Assange, Pinochet and Diplomatic Double-Dealing

British Foreign Secretary’s ‘Unprecedented’ Threat to Raid a Foreign Embassy

Chilean dictator Pinochet: Shielded by crony justice. It pays to do the dirty jobs for the global establishment.

by DEEPAK TRIPATHI
A decade ago, the British government of Labour prime minister Tony Blair decided to back President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq even though foreign office lawyers in London had warned that such an attack had no “legal basis in international law.”

In the midst of sharp divisions in government and British society, the invasion went ahead in March 2003. The consequences were far-reaching and they undermined the Blair government’s authority at home. Limping thereafter, he resigned in June 2007, humbled and apologetic. War and the economy together played no mean part in Tony Blair’s fall in British politics and the Labour Party’s defeat three years later.

A few days ago, Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague personally approved a letter that was sent to Ecuador. Its details were taken as a threat to raid the Ecuadorean Embassy in London and drag out WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange for extradition to Sweden, where state prosecutors say they want to question him about complaints of sexual assault. Hague’s letter was delivered to Ecuador despite the “grave reservations of lawyers in his department.”

Speaking anonymously to the Independent newspaper, a senior British official said that “staff feared the move could provoke retaliatory attacks against British embassies overseas.” A large majority in the Organization of American States is up in arms. Outside the Americas too, Britain is struggling to find much sympathy for its stance. In soccer parlance, Prime Minister David Cameron’s center forward has scored a spectacular own goal.

While Julian Assange made a statement from the balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, attacking America’s “witch hunt” against WikiLeaks and journalistic freedom, several former mandarins of the British Diplomatic Service expressed serious misgivings over William Hague’s handling of the affair. Oliver Miles, a 40-year veteran, described the letter to Ecuador as a “big mistake,” because “it puts the British government in the position of asking for something illegitimate.” Former ambassador to Moscow, Tony Brenton, commented that the Foreign Office had “slightly overreached themselves, for both legal and practical reasons.” And a former envoy to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, said, “You cannot legislate domestically to opt out of international law.”

Otherwise, the mainstream broadcast and print media continued to provide a running commentary of the whole affair. The coverage has been generally confused, selective, repetitive and often hostile to Assange and a small Latin American country’s decision to grant him asylum. The Economist, though, positioning itself on the other side, criticized Britain’s “ham-handed invocation of a never-used, 1987 law to insinuate that it could, eventually, have the right to enter the embassy.”

It is perhaps necessary at this point to take note of the London-based Bertha Foundation’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson, who has described the British Foreign Office’s letter and the implicit threat as unprecedented––one which, if implemented, would force a profound change in the conduct of international diplomacy. Also important is to take a look at the concerns raised by prominent American feminist writer Naomi Wolf in an article titled “Something Rotten in the State of Sweden: 8 Big Problems with the ‘Case’ Against Assange.” Under her microscope is the entire Swedish legal system.

Why does Assange and others fear that Sweden would repatriate him to the United States, where he could face the rest of his life in jail, even execution for publishing leaked official documents? Because in November 2006 the United Nations found Sweden guilty of violating the global torture ban. Swedish officials handed over Mohammed El Zari and Ahmeed Agiza, two Egyptian asylum seekers, to CIA operatives in December 2001, to be rendered from Stockholm to Cairo. Both were tortured in Egypt. And, as Seamus Milne wrote in the Guardian, because of reports of a secret indictment against Assange by a U.S. federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia.

The law says that someone who has suffered persecution, or fears that he or she will suffer persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion may seek asylum. In the last few days, the United States has claimed that it does not recognize the concept of “diplomatic asylum.” Exactly what distinction is Washington trying to make between asylum, political asylum and diplomatic asylum is baffling. Assange was after all in the territory of a foreign country that granted him refuge. Let us look at some precedents.

Stalin’s daughter Svetlana sought asylum when she walked into the U.S. Embassy in Delhi in 1967. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn got asylum and lived in the United States for years before returning to Russia. Martina Navratilova, the Czech tennis player, took asylum in the U.S. in 1975. There are numerous instances when dissidents have been granted refuge in the United States and elsewhere. The concept is universal and depends on the sovereign decision of the country dealing with an asylum request.

Also worth examining is the British foreign secretary’s assertion that the United Kingdom has a “binding obligation” to extradite Assange to Sweden. Let us, for a moment, go back to October 1998. Chile’s former military dictator Augusto Pinochet was visiting London for medical treatment. A Spanish magistrate Baltasar Garzon, now on Assange’s legal team, issued an arrest warrant for Pinochet on charges arising out of crimes against humanity in Chile. Pinochet was arrested a few days later in Britain, where he would spend more than a year in judicial custody, fighting extradition to Spain. The House of Lords, then Britain’s highest court, ruled that Pinochet could indeed be handed over to the Spanish judicial authorities, because crimes such as torture could not be protected by immunity.

The British government nonetheless allowed Pinochet to return to Chile in March 2000 on health grounds. The law was clear, but for Britain’s Labour government at the time there was no “binding obligation” to extradite Pinochet to Spain. Chile under Pinochet had backed the United Kingdom during the brief Falklands war with Argentina. Moreover, he and Britain’s former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher were admirers of each other. There was, after all, a way out for Pinochet to return home instead of being extradited to Spain.

Writing about the essence of rule of law and government’s legitimacy, Thomas Hobbes in his seventeenth-century work Leviathan observed: “The law is the public conscience.”

What conscience?

DEEPAK TRIPATHI is the author of Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism (Potomac Books, Incorporated, Washington, D.C., 2011) and Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan (also Potomac, 2010). His works can be found at: http://deepaktripathi.wordpress.com and he can be reached at:dandatripathi@gmail.com.

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Vomitorium, but quick! UK media lines up behind campaign to extradite Assange and silence WikiLeaks

By Julie Hyland, WSWS.ORG, a socialist organization

The British media has played a venal role throughout the ongoing efforts to witch-hunt and silence WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. But it has plumbed new depths following the decision by Ecuador to grant his request for political asylum. The WikiLeaks founder sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on June 19, when it became apparent that UK authorities intended to extradite him to Sweden.

In his statement delivered from a window at the embassy on Sunday, Assange gave fresh evidence of Britain’s efforts to flout international law with its threat to derecognise the embassy and send police to arrest him. He described how he had heard police “storming” through internal fire escapes earlier in the week.

He denounced the incarceration and torture of alleged whistleblower, US Army private Bradley Manning, called for an end to the US-led persecution of WikiLeaks, the defence of free speech and resistance to state repression.

Like the British government, which has refused to comment on Assange’s statement, the media had nothing to say on the substance of his remarks. The well-paid hacks of Fleet Street are just as contemptuous towards democratic rights as their political masters. This applies with equal measure to those employed by newspapers that are overtly right-wing, such as the Daily Mail, or nominally liberal outlets like the Guardian.

Unable to deal with Assange’s statement in an honest manner, the approach taken by the UK’s print media is two-fold.

Luke Harding: Billed by the Guardian as a foreign correspondent, better ask this fellow how much he charges.

First, they mocked Assange’s appearance—drawing analogies with scenes from Monty Python’s Life of Brian among others. Thus, Luke Harding wrote in the Guardian that Assange’s speech at the embassy window was the “moment for someone to shout: ‘’E’s not the Messiah! ’E’s a very naughty boy!’” For her part, Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail denounced Assange for “Posing as a champion of justice and human rights”, claiming his “theatrical statement from the balcony” made him “like an Eva Peron of the ether.”

Just who and what are these nobodies attempting to ridicule? Everyone knows that WikiLeaks and Assange are responsible for informing a world audience of monumental crimes routinely committed by the US and its allies—from murder, extraordinary rendition and torture to conspiring to suppress basic rights.

They might be indifferent to the Collateral Murder video, leaked by WikiLeaks, in which laughing US Apache helicopter operatives strafed Iraqi civilians with machine-gun fire, killing more than a dozen people including two children—carnage which, as two of the US personnel involved admitted, were “everyday occurrences” during the occupation of that country. The millions who viewed the footage are not.

Puerile analogies and sarcasm could never suffice to obscure the real issues involved in the Assange witch-hunt, which is why the main plank of their coverage is disinformation and a pose of moral indignation.

The Sun complained that Assange’s speech was “long on egotistical claptrap, but oddly failed to mention what this extradition case is actually about—the rape of one woman and sexual molestation of another.”

The Independent editorialised that Assange “is all but incarcerated in the Ecuadorean embassy not because he is a fighter for freedom but because he is wanted in Sweden over wholly unrelated allegations of sexual assault.”

The siege of the Ecuadorean embassy: a ludicrous display of force to catch a non-criminal.

Most bellicose was the Guardian. [Reminding everyone that a liberal can never be trusted] it accused Assange of “jumping bail”, as it claimed, “It is to avoid being confronted with accusations of rape and sexual assault that Mr Assange is now holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy.”

These assertions are false. Assange can hardly avoid the “accusations” made against him, since they have been repeated ad nauseam ever since they were first leaked by the Swedish prosecutor’s office to the tabloid newspaper Expressen in August 2010, before Assange had even been informed of them.

This was only the first indication of a dirty tricks campaign aimed at destroying Assange’s reputation and silencing WikiLeaks.

The fact remains that the accusations are just that—accusations. Ones, moreover, that relate to what all parties agree involved consensual sex and which were only made days after they were supposed to have occurred. Assange has still never been charged with any offence.

Sweden has gone to extraordinary lengths to have Assange extradited, supposedly for questioning over the allegations—from the issuing of a European Arrest Warrant to numerous court cases where that has been challenged. Yet Swedish prosecutors have repeatedly declined offers to question Assange in the UK, including the latest proposal by Ecuador that he could be interviewed in its embassy.

It is not the highly questionable and disputed allegations of sexual misconduct that have led to Assange taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy. Rather, as Ecuador set out in its statement, “The applicant had made his asylum request based on his fear of eventual political persecution by a third country, the same country whom could use his extradition to the Kingdom of Sweden to enable an expedited subsequent extradition.”

The rape allegations emerged just as Assange was preparing the release for October 22 of the Iraq War Logs, detailing war crimes by Iraqi police and soldiers serving under the US-led occupation between 2004 and 2009. It is a matter of record that, during the same period, the Obama administration launched an investigation against WikiLeaks and began a financial blockade to shut the site down.

Regarding his extradition, the Ecuadorian statement notes specifically that Assange fears the “possibility of being handed over to the United States of America by British, Swedish or Australian authorities”, where he could face charges of “espionage and treason” for his whistle-blowing.

Phillips at least acknowledges that it is “widely thought that the US authorities would rather like to have a bit of a chat” with Assange for what she described as the “real damage” he and WikiLeaks have “inflicted … upon Western interests.”

The Guardian’s editorial stoops lower still. With unashamed dishonesty, it complains of the “repeated suggestion from Mr Assange’s supporters that if he goes to Sweden he will face extradition to the US to be prosecuted for treason.

“Yet there is no serious evidence that Washington plans to start such proceedings”, it asserts.

Perhaps the authors should read the August 2 edition of their own newspaper, which carried an op-ed piece by Michael Ratner, the US attorney for Assange and WikiLeaks, in which he explained, “Julian Assange is right to fear US prosecution.”

Among the “unambiguous signs” that this was imminent, Ratner wrote, “A grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, empanelled to investigate violations of the Espionage Act—a statute that by its very nature targets speech—has subpoenaed Twitter feeds regarding Assange and WikiLeaks. An FBI agent, testifying at whistleblower Bradley Manning’s trial, said that ‘founders, owners and managers’ of WikiLeaks are being investigated. And then there is Assange’s 42,135-page FBI file—a compilation of curious heft if the government is ‘not interested’ in investigating its subject.”

If the Guardian had an ounce of integrity, it would attempt to factually refute rather than simply dismiss what Ratner reports. But it knows very well that what he writes is true.

In its statement granting Assange political asylum, Ecuador explained that it had sought assurances from the UK and Sweden that Assange would not be extradited to a third country, but this request was rejected. As to its requests for the US government to “officially reveal its position on Assange’s case”, it reported, “The US response has been that it cannot provide information about the Assange case, claiming that it is a bilateral matter between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.”

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The dictator you didn’t know about

By Stephen Gowans, What’s left

He’s a virtual dictator who presides over a virtual one-party state controlled by his own ethnic minority. True, he has been elected multiple times, but he relies on violence and intimidation to win “mind-bogglingly one-sided elections.” (1) In the last election, his party won all but two of 546 seats in parliament. (2)

When opposition supporters objected to one of his improbable election victories, he ordered regime forces to open fire, “killing 193 and wounding hundreds. Thousands of opposition leaders and supporters were rounded up and detained.” (3) Opponents who weren’t jailed were denied food aid, jobs and other social benefits. (4)

A rebellion against his regime has been met by “brutal campaigns” involving rape and the killing of his own people. (5) Last year, he sentenced two Western journalists to 11 years in prison for reporting on rebel groups fighting to overthrow his tyrannical regime. (6) And in 2006, he sent his forces into a neighbouring country to occupy it militarily, because it was weak and unable to defend itself.

Syria’s Bashar al-Asad?

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe?

The description fits the picture painted of these two leaders by the US State Department and its echo chamber, the Western mass media. But it is neither of these men. Both are reviled in Washington—and so automatically by the Western press—for reasons allegedly having to do with their bad attitudes to democracy and human rights and so it’s easy to believe the leader depicted above is one of them.

But the real reason the US State Department–and in train the mimetic Western media—treat these men as heinous criminals has to do with their attitudes to Western free enterprise and domination from abroad. Neither man has been willing to open his country to untrammelled exploitation by foreigners (or in Zimbabwe’s case to the descendants of settlers.) Neither votes in the United Nations as Washington directs, and neither is willing to act as a military proxy for the Pentagon.

But Meles Zenawi, the leader I’ve described above—the dictator you haven’t heard about—was willing to do all these things.

Meles, the prime minister of Ethiopia, died last Monday. An anti-Communist, he dropped out of medical school in the 1970s to fight Ethiopia’s then Marxist-Leninist government. As prime minister, he shepherded Ethiopia through a free-market, free-enterprise takeover that opened Ethiopia’s economy to foreign investors. (7) In 2006, when the United States asked him to invade neighbouring Somalia, Meles—the uncompromising local agent of US interests—was only too happy to comply.

For his services the Ethiopian strongman was showered with aid—$1 billion from Washington in 2010, and nearly the same amount last year. (8) And his “military and security services” are celebrated in Washington as “among the Central Intelligence Agency’s favourite partners…in Africa.” (9)

While Meles was of the kind of leader Washington professes to revile, there were no campaigns for Meles’s removal engineered by the US State Department, and then taken up by the compliant media, and from there by liberals, soft-leftists, non-violent pro-democracy activists, and “no-fly-zone-arms-to-the-rebels” Trotskyists. All of these forces were too busy trying to outdo each other in denouncing the rogue’s gallery of socialists and economic nationalists Washington trotted out for disdain, allegedly because they hate democracy and human rights, but actually because they hate foreign domination. Meles never made Washington’s list of rogues. Nor by consequence the Western mass media’s. Nor by consequence the aforesaid leftists’.

Writing Meles’ obituary, New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman felt moved to explain the gulf between Washington’s rhetoric about supporting democracy and human rights, and its practice of supporting their very enemies.

“Ethiopia,” wrote Gettleman, “is hardly alone in raising difficult questions on how the United States should balance interests and principles.” Contra Gettleman, the trouble here is that there is no balance between interests and principles. US interests—which is to say the interests of the one percent—vastly outweigh principles, which is why Washington continues to support leaders like Meles and tyrants in the Gulf. Principles are simply rhetoric to cover up the rape of other countries in the pursuit of profit.

“Saudi Arabia,” continued Gettleman, “is an obvious example (of interests trumping principles), a country where women are deprived of many rights and there is almost no religious freedom. Still, it remains one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East for a simple reason: oil.”

Right, but not oil, as a resource US consumers and industry depend on that can’t be obtained elsewhere. Indeed, the United States is one of the world’s top oil producers and more than half of US oil is sourced domestically. Neighbouring Canada supplies as much oil to the United States as do all of the oil producing countries in North Africa and the Middle East combined. (10) The loss of Saudi Arabia as an ally wouldn’t leave the United States short of oil. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia is a source of only a small part of the oil the United States consumes. But it is a source of gargantuan oil profits for US businesses, not only directly, but through the recycling of petro-dollars through US banks. Saudi Arabia remains one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East for a simple reason: not oil itself, but for what it delivers–immense profits.

Gettleman went on to point out that, “In Africa, the United States cooperates with several governments that are essentially one-party states, dominated by a single-man, despite a commitment to promoting democracy.” (11) But he didn’t say why. If it’s oil profits in Saudi Arabia, what is it in Africa? The Wall Street Journal is more forthcoming. Meles transformed a Communist-controlled economy by “loosening up of lucrative industries” and attracting “investment in agriculture and manufacturing.” (12) In other words, he helped make US investors—the one percent— richer.

Meanwhile, leaders who have resisted their country’s exploitation by the West’s one percent have been destabilized, sanctioned, bombed, and—with the help of plenty of leftists—tarred by the blackest campaigns of vilification.

1. Jeffrey Gettleman (a), “Ethiopian leader’s death highlights gap between U.S. interests and ideals”, The New York Times, August 21, 2012.
2. Peter Wonacott, “Ethiopia in flux after leader dies”, The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2012.
3. Wonacott
4. Gettleman (a)
5. Jeffrey Gettleman (b), “Ethiopian leader’s death highlights gap between U.S. interests and ideals”, The New York Times, August 21, 2012.
6. Gettleman (a)
7. Wonacott
8. Wonacott
9. Gettleman (a)
11. Gettleman (b)
12. Wonacott

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Syrian False Flag Planned?

By Stephen Lendman

Short of nuclear weapons, the Syrian army is a match for any regional power, including Israel. But now the excuses and manufactured turmoil are accumulating fast to permit the intervention of NATO power. Where that criminal insanity will lead is impossible to guess. The image is of a well camouflaged Syrian soldier with a machine-gun. He is wearing a nuclear-biological-chemical warfare mask.

Never bet against Washington’s imperial plans. New tactics follow failed ones. Efforts to oust Assad continue. Proxy killers can’t do it alone. They’re no match against Syria’s superior military strength. It’s committed to rout them.

Expect NATO intervention anytime or perhaps post-US November elections. Libya 2.0 looks increasingly likely. What better way to finesse it than by staging a false flag attack blamed on Assad. America’s false flag history suggests it. In 1898, Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed.

Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. South Korea was used to instigate war on the North. Lyndon Johnson wanted war on Vietnam and got it. Fake threats sent US marines to Grenada. Manufactured incidents precipitated America’s Panama invasion.

Saddam was head-faked into invading Kuwait. The Gulf War, two decades of sanctions, another war, and occupation followed.

September 11, 2001 was the mother of all false flags. It’s the big lie of our time. Eleven years of imperial wars followed. One segues to another without end. Syria is Washington’s latest. Iran is next. Proxy wars always rage. Media silence makes pretexts unnecessary.

On August 20, Obama perhaps signaled US intervention intentions. He told reporters:

“I have indicated repeatedly that President al-Assad has lost legitimacy, that he needs to step down. So far, he hasn’t gotten the message, and instead has double downed in violence on his own people.”

“I have, at this point, not ordered military engagement in the situation. But the point that you made about chemical and biological weapons is critical.”

“That’s an issue that doesn’t just concern Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.”

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

“We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly.”

These comments signal possible intervention. The New York Times said Obama’s warning advances things “a step closer to direct American intervention.”

Syrian Foreign Ministry Jihad Makdissi clearly said chemical weapons won’t be used internally. Nor will they be used against other nations except in self-defense.

Of course they won’t. Why would Assad give Washington and other NATO countries reason to intervene?

No matter. Incidents are easy to manufacture. Scoundrel media hyperbole manipulates readers and viewers to expect it. Propaganda hypes fear.

On August 17, Mossad-connected DEBKAfile (DF) headlined “Syria’s neighbors braced for chemical threat. Assad warns Turkey on Stingers,” saying:

“The US and its allies are discussing a worst-case scenario that could require up to 60,000 ground troops to go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of the Assad government, an unnamed American source said Thursday night, Aug.16.”

Securing weapons is deceptive cover perhaps for a planned chemical false flag blamed on Assad. DF, Obama, other officials, and Western media are manipulating public opinion to accept another full-scale war.

Alleged Iraq WMD threats facilitated shock and awe and occupation. Others initiated NATO’s destruction of Libya. Expect something similar for Syria. Washington’s bag of tricks contains all dirty ones.

Chemical warfare threats are hyped. DF said US special forces are positioned in Jordan, Turkey and Israel. “Reconnaissance teams from potentially targeted countries have infiltrated Syria.”

Medical preparations have been made. “Israeli hospitals are on war alert.” Fortified emergency wards were opened. “IDF Home Front Command units embarked on a series of chemical attack drills….”

Soldiers wore anti-contamination clothing. Underground parking areas are ready as bomb shelters. “Assad is resolved more than ever to stand fast” and fight.

DF hyperbole sounded like Western media reports during the Blitz.

On August 21, Voice of Russia headlined “Russia denies sending chemical weapons to Syria,” saying:

Colonel Vladimir Mandych, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Department for Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons, said none were sent to Syria, adding:

“Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction. (Their) use leads to colossal consequences for people involved in armed conflicts and the civilian population and inflicts irreparable damage to the environment.”

“Of course, the international community should take measures to prevent the use of chemical weapons in different regions in the 21st century.”

At the same time, SANA state media reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejects outside intervention and safe zones. He said:

“Statements saying (the Geneva agreement) is as good as dead imply that someone seeks a pretext for military intervention. This is worrying as it can only lead to catastrophe in the region.”

He added that Russia continues discussions with “everyone” to prevent what’s bad getting worse. He fears it for good reason.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expects no Security Council resolution. On August 20, her follow-up comments suggested intervention, saying:

Washington’s position is well-known. “We don’t think there’s going to be peace in Syria until Assad steps down and the bloodshed ends.”

America’s agenda remains unchanged, “that is to get to a political transition strategy, to get to an end to the bloodshed, and to get to a real transition with those countries who are willing to participate, outside the UN if necessary.”

On August 19, SANA state media reported Britain’s Sunday Times saying UK intelligence “is covertly aiding the armed terrorists to launch terrorist attacks in Syria….”

A Syrian opposition official was quoted saying:

UK authorities “know about and approve 100%” of intelligence from their Cyprus military bases. It’s being sent through Turkey to Free Syrian Army forces.

“British intelligence is observing things closely from Cyprus. The British are giving the information to the Turks and the Americans and we are getting it from the Turks.”

Information includes Syrian army movements in Aleppo. CIA elements are involved. So is German intelligence. The Bild am Sontag weekly reported that a spy ship off Syria’s coast uses Federal Intelligence Service (BND) technology. It’s provides information to insurgents.

Germany’s Defense Ministry confirmed its presence. The vessel Oker provides early warnings, communications and reconnaissance. It’s able to monitor troop movements up to 600 km inside Syria. Information is sent to Washington, Britain and insurgents.

BND agents are also stationed in Adana, Turkey. They’re monitoring Syrian telephone and radio communications.

Oker is part of Germany’s UNIFIL mission (UN Interim Force in Lebanon since 1978 until August 31, 2012 unless renewed). It’s not authorized to conduct Syrian intelligence. No parliamentary mandate approved it.

Perhaps Angela Merkel is freelancing on her own. She’s part of NATO’s imperial regime change coalition. Germany is also involved with the “Economic Reconstruction and Development” working group.

Last May, the Syrian National Council’s (SNC) Finance and Economic Affairs Bureau (FEAB) adopted a post-Assad privatization plan. Dozens of countries and 10 organizations are involved. Germany and the UAE lead the initiative.

They want Syrian spoils carved up among them. Plunder is their mandate. Subterfuge masks it. They call it a mission to benefit all Syrians. They plan erasing the Syrian Arab Republic and remaking it in their own image.

They envision unfettered capitalism unleashed in its most savage form. They want Syria replicating the new Iraq and Libya. Profits, not people, matter. Iraq more closely resembles hell than “the cradle of civilization.”

Violence ravages Libya. No end of conflict and human misery is imminent in either country. Full-scale war rages in Afghanistan. American-style liberation is more charnel house than democratic freedom.

Syrians experienced it for months. No end in sight is near. The worst is yet to come. Bet on it.

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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OpEds—Pussy Riot, The Unfortunate Dupes of Amerikan Hegemony

By Paul Craig Roberts

[dropcap] M[/dropcap]y heart goes out to the three Russian women who comprise the Russian rock band, Pussy Riot. They were brutally deceived and used by the Washington-financed NGOs that have infiltrated Russia. Pussy Riot was sent on a mission that was clearly illegal under statutory law.
.

You have to admire and to appreciate the spunk of the women. But you have to bemoan their gullibility. Washington needed a popular issue with which to demonize the Russian government for standing up to Washington’s intention to destroy Syria, just as Washington destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and as Washington intends to destroy Lebanon and Iran.

By intentionally offending religious worshipers–which would be a hate crime in the US and its European, Canadian, and British puppet states–the women violated a statutory Russian law.

Prior to the women’s trial, Russian President Putin expressed his opinion that the women should not be harshly punished. Taking the cue from Putin, the judge gave the women, deceived and betrayed by the amerikan-financed NGOs, two years instead of seven years.

The women were not waterboarded, raped, or forced to sign false confessions, all well-established practices of amerikan “justice.”

The chances were good that after six months Putin would see that the women are released. But, of course, that would not serve the propaganda of the Amerikan Empire. The instructions to the Washington-financed fifth column in Russia will be to make any government leniency for Pussy Riot impossible.

Washington-organized protests, riots, property damage, assaults on state and religious images by Washington’s Russian dupes can make it impossible for Putin to stand up to nationalist opinion and commute the sentences of the Pussy Riot women.

Distrust of the Russian government and dissension within Russia are what Washington wants. As Washington continues to murder vast numbers of people around the globe, Washington will point its finger at the fate of Pussy Riot. The western bought-and-paid-for presstitute media will focus on Russia’s evil, not on the evil of Washington, London, and the EU puppet states who are slaughtering Muslims by the bucket-full.

The disparity between human rights in the west and in the east is astonishing. When a Chinese trouble-maker sought protection from Washington, the Chinese “authoritarian” government allowed the person to leave for America. But when Julian Assange, who, unlike the presstitute western media, actually provides truthful information for the western peoples, was granted political asylum by Ecuador, Great (sic) Britain, bowing to the country’s amerikan master, refused the obligatory free passage from the UK.

The UK government, unlike the Chinese government, doesn’t mind violating international law, because it will be paid buckets of money by Washington for being a pariah state.

As Karl Marx said, money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold: government, honor, morality, the writing of history, legality. Nothing is immune to purchase. This development of capitalism has reached the highest stage in the US and its puppet states, the governments of which sell out the interest of their peoples in order to please Washington and be made rich, like Tony Blair’s $35 million. Sending their citizens to fight for Washington’s empire in distant parts of the world is the service for which the utterly corrupt European politicians are paid. Despite the wondrous entity known as European Democracy, the European and British peoples are unable to do anything about their misuse in Washington’s interest. This is a new form of slavery. If a country is an amerikan ally, its people are amerikan slaves.

The international attention focused on Pussy Riot, an obscure rock group which apparently has no recordings on the market, demonstrates the complicity of the Western media in US propaganda. Pussy Riot is not the Beatles of the 1960s. I doubt that most of the young people demonstrating in favor of Pussy Riot had ever before heard of the group or have any understanding of how they are being manipulated.

There are so many more important issues on which media attention should be focused. There is Bradley Manning’s illegal detention and torture by the US government. Manning has already been in prison without trial for longer than Pussy Riot’s sentence!

What is Manning’s “crime.” No one knows. Washington accuses him of doing his duty under the US Military Code and revealing the war crime of the “thrill killing” of civilians by US military personnel and of releasing documents to WikiLeaks revealing the mendacity of the US government. In other words, Manning is a hero, and so off he is dragged to the torture chamber.

WikiLeaks Julian Assange, accused of posting on the Internet the leaked documents, is confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The British “human rights” regime refuses to abide by international law and allow Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, safe passage. Everyone familiar with international law knows that asylum takes precedence over the other legal claims, especially specious ones.

Washington has armed and financed outsiders to destroy Syria and to break the country up into warring factions. Instead of protesting this heinous act by Washington, the world protests the Syrian government for resisting its overthrow by Washington. I don’t think that even George Orwell imagined that the peoples of the world were this utterly stupid.

In “freedom and democracy” amerika, President Obama refuses to obey a federal court order to cease and desist from violating the clear, unambiguous Constitutional rights of US citizens. Instead, the President of the United States defies the court’s order and continues to hold US citizens in indefinite detention, and there is no movement to impeach this tyrant. To the contrary, amerika is presented as the example of democracy to the world.

Where are the protests?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.

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