Tag Archives: Syria

Combat Vet Senator Richard Black Fighting the War Party, by Hunter DeRensis

Posted on November 18, 2019 | 1 comment

Most of America’s most ardent proponents of interventionism and perma-war have never been closer to an actual war than a two-day public relations tour of the troops. From Hunter DeRensis at antiwar.com:

Two weeks ago the Virginia State Senate switched hands from the Republicans to the Democrats, another step in the state’s leftward turn. One of the Democratic pick ups was in the 13th district, where incumbent State Senator Dick Black is retiring from public service. Black is a Vietnam veteran and former colonel in the US army, a former delegate in the Virginia House, and he has served in the state senate since 2012.

Senator Black, who has been a vocal opponent of the United States’ overseas wars, spoke to Antiwar.com for an exclusive interview covering his military career, candid rejection of the Washington foreign policy consensus, and his activism against regime change in Syria.

Military Service and the Vietnam War

Black was born in northern Virginia in 1944, and spent his young formative years being raised in Miami, Florida. After attending the University of Miami for one year, Black was compelled to leave due to financial distress. He enlisted in the Marine Corps and began a “miserable existence” in the aviation cadet program.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Imperialism, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , , , , , ,

The Hugely Important OPCW Scandal Keeps Unfolding. Here’s Why No One’s Talking About It. By Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on November 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you poke holes in one establishment narrative, people might be skeptical, or outright not believe, other establishment narratives. From Caitlin Johnstone at medium.com:

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is now hemorrhaging evidence that the US and its allies deceived the world once again about yet another military intervention, which should be a front-page story all over the world. Yet if you looked at American news media headlines you’d think the only thing that matters right now is indulging the childish fantasy that Donald Trump might somehow magically be removed from office via supermajority consensus in a majority-Republican Senate.

CounterPunch has published an actual bombshell of a report by journalist Jonathan Steele containing many revelations about the OPCW scandal which were previously unknown to the public. Steele is an award-winning reporter who worked as a senior foreign correspondent for The Guardianback before that outlet was purged of all critical thinkers on western imperialism; he first waded into the OPCW controversy last month with a statement made on the BBC revealing the existence of a second whistleblower on the organisation’s investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Horseshit, Investigations, Media, Politics

Tagged , , ,

About Trump, by Sylvain LaForest

Posted on November 17, 2019 | 1 comment

Is there method to President Trump’s madness? That’s a question people have been asking for the last three years. Sylvain LaForest claims there is. From LaForest at orientalreview.org:

The timing is right for everyone to understand what Donald Trump is doing, and try to decrypt the ambiguity of how he is is doing it. The controversial President has a much clearer agenda than anyone can imagine on both foreign policy and internal affairs, but since he has to stay in power or even stay alive to achieve his objectives, his strategy is so refined and subtle that next to no one can see it. His overall objective is so ambitious that he has to follow random elliptic courses to get from point A to point B, using patterns that throw people off on their comprehension of the man. That includes most independent journalists and so-called alternative analysts, as much as Western mainstream fake-news publishers and a large majority of the population.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Media, Military, Politics

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Trump Doctrine Demands a Democratic Response, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on November 14, 2019 | Leave a comment

Trump’s actual foreign policy, as opposed to his bombast, is virtually no departure from the policies of his predecessors. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

I’ve been publishing antiwar material for more than five years now. Seeing as I only retired this past February, I did most of my dissenting while still on active duty, and much of it during the Obama years. During that time, the overwhelming majority of hate mail in my inbox – and sometimes my actual mailbox – almost always came from the political right. Then Trump was elected, occasionally said some modestly prudent things about ending endless war in the Middle East, and when I dared write approvingly about those words, my hate mail began to change. Now it invariably emerges from the mainstream “left,” my own ostensibly ideological compatriots. (More on this phenomenon in my Nov. 6 column at Antiwar.com). Now, despite spending almost all of my adult life in uniform, I’m labeled a “Putin apologist,” a “traitor,” an “asset” and a “useful idiot.”

It’s ironic; maddeningly so, in fact. A cursory glance at my body of work since January 2017 reveals a consistent propensity to challenge this president. Nonetheless, I’ve felt of late a professional, and ethical, obligation to occasionally (if cautiously) cheer Trump’s more prudent critiques of the forever wars I once waged. My more thoughtful critics note that all that Trump-talk hasn’t been backed by much follow-through, and they ain’t wrong. As I’ve been long apt to point out, the distance between Trump’s anti-interventionist “rhetoric” and his actual actions in the greater Middle East remains, for now, wide enough to drive a semi-truck through.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics, War

Tagged , , , ,

Three Deep State Confessions On Syria, by Brad Hoff

Posted on November 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

The Deep State has wanted to get rid of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for a long time. From Brad Hoff at libertarianinstitute.org:

Rare admissions from deep within the Washington blob…

First, all the way back in 2005 — more than a half decade before the war began — CNN’s Christiane Amanpour told Assad to his face that regime change is coming. Thankfully this was in a televised and archived interview, now for posterity to behold.

Amanpour, it must be remembered, was married to former US Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin (until 2018), who further advised both President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

https://twitter.com/IntheNow_tweet/status/1190327643951886338?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1190327643951886338&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Flibertarianinstitute.org%2Fblog%2Fthree-deep-state-confessions-on-syria%2F

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Media, Military, War

Tagged , ,

Rebuilding Syria – without Syria’s oil, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on November 4, 2019 | 1 comment

The US had no legal or moral basis for being in Syria in the first place, and now it has no legal or moral basis for taking Syria’s oil. US foreign policy is for the most characterized by actions that have no legal or moral basis. From Pepe Escobar at thesaker.is:

Compare US pillaging with Russia-Iran-Turkey’s active involvement in a political solution to normalize Syria

What happened in Geneva this Wednesday, in terms of finally bringing peace to Syria, could not be more significant: the first session of the Syrian Constitutional Committee.

The Syrian Constitutional Committee sprang out of a resolution passed in January 2018 in Sochi, Russia, by a body called the Syrian National Dialogue Congress.

The 150-strong committee breaks down as 50 members of the Syrian opposition, 50 representing the government in Damascus and 50 representatives of civil society. Each group named 15 experts for the meetings in Geneva, held behind closed doors.

This development is a direct consequence of the laborious Astana process – articulated by Russia, Iran and Turkey. Essential initial input came from former UN Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. Now UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen is working as a sort of mediator.

The committee started its deliberations in Geneva in early 2019.

Crucially, there are no senior members of the administration in Damascus nor from the opposition – apart from Ahmed Farouk Arnus, who is a low-ranking diplomat with the Syrian Foreign Ministry.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Crime, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Horseshit, Morality, Politics

Tagged , , ,

In Defense of Tulsi Gabbard, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on October 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

A former soldier comes to the defense of a comrade in arms. From Danny Sjursen at truthdig.com:

In Defense of Tulsi Gabbard

“The trouble [with injustice] is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There is no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” —Arundhati Roy

Once again, Arundhati Roy—the esteemed Indian author and activist—more eloquently described what I’m feeling than I could ever hope to. After tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, a lifetime in the Army and burying several brave young men for no good reason, I couldn’t remain silent one moment longer. Certainly not about the madness of America’s failed forever wars, nor about domestic militarization of the police and the border, nor about the structural racism borne of our nation’s “original sin.” Still, most of my writing and public dissent has stayed within the bounds of my limited expertise: the disease of endless, unwinnable and often unsanctioned American wars.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Military, Politics

Tagged , , ,

Media Silent as Nobel Prize Winning OPCW Found “Fixing” its Own Findings on Syria, by Alan Macleod

Posted on October 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

Whenever something dastardly happens, or is alleged to have happened, and governments immediately assign culpability, even before they’ve had a chance to investigate, you can be pretty sure it’s some sort of false flag. From Alan Macleod at mintpressnews.com:

Douma, Syria, April 2018. Dozens of people die in a suspected chemical weapons attack in the eastern suburb of the capital Damascus. The United States and many European countries immediately identify President Bashar al-Assad as responsible for the attacks, and respond with deadly violence of their own, starting a bombing campaign against his forces. Yet new evidence leaked from whistleblowers suggests that not only is the Western story on shaky ground, but the report into the incident from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) deliberately suppressed evidence and testimony that contradicted the U.S. narrative.

The OPCW’s Fixed Report

Founded in 1997 to represent the collective position of its 193 member states, the OPCW oversees and verifies adherence to the strict rules that regulate the use of chemical weapons, which it hopes to eliminate.

After its fact-finding mission was complete, the OPCW issued a report on the alleged Douma attack. While far from conclusive or damning (it refused even to speculate on who was responsible for the attacks), it did suggest there was “likely” a chlorine attack carried out by dropping gas canisters from the air. This seems to contradict its interim findings that stated, “No organophosphorus nerve agents or their degradation products were detected, either in the environmental samples or in plasma samples from the alleged casualties.” Nevertheless,some insinuated that the new report implicated government forces, the only groups likely to possess both the chemicals and the helicopters necessary to carry out such an attack.

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Investigations

Tagged , ,

The USA’s History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on October 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

It looks like the Douma gas attack story was a concoction by the US government, aided and abetted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

You wouldn’t know it from today’s news headlines, but there’s a major scandal unfolding with potentially far-reaching consequences for the entire international community. The political/media class has been dead silent about the fact that there are now twowhistleblowers whose revelations have cast serious doubts on a chemical weapons watchdog group that is widely regarded as authoritative, despite the fact that this same political/media class has been crowing all month about how important whistleblowers are and how they need to be protected ever since a CIA spook exposed some dirt on the Trump administration.

When the Courage Foundation and WikiLeaks published the findings of an interdisciplinary panel which received an extensive presentation from a whistleblower from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation of an alleged 2018 chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria, it was left unclear (perhaps intentionally) whether this was the same whistleblower who leaked a dissenting Engineering Assessment to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media this past May or a different one. Subsequent comments from British journalist Jonathan Steele assert that there are indeed two separate whistleblowers from within the OPCW’s Douma investigation, both of whom claim that their investigative findings differed widely from the final OPCW Douma report and were suppressed from the public by the organization.

Continue reading→

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Investigations

Tagged , , ,

An Imperfect Bit of Statecraft, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on October 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

The real reason the US military was in Syria was to get rid of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. That’s not going to happen. Will anybody in power recognize this golden opportunity to leave Syria? From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Trump cancels the pullout from Syria then flip-flops, threatens war with Turkey and gives money to terrorists

The long nightmare in Syria might finally be coming to an end, but not thanks to the United States and the administration of President Donald Trump. Trump’s boastthat “this was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else” was as empty as all the other rhetoric coming out of the White House over the past two and a half years. Nevertheless, it now appears that the U.S. military just might finally be bidding farewell to an exercise that began under President Barack Obama as a prime bit of liberal interventionism, with American forces illegally entering into a conflict that the White House barely understood and subsequently meddling and prolonging the fighting.

The fundamental reason why the U.S. was so ineffective was that the Obama Administration’s principal objective from the beginning was to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, yet another attempt at “humanitarian” regime change similar to that which produced such a wonderful result in Libya. Al-Assad was never in serious danger as he had significant popular support, including from the country’s Christian minority, and American piecemeal attempts to negotiate some kind of exit strategy were doomed as they eschewed any dealing with the legitimate government that was in place. The Syrian civil war supported and even enabled by Washington caused more than 500,000 deaths, created some 9 million internal and external refugees, and destroyed the Syrian economy and infrastructure while also almost starting a war between the U.S. and Turkey.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Intelligence, Politics

Tagged , , , , , ,