Christof Lehmann (nsnbc),- The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has passed legislation that, if signed by U.S. President Obama, approves of officially supplying weapons to what the committee describes as “The Syrian Opposition”.

According to international law the bill implies, that the U.S.A. officially becomes a conflicting party due to the fact, that the official approval of weapons deliveries and other aid to “the opposition” is changing its status to that of a mercenary corps.

The Senate´s decision has significantly increased the likelihood of the development of a regional war with global implications and has, if it is signed  by President Obama, for the foreseeable future undermined attempts to settle the war by political means. 

The bipartisan U.S. Senate´s Foreign Relations Committee voted 15 – 3 in favor of the bill that would allow U.S. politicians to officially arm the terrorist organizations, which the USA has been directly and indirectly financing, arming and otherwise supporting since the genesis of the conflict in 2011.

Already in 2011 a whistleblower at the U.S. Special Forces at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, U.S.A. stated to nsnbc, that the USA has special forces deployed in Syria and the the USA is financing and arming the “Syrian opposition”. 

If signed by President Obama, the U.S.A. would technically become a directly involved party to the war, which is due to the fact, that the so-called opposition would arguably  receive the legal status of being a US-sponsored mercenary corps.

While some analysts state, that the decision would not imply significant changes on the ground because the USA has sponsored terrorists in Syria since the onset of the crisis, others predict that the new legislation implies a significant increase of arms shipments, a significant increase in recruitment efforts, a substantial increase of funding, and an inevitable widening of the war into Lebanon and Iraq.

What remains unclear is, whether a full Senate will vote on the legislation. The legislation calls to “provide defense articles, defense services, and military training” directly to the “opposition” on the ground in Syria who “have been properly and fully vetted and share common values and interests with the United States”. 

The legislation would thus officially endorse an illegal military strategy on Syria, which a US Training Circular for Special Forces and “Foreign Students” designates as being official US military doctrine. The Training Circular, TC-18-01 explicitly states, that the US military, for the foreseeable future, would primarily be involved in unconventional warfare. The subversion of foreign nations, as described in the TC-01 is a de-facto outline of the political and military strategy which the USA has used against the Syrian Arab Republic since 2011. The full document has previously been disclosed on nsnbc. 

It is however, the last part of the sentence, “vetted and share common values and interests with the United States”, that would also officially transform the United States into a party that is directly involved in the war by recruiting, financing and arming  mercenaries.

Belhadj – The Enemy Image

According to reliable Syrian statistics, which repeatedly have been sent to the office of U.N. Secretary Ban Kyi-moon, more than 80 per cent of the persons involved in combat operations against the Syrian military forces and the Syrian Civil Defense Forces are foreign fighters.

As documented in a previous article, much of the recruitment of these mercenary forces is being organized via Libya, under supervision of Emir of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Since the US-backed coup d´etat in Libya in 2011, Abdelhakim Belhadj, who has a long history of cooperation with the British Foreign Intelligence Service MI6, Mossad and NATO Intelligence, and who according to former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar is the main responsible person for the 2004 Madrid Train Bombings that killed dozens, Abdelhakim Belhadj also functions as official Tripoli Military Governor. The largest so far documented arms shipment, including SAM-7 surface to air missiles was shipped from Libya through Turkey and into Syria. 

Belhadj, Tripoli Military Governor and Syrian Tripoli Brigade Commander in Chief

With the main body of Syria recruits being recruited through a network that is in liaison with NATO, NATO is, by implication, also becoming directly involved in the Syria War if the bill is passed. The legal implications are mind-boggling and bound to significantly worsen the crisis between Russia and the USA, the crisis between Russia and the EU, and the crisis between some EU member states, first and foremost Germany and the USA.

Most experts on US – Israeli foreign relations agree that the Israeli lobby in the USA, which has a significant influence over the majority of members of Congress, has been lobbying strongly in support of the bill. Over the course of the last month reports of direct Israeli involvement in the war have significantly increased.

Already in 2011 Israel was arming the so-called Syrian opposition through third parties in Lebanon. Most prominently among them, the Saudi-Lebanese national and chairman of the “Movement for the Future Party” Saad Hariri, and the leader of the Lebanese Druze community and chairman of the Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblatt. Jumblatt is known for, already in 2011, having facilitated weapons deliveries from Israel´s Raphael Industries.

One of the few Senators who have voted against the bill was Senator Rand Paul who stated ” You will be funding today the allies of al-Qaeda…. It is an irony you cannot overcome”. Critics of Rand Paul however state that his nay-vote was cheap since it was well known that the majority would vote in favor of the bill. Others criticize Paul for being representative of double standards by not clearly stating that it is not allies of al-Qaeda but al-Qaeda and allies, and that al-Qaeda is a euphemism for a network of NATO mercenaries who can be used as friend or foe, terrorist of freedom fighters, all and alone depending on utility.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is currently visiting Jordan to meet representatives from 11 nations. Part of the agenda will be discussions between Kerry and Russian representatives about the so-called U.S.-Russian roadmap to end the Syria crisis.

The chances for ending the war in Syrian by political means however, are becoming increasingly slim. According to some analysts, the crisis is increasingly developing a propensity toward a deterioration into a Sarajevo-like situation, where the events begin determining the decisions of the policy makers, rather than the policy makers being the ones who determine the development of the events. The odds are clearly stacked against a political resolution and overwhelmingly for a widening of the war into Lebanon and Iraq.

Russia has repeatedly warned that the material support of the terrorists in Syria violates international law, and Russian officials have warned that the passing of the legislation is one more, and a most serious violation of international law.

The Russian position always was and remains the position, that only direct talks between the Syrian government and the opposition can solve the crisis and that the arming of terrorists sabotages ongoing attempts to solve the crisis and the ongoing political reform process in Syria.

In March, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated, that “International law does not permit the supply of arms to non-governmental actors and our point of view is that it is a violation of international law” .

Podium and first row, left to right: Paul Liem, Korea Policy Institute; Dorothy Ogle, former Methodist missionary to South Korea; Pilju Kim Joo, Agglobe Services International; Indong Oh, M.D.; Jeong Young-Hee, farmer and peace activist from Gangjeong, Jeju Island; Christine Ahn (back turned), Global Fund for Women and Oakland Institute, and daughter. Top row, left to right: Moon Jae Pak, M.D., U.S.-North Korea Medical Science Exchange Committee; historian Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago; Erich Weingartener, CanKor; Rev. Syngman Rhee; James Chun, One Korea Movement; Hosu Kim, City University of New York.
Conference organizers and speakers.* (Photo: Peggy McInerny.)

The UCLA Center for Korean Studies hosted a conference entitled “Ending the Korean War” on May 9, 2013. The meeting brought together a wide range of speakers — historians, sociologists, former missionaries, peace activists, Korean War survivors, and people currently engaged in humanitarian projects in North Korea — to reconsider how to end a war that never technically ended. Instead of a peace agreement, the United States and North Korea signed an armistice agreement in 1953 on behalf of their allies on each side.

Sixty years later, the Korean Peninsula remains heavily militarized, the United States has still not recognized North Korea, and acute tensions between the two states earlier in 2013 threatened to lead to military conflict.

Historian Bruce Cumings of the University of Chicago, where he is Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the history department, served as keynote speaker. In his view, U.S. policy toward North Korea over the past 60 years, which has consisted mostly of nuclear threats, has been a complete failure. Not only does North Korea now have nuclear weapons, as well as long- and medium-range missiles, the two nations are no nearer to a peace agreement than they were in 1953.

“We haven’t taken the bull by the horns and figured out a way to make a deal with North Korea that would both allow it to exist and survive and — hopefully — thrive, and allow us to get out of what is really. . . a ridiculous position of threatening a tiny countr

Araqchi extended condolences to the bereaved families of victims and said such terrorist attacks were in contravention of humane and ethical principles.

Photo, Kai Mörk

He said the terrorist attacks were part of the enemies’ plots to fuel ethnic rifts in the region and undermine the unity among Muslims.

The Iranian official underlined the responsibility of the Iraqi government as well as the security and law enforcement bodies to protect the lives of pilgrims in the Arab country.

At least 86 people have been killed and over 150 others injured in several bomb explosions and shooting incidents the capital Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman also said the upcoming meeting of the Friends of Syria, due to be held in Tehran, is aimed at finding a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria.

“The meeting is an effort by the Islamic Republic of Iran to help find political solutions to the Syrian crisis,” Araqchi said.

He said that the meeting will be held with the slogan of Political solution – Regional stability on May 29 and a number of countries have been invited to attend the meeting.

The Iranian official reiterated Iran’s opposition to any military intervention in Syria, voicing the Islamic Republic’s support for national dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition in order to settle the crisis in the Arab country.

Araqchi further condemned the recent wave of deadly terrorist attacks across Iraq, warning that the enemies of the Muslim world are seeking to cause ethnic and sectarian strife between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Referring to the latest talks between Iran and the IAEA, Araghchi said Tehran does not consider negotiations a failure.

“Talks between Iran and the IAEA has not reached any conclusions so far, but we hope that they would yield results in next rounds, nevertheless we do not consider them a failure,” the Iranian official added.

Commenting on the meeting between Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili and the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in the Turkish city of Istanbul on May 15, Araghchi said, “Both sides said talks have been fruitful and the date of the next round of negotiations will be determined during future talks.”

“If the P5+1 (Britain, China, France, Russia and United States plus Germany) prefer to continue talks after the [presidential] election that is their choice, because the fundamental stances of our country will not change before or after the election,” Araghchi said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman has also offered its condolences to the American nation following the death of more than 90 people in a massive tornado that ripped through parts the US state of Oklahoma.

Abbas Araqchi voiced regret over the deadly incident and expressed sympathy with the families of the victims.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman has also condemned a raid by Bahraini forces on the house of prominent Shia cleric Ayatollah Sheikh Issa Ahmed Qassim.

“We strongly condemn this inappropriate move and stress that the element of violence and intimidation and an organized break into people’s houses are not compatible with logic and run counter to all ethical, religious and human standards,” Araqchi said.

Araqchi said acts of insult against senior clerics, attacking people’s houses and employing violence would have no result but the complication of the situation.

The Iranian official said the only solution to Bahrain’s crisis was adopting political methods and paying attention to and realizing popular demands.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated Iran’s readiness to employ its capacities for helping Bahrain resolve the crisis in a transparent and public manner.

Via Iran Review

The Movement issued a press release denouncing what it described as “suspicious media reports that try to drag the Islamic Jihad into what is happening in Syria”.

It added that “its struggle, and fight, is against the Zionist occupation that occupies Palestine”.

The movement also repeated its call for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and to ensure the unity of the Syrian land and people “far away from the cycle of violence and bloodshed, that only serve the interests of Syria’s enemies”.

The statement of the Islamic Jihad came after some reports said that Fadi Al-Jazzar, a Palestinian member of the movement was killed during a gun battle in Al-Qaseer Syrian city on Monday. Media reports claimed that Al-Jazzar recently joined the Lebanon-based Hezbollah party.

Via IMEMC

The recording is allegedly of a conversation between government supporter Mario Silva, who hosts the current affairs program La Hojilla on state channel VTV, and Aramis Palacios, a Cuban military official and supposed member of Cuban intelligence G2.

Television program host Mario Silva (EFE)

Opposition legislators played the audio file to press late yesterday morning. The recording lasted around 50 minutes, with opposition legislator Ismael Garcia saying that it would have been from “a little after the 14 April election”.

Within minutes of the opposition releasing the recording, private national newspaper Ultimas Noticias, together with other private international and national media, released a full written transcript of it.

Garcia claimed that the recording would have been handed over to Cuban president Raul Castro, “who seems to direct Venezuelan politics”.

In the recording, Silva made a series of alleged comments in which the pro-government head of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, is implicated in acts of corruption and plotting against President Nicolas Maduro.

Cabello is accused of using the government’s currency exchange commission CADIVI and tax authority SENIAT as “sources of financing”, facilitated by Cabello’s brother, Jose David, who heads SENIAT. Part of this is the apparent “leaking” of dollars from CADIVI to Cabello via “ghost companies”.

The national assembly president is also claimed to be conspiring against Maduro. This supposed “Cabello faction” is accused of seeking to “remove (Defence Minister) Diego Molero…to take power of the armed forces and direct Maduro as they want, or launch a state coup”.

Other claims aired in the recording are that the opposition hacked the National Electoral Council system and changed the 14 April presidential election result in their favour, that Vice-president Jorge Arreaza is a contact of opposition journalist Nelson Borrancada, and that state channel VTV is being run by a corrupt “Vampire Group”.

After playing the recording, Garcia called for a parliamentary session to open an investigation into what he called a “very grave” situation.

Meanwhile, former opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, who had been building up the release of the audio file over the previous day, tweeted that “all corrupt and illegitimate governments implode”.

Earlier this month Capriles told press that a “possible recall referendum” is “building up strength”. Further, since former president Hugo Chavez became sick at the end of last year, the opposition  and private media has waged a campaign against so called Cuban “interference” in Venezuela, and suggesting that Cabello should have been the interim president, and that there is a “divide” within the government between Cabello and Maduro.

Silva and Cabello respond

Silva responded straight away that the audio recording was a “set-up” and “absolutely false”, then late last night on his daily news analysis program, La Hojilla (The Razorblade), he said that he would make himself available for investigations.

“Let the justice institutions do what they have to do, I’m not scared of the fascists [opposition], much less of justice,” he said.

Live on the program, Silva criticised the opposition’s “attacking” of the Cuban people, and accused the Israeli Mossad of being involved in the “set-up”.

He said the recording was a “crap”, and a combination of extracts from television and radio programs, with which they “put together” using “specific technology”.

“We’re talking about nine years of La Hojilla…the construction [of the recording] can be done very easily…we’re doing our own one to demonstrate, so you all can see how easy it is to do,” he said.

The audio recording is “with a supposed Cuban who doesn’t talk, who doesn’t say very much in the conversation…and doesn’t sound like a Cuban”.

Silva said it wasn’t surprising that they “put together a plan to bury” his program and himself. “The opposition has always said that everything that I say here [on my program] is a lie, but now suddenly this audio of me is their proof against the revolution,” he noted, adding later that “La Hojilla is a problem (un peo) for the opposition”.

“There’s a series of coincidences…the first one is that I went to Cuba on Friday, I went to see my daughter who has cancer, and she’s being treated there as part of the Cuba-Venezuela accord…and on Friday my email was hacked into…and when I looked into it, it was from an IP in Sweden and with direct links with mirrors in the US…they were preparing this,” he said.

“They put it together almost perfectly…and they have inflicted damage, there are people who believe this… this thing will have its consequences,” he added.

Silva talked about the various “set-ups” that he claimed he had seen the opposition put together, including when Globovision was at the scene of the Rodeo prison riots before they happened.

Talking about the people he believe put together the audio, Silva said, “They believe anything, in order to be able to continue conspiring…they are the same people who participated in the 2002 coup,” he stressed, arguing that that was also a “set-up”. He then referred to the 11 people killed in the few days after the elections, including two children, “we have to put an end to impunity in this country”.

In the second part of the program, two of Silva’s assistants explained how computer programs can cut and merge spoken audio, or record one voice and replay it in another voice.

Silva announced that his program would be off air for the next few days. He said he would be undergoing medical treatment, after being hospitalised on Saturday, and said his absence wasn’t related to the opposition’s audio.

“I insist I don’t owe apologies to anyone because I haven’t done anything that isn’t revolutionary… If in any way I were damaging the revolution, I would remove myself,” he said.

Last night Cabello responded on VTV to the audio released by the opposition. He said, “This is the opposition we have, they put on this big party over what information they would release… I’d feel good about proof, not about a show”.

“Every time a video comes out of an [opposition legislator] receiving money, they say it’s illegal… well their desperation is showing,” he said, adding that, “Nobody can divide the Chavista forces, I express my complete support for Nicolas Maduro”.

Further, according to Venezuelan journalist and legislator Earle Herrera, Capriles called a press conference yesterday, then aborted it and called another one, because “nine opposition leaders refused to present the supposed recording of Mario Silva…in the end [Capriles] was relieved because he found someone to present his media bomb”.

Tamara Pearson & Ewan Robertson via Venezuelanalysis

It said that several members are being targeted by the P.A for resisting the Israeli occupation, and practicing their right to Freedom of Speech.

The PPP added that members of the Palestinian Preventative Security Forces surrounded, on Tuesday at dawn, the homes of a number of its political leaders in Tulkarem, and arrested four, and that on Wednesday morning, the security forces arrested a fifth member.

In a press release, the party identified the arrested members as Salim Suheil As-Salman, 22, Ala’ Mohammad Baleedy, 22, Yasser Ammar Zeidan, 20, Mohammad Eyad Abu Zeina, 22, and Mo’men Mahmoud Hamed, 22.

It demanded the Palestinian Security Forces to unconditionally release the political prisoners, and to stop all political arrests, and added that the P.A should act on supporting the Popular Resistance, public freedoms and the rule of the law.

Furthermore, the PPS said that Israeli soldiers also kidnapped, on Tuesday at dawn, one of its members in Tulkarem, identified as Abdul-Basset Shreiteh, 21, and added that Israeli soldiers kidnapped six members over the last two months.

Saed Bannoura via IMEMC

CHS & nsnbc,- A proposal to annually vaccinate 25 million infants in India could potentially  prevent 175 deaths from Hib meningitis over the course of 5 years. The lives of 175 children are important. 

The incidence of invasive Hib disease is low in India which makes it difficult to justify introducing Hib vaccination. Additionally, the WHO has also been promoting a new form of Hib vaccine which has caused deaths in a large number of children. The WHO vaccine has increased the price of DPT 30 fold.

Vaccination Needles, Photo Victorg.India

Beside these primary concerns,the programs are controversial because in resource impoverished areas, money spent on vaccinating 25 million infants could be spent on programs for providing safe water.  These programs could save many hundreds of thousand of lives.

So far, 21 have so far died in India in a limited experiment with the vaccine. Last week the Vietnamese Government´s Drug Regulatory Authority stopped the new form of vaccine – a Pentavalent vaccine – after the vaccine caused nine death.

The new vaccine was introduced because vaccine uptake for the previous vaccine has been poor.  The new vaccine is a combination vaccine; a Pentavalent vaccine.  This vaccine combines Hib and Hepatitis B vaccine with the widely used DPT vaccine. The vaccine is not licensed for use in the West but is promoted in Asia.

The Minz Study, a comprehensive, 2-years study sponsored by the WHO, found an incidence of Hib meningitis of  7/100000 children under-five.  The figure for a saving of 175 deaths in 5 years is suggested by a mortality of 10%.

The article by Padmanabhan Ramachandran and colleagues available here suggests:

1.       Hib was found to be the predominant cause of bacterial meningitis in young children.  Hib meningitis was responsible for 58% to 74% of children with abnormalities in the Cerebro Spinal Fluid, CSF.

2.       41% in Vellore are immunized against Hib and that is why the proportion of Hib was 58% here compared to 74% elsewhere.

3.       Hib accounted for 70% of bacteriologically confirmed meningitis.

An invited commentary accompanying the article is entitled

“Making a case for universal Hib immunization in India: over interpreting the data.”

1.       It shows that the Hib antigen was detected only in 8.75 per cent of patients with an abnormal CSF cytology and not 74% or 58% as suggested in the article.

2.   There were only 7 cases of Hib meningitis in Vellore and one was vaccinated. The incidence of meningitis among those vaccinated in Vellore was not statistically different from those unvaccinated.

3. The Latex agglutination Test (LATS) used by the study to detect the cause of meningitis, picks up 93% cases of Hib but only 39% Neisseria meningitides. Thus LATS cannot be used to look at the relative incidence of different causes of meningitis.

Conflict of Interests

The commentary says that one of the authors has a declared conflict of interest. Quoting Als-Nielsen and colleagues the reviewer says such conflict of interests has little impact on the results or data reported but it influenced the interpretation of the results and the conclusions drawn. “The fact that the data are not impacted by conflicts of interest provides persuasive reason to publish the figures from large trials such as this, regardless of the declared conflicts of interests. Publication allows data to be put out in the public domain. It can be interpreted by the scientific community, separately from the interpretations of the authors. Discerning readers and decision makers can use the data provided for health policy, based on sound cost–benefit calculations”

Via CHS edited by nsnbc

Related articles: 

The Vaccine Hoax is Over. Documents from UK reveal 30 Years of Coverup

BBC News Removes False News Claims About Measles Epidemic “after being busted”

Bill Gates’ Polio Vaccine Program Caused 47,500 Cases of Paralysis Death

One of his early achievements was to dispose of the myth of immigrant crime by demonstrating that “Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age and gender.” You can imagine the uproar, but Unz won the debate.

Unz provoked and prevailed in another controversy when he concluded that Mexican-Americans have approximately the same innate intelligence as whites, with their lower IQs being due to transitory socio-economic deprivation.

He next surprised by showing the connection between the declining real value of the minimum wage (about one-third less than in the 1960s) and immigration. Americans cannot survive on one-third less minimum income than four decades ago, and the unfilled jobs are taken by Hispanics who live many to the room. A higher minimum wage, Unz pointed out, would cure the illegal immigration problem as American citizens would fill the jobs.

I wrote about some of Unz’s remarkable findings. One of my favorites is his comparison of the responsiveness of the Chinese and US governments to their publics. I found his conclusion convincing that the authoritarian one-party Chinese government was more responsive to the Chinese people than democratic two-party Washington is to the American people.

The person is rare who can take on such controversial issues in such a professional way that he wins the admiration even of his critics. In my opinion, Ron Unz is a national resource. He has established online libraries of important periodicals and magazines from the pre-Internet era, information that otherwise essentially would be lost. I have not met him, but he donates to this site and is an independent thinker free of The Matrix.

Unz’s latest article, “Our American Pravda,”http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/ is a striking account of the failure of media, regulatory, and national security organizations and subsequent coverups that leave the public deceived. Unz uses the Iraq war as one example:

“The circumstances surrounding our Iraq War demonstrate this, certainly ranking it among the strangest military conflicts of modern times. The 2001 attacks in America were quickly ascribed to the radical Islamists of al-Qaeda, whose bitterest enemy in the Middle East had always been Saddam Hussein’s secular Baathist regime in Iraq. Yet through misleading public statements, false press leaks, and even forged evidence such as the “yellowcake” documents, the Bush administration and its neoconservative allies utilized the compliant American media to persuade our citizens that Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs posed a deadly national threat and required elimination by war and invasion. Indeed, for several years national polls showed that a large majority of conservatives and Republicans actually believed that Saddam was the mastermind behind 9/11 and the Iraq War was being fought as retribution. Consider how bizarre the history of the 1940s would seem if America had attacked China in retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

“True facts were easily available to anyone paying attention in the years after 2001, but most Americans do not bother and simply draw their understanding of the world from what they are told by the major media, which overwhelmingly—almost uniformly—backed the case for war with Iraq; the talking heads on TV created our reality. Prominent journalists across the liberal and conservative spectrum eagerly published the most ridiculous lies and distortions passed on to them by anonymous sources, and stampeded Congress down the path to war.

“The result was what my late friend Lt. Gen. Bill Odom rightly called the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history.” American forces suffered tens of thousands of needless deaths and injuries, while our country took a huge step toward national bankruptcy [and a police state]. Economics Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and others have estimated that with interest the total long-term cost of our two recent wars may reach as high as $5 or $6 trillion, or as much as $50,000 per American household, mostly still unpaid. Meanwhile, economist Edward Wolff has calculated that the Great Recession and its aftermath cut the personal net worth of the median American household to $57,000 in 2010 from a figure nearly twice as high three years earlier. Comparing these assets and liabilities, we see that the American middle class now hovers on the brink of insolvency, with the cost of our foreign wars being a leading cause.

“But no one involved in the debacle ultimately suffered any serious consequences, and most of the same prominent politicians and highly paid media figures who were responsible remain just as prominent and highly paid today. For most Americans, reality is whatever our media organs tell us, and since these have largely ignored the facts and adverse consequences of our wars in recent years, the American people have similarly forgotten. Recent polls show that only half the public today believes that the Iraq War was a mistake.”

Unz covers a number of cases of criminality, treason, and coverups at high levels of government and points out that “these dramatic, well-documented accounts have been ignored by our national media.” One reason for “this wall of uninterest” is that both parties are complicit and thus equally eager to bury the facts.

Unz is raising the question of the efficacy of democracy. Does the way democracy works in America provide any more self-rule than in undemocratic regimes? He offers this example:

“Most of the Americans who elected Barack Obama in 2008 intended their vote as a total repudiation of the policies and personnel of the preceding George W. Bush administration. Yet once in office, Obama’s crucial selections—Robert Gates at Defense, Timothy Geither at Treasury, and Ben Bernake at the Federal Reserve—were all top Bush officials, and they seamlessly continued the unpopular financial bailouts and foreign wars begun by his predecessor, producing what amounted to a third Bush term.”

In an article not long ago, I raised the issue whether Americans live in The Matrix with their perceptions and thoughts controlled by disinformation as in George Orwell’s 1984.

Unz adds to this perspective. He tells the story of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s plan to transform Russia into a make-believe two-party state complete with heated battles fought on divisive and symbolic issues. Behind the scenes the political elites would orchestrate the political battles between the parties with the purpose of keeping the population divided and funneling popular dissatisfaction into meaningless dead-end issues. In such a system, self-serving power prevails. After describing Berezovsky’s plot, Unz asks if Berezovsky got his idea from observing the American political scene.

Thinking further about the propagandistic nature of the US media, Unz writes:

“Individuals from less trusting societies are often surprised at the extent to which so many educated Americans tend to believe whatever the media tells them and ignore whatever it does not, placing few constraints on even the most ridiculous propaganda. For example, a commentator on my article described the East German media propaganda he had experienced prior to Reunification as being in many respects more factual and less totally ridiculous than what he now saw on American cable news shows. One obvious difference was that Western media was so globally dominant during that era that the inhabitants of the German Democratic Republic inevitably had reasonable access to a contrasting second source of information, forcing their media to be much more cautious in its dishonesty, while today almost any nonsense uniformly supported by the MSNBC-to-FoxNews spectrum of acceptable opinion remains almost totally unquestioned by most Americans.”http://www.theamericanconservative.com/american-pravda-reality-television/ 

Unz’s view of the US media as propagandists for power is consistent with that of John Pilger, one of the last remaining real journalists who refuses to serve power, and with Gerald Celente, who sums up the sordid American media in one word–”presstitutes.” I know from my own media experience that an independent print and TV media no longer exists in the West. The American media is a tightly controlled disinformation ministry.

Those few Americans who are free of the constraints imposed by dogmas on their ability to think and to process information have a huge responsibility for their small number. The assault on the rule of law began in the last years of the Clinton regime, but the real destruction of the US Constitution, the basis for the United States, was achieved by the neoconservative George W. Bush and Obama regimes. Wars without declarations by Congress, torture in violation of both US and international law, war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg standard, indefinite detention and assassination of US citizens without due process of law, universal spying on US citizens without warrants, federalization of state and local police now armed with military weapons and uniforms, detention centers, “your papers, please” (without the Gestapo “please”) not only at airports but also on highways, streets, bus terminals, train stations, and at sporting events.

On May 5 Obama gave the commencement address at Ohio State University. No doubt that the graduates thought that they were being honored by being addressed by the world’s greatest tyrant.

Obama told the graduating class, to applause, that their obligation as citizens is to trust the government. Outdoing George Orwell’s Big Brother, Obama said in public to a graduating class of a great university without shame: “You have grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as . . . some sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”

Listen to my propaganda, not to those constitutional experts, legal authorities, and critics of me, the First Black President, who tell you to beware of unaccountable government. Due process is decided by the demands of the war on terror. If there is a war on terror, do you want a fair trial or do you want to be safe? I am going to make you safe by not giving defendants accused of terrorism, who some liberal-pinko-commie judge would set free, a fair trial.

Making you safe by enveloping you in a police state is a nonpartisan undertaking. Just listen to Lindsay Graham and Peter King and John McCain. These Republican leaders are demanding the police state that I am providing.

As my own legal department, The US Department Of Justice, decided, the Dictator, I mean, elected president, has the power to save the country from domestic and foreign terrorists by abrogating the US Constitution, an out-of-date document that binds our hands and prevents us from keeping you, our serfs and minions, I mean our cherished citizens, safe.

Trust me. That is your obligation as a US citizen. Trust me and I will make you free, happy, employed sometime later in this century when the Amerikan Empire controls the world.

The US Constitution was written by people who opposed Empire. These people were misguided, just like the Roman Republicans who did not understand the need for a Caesar. The American Empire, as the neoconservatives have made clear, is what keeps you free from terrorism. We have to kill them over there before they come over here. And those who are over here will be killed too. We tolerate no dissent. That part of the Constitution is gone, along with the rest of it.

Now give me my honorary doctorate, another sign of approval of my usurpation.

Paul Craig Roberts via The 4th Media

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

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Yet, Western governments and their dysfunctional news media defy rational thinking – and the glaring truth – by referring to the perpetrators in one country in positive tones as “rebels” while in the other country the pejorative term “terrorists” is permitted in discourse. That is what you call “doublethink” – an absurd inability to see or tell the truth.

The file photo shows militants in Syria. Photo via Press TV

We are talking, of course, about Syria and Iraq – two countries that share so much of humanity’s heritage of ancient civilization – that are now each being ripped apart by mercenaries with guns and bombs who have no value for human life. It’s not just that the exact same heinous methodology of indiscriminate violence against civilians is being used in both countries. The protagonists of terror have themselves declared unity in organization, personnel, and ideology – the Al Nusra Front in Syria and al-Qaeda in Iraq.

So there’s no need to beat around the bush. These self-styled Jihadist groups are the ones waging war on Syria and Iraq. In Syria, the so-called Free Syrian Army that the West has elevated with grandiloquent nonsense is merely the window-dressing to prettify the cutthroats and rapists of Al Nusra/al-Qaeda.

But, laughably, the Western governments and media call the vile operators in Syria “rebels” and are busting to find a legal loophole by which they can begin overtly sending assault rifles, anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank mines.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Western media report that violence is perpetrated by, well, “terrorists.” The way that this common violence is being reported in news bulletins – sometimes back-to-back this week – is an exercise in consummate doublethink and mental somersaulting. A bomb goes off in Baghdad and, plainly, it is terrorist. But a bomb goes off in Damascus, and it somehow is acceptable or at least excusable.

One can imagine the public paroxysm if Washington, London or Paris proposed to fund the al-Qaeda car bombers in Iraq or were soliciting for their participation in future political negotiations with the government in Baghdad. Even though that, in essence, is what the Western governments are proposing to do in Syria.

The only way that the Western governments and their servile media can square the circle of illogic (and immorality) on Syria and Iraq is by asserting without any foundation that the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria is illegitimate. For the past two years, the Western governments and their dutiful media have tried every trick to malign Assad and to traduce him as a despot who has no mandate from his people. But the problem for the Western regime-changers is that Assad has a mandate, and it is only the Syrian people who have the sovereign right to decide otherwise, when the country goes to national elections next year.

The risible quality about doublethink is that those who suffer from the condition cannot see how absurd they are.

Advocating the illegal Western regime-change agenda in Syria are the Persian Gulf dictatorships, which have never had an election in their entire history as artificial colonial states ruled by absolute despots and corrupt family cronies.

Furthermore, it is these Western-backed Persian Gulf tyrants who are behind the awful re-ignition of sectarian violence in Iraq, as they have been all along in Syria for the past two years.

Iraq’s violence has returned with a vengeance after some years of relative quiet. Last month saw some 700 people killed in bombings and shootings – the highest monthly death toll in five years and reminiscent of the sectarian bloodbath during the criminal American-led military occupation of that country between 2003-2012.

This week, more than 80 people were killed in Iraq on one day alone when 10 bombs blasted the capital, Baghdad, on Monday and two explosions ripped through the southern port city of Basra. As usual, no group claimed responsibility for the mass murder. But the callous killings have all the hallmarks of extremists operating under the franchise of al-Qaeda. The indiscriminate, no-warning bombings targeted mainly Shia Muslim districts.

As we know, al-Qaeda in Iraq, as in Syria and elsewhere, is driven by the extremist Wahhabi ideology, whose adherents view Shia as heretics with a pathological death wish.

Few people would claim that Iraq’s mainly Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki is perfect.

But the sectarian bloodlust and indiscriminate terrorism that has rebounded in Iraq is way out of proportion to any ostensible political grievance that the minority Sunni population may harbour against the mainly Shia central authorities in Baghdad.

As with Syria, the violence in Iraq is being driven by external forces with an agenda of subversion and regime change.

The common linkage here is the money, weapons, and Wahhabi ideology that is flowing from the Persian Gulf dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates into Iraq and Syria.

During the American-led occupation of Iraq, the Saudis in particular were major sponsors of the Jihadist groups that gravitated under the rubric of al-Qaeda. That relationship goes back to the Saudi sponsoring of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the Soviet Union. American and British military intelligence also share in the creation of that terrorist network that has since become a global utility for Western powers, for example in destabilizing Libya or the Russian Caucasus – despite all the spurious rhetoric about “war on terror.”

That the Americans and the British military were confronted in Iraq partly by terror groups that they had previously engineered, and which their Saudi allies were sponsoring, is one of the ironic intrigues of blowback. But for the American and British ruling elite, they could hardly care less if some of their cannon-fodder troops were being killed and maimed when their corporate interests had one of world’s richest oil countries – Iraq – to gain. And besides the Western counterinsurgency doctrine of setting up counter terror gangs and sectarian conflict is a central part of imperial control and justification.

It is no secret, however, that the Saudis were not happy with the outcome of the American and British so-called nation-building (regime-change) project in Iraq, when the new governing apparatus that took over from Saddam Hussein reflected the majority Shia population.

That Saudi peevishness has only grown deeper since the American military departure at the end of 2011 and the Maliki government has shown some backbone in its foreign policy, by developing Iraqi cordial relations with Iran and Syria – all three of which share a common Shia heritage.

This is why the terrorist flames are consuming Iraq again. The Saudis and their Persian Gulf autocrats are trying to mould Syria, Iraq, and the region to suit their twisted agenda of sectarian control. We can be sure that Saudi and Qatari blood money is flowing again into Iraq since at least last year, fuelling the apparently mindless violence and attempting to turn Iraq into a failed state, as in Syria.

It is anathema to these illegitimate Persian Gulf despots for Iran to enjoy the regional kudos that it deserves based as it is on Tehran’s independence and democratic governance, vast energy resources, just foreign policy towards neighbours, and defiant resistance to Western imperialist aggression and in particular the Zionist garrison terror-state of Israel. That is why the insanely jealous and insecure Houses of Saud and Al Thani, which are nothing more than country-selling Western dependencies, want to tear down Syria and Iraq with the most despicable violence, chaos, and mayhem – to open up the bigger assault path on Iran.

That is ultimately, of course, exactly what the Western powers want as well. And to that end, these powers are content to unleash the hounds of hell across the Middle East. But, in order to conceal the obvious criminality of this regime-change project, the Western governments and their media have to indulge in the most absurd illusions. Hence Syria and Iraq, as indeed the entire Middle East, is a morass of Western duplicity and doublethink.

Finian Cunningham via PRESS TV

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