Refugees The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Well, the Russians are always coming. The Russians never stopped coming since those heady Cold War days. The Russians are “invading” Ukraine. Every day. For over a year now. Now the Russians are “invading” Syria. That’s just a prelude. Soon the Russians will be invading the whole Middle East, the whole of Eastern and Western Europe, the whole Arctic. And then, one day, surreptitiously, they will be back in Cuba, ready to invade Florida and then the whole homeland. History now repeats itself under the eternal recurrence of farce. About the best illustration of the propaganda modus operandi underlying the current exceptionalist hysteria over Russia’s alleged “military incursion” in Syria was penned way back in 2011 on Counterpunch by the late, great Alex Cockburn. Enjoy:
Category: Head Stories
Secretary John Kerry and friends have managed what can only be called a brilliant double suicide. The September 2014 deal with Saudi Arabia to crash oil prices, then at $103 a barrel for US WTI grade crude oil, not only has managed to bring the US shale oil industry—Washington’s new strategic card allowing the US to essentially abandon her Saudi and Gulf Arab allies–to the brink of bankruptcy and collapse. The oil price collapse, ironically, also gave Russian oil beautiful profits and forced the companies to turn east for far larger and more lucrative new markets. Team Russia-Saudi Arabia: 2 to 0 for Team USA-Canada. At the present rate of developments, with oil prices frantically being pushed up by derivative trades only to crash back the next day, today hovering at $47 a barrel for the benchmark US West Texas Intermediate or WTI, I would estimate that a major share of USA shale companies will be forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy before year-end or into the first quarter of 2016.
US corporate-funded policy think-tank, the Brookings Institution, published a June 2015 paper titled, “Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country.” The signed and dated open-conspiracy to divide, destroy, invade, then incrementally occupy Syria using no-fly-zones and both US and British special forces is now demonstrably underway. The paper would lay out in no uncertain terms that (emphasis added): The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.
Starting in 2011 in Libya, the United States dropped bombs on Libya in order to replace its pro-Russian dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. The EU is now tearing itself apart with guilt-feelings at European nations’ responses to the refugee-crisis that was caused by this American bombing-campaign in Libya, and then by the one in Syria. Europe has also received refugees from the American-sponsored bombing-campaign in eastern Ukraine (the bombing-campaign that the 2014 American-installed anti-Russian Ukrainian government calls an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation,’ or ‘ATO,’ which labels the residents in that pro-Russian area — where the residents reject the February 2014 U.S. coup — as ‘Terrorists’ and thus as being suitable to be bombed, and even firebombed).
The world has suddenly realised that there is a “refugee crisis”. There are more refugees now than at any time since World War II. The number has grown three-fold since the end of 2001. The problem is treated as if it arose just recently, but it has been a long time coming. The pressure has been building and building until it has burst the dams of wilful ignorance. Death and despair has migrated to the doorsteps of Europe. But tens of millions of people do not simply abandon home and native land for an insecure dangerous future of desperate struggle. The forces that have created this crisis are massive and historic in scale.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron this week said “as a father I felt deeply moved” by the image of a Syrian boy dead on a Turkish beach. As pressure mounts on the UK to take in more of those fleeing to Europe from Syria and elsewhere. Cameron added that the UK would fulfil its “moral responsibilities.” On hearing Cameron’s words on the role of ‘morality’, something he talks a lot about, anyone who has been following the crisis in Syria would not have failed to detect the hypocrisy. According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009.
Fact Or Fiction? Russia has begun its military intervention in Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base, in order to launch attacks against ISIS and Islamist rebels; US stays silent. Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state. According to Western diplomats, a Russian expeditionary force has already arrived in Syria and set up camp in an Assad-controlled airbase. The base is said to be in area surrounding Damascus, and will serve, for all intents and purposes, as a Russian forward operating base.
War without mercy on Yemen: “In five months [of war], Yemen has been reduced to the state of Syria after 5 years”, said Peter Maurer, the Director of the International Red Cross, on August 19th, 2015. These difficult images, which put faces and names to the countless civilian victims, can help to give an idea of the magnitude of the unspeakable massacres perpetrated daily by the forces of the Saudi-US coalition against Yemen’s population, with a barbarity unexampled in recent history that overshadows even the Zionist crimes in Gaza, and of the incredible spirit of resistance of the Yemeni people despite being abandoned by the international community. Terrorist UK and stateless Hollandian France are proud to actively participate, via their ethereal and pacifist weapons, in this “heroic butchery”.
Judiciary Branch Has Self-Abolished The US no longer has a judiciary. This former branch of government has transitioned into an enabler of executive branch fascism. Privacy is a civil liberty protected by the US Constitution. The Constitution relies on courts to enforce its prohibitions against intrusive government, but if the executive branch claims (no proof required) “national security,” courts kiss the Constitution good-bye. Federal judges are chosen by the executive branch. The senate can refuse to confirm, but that is rare. The executive branch chooses judges who are friendly to executive power. This is especially the case for the appeals courts and the Supreme Court. The Justice (sic) Department keeps tabs on district court judges who rule against the government, and these judges don’t make it to the higher courts. The result over time is to erode civil liberty.
The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency. This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street. Fearing the eclipsing of the US dollar and the Bretton Woods system by a rival financial architecture the US response has been an attempt to damage the Chinese markets and increase the value of China’s currency. China has responded through regulations in the market and then quantitative easing of its currency to maintain the low prices of Chinese manufactured goods and exports.