How Barack Obama chose war over peace in Syria

By Shamus Cooke Counterpunch

With Syria on the brink of national genocide, outside nations have only two options: help reverse the catastrophe or plunge this torn nation deeper into the abyss.

Countries can either work towards a peaceful political solution or they can continue to pour money, guns, and fighters into the country to ensure a steady gushing into the bloodbath.

President Obama will have no talk of peace. He has chosen war since the very start and he’s sticking to it. A recent New York Times article revealed that President Obama has been lying through his teeth about the level of US involvement in the Syrian conflict since the beginning.

The President recently said that the US government continues to give only “non-lethal” military aid to the rebels, but The New York Times revealed that the CIA has been actively funneling and distributing massive shipments of weapons to the rebels over the borders of Jordan and Turkey.

Democracy vs. Foreign Invasion. Who is Bashar Al Assad?

by Arabi Souri

Pres. Bashar al Assad

Bashar al-Assad has recently been demonized by the mainstream and so-called alternative media who claim that he is a brutal dictator. Actually Bashar is a reformer who has done much to further the causes of democracy and freedom. It is the opposition and their foreign supporters who represent the most repressive elements of the former ruling party in Syria. To fully understand this its is helpful to look at the historical context of the current crisis. The so-called “spontaneous popular uprising” started in Daraa on March 15^th, 2011. The court house, police stations, governor’s house, and other public buildings were looted and torched by the “peaceful protestors” in the first week of the crisis. The people in Homs then began to protest in solidarity with Daraa, but this was uncharacteristic of peaceful Homs and many Syrians knew that it was a fake revolution.

About 110 unarmed police officers were murdered in Daraa and Homs, sparking anger against the “revolutionaries.” There was an incident in the city Baniyas where an Alawite truck driver was attacked by an armed mob, skinned, and paraded through the city. This disgusted almost all Syrians and since then not a single major city actually rebelled against the government. The foreign backed “revolutionaries” would attack a neighborhood, police station, or army base, from across the borders of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. Then they would claim that the city was in rebellion.But the Syrians, seeing the same lies in all the western and Arab news stations, and the exiled rotten officials adopting the ‘revolution’, mostly took an anti-revolution stance. That is why whenever the rebels would infest a town or city you would immediately hear of a massacre to punish the residents for not supporting them. Of course the mainstream media would claim that it was Assad forces punishing the town that dared to oppose him!Assad took advantage of the revolution to introduce his packages of reforms, putting aside those in the old guards who opposed them. Many of the old guard then joined the opposition abroad.

CONFIRMED: US Shipping Weapons to Syria - Al Nusra's "Mystery" Sponsors Revealed

While US President Barack Obama and the Western media lied in concert to the world regarding America's role in supporting terrorists operating in Syria, it is now revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been shipping weapons to Syria via NATO-member Turkey and Jordan since at least early 2012. The New York Times in their article titled, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid," admits that: 

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

The New York Times piece attempts to spin America's role in arming militants in Syria. The Times continues by stating:  

The American government became involved, the former American official said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft.

Hugo Chávez (1954-2013)

The death of the Commander President Hugo Chavez Frias this Tuesday, March 5, causes immense pain and consternation among the Venezuelan people, in all Latin American peoples and legions of fans, he won followers, friends and allies with his inner strength, his charisma, his talent and energy for the Bolivarian Revolution and the cause of national liberation and social development of the people.

Hugo Chávez goes down in history as one of the greatest figures ever born on Latin American soil. Alongside Fidel Castro, Commander of the Cuban Revolution, he was the main leader of the anti-imperialist current times, Keeper of confidence of the peoples of "Our America," as José Martí would say.

He was effectively a giant. Chavez led a major political movement, which, as new, is still in the bud. With the strength of his ideas and his transformative edifying example of revolutionary leader and statesman, this movement tends to consolidate and perpetuate as the major trend of our time. The political movement directed by and starring Chavez is the essence of anti-imperialism, which is the very spirit of our time, the brand of tenacious resistance of the peoples against the international neocolonialist offensive  potentates under the aegis of U.S. imperialism.

Another indelible imprint of his thought and work is popular democracy, participatory, permanent mobilization of the people, a weapon of victory in any battle against the enemies that appear to be more powerful.

US-Saudi Funded Terrorists Sowing Chaos in Pakistan

Baluchistan, Pakistan - long target of Western geopolitical interests, terror wave coincides with Gwadar Port handover to China. 

February 18, 2013 - Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province, bordering both US-occupied Afghanistan as well as Iran, was the site of a grisly market bombing that has killed over 80 people. According to reports, the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the attack. Billed as a "Sunni extremist group," it instead fits the pattern of global terrorism sponsored by the US, Israel, and their Arab partners Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The terrorist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group was in fact created, according to the BBC, to counter Iran's Islamic Revolution in the 1980's, and is still active today. Considering the openly admitted US-Israeli-Saudi plot to use Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups across the Middle East to counter Iran's influence, it begs the question whether these same interests are funding terrorism in Pakistan to not only counter Iranian-sympathetic Pakistani communities, but to undermine and destabilize Pakistan itself.

The US-Saudi Global Terror Network 
While the United States is close allies with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is well established that the chief financier of extremist militant groups for the past 3 decades, including Al Qaeda, are in fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While Qatari state-owned propaganda like Al Jazeera apply a veneer of progressive pro-democracy to its narratives, Qatar itself is involved in arming, funding, and even providing direct military support for sectarian extremists from northern Mali, to Libya, to Syria and beyond.  

France 24's report "Is Qatar fuelling the crisis in north Mali?" provides a useful vignette of Saudi-Qatari terror sponsorship, stating:

“The MNLA [secular Tuareg separatists], al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and MUJAO [movement for unity and Jihad in West Africa] have all received cash from Doha.”

"A month later Sadou Diallo, the mayor of the north Malian city of Gao [which had fallen to the Islamists] told RTL radio: “The French government knows perfectly well who is supporting these terrorists. Qatar, for example, continues to send so-called aid and food every day to the airports of Gao and Timbuktu.”

The report also stated:  

“Qatar has an established a network of institutions it funds in Mali, including madrassas, schools and charities that it has been funding from the 1980s,” he wrote, adding that Qatar would be expecting a return on this investment.

“Mali has huge oil and gas potential and it needs help developing its infrastructure,” he said. “Qatar is well placed to help, and could also, on the back of good relations with an Islamist-ruled north Mali, exploit rich gold and uranium deposits in the country.”

These institutions are present not only in Mali, but around the world, and provide a nearly inexhaustible supply of militants for both the Persian Gulf monarchies and their Western allies to use both as a perpetual casus belli to invade and occupy foreign nations such as Mali and Afghanistan, as well as a sizable, persistent mercenary force, as seen in Libya and Syria. Such institutions jointly run by Western intelligence agencies across Europe and in America, fuel domestic fear-mongering and the resulting security state that allows Western governments to more closely control their populations as they pursue reckless, unpopular policies at home and abroad. 

Since Saudi-Qatari geopolitical interests are entwined with Anglo-American interests, both the "investment" and "return on this investment" are clearly part of a joint venture. France's involvement in Mali has demonstrably failed to curb such extremists, has instead, predictably left the nation occupied by Western interests while driving terrorists further north into the real target, Algeria.

Additionally, it should be noted, that France in particular, played a leading role along side Qatar and Saudi Arabia in handing Libya over to these very same extremists. French politicians were in Benghazi shaking hands with militants they would be "fighting" in the near future in northern Mali.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is Part of US-Saudi Terror Network 
In terms of Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, as well as the infamous Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai, India attack killing over 160, both are affiliates of Al Qaeda, and both have been linked financially, directly to Saudi Arabia. In the Guardian's article, "WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists," the US State Department even acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is indeed funding terrorism in Pakistan:  

"Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton."

"More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said.

Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has also been financially linked to the Persian Gulf monarchies. Stanford University's "Mapping Militant Organizations: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi," states under "External Influences:" 

"LeJ has received money from several Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates[25] These countries funded LeJ and other Sunni militant groups primarily to counter the rising influence of Iran's revolutionary Shiism."  

Astonishingly, despite these admission, the US works politically, financially, economically, and even militarily in tandem with these very same state-sponsors of rampant, global terrorism. In Libya and Syria, the US has even assisted in the funding and arming of Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, and had conspired with Saudi Arabia since at least 2007 to overthrow both Syria and Iran with these terrorist groups. And while Saudi Arabia funds terrorism in Pakistan, the US is well documented to be funding political subversion in the very areas where the most heinous attacks are being carried out.

US Political Subversion in Baluchistan, Pakistan
The US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been directly funding and supporting the work of the "Balochistan Institute for Development" (BIFD) which claims to be "the leading resource on democracy, development and human rights in Balochistan, Pakistan." In addition to organizing the annual NED-BFID "Workshop on Media, Democracy & Human Rights" BFID reports that USAID had provided funding for a "media-center" for the Baluchistan Assembly to "provide better facilities to reporters who cover the proceedings of the Balochistan Assembly." We must assume BFID meant reporters "trained" at NED-BFID workshops.

 Image: A screenshot of "Voice of Balochistan's" special US State Department message. While VOB fails to disclose its funding, it is a sure bet it, like other US-funded propaganda fronts, is nothing more than a US State Department outlet. (click image to enlarge) 

Images: In addition to the annual Fortune 500-funded “Balochistan International Conference,” the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy has been busy at work building up Baluchistan's "civil society" network. This includes support for the "Balochistan Institute For Development," which maintains a "BIFD Leadership Academy," claiming to "mobilize, train and encourage youth to play its effective role in promotion of democracy development and rule of law." The goal is to subvert Pakistani governance while simultaneously creating a homogeneous "civil society" that interlocks with the West's "international institutions." This is how modern empire perpetuates itself. 

There is also Voice of Balochistan whose every top-story is US-funded propaganda drawn from foundation-funded Reporters Without Borders, Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, and even a direct message from the US State Department itself. Like other US State Department funded propaganda outfits around the world - such as Thailand's Prachatai - funding is generally obfuscated in order to maintain "credibility" even when the front's constant torrent of obvious propaganda more than exposes them.

Perhaps the most absurd operations being run to undermine Pakistan through the "Free Baluchistan" movement are the US and London-based organizations. The "Baloch Society of North America" almost appears to be a parody at first, but nonetheless serves as a useful aggregate and bellwether regarding US meddling in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. The group's founder, Dr. Wahid. Baloch, openly admits he has met with US politicians in regards to Baluchistan independence. This includes Neo-Con warmonger, PNAC signatory, corporate-lobbyist, and National Endowment for Democracy director Zalmay Khalilzad.

Dr. Wahid Baloch considers Baluchistan province "occupied" by both the Iranian and Pakistani governments - he and his movement's humanitarian hand-wringing gives Washington the perfect pretext to create an armed conflagration against either Iran or Pakistan, or both, as planned in detail by various US policy think-tanks.

There is also the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad, or BSO. While it maintains a presence in Pakistan, it has coordinators based in London. London-based BSO members include "information secretaries" that propagate their message via social media, just as US and British-funded youth organizations did during the West's operations against other targeted nations during the US-engineered "Arab Spring."

 

 Image: A screenshot of a "Baloch Human rights activist and information secretary of BSO Azad London zone" Twitter account. This user, in tandem with look-alike accounts has been propagating anti-Pakistani, pro-"Free Baluchistan" propaganda incessantly. They also engage in coordinated attacks with prepared rhetoric against anyone revealing US ties to Baluchistan terrorist organizations. 

And while the US does not openly admit to funding and arming terrorists in Pakistan yet, many across established Western policy think-tanks have called for it.

Image: Why Baluchistan? Gwadar in the southwest serves as a Chinese port and the starting point for a logistical corridor through Pakistan and into Chinese territory. The Iranian-Pakistani-Indian pipeline would enter from the west, cross through Baluchistan intersecting China's proposed logistical route to the northern border, and continue on to India. Destabilizing Baluchistan would effectively derail the geopolitical aspirations of four nations. 

Selig Harrison of the convicted criminal, George Soros-funded Center for International Policy, has published two pieces regarding the armed “liberation” of Baluchistan.

Harrison’s February 2011 piece, “Free Baluchistan,” calls to “aid the 6 million Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression.” He continues by explaining the various merits of such meddling by stating:  

“Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.”

Harrison would follow up his frank call to carve up Pakistan by addressing the issue of Chinese-Pakistani relations in a March 2011 piece titled, “The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis.” He states: 

“China’s expanding reach is a natural and acceptable accompaniment of its growing power—but only up to a point. ”  

He continues:  

“To counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar.”

While aspirations of freedom and independence are used to sell Western meddling in Pakistan, the geopolitical interests couched behind this rhetoric is openly admitted to. The prophetic words of Harrison should ring loud in one's ears today. It is in fact this month, that Pakistan officially hands over the port in Gwadar to China, and Harrison's armed militants are creating bloodshed and chaos, attempting to trigger a destructive sectarian war that will indeed threaten to "oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar."

Like in Syria, we have a documented conspiracy years in the making being carried out before our very eyes. The people of Pakistan must not fall into the trap laid by the West who seeks to engulf Baluchistan in sectarian bloodshed with the aid of Saudi and Qatari-laundered cash and weapons. For the rest of the world, we must continue to uncover the corporate-financier special interests driving these insidious plots, boycott and permanently replace them on a local level.

The US-Saudi terror racket has spilled blood from New York City, across Northern Africa, throughout the Middle East, and as far as Pakistan and beyond. If we do not undermine and ultimately excise these special interests, their plans and double games will only get bolder and the inevitability of their engineered chaos effecting us individually will only grow.

Libyan-style "Democracy": Two Years Without Gaddafi

Mass protests are sweeping across Libya as the country marks the second anniversary of the beginning of a civil war that ousted Muammar Gaddafi. Two years after the fall of the Gaddafi regime, no new constitution has been drafted.

The new authorities have obviously failed to maintain law and order. Crime is rampaging and popular discontent is on the rise. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has shut the borders with neighboring Egypt and Tunisia from February 14 to 18 as a security precaution.

Though the anti-Gaddafi revolt erupted on February 17, the main celebrations will take place on the 15th . Airport security is being tightened. Meanwhile, Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines have suspended all flights to Libya until the 17th, citing “tensions on the grounds”. Earlier, Germany, France, Canada and other countries urged their citizens to immediately leave Benghazi over the imminent threat of terrorist attacks. Security is being tightened in the capital Tripoli and also in Benghazi where four U.S. diplomats were killed in a bloody raid on the U.S. consulate last September.

With anarchy and marauding flourishing in border areas where once strict law and order reigned under Gaddafi, most Libyans, particularly in the east, have been outraged by the authorities’ inaction. In addition to local extremists and “adventure seekers”, terrorists of all sorts, including groups of jihadists from Mali, have been pouring in. The “democracy” the West had once been so fervent in forcing upon Libya looks more like a medieval rule, says Director of the Cairo-based Java Center for Political Studies Rifaat Sayed Ahmad.

"NATO air strikes threw the once prospering country by African standards back into the Middle Ages, and still worse, they plunged it into a civil war. The West used military force to install an obedient yet unpopular regime unable to deal with the religious and tribal feud that is tearing the country apart. Libyan oil and gas – that was the main target of NATO’s military intervention in the name of the noble goal of freeing ordinary Libyans from Colonel Gaddafi’s dictatorship, as one French TV program put it."

The unhappy outcome is hardly a surprise and had been foreseen by analysts even before the intervention began, says Russian political scientist Stanislav Tarasov.

"Not just Russian analysts but Western ones as well made such forecasts. Libya is fragmented and may, in prospect, split into two or even three states. Some territories ruled by certain tribal clans have set up their own borders. In this situation, attempts by the so-called central government to adopt an all-Libyan law, a constitution accepted by all, appear to be doomed. The West which initiated the “Arab spring” in Libya can offer nothing except the use of force."

No immediate improvements should be expected though. Boris Dolgov, a senior researcher at the Center for Arabic Studies in Moscow, notes that Libya is a long way from stabilization. It is actually the hotbed of instability for the entire North Africa.

"We are witnessing a spread of radical Islamism, as in the case of Mali and Algeria. The events in Mali and Libya are closely intertwined. Gaddafi waged a war on radical extremism and kept the situation under control. More than 600 Islamists were in jails. After the fall of Gaddafi, they walked free and joined radical groups, including those operating in Mali."

Libya today is “a territory of absolute lawlessness”, as some Arab analysts call it, or rather it’s a powder keg to which a blazing torch has already been brought.

http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_02_15/Libyan-style-democracy-two-years-without-Gaddafi/

They Used to Call Them Conspiracy “Theories”

When the violence involved in the Syrian revolution first came to exposure, it attracted much attention from around the world. Media networks such as Aljazeera, Alarabiya, CNN, and BBC all drew a scenario in which a power-lusting dictator was deliberately massacring peaceful protesters in order to remain in power. The Syrian government, however, rejected this story and offered another scenario regarding the undeniable violence that was occurring in the country. According to the Syrian president, Bashar Al Assad, and other government representatives, the horrific violence that was taking place in Syria was carried out by “terrorist gangs” , many of whom were Islamic extremists that opposed the Syrian government for its secularity and that aimed to create an Islamic Sharia led government. The Syrian government also proposed that the West, especially nations such as the United States, was particularly involved in backing the extremist rebels up because it too had a political interest in ousting the Syrian government.

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad in his first speech
after the protests broke out in Syria. He said that “Syria’s enemies were targeting its unity”.

All of the claims made by the Syrian government were not backed up by any evidence. They were simply “theories”, and more specifically “conspiracy theories”; at least that is what most people who rejected these ideas referred to them as. Most people who supported the Syrian government’s direction of thought were mocked to be “conspiracy theorists” or “Assad apologists”. Their arguments were dismissed as irrational and impossible.

In recent days, however, more and more evidence has compiled to reveal a truth that is quite ironic. In fact, the evidence is so strong that it is actually no longer deniable. At this point, the FSA does indeed fit all of the descriptions the Syrian government had given it. This is fully recognized by everyone, especially the Syrian people.

First of all, the FSA is indeed composed of mostly radical sectarian individuals who consider their fight to be a form of jihad for the sake of Islam. Many of these fighters are not even Syrian, they are mercenaries who have entered Syria through the Turkish border. A lot of them are with Al Qaeda, in fact the leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman Zawahiri, is an outspoken supporter of the Syrian Revolution and has made public invitations for jihadists all over the globe to join the FSA. And they have indeed been found on Syrian lands (See Al Qaeda leader, Ayman Zawahiri, calls upon jihadists all over the world to join the FSA in Syria)

Two Saudi Arabian jihadists who joined the FSA.
The one on the right was found and defeated by the Syrian Army.

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