Obama’s Friday Afternoon Document Dump for this Week: US Begins Overt Aid to Syrian Death Squads After 13 Months of Covert Support [video]
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph. D.
TARPLEY.net
April 14, 2012
FROM LIBYA TO SYRIA: “WAR IS A RACKET. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN”
by James Corbett
Global Research
April 14, 2012
“War is a racket. It always has been.” These words are as true now as they were when Major General Smedley Butler first delivered them in a series of speeches in the 1930s. And he should have known. As one of the most decorated and celebrated marines in the history of the Corps, Butler drew on his own experiences around the globe to rail against the business interests that use the U.S. military as muscle men to protect their racket from perceived threats. From National City Bank interests in Haiti to United Fruit plantations in Honduras, from Standard Oil access to China to Brown Brothers operations in Nicaragua, Butler pointed out how intervention after intervention served the business interests of the well-connected even as American taxpayer money went to foot the bill for these adventures. The names and places may have changed, but the old adage holds: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The National Transitional Council that is nominally in charge of what is left of Libya announced this week that they’re beginning a probe of foreign oil contracts brokered during Gaddafi’s reign by his son, Saif al-Islam. Libya is sitting on the largest oil reserves in Africa, and it is no coincidence that within weeks of the start of the NATO campaign last year the rebels had already secured the country’s oil ports and refineries on the Gulf of Sidra and established their own national oil company for negotiating contracts with the invading forces. Although the oil contract probes are supposedly meant to show the transparency of the new “government” and their willingness to root out the graft and kickbacks inherent in the old regime, it’s quietly acknowledged that the process will be used to reward the nations that most visibly supported last year’s invasions and punish those who were more reticent.
Surprising, then, that the first companies on the block are Italy’s Eni and France’s Total. Both countries fostered close ties with the NTC last year and France was the first country to officially recognize them as the government of Libya. But now Libya’s general prosecutor is reviewing documents related to these companies for possible financial irregularities. The SEC is getting in on the act, too, requesting documents relating to both companies’ Libyan operations to check for suspected violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The potential blow to the European giants’ share in the Libyan market is especially painful in light of the upcoming Iranian oil embargo that threatens to squeeze the crude imports of Greece, Italy and Spain. Now, as Libya ramps up oil production to pre-war levels the obvious potential winners in the probe are the American and British majors, who could end up eating up some of Eni and Total’s share in Libya’s oil production should the investigation lead to charges.
China may also have reason to be wary of their standing with the new government. Chinese-Libyan ties were increasingly close in the years leading up to Gaddafi’s ouster, with trade volume having reached $6.6 billion in 2010. In 2007, as the US was beginning to put AFRICOM together and the competitive scramble for African resources was heating up, Gaddafi delivered an address to the students of Oxford University where he praised China’s hands-off approach to investment in Africa. At the time, Gaddafi suggested that Beijing was winning the hearts and minds of Africans with its reluctance to interfere in local politics, while Washington was alienating the population with their heavy-handed interventions. In the wake of the NATO bombing the would-be government of Libya is singing a different tune and relations with China have cooled down. Last August a senior NTC official suggested that China would be punished when it came time to award reconstruction contracts in Libya because of their initial reluctance to support the rebels. Although the statement was downplayed, it was revealed earlier this month that Chinese companies are still waiting to begin negotiations on losses to frozen and outstanding contracts worth $18.8 billion. Relations are still cordial, though, and the Libyan government is assuring China that the contracting companies will be in a better position to resume negotiations after national elections in June.
These latest moves from Tripoli may be as much about projecting the idea that the NTC is actually functioning as a government than anything else, though. Armed militias are still waging violent turf wars throughout the country, with 26 people dying in fighting between rivals in the western town of Zwara earlier this month and 150 dying in skirmishes last month in the southern city of Sabha. One militia stormed a hotel in Tripoli and opened fire, then beat and kidnapped the manager after he told a militia member to pay an outstanding room bill. Last week hundreds marched in Benghazi to call for an end to the violence between the armed gangs. The country is deeply divided along tribal lines and armed militias still occupy government buildings and openly flaunt the pronouncements of the erstwhile government. The idea that the NTC is actually functioning as a government is a pipe dream at this point, but as long as they keep the oil pumping and the victors of last year’s humanitarian love bombing get their spoils, there’s hardly a peep out of Washington, Paris, or London. Smedley Butler wouldn’t be surprised.
Meanwhile in Syria, the racketeers’ plans for a Libyan repeat are proceeding apace. Last week we reported on the so-called “Friends of Syria” and their agreement to begin openly funding the rebels to the tune of millions of dollars. This week we have been watching the inevitable, pre-scripted “break down” in Annan’s UN-brokered ceasefire. Exactly on cue, unverified reports from unnamed activists have begun rolling in to the usual media mouthpieces via foreign-based NGOs proclaiming so many people have died in continued fighting. The unacknowledged elephant in the room, however, is that, exactly as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been attempting to point out all month, it’s impossible to expect a cessation in fighting when you are openly arming, training and funding an insurgent proxy army that is hell-bent on toppling the government. However, Lavrov is banging his head against a brick wall. The ceasefire was never meant to be a ceasefire and it’s all political theater at this point anyway. Any and every unverified rumor of fighting or violence in the country will now be taken as a sign that Assad has broken the agreement and the pressure to get Beijing and Moscow to acquiesce to the toppling of the Syrian government will intensify.
In the end, this will not be a carbon copy of Libya. There will be no NATO-led bombardment or large-scale military intervention, because Russia couldn’t allow that to happen. Besides, Syria has Russian supplied surface-to-air missiles and no compunction about using them. Instead, political pressure will increase for Assad to step down and the funds and arms to the rent-a-rebel force will continue increasing until the government is toppled. The dangerous factor in this equation is that neither the west nor China/Russia have blinked yet and there is a significant amount of face to lose for one side or the other in this proxy struggle. The one with the most to lose is clearly Iran, which all things being equal would be a dominant power player in regional politics. All things, however, are not equal. With their oil increasingly embargoed, the sanctions getting progressively tighter, and one of their key allies in the region threatening to topple in favor of a hostile Sunni insurgency, Iran has to know that when and if the Syrian domino falls, it falls on them.
At the same time, attention is turning once again to another of the war racketeers’ key interests: Pakistan. There has been newfound congressional interest in the so-called “Free Baluchistan” movement seeking independence for Pakistan’s Baluchi nationals. Citing human rights violations, Rep. Rohrbacher (R-California) has introduced a resolution calling on Pakistan to recognize Balochi self-determination. He has even written an op-ed in the Washington Post where he begins his argument with recourse to human rights and switches seamlessly in the fourth paragraph into noting with evident glee the region’s natural gas, gold, uranium, and copper reserves.
Interestingly, Russia agreed last week to pony up $1.5 billion in financing and technical assistance for a proposed Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. The projected course of the pipeline? It would start in Iran’s southern Assalouyeh Energy Zone and enter Pakistan from the west, crossing straight through Baluchistan. Coincidence, surely. The IP pipeline has had a tumultuous history, complete with plans to run the pipeline all the way to India (an idea from which India has distanced itself but never completely abandoned) and the potential involvement of China, which has flirted with the idea of incorporating the pipeline into a planned logistical network running from the port of Gwadar in Pakistan’s southwest all the way to Xinjiang province. Now, with a proposal for Russian funding on the table the pipeline looks closer than ever to becoming a reality.
From the outset, the US has used every bit of leverage it has to get the parties involved to scrap the idea. Diplomatic pressure has been brought to bear on China, Pakistan, and India, with Beijing and New Delhi both appearing to buckle under the pressure and pull out of the project. The US has backed its own alternative pipeline, a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India route, but that idea is looking less feasible by the day. Iran has nearly completed its share of the proposed IP pipeline, but Pakistan has been hesitant. Now along come the racketeers to fund yet another rebel movement in another geostrategically vital corridor, and before you know it “Free Baluchistan” might derail the project altogether. Look for US pressure on the Pakistani government regarding Baluchistan to increase as the pipeline comes closer to completion.
Butler was right. War is a racket, after all. These days the muscle men are rent-a-mobs and insurgents more so than the U.S. military, but the idea is the same: fund, arm and train the fighters to secure the resources and control the strategic areas. In Libya the NATO-backed rebels wrested the oil spigot from the unpredictable Gaddafi. In Syria the “Friends of Syria” are overthrowing a key Iranian ally and taking over an important square on the geopolitical chessboard. In Pakistan, American-backed rebels may succeed in driving a wedge through a key Iran-Pakistan pipeline. And the racket continues. One would do well to remember the grand finale of Butler’s speech: “To hell with war!”
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In order to access the Corbett Report: http://www.corbettreport.com
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| James Corbett is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Corbett |
Love Bombs for Syria? – Syrian Girl on Intervention and Hypocrisy [video]
The Corbett Report
April 15, 2012
Syrian commentator “Syrian Girl” joins us to discuss the latest news on the moves toward outside intervention in Syria.
Download audio: http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-495-syrian-girl-on-the-syrian-interven…
Syrian Girl’s recommended websites on Syria:
Website: http://www.syrianews.cc/
Real Friends of Syria blog http://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/
Youtube channel exposing media lies: http://www.youtube.com/user/SyriansWorldWide
UN approves monitors’ deployment to Syria [video]
Russia Today
April 14, 2012
The UN Security Council has voted unanimously on a resolution to send a team of observers to Syria. The group of up to 30 monitors will help oversee the country’s fragile ceasefire. This, amid reports of fresh shelling and more bloodshed in the country, despite the truce. RT’s Marina Portnaya is following the events in New York.
RT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RT_com
RT on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
Faux-Feminist’s Ridiculous “Women Under Siege” Syria Map
CIA Asset Gloria Steinem’s “Women Under Siege” Joins Syrian Propaganda Campaign.
by Tony Cartalucci
April 14, 2012 – Ironically, faux-feminist Gloria Steinem’s “Women Under Siege’s” latest campaign to demonize the Syrian government in tandem with the US State Department and its vast stable of media and intelligence assets, stands to set the stage for extremist ideologues to overrun Syria, ending its secular society and entirely stripping away the “women’s rights” Steinem claims to have spent a lifetime fighting for.
Image: “Women Under Siege – Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria” attempts to demonize the Syrian government and raise the level of feigned humanitarian-hysteria ahead of NATO maneuvering to rearm and redeploy militant extremists sure to end all human rights in currently secular Syrian society – just as they’ve done in Libya.
Of course, when one understands that Steinem is an establishment asset merely leveraging/perverting legitimate concerns regarding women to manipulate, divide, and control people for a corporate-financier agenda, such hypocrisy makes perfect sense.
Women Under Siege is a project of Steinem’s “Women’s Media Center,” which is itself a spinoff of its umbrella organization, Ms Foundation. Steinem’s Ms Foundation is funded by convicted criminal and Wall Street speculator George Soros‘ Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, Tides Foundation, New York Life, Google, the United Nations, AT&T, Lifetime, the ACLU, and many others featured in their 2011 Annual Report starting on page 27. So what appears to be a feminist crusade turns out to be yet another facade of Wall Street and London’s (ironically very male-dominated) charade of manipulating, exploiting, dividing, and controlling the population.
Further evidence exposing Steinem and her expansive propaganda empire as nothing more than a tool of special interests is the documented fact that she was at least for a time, an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as described in the New York Times article “CIA Subsidized Festival Trips; Hundreds of Students Were Sent to World Gatherings” (full text can be found here). Steinem’s “Independent Research Service” was anything but “independent,” as it was bankrolled by the CIA. While Steinem claims the CIA did nothing to influence her organization’s policy, a tenuous defense used by many operatives caught receiving dubious funding, it is clear that her activities dovetailed with the CIA’s agenda, making her at best what is called a “useful idiot.”
Now Steinem is once again conveniently co-facilitating the agenda of the establishment though the US State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the various intelligence and military agencies involved in destabilizing Syria and overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. She does so with her “Women Under Siege – Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria” project, featuring a map of unverified, hearsay reports of atrocities carried out allegedly on “women.” Clearly, considering the corporate-financier backing Steinem’s Ms Foundation receives, this is not merely a convenient convergence of interests – rather more manipulative propaganda abusing and ultimately undermining real human rights – as the very term “women’s rights” is indicative of bigotry in and of itself.
Image: Pictured is “Gay Girl in Damascus.” Far from an editorial oversight, “Gay Girl in Damascus” was in reality a 40 year-old American man living in the UK. The Western media shamelessly exploited his narrative until it unraveled, and simply moved on to other actors, like “Danny” who directs fake gunfire off-camera while giving casualty reports to CNN. CIA asset Gloria Steinem’s new “Women Under Siege – Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria” map makes a nice fit for the constant din of lies and fabrications coming out of the West in its pursuit of dividing and destroying Syria.
However, Steinem’s efforts find good company amongst the constant din of unverified reports fabricated by London-based NGOs like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, exposed frauds like CNN’s “Syrian Danny,” and “Gay Girl in Damascus” who turned out to be a middle-aged American man living in the UK.
[hat tip: End the Lie]
Syria: Another “Humanitarian War” Based on Lies & Deceit
Mini-Documentary Exposes Imperial Expansion Through “Humanitarian Interventionism”
by Tony Cartalucci
April 13, 2012 – The Paris-based Centre for the Study of Interventionism (CSI) and Julien Teil, director of “Lies behind the “Humanitarian War” in Libya: There is no evidence!” has recently released a short documentary exposing how a cartel of Western nations and their Arab proxies are purposefully creating chaos inside targeted nations and then using it as a pretext to invade, topple governments, and replace them with preselected client regimes, and in effect threatening the very concept of national sovereignty.
The documentary particularly focuses on Syria and features video of Syrian opposition members sitting at the US State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) “round-table” having praise heaped upon them, and in particular Washington-based Syrian “activist” Radwn Ziadeh, for their complicity in betraying their nation and people for the corporate-financier interests that constitute NED’s board of directors.
Image: Just some of the corporate-financier interests represented by the National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) Board of Directors. NED’s mission statement of “supporting freedom around the world” is exposed as a ludicrous cover for what is obviously an organization dedicated to expanding the corporate-financier hegemony of its membership and sponsors – merely using the cover of “democracy promotion” to justify what is in fact global imperial conquest. (click on image to enlarge)
Mention is made of how this very same gambit, featuring very similar characters working with the very same Western organizations and “institutions” similarly ravaged Libya, toppled the government, and installed a proxy client regime using this fraudulent model of “Responsibility to Protect.” It is stated multiple times, that the West’s self-evident desire to see “regime change” in Syria and its decision to “pick sides” in regards to backing Syrian opposition terrorist clearly violates the not only Syria’s national sovereignty, but endangers the very concept of national sovereignty all together.
It is important to understand that this agenda of neo-imperialism is being driven by converging corporate-financier interests centered around Wall Street and London and seeks to create a global “open society” which they can dominate without the hindrance of borders or national institutions opposing them. The distinction is made in the documentary between Western-educated opposition members helping facilitate the West’s global blitzkrieg who hold the “global worldview of the West” verses the classical view of international law and diplomacy held by the rest of the world.
Humanitarian interventionism is simply the institutionalization of modern global imperial conquest.
Please be sure to support the makers of this documentary by rating their video on YouTube. Please also visit Julien Teil’s “The Humanitarian War” website.
[hat tip: Global Research TV]
Libyan scenario for Syria?
by Dmitry Babich
Voice of Russia
April 5, 2012
The recent statement of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the inability of NATO and its allies to replace Gaddafi’s regime in Libya with a viable modern state gets some worrisome confirmations every day. A military coup in Mali, another African country, where the black African majority is facing a rebellion of the local Tuareg minority with simultaneous attacks from the aggressive Islamist group named Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQMI), was another ominous sign of the destabilization in the region. It is a commonly held opinion of a number of experts in Algeria, Morocco, France and other countries that the events in Mali were a consequence of Colonel Gaddafi’s violent removal from power in 2011, in which NATO members and Persian Gulf monarchies took part. During his recent visit to Baku, Sergei Lavrov let it be understood that he shared that opinion.
“The people, who abused the UN Security Council’s mandate, who defeated Gaddafi’s army killing dozens of civilians in the process of doing this, these people left in Libya something that cannot really be called a state,” Lavrov said in Baku. Lavrov added that the Libyan tragedy, whose damage to civilians still needs to be assessed and investigated, is far from over. “Right now the state of Mali is being destroyed,” Lavrov said.
There are surprisingly few reports in the Western press on the dangerous instability in Libya and the military action in Mali, which indeed was a direct consequence of the West-supported eviction of Tuaregs from Libya. The anti-Gaddafi rebels summarily suspected Tuaregs of helping the government forces, so they made short work of them after Mr. Gaddafi’s defeat. So, the lack of interest that the Western media showed for their fate was particularly strange after many months of hysterical reports demonizing Gaddafi and predicting an eventual massacre which Gaddafi’s forces might presumably have inflicted on the Libyan opposition in Benghazi. This media circus served to justify the Western intervention and stopped immediately after the insurgents took over Tripoli. The massacre inflicted on Gaddafi’s supporters in the city of Sirte, Gaddafi’s stronghold, which lost up to 30 percent of its population, was not presumed, but quite real. However, only the French daily Le Figaro dwelled on the plight of the victims.
On Monday, another show of force which even the Western media could not ignore left at least 22 people in an area west of Tripoli, where Berber fighters from the town of Zuwarah clashed with their neighbors from the mostly Arab town of Ragdalein. Similar clashes had been recorded earlier in the Libyan desert oasis of Sabha, where at least 150 people were killed.
“Hopes in the Western press for a glorious end to the war in Libya, which were widespread in the wake of Mr. Gaddafi’s killing at the end of 2011, were somewhat shortsighted,” said Nikolai Surkov, an analyst on Middle East politics writing for the Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta. “The war in fact goes on – without Gaddafi.”
The refusal of the new Libyan authorities to hand Gaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam to international justice in the Hague and the recently started trial in Tripoli of 20 Ukrainian citizens accused of doing “hardware repairs” for Gaddafi’s forces do not make the humanitarian credentials of Libya’s new masters any better. In fact, the amount of violence in the country forced even the liberal New York Times to admit that Libya’s ruling Transitional National Council “was weak and disorganized.”
As for Mali, another terrible revelation of the New York Times to the Western public is that fighting in this country and its recent coup (“a major blow to democracy in Africa”) “are among the unexpected consequences of the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.” So much for the months-in-a-row media chatter about the Western intervention in Libya being a boon to Africa’s democracy.
If Mr. Lavrov’s pessimism proves to be right on Libya, there is no reason to expect him to be wrong on Syria, where events are developing according to the Libyan scenario. Michel Kilo, a respected Syrian human rights activist and opposition leader, recently blasted the penchant of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council and its Western “friends” for the military solution to the problem and their ties to militant Islamists inside and outside Syria. He also urged the West to cooperate with other Syrian opposition groups, not just with the SNC. Right now only Russia is inviting these groups to Moscow and taking their ideas seriously. In Mr. Kilo’s opinion, it is high time for all Syrian opposition groups to cooperate with Russia.
In April, Michel Kilo is planning to convene a founding session of his organization, Democratic Forum of Syria, in Cairo, Egypt. Now there are two alternatives open for the Western press: we shall either hear less from the “Friends of Syria” or we shall not hear at all from Mr. Kilo and his Democratic Forum. The latter option, unfortunately, has a much bigger chance to be chosen.
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Source – http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_04_05/Libya-Syria/
[hat tip: STOP NATO]
PN 