Responses from US and European Diplomats and Politicians to the Russian and Chinese Veto to the UNSC Draft Resolution on Syria have elicited responses which can no longer be described as normal diplomatic courtesy and etiquette. Susan Rice, the highest US Diplomat to the United Nations and other used strong language such as “disgusting” and “disgusted”. In private meetings, Russian politicians and diplomats are said to have “warned” France, and other NATO countries from military intervention. This “warning” however, is late. In numerous articles the author has documented that NATO has been operating inside Syria at least since August 2011,
Category: Head Stories
Here’s a crash course on the “democratic” machinations of the Arab League – rather the GCC League, as real power in this pan-Arab organization is wielded by two of the six Persian Gulf monarchies composing the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-revolution Club; Qatar and the House of Saud. Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not. When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.
British and Qatari troops are directing rebel ammunition deliveries and tactics in the bloody battle for Homs, according to an Israeli website known for links to intelligence sources. Four centers of operation have been established in the city with the troops on the ground paving the way for an undercover Turkish military incursion into Syria. The debkafile site said the presence of British and Qatari troops in Homs topped the agenda of Tuesday’s talks between Assad’s officials and head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov. Qatar makes little secret of supporting the Syrian opposition with cash, arms and political support. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani said in mid-January he is ready to send troops to Syria to stop the violence there. Britain insists it is not planning any military action against the Assad regime.
As we previously documented, Belhadj is the former front man for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. Belhadj was captured by the CIA in Malaysia in 2003 and extradited to Libya where Colonel Gaddafi had him imprisoned. Belhadj is a committed jihadist who fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi also admitted that Belhadj’s LIFG fighters were the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, responsible for killing U.S. troops. Whereas the western corporate media has attempted to portray the bloodshed in Syria as a one sided affair, with Assad’s regime being solely responsible for the atrocities, independent observers have noted that both sides are culpable for the violence.
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East. All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort” have been scrapped. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defense”. The distinction between tactical nuclear weapons and the conventional battlefield arsenal has been blurred. America’s new nuclear doctrine is based on “a mix of strike capabilities”. The latter, which specifically applies to the Pentagon’s planned aerial bombing of Iran, envisages the use of nukes in combination with conventional weapons. As in the case of the first atomic bomb, which in the words of President Harry Truman “was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base”, today’s “mini-nukes” are heralded as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.
Class Struggle not over in Russia Moscow — For a month, Moscow was bracing itself for the February 4 Rally. It was pre-planned and prepared by the anti-Putin pro-Western liberal opposition. Despite sub-zero Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Centigrade) arctic frost, the organizers hoped to break their pre-Christmas record and gather a huge crowd and a procession to shatter the will of the government supporters. They had bought up all the thermal underwear in the city stores, joined forces with anti-Muslim nationalists of Pym Fortuyn kind, and marched in strength probably exceeding the previous rallies. Police counted them at 38,000; by their own calculation they were up at 60,000. But the surprise of the day loomed elsewhere. While the pro-Western opposition gathered on the Bolotnaya Heath («Marais») just across the river from the Kremlin’s red crenelated walls, a small demo was also planned as a token of government support on the Poklonnaya Hill, overlooking Moscow from the west. The White Fronde of the Heath applied for a 60,000 rally permit and made it; pro-government forces planned for 15,000, and even this assessment was considered too optimistic: a previous pro-government rally made between three to five thousand. Indeed, demos are good “against”, not “for” the government.
George Orwell coined the useful term “unperson” for creatures denied personhood because they don’t abide by state doctrine. We may add the term “unhistory” to refer to the fate of unpersons, expunged from history on similar grounds. The unhistory of unpersons is illuminated by the fate of anniversaries. Important ones are usually commemorated, with due solemnity when appropriate: Pearl Harbor, for example. Some are not, and we can learn a lot about ourselves by extricating them from unhistory. Right now we are failing to commemorate an event of great human significance: the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s decision to launch the direct invasion of South Vietnam, soon to become the most extreme crime of aggression since World War II.
The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. The military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously. The concept of the “Long War” has characterized US military doctrine since the end of World War II. The broader objective of global military dominance in support of an imperial project was first formulated under the Truman administration in the late 1940s at the outset of the Cold War. In September 1990, some five weeks after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President and Commander in Chief George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a historical address to a joint session of the US Congress and the Senate in which he proclaimed a New World Order emerging from the rubble of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union. Bush Senior had envisaged a world of “peaceful international co-operation”, one which was no longer locked into the confrontation between competing super powers, under the shadow of the doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) which had characterized the Cold War era. Bush declared emphatically at the outset of what became known as “the post-Cold War era” that: “a new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times… a new world order can emerge: A new era freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.” Of course, speeches by American presidents are often occasions for cynical platitudes and contradictions that should not be taken at face value. After all, President Bush was holding forth on international law and justice only months after his country had invaded Panama in December 1989 causing the deaths of several thousand citizens – committing crimes comparable to what Saddam Hussein would be accused of and supposedly held to account for. Also in 1991, the US and its NATO allies went on to unleash, under a “humanitarian” mantle, a protracted war against Yugoslavia, leading to the destruction, fragmentation and impoverishment of an entire country
Cultural Construction is an important component part for constructing the general composition of socialist undertakings with Chinese characteristics, cultural flourishing and development is an important goal for completely constructing a relatively well-off society. The Decision passed by the plenary session, completely summarizes the achievements and experiences of the Party’s leadership of cultural construction, deeply analyzes the situation and tasks facing cultural construction, and on the basis of concentrating the wisdom of the entire Party, has elaborated the development path for socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, has established strategic objectives for constructing a strong socialist culture country, has put forward the guiding ideology, important guiding principles, objectives, tasks and policy measures for promoting cultural reform and development under new circumstances, and is a programmatic document for guiding our country’s cultural reform and development in the present and future periods.
Last Friday (January 27) the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced its advance estimate that in the last quarter of 2011 the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8% in real inflation-adjusted terms, an increase from the annual rate of growth in the third quarter. Good news, right? Wrong. If you want to know what is really happening, you must turn to John Williams at www.shadowstats.com. What the presstitute media did not tell us is that almost the entire gain In GDP growth was due to “involuntary inventory build-up,” that is, more goods were produced than were sold. Net of the unsold goods, the annualized real growth rate was eight-tenths of one percent.
And even that tiny growth rate is an exaggeration, because it is deflated with a measure of inflation that understates inflation. The US government’s measure of inflation no longer measures a constant standard of living. Instead, the government’s inflation measure relies on substitution of cheaper goods for those that rise in price. In other words, the government holds the measure of inflation down by measuring a declining standard of living. This permits our rulers to divert cost-of-living-adjustments that should be paid to Social Security recipients to wars of aggression, police state, and banker bailouts.