America’s “Nonconventional War” Against Syria

Western Media Narrative Enters into Comedy Act

By Sam Muhho

 “If all the world is a stage,” as William Shakespeare once said, then the current mainstream media narrative on Syria must be the comedy act; this time, however, it isn’t very funny. Having spent the last three years failing to exert their desire for regime change in Syria, the western imperialist, globalist powers and the corporate financier interests that sustain them are becoming increasingly desperate for a change in the geopolitical tide. Beginning in 2014, they have constantly attempted to leverage any potential outlet as a means of toppling Assad and proceeding in the implementation of their hegemonic agenda across the Middle East and Eurasia.

 One example was their attempt to spin the Geneva II communiqué to falsely imply that it mandated Assad should step down. This was done in context to the fact that the Syrian National Council was vastly shedding any remaining legitimacy it may have had; one must not forget an excellent Guardian piece by Charlie Skelton titled, “The Syrian Opposition: Whose Doing the Talking?”, which documented the clear connections between the leading Syrian National Council front-group members and western corporate-financier interest. By January 2014, many members were resigning over the illegitimacy of the council as noted by Nile Bowie who stated:

In a recent letter explaining his resignation, former SNC Secretary-General Mustafa al-Sabbagh concedes that the organization failed to extend humanitarian relief efforts and to make any political or military progress; he describes the SNC as “a body that is entirely separate from the Syrian domestic arena.” Former member Mohammad Bassam Imadi’s description is no less critical; he stated in a recent interview that the SNC “…was only some expatriates who were living outside Syria, they lost touch with reality in Syria. They didn’t know what was going on… They thought that within a few months they will become presidents or ministers so they were not interested in doing anything other than contacting the foreign powers…”

The Issue of “Moderate Rebels”

That was in January 2014. It was in this context that the increasingly militant Syrian opposition forces on the ground were increasingly being exposed as primarily driven by Al Qaeda aligned militants that were the outgrowth of western financing and geopolitical posturing. Whatever multiplicity of identities and splinter groups that exist among the opposition on the ground, the primary driving force had become the Islamists as noted in the New York Times’ “Islamist Rebels Create Dilemma on Syria Policy.” As the article notes, “Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.”

Furthermore, Reuters has admitted that the military command of the allegedly moderate, western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), is dominated by Islamists. One has yet to name me any viable moderate opposition force on the ground of sizable influence that is not in one way or another tied to Islamist groups from Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise Jabhat Al-Nusra to the Islamic Front which is heavily active on the ground. The paradigm presented in the mainstream media depicting a distinction between jihadis, who are described as being small-numbered and mostly foreign, and indigenous “democracy” factions is patently false. An 2012 interview with Omar Gharba’, a Wahhabi cleric and member of the US-backed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) who had previously been seen smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary in Idlib, demonstrates clearly the FSA mentality

Libya Coming Full Circle

When A Deemed “Conspiracy Theory” Becomes Reality

Libya as a Functioning, Cohesive State has virtually Ceased to Exist

By Sam Muhho

In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. 

Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom.

Libya Today

How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state.

Battling over the strategic commercial area around Benghazi is the Islamist Ansar al-Sharia led by Ahmed Abu Khattala fighting against the former leader of the CIA-backed Libyan National Salvation Front and current renegade Libyan Army General Khalifa Hifter. The conflict is more complex than merely conflagration between these two main parties and is interspersed with competing militias and gangs. As noted by Draitser, the February 17^th Marytrs Brigade, seen as one of the most capable militias in the region, has received training by western forces and is seen as a reliable security force, but is recognized by its own members as having anti-American sentiments.
The Islamist Ansar al-Sharia has been implicated in the September 11, 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi with its leader Khattala admitting being present but denying leading the attack. With no end in sight for the war, it appears that the primary gainers in the conflict are the western corporate-financier interests who orchestrated the overthrow of Gaddafi because he was seen an impediment to accomplishing their geopolitical aims.

Now they Admit the Truth.

#ColorRevolutions

Color Revolutions. 

Getting Our Facts Straight on the “Arab Spring”

By Sam Muhho

The so-called Arab Spring is one of the most pivotal geopolitical happenings of the current century and one which will no doubt reverberate and define the academic discourse on the subject in later generations.

That being said, it becomes disheartening to find out that the majority of the talking points on the Arab Spring echoed from both mainstream media as well as “non-aligned”, independent sources ring of the stereotypical western narrative of spontaneous, indigenous uprisings rising up corruption and despotism.
 

While no doubt unsavory strongmen like Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had well earned the resentment of their population, to engage in a reductionist paradigm of the Arab Spring illustrating down-trodden masses merely rising up against political exploitation does injustice to the behind-the-scenes networks of NGOs and special interests who helped influence popular sentiment and channel it in ways to bolster western objectives.

While the notion that the US government, and specifically the corporate-financiers overlords of Wall Street and London, were behind the Arab Spring are scoffed at by “skeptics” and “academics”, the financial and political connections are well established and open for all to independently verify. The year 2011 was truly the “Year of the Dupe” and unless we collectively identify this engineering of our past and by extension our destiny, we run the risk of making true yet again Napoleon Bonaparte’s adage that, “History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon.”

The Mainstream Left, the Fake Neo-Con “Right”, and the Islamists

Our first stop in deconstructing the myth of the Arab Spring relates to the standard view propagated by the mainstream left and the likes of MSNBC, CNN, most of academia, and well-intentioned “critics of the conspiratorial right-wing” (which does warrant legitimate criticism but for different reasons). A classic case of this which can be found replicated across a host of websites is the article “How the Conspiratorial Right is Spinning Egypt’s Protests” by Sarah Posner. According to her

The #Iranian #Smoke and #Mirrors #Threat

The Iranian “Smoke and Mirrors Threat” and Washington’s “Human Rights Card”

By Sam Muhho

In a cycle of habit borne out repeatedly in the mainstream western media, demonization and fear mongering against Iran is picking up pace again in the face of attempts by the new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to rebuild relations with the west and work toward international cooperation. The techniques and methodologies used by the west in perpetuating the geopolitically-motivated, neo-imperialist, agenda against Iran often come across in the media as clumsy and awkward in their reasoning. Before delving into the hard geopolitical reality, a much needed word on the disingenuous leveraging of human-rights against countries such as Iran is critical.

 Iran and the Western “Human Rights Card”

 In a recent Fox News report, Iran’s human rights record is criticized by Benjamin Weinthal, a Berlin-based fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). His arguments are employed to argue against the feasibility of pragmatic negotiations with Iran as according to his logic, Iran is not a regime “worthy” of practical negotiation with. To use the reported human right violations against religious minorities and Christians and particular as geopolitical leverage to argue against diplomacy and negotiation with Iran wreaks of compromised, corporate-financier motivation, especially when juxtaposed with the intimate collaboration of the United States and its allies with one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East (and the world), Saudi Arabia.

  While Iran is often berated for its short-comings, these short-comings pale in comparison to the atrocities perpetuated by the Saudis. In Saudi Arabia, no Jewish or Christian worship is allowed and possession of a Bible could warrant you various brutal punishments. Saudi Arabia has been notorious for rigid campaigns against Bible possession and religious symbols, especially in airport customs searches including the shredding of any Bibles found and in one case, harassing a nun who was passing through Jeddah on a transit flight.

Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with the United States, is currently promoting a sectarian-extremist-driven destabilization campaign in Syria whose byproduct has resulted in nightmarish lives for people across religious lines which can be described as nothing less than premeditated genocide with former CIA official Robert Baer predicting campaigns against Christians in Syria and Lebanon during an interview with Seymour Hersh for his excellent 2007 article, “The Redirection.”

What is rather ironic in light of western focus on Iran is that Baer stated that joint US-Saudi-Israeli machinations in Lebanon, which were generating radical Islamist groups, would necessitate the protection of Christians which would be done by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and the Shiites as opposed to the US and France. Iran is predominantly Shiite and while conservative Islam is the norm, this conservatism is distinct from the twisted inventions and atrocities of radical Wahabism in Saudi Arabia which serve as the hotbed of global Al Qaeda activity.

Let it not be forgotten that Saudi Arabia is the primary underwriter of Al Qaeda’s proliferation throughout Eurasia, done admittedly and particularly in line with western imperialist designs of isolating Iran and serving as geopolitical pawns. It is noted that the Taliban and the Wahabi fundamentalists that constitute its ranks and the ranks of extremists from Nigeria to the Philippines would not exist without Saudi financing done purposefully to create a twisted brand of Islam and produce a “Swiss-Army knife” to be used against the targets of western foreign policy such as Syria today and previously against Afghanistan during the 1980s; it has since formed the cornerstone of the fake “war on terror” driven by western neo-imperialist interests. The largest arms sale in U.S. history has been to Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia regularly conducts brutal executions through the means of hooded swordsmen including on religious charges of being accused of “sorcery and witchcraft” in the grimly-dubbed “Chop-Chop Square.” Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia and foreign women cannot visit the country without being accompanied by a male guardian.  In addition to toeing the line of western corporate-financier geopolitical agendas in cooperation with Israel such as in Syria, the Saudi establishment interlocks with these interests as noted in points “6” and “7” in the article “Introducing the Gulf State Despots” by Tony Cartalucci.

Iran, which may have its shortcoming, has an unprecedented standard when compared to Saudi Arabia. Iranian Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians are guaranteed their own seats on the Iranian parliament in proportion to their population. Iranian Jews, roughly 30,000 in population, enjoy relatively peaceful lives in Iran with a Jewish hospital, two kosher restaurants in Tehran, 11 synagogues, many with Hebrew schools, and a Jewish library including 20,000 titles. Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued edits in the 1980s stating that Iran’s Jewish and Christian populations be “protected.” Many of these points are noted by Benjamin Schett’s article “Debunking Anti-Iran Propaganda” which conflict with the gravely austere picture painted by western media. This short documentary by Journeyman Pictures gives a candid picture of Jewish life in Iran.

It is often claimed that Iran promotes institutionalized anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial but Benjamin Schett explains why this is not true. Ahmadinejad has made accusations against the reliability of the Holocaust but this does NOT represent the position of the Iranian state or people whose state-media even broadcasted a popular, Hollywood-quality film commemorating the suffering of the Jews and featuring the story of Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian diplomat who helped save Jews from the Holocaust by giving them false passports to flee Nazi-occupied France. Iran’s former Jewish Member of Parliament, Moris Motamed, has criticized Ahmadinejad for his statements on the Holocaust and even held a press conference to denounce those statements. However, such sentiments must not be seen as reflecting the entirety of the Iranian society as clearly is not the case.

Criticism against Israel is mainstream and expected but not because of any religious animosity towards the Jews, as Ahmadinejad himself stated in a speech in Esfahan cited by Schett, but rather because of the complicated political issues surrounding the Palestinian plight.

Benjamin Schett notes that it is impossible to give 100% insight of life as a religious minority in a religiously conservative country without being in that position oneself but unlike in Saudi Arabia, at least such minorities openly exist. Of course, such minorities must not settle for the bare minimum and as a westerner, I’m in the tradition of the equality for all. If and where any cases of rights violations exist, such as those noted in the original Fox News article by Benjamin Weinthal, they must be openly addressed but done so in a manner unlike the western media’s purpose which is to highlight certain facts, at the expense of others, and use any incident they can as propaganda fodder for the sake of western geopolitical objectives aimed at stifling peace and diplomacy, substituting it with war-mongering, and covering up the west and its assets’ own serial crimes against humanity.

 Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): Is it Really About Democracy?

Of particular interest in the Fox News article is that the author, Benjamin Weinthal, is listed as a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an organization with a vested interest in promoting western corporate- financier objectives around the world with human rights simply employed as an easily-leveraged cloak for naked imperialism. I will assume good faith on the part of Benjamin Wienthal as many people drawn into organizations and NGOs that served western subversion are drawn it by honest intentions which is something that imperialist systems exploit as they have in history. Nevertheless, the overall bulk and existence of the FDD cannot be casually excused when one gets an insight into the interests and networks propping it up. Tony Cartalucci in his excellent article, “The War on Terror is a Fraud”, explains the FDD:

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a corporate and US State Department-funded policy institute that claims to be dedicated to promoting “pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that threaten democracy.” It is decidedly “Neo-Conservative” and focuses almost exclusively on starting and maintaining wars at America’s expense.

FDD’s “executive team” includes James Woolsey and Clifford May, while its “leadership council” includes Bill Kristol – all signatories of a recent Foreign Policy Initiative letter addressed to House Republicans asking them to discard the UN mandate for NATO’s Libyan intervention and commit more support specifically for regime change. Acting Senator Joseph Lieberman also can be found on FDD’s “leadership council” and has been a chief proponent of war with Libya, as well as Syria and Iran, alongside John McCain. FDD has a myriad of publications expressing the elation of the “Neo-Conservative” establishment over current operations against Libya and the possible springboard the Libyan war serves toward US intervention in Syria and Iran. FDD’s only criticism of Obama is that more should be done, faster, and at a greater expense to America. Michael Ledeen, a “freedom scholar,” expresses this well in his article titled, “Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran),” where he throws in his organization’s collective desire to intervene in both Syria and Iran, for good measure.

The Atlantic article, “Al-Qaeda Is Winning,” written by FDD “senior fellow” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, expresses the true contempt these individuals have toward their audience. In this piece reflecting on the last 10 years of the “War on Terror,” Gartenstein-Ross claims that Al Qaeda’s ability to use cheap means to provoke the United States into a multi-billion dollar defense is rendering an Al Qaeda victory through a “strategy of a thousand cuts.” Of course, the x-ray machines and other security apparatuses being installed across the United States and the tremendous amount of money being used to sustain combat operations around the world “hunting terrorists,” doesn’t go into a black hole. Instead, it goes into the pockets of the very people funding the work of Mr. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his peers throughout his and other US and British think-tanks.

Those who have read my recent article on Libya will note the entirely illegitimate nature of the NATO campaign against Libya and the intellectually bankrupt mentality of those who shamefully perpetuate its talking-points. The FDD, at the top of the organization, is not merely concerned with human rights themselves but rather leveraging such concerns for their own sake, something the US government and the corporate-financier interests it represents have clearly done before with regards to China. It should be noted that the FDD is just one element in the neo-imperialist racket. Other corporate-financier, “globalist” think-tanks, who are the true underwriters of western policy, includes the Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, the International Crisis Group, and the Brookings Institute. In “Naming Names: Your Real Government”, Tony Cartalucci points out who truly controls the United States/NATO and lists the prominent individuals and corporations financing and directing them.

 Iran and the Western Geopolitical Struggle

The Brookings Institution is of particular concern among these think-tanks as it has been the primary facilitator in the drive for war against Iran founded on distortion and geopolitically-motivated propaganda. Contrary to media reports portraying Iran as an immediate, existential threat to US and Israeli security, the Brookings Institute released a policy report that was basically a handbook for overthrowing nations titled Which Path to Persia? (.PDF). It was written by six prominent analysts within establishment circles, including Kenneth Pollack, admitting that Iran poses not a threat to the survival of the United States and Israel’s security but their collective regional and geopolitical hegemony and interests across the region. It was noted that Iran was playing a strategy of firmness and even aggressiveness but not recklessness in combating western hegemony and imperialism as can be seen in its recent economic endeavors in the pipeline and gas politics of the region. It was also noted that Iran was deliberately avoiding a conflagration with the west and that any possible nuclear weapons capability for Iran (which is noted as unconfirmed and nonexistent in other reports) would be used as a deterrence for attack and protecting regional ambitions Iran has for the region (pg. 24-25).

 This is reconfirmed by the recent 2013 RAND Corporation report Iran After the Bomb which while noting that no evidence exists that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons according to the US intelligence community, envisions a post-nuclear scenario of Iran. RAND is another “globalist” think-tank that hosts compromised interests but manages to give an honest synopsis of the Iranian reality. It is also noted that Iran’s “supreme leader” Ayatollah Khamenei has issued religious decrees labeling nuclear weapons as “against Islamic principles.” Contrary to recent reports circulation by MEMRI TV and mainstream media, these fatwas are not fake and actually do exist. And contrary to some critics, they are not an example of taqiyya (deception) as Juan Cole notes. One thing that is very revealing is the following statement by RAND which sums up their insightful report:

The Islamic Republic [of Iran] is a revisionist state that seeks to undermine what it perceives to be the American-dominated order in the Middle East. However, it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations. Its chief military aim is to deter a U.S. and/or Israeli military attack while it undermines American allies in the Middle East [which includes the economic interests of the totalitarian kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar whose atrocities in human rights dwarfs anything Iran is guilty of]… Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons will lead to greater tension between the Shi’a theocracy and the conservative Sunni monarchies [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.] However, Iran is unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries…The Islamic Republic views Israel in ideological terms. However, it is very unlikely that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel, given the latter’s overwhelming conventional and nuclear military superiority. (pg. vii)

The Brookings Institution not only enumerates transparently the similar points that Iran is not an existential threat but goes further to enumerate a list of strategies for US provocations against Iran to initiate a war that, according to the report, Iran does not want. It is even noted that an Iranian retaliation in the case of American airstrikes would not be inevitable and that Iran may deliberately refrain from retaliation in order to strategically “play the victim” (pg. 84-85, 95) Let it not be forgotten how the US and Britain staged the CIA “Operation Ajax” in 1953 to oust the democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh, who nationalized the country’s oil, in favor of the pro-American Shah who ruled as a brutal dictator. Similar plans for regime change are enumerated in the Brookings Institute report where it is admitted that the opposition “Green Movement” in 2009 was orchestrated by the US government through “civil society and NGOs” in order to provoke Iranian belligerence through regime change operations, capitalizing on internal dissent. This is not to deny any legitimate aspirations and calls for reform in Iran which are prevalent among student groups but merely to point out how such ambitions are co-opted and used by western interests for their own agenda (103-105, 109-110). See this excellent summary of all these critical points.

Other means proposed included playing upon sectarian and ethnic divisions inside Iran to destabilize the country and even funding radical Sunni militant groups, specifically the MEK, which has killed Americans in the past and is labeled by the U.S. state department as a “foreign terrorist organization”. Its ideology is described by analysts as radical “left-wing” Islamic-Marxism which makes it interesting to consider the US plans to fully employ this group as political assets. MEK has also collaborated with Saddam Hussein’s forces in guerilla warfare against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s (113, 117-118). The group is against the dominant Iranian establishment and it is noted that the US has worked covertly with them in the past and that in order to work overtly with them, the group had to be removed from the terrorist list (118).  Regarding the MEK on pages 117-118, Brookings states:

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

 Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

 The compounded criminality of western and Israeli collaboration with MEK is emphasized here. It should be noted that the MEK has recently been removed from the US list of terrorist organizations as part of the next phase of using them as a proxy. MEK claims to have killed 40,000 Iranians in the past and has been trained on U.S. soil in a secret base in Nevada, published on the Huffington Post and cited here by Kurt Nimmo in an excellent and well-sourced article emphasizing the coordinated western agenda against Iran.

In culminating these abhorrent proposals, Brookings further notes the option of a military invasion and conventional war against Iran if the above proposals failed to accomplish western interests. This is the most alarming option especially in context to the following admission:

If the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely. ..However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all (65)… it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes [as a catalyst for an invasion] before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it (85).

In all this certified criminality, which has obviously been at play even as the report was being published in 2009, it must not be forgotten that the Brookings Institution is of, for, and by big business and their collective agenda of integrating Iran into their international consensus and exploiting its 76 million population for their unipolar order. This is opposed to Iran’s attempts to foster national self-sufficiency and develop ties with nations strategic to western interests including India, Thailand, China, and Russia. Brookings Institution is funded by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, The Carnegie Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and the Carlyle Group among others; their report even includes a special acknowledgement of financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation upon which Zbigniew Brzezinski sits as an active governor as pointed out by Tony Cartalucci and easily verifiable in the report’s preface.

Such international criminality is magnified when Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in his article “Preparing the Battlefield” that the U.S. is cooperating with their anti-Iranian terrorist asset, Saudi Arabia, in order to fund radical, Al Qaeda-linked, Sunni-groups like the Jundallah to destabilize and destroy Iran as a viable geopolitical opponent. Al Qaeda, directed by the Saudis in cooperation with western geopolitical objectives, has been leveraged as a “Swiss army knife of destabilization” across the Middle East in the fake “war on terror” as Seymour Hersh exposed in another report  titled “The Redirection”  published in 2007. In that report, Hersh reveals that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have been working since 2007 to destabilize Syria and Lebanon with a wave of sectarian-extremists currently being marketed in the media as a “political uprising” and a “revolution”. This is different from the legitimate internal political opposition in Syria that has collaborated with the Syrian government in a reform initiative and maintains distinctiveness from the extremist and terrorist elements that clearly constitute the bulk of the “Syrian rebels” supported by the west. In his report, Seymour Hersh states:

 To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda…[Saudi Arabia's Prince] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis [Al Qaeda] to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.

 There is no doubt that there is an anti-Iranian proxy conflict being waged in Syria by a joint US-Saudi-Israeli effort to further the Wall Street-London geopolitical consensus. Undermining and destabilizing Syria would further isolate Iran and perpetuate the united geopolitical front against Iran that has been the objective of western politicians and think-tanks. Iran would ultimately serve as a vital door into central Asia and a springboard against Russia and China who are the ultimate target for absorption within the western design of a unipolar world order. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is an active agent in the networks of these machinations, makes it no secret in his book The Grand Chessboard that U.S. “global pre-eminence” (a euphemism for Wall Street/London geopolitical domination and a unipolar world order) is the agenda along with American influence in central Asia to which Iran is a doorway. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken of hegemonic ambitions on the part of the west to establish a unipolar order at a 2007 Munich conference.

 In addition to this evidence of open subversion, it must be noted that Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama in December 2011 claiming that there is no nuclear weapons threat from Iran, stating the following on Iran’s nuclear weapons program:

 The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using  dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives.

As warmongering against Iran is expected to drastically pick up pace as western designs for domination across the Middle East show increasing signs of faltering, it is absolutely critical to be educated on these matters in order to undermine and extinguish the effects of the media propaganda echo-chamber. This is not to deny any human rights accusations against Iran altogether but one must guard themselves from being misguided and swayed by disingenuous corporate-financier, globalist interests seeking to expand their empire. It is imperative for people around the world to recognize the corporations and institutions perpetuating systematic atrocities and genocide across the planet and realize that once they eliminate the sovereignty of other countries, they will then turn their attention fully to the people within their own borders in the west.

A real revolution will come by boycotting the degenerate corporations and financier interests seeking to enslave humanity and building up our own communities to create a world order in our own image and not in the image of Wall Street and London.

 

The Libyan Puzzle in the Scramble for Africa

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-libyan-puzzle-in-the-scramble-for-africa/5355475

By Sam Muhho

As a new era in history has begun to dawn on humanity, new doors are being opened in both opportunities and also in the realms of potential threats and conflagrations. This reality has been noted most clearly in the developing affairs of Africa, a continent that is on the verge of transformation through both technology and evolving international interactions. In the face of potential progress driven by Africa’s lucrative natural resources and economic potential, an ominous threat looms above Africa, the threat of the neo-imperialist, globalist agenda which has scarred the face of humanity with its continual drive of global hegemony. This “globalist agenda” is a militarized corporatism in a neo-imperialist system operating from all sides of the western political spectrum and representing the corporate elite of Wall Street and London; no clearer was the nefarious nature of these interests shown than in the subversion of Libya two years ago in 2011.

Before delving into the demise of Libya, it is necessary to understand neo-imperialisms’ ambitions for Africa; its goal is the subjection of Africa into its orbit in order to serve as a critical lynchpin in the establishment of a unipolar world order (including ousting potential Chinese competition). The unipolar world order is the creating of a single center of global economic, political, and military power coupled with the control of international trade and the distribution of resources as is admittedly the agenda noted by Dr. Carroll Quigley in his “Tragedy and Hope” among various other publications from western corporate-financier think tanks ranging from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Brookings Institute. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also spoken of hegemonic ambitions on the part of the west to establish a unipolar order at a 2007 Munich conference.

As Libya again takes prominence again in the media with the increasing unrest even provoking a mobilization of U.S. Marines from Spain to Italy, across from Libya, hinting a potential military involvement in the already decimated state, it is important to review the foundational history of the current Libyan dilemma before the “disinfo” echo chamber of the mainstream media begins a new full-throttle propaganda blitz. The increasing urgency for this review is news headlines even alleging a “new war” in Libya because of militia rivalries.

Libya has recently been ravished by increasing internal strife and ethno-tribal divisions that was the continuation of NATO’s systematic destruction of the nation-state in 2011. In  Dr. Webster Tarpley’s “Al Qaeda: Pawns of CIA Insurrection from Libya to Yemen”, it was explained that four primary factors contributed to the Libyan “revolution” in 2011 with the primary one being racist and monarchist elements among the eastern Libyan Harabi and Obeidat tribes found in the Benghazi-Darna-Tobruk corridor who had historically resented Gaddafi for toppling the western-backed King Idris which hailed from that region. This would explain why many of the protestors in eastern Libya were photographed carrying pictures of King Idris. That is not to say that all participants in the opposition were negative elements but it cannot be denied that negative elements had been pervasive as pawns of the western subversion and even culminated in the wide presence of Al Qaeda flags in Benghazi, even atop the Benghazi courthouse, reflecting the prominent role of radical Islamist militias that will be discussed below. It is not to be forgotten that insurrectionary activity is not new in this region as Gaddafi had witnessed continuous waves of strife and militarized opposition, often propped up by the west for geopolitical purposes, and this was reflected during an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, often with racial overtones. Tony Cartalucci in “Libya at Any Cost” documented the censored history of unrest in Libya driven by western interests:

1980′s: US-CIA backed National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) made multiple attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and initiate armed rebellion throughout Libya.
1990′s: Noman Benotman and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) wage a campaign of terror against Qaddafi with Osama Bin Laden’s assistance.
1994: LIFG kills 2 German anti-terrorism agents. Qaddafi seeks arrest warrant for Osama Bin Laden in connection to the attack but is blocked by MI6 who was concurrently aiding the LIFG.
2003: Upon Qaddafi’s abandonment of WMD programs, Libya’s collaboration with MI6 & the CIA to identify and expose the LIFG networks begins, giving Western intelligence a windfall of information regarding the group. Ironically this information would give Western nations an entire army to rebuild and turn against Qaddafi in 2011.
2005: NFSL’s Ibrahim Sahad founds the National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO) in London England.
2011: Early February, the London based NCLO calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage,” beginning the “February 17th revolution.”
2011: Late February, NFSL/NCLO’s Ibrahim Sahad is leading opposition rhetoric, literally in front of the White House in Washington D.C. Calls for no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi is strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.
2011: Late February, Senators Lieberman and McCain and UK PM David Cameron call for providing air cover for Libyan rebels as well as providing them additional arms.
2011: Early March; it is revealed UK SAS special forces are already operating inside Libya
2011: Mid-March; UN adopts no-fly zone over Libya, including air strikes. Immediately, the mission is changed from “protecting civilians” to “ousting Qaddafi.” Egypt violates the arms embargo of UN r.1973 with Washington’s full knowledge by supplying Libyan rebels with weapons, while Al Qaeda’s ties to the rebels are admitted by everyone including the rebels themselves.
2011: Late April; Documented evidence is revealed that Libya’s rebels are conducting a barbaric campaign, employing extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate military force, child-soldiers, landmines, and torture. New York Times blames a lack of support.
2011: Late April, early May; Followed by calls to assassinate Qaddafi, ordnance crash into his son’s home killing him and 3 of Qaddafi’s grandchildren. NATO concurrently seeks a new UN resolution authorizing ground troops while aggressor states seek to release seized Libyan assets to the rebels

This tribally-based resentment that categorized much of the violence in 2011 contributed to racially-driven atrocities committed against Libyan blacks that make up a third of the Libyan population and inhabit the western regions including the Fezzan tribes of the Libyan southwest. Dr. Webster Tarpley also documented the prominent role of Al Qaeda mercenaries in the Libyan conflict whose nest in eastern Libya had been a world-leading nurturing ground for extremism according to the US Military Academy at West Point’s “Combating Terrorism Center” (CTC) 2007 reports on foreign fighters in Iraq. The key rebel city of Darna, for example, was commandeered by a rebel terrorist triumvirate featuring Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, formerly of the Al Qaeda-tied “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” (LIFG), who fought against NATO forces in Afghanistan. At his side were Sufian bin-Kumu, Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur and an inmate at Guantánamo Bay for six years, as well as al-Barrani who is also a devoted member of LIFG.

Tarpley does an excellent job in demonstrating how such figures were not atypical but were the norm in a region that was the world’s “terrorist capital” according to the CTC. It is also disturbing to note the desperate attempts at damage control by the CTC in the wake of NATO’s disastrous intervention where previously documented facts were purposefully obscured and spun to cover NATO’s illegitimacy. Tarpley also documented the role of western assets such as the Libyan National Salvation Front as well as the French-assisted defection of top-Qaddafi associate Nouri Mesmari in 2010 who would later collaborate with the west in fomenting military mutinies against Gaddafi in northeast Libya.

Being the only African nation to rank as “high” on the Human Development Index and boasting a highly developed infrastructure, Libya under Gaddafi has become the globalists’ geopolitical gateway into Africa. To the detriment of all free humanity, this gateway has been trampled down by the illegal NATO war on Libya which revolved around verified propaganda regarding Libya leader Muammar Gaddafi’s alleged atrocities, a misrepresentation of the Libyan rebels, and a complete media blackout regarding geopolitical forces at play. These claims would culminate in international myths spun around Gaddafi who was claimed to be bombing his people, hiring African mercenaries, and staging mass rapes to terrorize opposition as the official dogmas justifying NATO’s aggression.

 Integral to the narrative justifying NATO’s intervention revolved around painting Gaddafi as a brutal tyranny launching a bloody crackdown against a “peaceful” movement with a host other atrocities ranging from hiring African mercenaries, using the air force against protestors, staging mass rapes, and threatening “genocide” against Benghazi. The NATO narrative of the revolution being the noble Libyan masses rising up against Gaddafi and his mercenaries was painted most clearly in the early March 14, 2011 Reuters article titled, “Libyan jets bomb rebels, France pushes for no-fly zone.” In this typical mainstream media report, rhetorical justification is given for the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine in sanctioning a no-fly zone in Libya based on the tired narrative of Gaddafi using air power to brutally suppress what is seen as an indigenous uprising, seeming to be heading down the pathos becoming a “tragedy for Libya.” A warning for an upcoming bloodbath against Gaddafi was sounded. Interestingly, even the “Independent” would later publish an article debunking this, pointing out the unreliability and factually-depraved basis for this propaganda among other accusations levied against Gaddafi. This baseless propaganda, already having poisoned western perception of what happened in Libya, would later be supplemented with reports involving the role of alleged mercenaries and mass rapes to whip up justification for intervention.

 In reality, such a narrative was factually bankrupt as masterfully documented by Maximillain Forte in his “Top Ten Myths in the War Against Libya” which directly nails the illegitimacy of the NATO campaign. While Gaddafi is certainly no saint and while many groups did have legitimate grievances against him, he nonetheless had a solid support base in Libya while the rebels were overall lacking legitimacy and were being driven by Islamist radicals, exiled politicians with globalist ties, and decades of ethnically-based tension. Gaddafi had invested heavily into the infrastructure and the social structure of his country, bringing the country to nearly eradicating illiteracy and also combating homelessness which had previously been a constant problem. Women rights were also championed as women in Libya were allowed to study and work where they desired as even BBC noted.

While Gaddafi had invested in infrastructure, the globalists sought to offset this by asserting their presence in Libya through both the destruction of its infrastructure and seeking to bring Libya into their economic orbit. There was a concerted effort to undermine Gaddafi’s agenda of building a united, strong, and self-sufficient African community and strengthening African multilateral institutions. Furthermore, Libya provided a gateway into Africa for the Pentagon’s “AFRICOM” to undermine and oust Chinese economic interests on the African continent which were a major challenge for western corporate interests’ access to resources and economic hegemony. Another key point was Gaddafi’s goal of creating a single, gold-based, African currency called the “gold dinar” with which he planned to trade African oil for. This would have conflicted directly with western corporate and banking interests and their international fiat monetary system upon which the IMF and their “casino economy” is built. Countries’ purchasing power would be determined by the amount of gold they had as opposed to fiat paper currency that made no substantial backing.

 Regarding the specific claims of Gaddafi’s atrocities as parroted by the mainstream media, Forte gives many insights that help dismantle the myths behind the “humanitarian” war. For example, the claims of air strikes by Gaddafi are noted to have been a fabrication peddled by the BBC and Al Jazeera. The claims were completely unfounded and based on fake claims. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen would admit during a Pentagon press conference that they had seen no confirmation of such reports. David Kirpatrick of the New York Times would be cited by Forte as admitting that, “the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories…and making vastly inflated claims about his [Gaddafi’s] behavior”.

 The claims of African mercenaries, integral to portraying Gaddafi as being on one side against Libya as a whole, were perhaps the most atrocious and racist of the myths, sprung from the rebels’ own tribal animosities towards indigenous Africans in Libya and migrant African workers that were common throughout the country. Human Rights Watch would claim that it found no evidence at all of African mercenaries in eastern Libya where the rebellion and fighting were centered and even noted that Gaddafi had attempted to end discrimination against these people, contradicting, as Forte noted, the rabid claims made throughout the mainstream press including Time Magazine, The Telegraph, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. The Los Angeles Times also found no evidence of such mercenaries with the New York Times even pointing out the “racist overtones” involved in the conflict and the disinformation they helped spread. Amnesty International would later confirm that “mercenaries” put on display by the rebels had been undocumented African migrant workers and noted things like rampant discrimination and disproportionate detention of black Libyans in Az-Zawiya. Mainstream media and Al Jazeera would attempt to cover its crimes by pointing out, though briefly, the reality that Africans in Libya were being subjected to lootings, abduction, and killing by the rebels. All of this, of course, in light of the fact that Africans were an integral part of Libyan society, making up 33% of the population. A severe crime never to be forgotten is the ethnic cleansing of the beautiful black Libyan town of Tawargha, previously inhabited by 35,000 people, expelled by racist militants calling themselves, “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin.”Another crime was the systemic slaughter of blacks in western Libya by the eastern rebels advancing on Tripoli (see here as well).

Another hysteria peddled by the media revolved around Gaddafi’s alleged planning of mass rapes, often blamed on nonexistent “mercenaries, which was then used by the media to help garner sympathy to the rebels. The source for these claims, also adequately exposed by Forte, began with Al Jazeera, a propaganda outlet for the Wall Street-London backed Qatari regime, claiming that Gaddafi had distributed Viagra to his troops and ordered them to use rape against those who opposed him. These claims were then redistributed throughout the media and found their way to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo would later fraudulently claim that Gaddafi had ordered the rape of hundreds of women and that Gaddafi had personally ordered Viagra to be distributed. U.S. ambassador Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton would also make these allegations (see Forte’s article).

In reality, a UN rights inquiry in Libya headed by Cherif Bassiouni would find these claims a baseless “mass hysteria.” Bassiouni told of a woman to “claimed to have sent out over 70,000 questionnaires and received 60,000 responses, of which 259 reported sexual abuse.” Bassiouni would ask to see these questionnaires, but never receive them, casting doubt on the narrative. It was pointed out that it seems improbable that 70,000 questionnaires were sent out in March considering the fact that the postal service wasn’t working. Bassiouni whose team would uncover only 4 cases of sexual abuse in their study. The boxes of Viagra that Gaddafi supposedly distributed were found fully intact right next to burnt-out tanks, indicating staged propaganda (Forte). Further confirming this is Amnesty International and who further shamed the imperialist establishment and thoroughly shattered this lie. According to the “Independent”, “Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising, says that “we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped”.

The most disingenuous claim peddled by the media to justify the Libyan war was the “save Benghazi” crusade. While it is true that Gaddafi had employed “overblown” rhetoric threatening to fight from house to house and “squash the cockroaches”, the media emphasizing these claims admits the radical-extremists nature of the hordes fighting among the rebels. The same media would also disregard Gaddafi’s “overblown” rhetoric when it was convenient to do so but attached to the Benghazi narrative as it seemingly gave justification for NATO to intervene. There is no evidence that Gaddafi had genocide planned as he only made the charges to the armed groups causing upheaval in the east of the country and even offered them amnesty and an open passage into Egypt across the border to avoid bloodshed. Professor Alan J. Kuperman exposed the propaganda talking-points of this argument, citing as evidence for the fact that Gaddafi had no genocide planned the reality that he did not perpetuate it in areas that he had captured fully or partially from the rebels including Zawiya, Mistrata, and Ajdabiya.

 The very actions of NATO itself would discredit the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine employed to justify NATO’s intervention as NATO would be directly responsible for the deaths of countless civilians. NATO would gun down civilians in the central square of Zawiya and “taking a fairly liberal definition of command and control” facilities by targeting a residential district, killing some of Gaddafi’s family members and three of his grandchildren. NATO was also responsible for targeting Libya’s state television, killing three civilian journalists and earning condemnation by international journalist federations (see Forte’s article).

 NATO oversaw the death of 1,500 refugees fleeing Libya by sea, mostly sub-Saharan Africans, the same people who were baselessly demonized as mercenaries. NATO would ignore their distress calls even though refugees would make contact with vessels belonging to NATO members. NATO also would launch numerous unjustifiable strikes against Libya furthering the damage toll. Above all, NATO was giving cover to rebels who were perpetuating verifiable genocide against cities, such as Sirte, with NATO backing and airstrikes to order, cutting off electricity, food, and water and using bombardment against civilians. Under this blueprint of destruction, scores of people would die in multiples of what was happening initially in Benghazi against armed rebel gangs which Gaddafi was fighting making a mockery out of the pre-text used to justify their globalist, faux-humanitarian war in the first place (Forte).

NATO and the globalist war on Libya was one bankrupt of any moral grounding or political justification. It was a war born of compromised interests that sought not the liberation of an oppressed people but rather the pillages of Libya which would later serve as a gateway into the heart of Africa. While the globalists attempt to sell their wars as moral and for the betterment of the world, they are at heart driven only by a desire to spread hegemony and consolidate control, with the ultimate goal being global hegemony. Any attempt to invoke a moral cover should be shunned in light of the barrage of fake atrocities attributed to Gaddafi and complementing crimes by NATO, best captured in the lies regarding Gaddafi massacring his people, hiring mercenaries, and staging mass rapes among other echo chamber distortions. Only when we tear down the media’s curtain of deception can we better understand the events at play and position ourselves intellectually to combat globalist imperialism which seeks to subvert us all.