Postcard from the Ukraine II: Factions, Putin and Painted Corners

By Diane Gee, The Wild Wild Left
SPECIAL DISPATCH

ukraine-donetsk-russianFlag
Russian flag waving in Donetsk 
© Kostyantyn Chernichkin
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One would hope by now, that anyone paying attention has garnered a better understanding of the issues in the Ukraine than it being “freedom fighting rebels” standing up against an “oppressive government,” as originally propagandized by the American Press Transcribers. That they would see that was always a lie.Even some of the US media mouthpieces now grudgingly admit what I reported in Postcards From the Ukraine a full month ago:  That there is more than an ideological split there, it is one of culture and language and grave historical precedent.  It is exceedingly important to understand these basics, the mistrust of the Eastern people, primarily of Russian descent for their Western counterparts whose Parents and Grandparents took part in the slaughter of their own under a Nazi flag. For those in the West, they have been breast-fed on post Austria nationalism, and feel that anything short of pure Ukrainian is a threat – the Russians, the Polish, and yes, the Jewish – to their autonomy.

 

This?  This is the fabric upon which the Maidan uprising was painted, aided heartily by US planners and CIA monies, a fabric loosely but peacefully tied together in coexistence for decades, but fragile nonetheless. Fragile, and soon rent asunder.

To be sure the last government, though legitimately elected, was corrupt.  Wages were going down, while costs were being driven up, much like here in the Unites States, by their own Oligarchs, the Robber Baron class.  It wasn’t hard to take that general anger and ignite it into a frenzy of far right-wing, even fascist and neo-nazi movement that could scapegoat minorities and look to the Capitalist West to save them (which is where the far-right libertarians and infantile leftist anarchists meet in the US as well).

Those important facts cannot be denied as the start of the Ukrainian troubles, yet as things metamorphosize of their own volition – it is just as important to understand there are far more variables at play now.  More factions on the ground, more anger, and more international subversion than ever.

 

The face of bravery – Ukrainian women stops line of tanks.

First and foremost, the far-right, the Nazis that originally took the power, roving bands of violent skinheads screaming of “Ukraine only for the Ukrainians” and hoping to make the Russian language illegal no longer hold the power, though they are still on the streets. Aleksandr Muzychko, whose claim of “I’ll be fighting Jews and Russians till I die,” has in fact met that death. This has made the right wing militias feel angry and betrayed by the slightly less right-wing leadership.


I can only offer to the US audiences, that this would be akin to the Tea Party joining forces with the Aryan Nation to overthrow Washington… then upon taking power, killing David Duke and then telling the white supremists that they no longer have “Killing Blacks and Jewish” on their agenda.  This faction will not be satisfied with less than a racially pure state, an enforced national language, and loyalty tests for employment in their new Nation.

Ironically, when these extremist militants claimed to have purged the most extremist of them, and created their own party to challenge interim President Olexander Turchynov’s legitimacy in office – Turchynov claimed it was a Russian backed challenge to him.  Suuuure, cousin, we believe you, because if the KKK’s political branch tried to overthrow the new Tea Party government in a post-coup US, it would be the Blacks who made it happen.  These people hate Russians. Pravy Sektor (the extremists) may not be in power, but they still wield considerable power in Kyiv, and are still roaming the streets in packs, terrorizing people who seem less than their version of Perfect Ukrainians.

The West/East divide is simplistic, for both are a melting pot of many differing peoples, right up to the languages they speak.  While the East speaks primarily Russian, in Kiev people speak Ukrainian, Russian, and often a hybrid of each; in local dialect and a simple borrowing of words from both languages slipping back and forth without notice.

The West of the country is still firmly in the hands of rightwingers, from the Government to the disgruntled extremists.  Things are far from settled there, but that threat is basically internal.  As Dmitri Kolesnik who we met in my last Postcard from the Ukraine reported yesterday, there are videos of them making these claims:

 

17.04.2014 Odessa – march of Right Sector Neonazis.
The speaker: “[We want] into that kind of Europe that crusaders fought for, into that Europe – the European nationalists were fighting for – into Europe of white people, but not into Europe where now live Muslims and ousting native population: they seize their lands and restrict their rights. We will be fighting for Europe – white Europe of traditions and national states – for Europe of free nations. Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!”

Moving to the West, earlier this week it seemed that the Donetsk region protected themselves from the attack by the new Government’s military forces, without a shot being fired or a drop of blood spilled. The Saker reported:

 

Something really amazing happened today in Kramatorsk. It appears that a column of Ukrainian paratroopers entered the city unopposed, some of them put Russian flags on their Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV), others Saint George ribbons. When they made it to the city center they were greeted by the civilians who brought them flowers and food.

Both Betty, and Dmitri reported the military forces were on their way to the West last week, hearing ordnance in the distance. By the 7th Kharkovwas still under the people’s control. By the 12th, the miners had come to the defense of their area as reported in the Guardian, though those on the ground said they vastly underestimated the number of protestors there.

 

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos 

The crowd parted as a group of a dozen or so burly men in orange work helmets marched past barbed-wire and tyre barricades into the 11-storey administration building, which protesters seized last weekend as they demanded greater independence from Kiev.”Glory to the miners!” the crowd began chanting. “Glory to Donbass!” they shouted

::snip::

“It’s hard to arouse the miners, but when you do, there will be trouble,” said Artyom, a former miner who was guarding the administration building on Friday night. “If the miners all rise up, it will be an economic, physical and moral blow. It will be hard for everyone.”

By the 13th the attack had come to the Donbass area, whose central city is Donetsk. The area is a heavy industrial area, mainly mining.

Betty reported:

Donbass is the name of the province, the industrial region of Ukraine where many people work in the coal mines. Donetsk is the main city of Donbass. The new fascist gov is beginning its military attack against protesters in Donetsk tonight.

But later, was disappointed:

The miners are not very active, the owners warned about mass dismissals if they go out to support the rebels. [The pro-Russia separatists—Eds.]

Note, these mines are privately owned, and pay has stagnated, if not gone down.  Some weeks their wages are not met.  Picture being owed $100 for a week’s work, and getting a paycheck for $67.85 with no explanation other than, “That’s what we have right now.”  But thus made hungry, they are less likely to strike, all while knowing full well their Russian counterparts across the border, a few miles away, are making 3x, 5x, up to 8x the pay scale they are being given. It’s hard to endure.

Yet, as I pointed out this ended up not being a bloody confrontation.  Many soldiers walked away, many flipped sides, while they ended up surrounded, nominally by the new Ukrainian forces – mostly, the whole thing fizzled out.  People went back to doing their business, with a few protestors here and there.

Were this really a divide between Russian sycophants in the East as they say, and hardline nationalist Westerners, were it all-encompassing and pervasive as all that, it simply would have come to bloodshed. But in between all the propagandist rhetoric, in between the wonks working furiously to decipher what is happening and why, and create predictive models for outcomes, lies the real people. They don’t want a civil war, they don’t want to kill one another.

Save a few?  Most do not want to see their country broken up.  They want a unified Ukraine, with the social tolerance of all her citizens as in their recent past.  But they want it with less corruption, they want it with an economy that lets them not hunger.

Dimitri:

(on desertions)

Ordinary soldiers and officers do not desire a war and we see even a kind of sabotage in the army.


(on the extremists)

 

We see the rise of young neo-nazis – a kind of storm-troopers (especially from provinical western towns where children were indoctrinated for many years by nationalist ideas) that expect nothing from life and just want to die at least for something – for something like ‘government’, ‘race’, ‘state’, ‘nation’ – they are being used very well by oligarchs – they use them as a ready-made army to crush dissenters for free.

(lastly on why fewer extremists join – then sometimes desert as they did when sent to Donetsk)

 

Too many young people have no job – we refused last year also from army recruiting – many young people (boys) see no prospects except a career of a militarymen. You should remember that in Germany (where army was forbidden after 1918 WWI defeat) there was a great number of unemployed young people – they became the core of Nazi-storm-troopers.

Overall, it is the desperation of economic stress driving people and they are torn between wanting a united Ukraine, wanting and or resisting a strong federal presence in their lives (which at the moment is highly oppressive to ethnic Russians) and wanting local autonomy.

Dmitri, from the West sees the East as marginalized by both Russians and Ukrainians:

 

As for eastern Ukraine – not the same way – the pro-Russian sentiments are present there – but you should understand that eastern Ukraine – is a melting pot of nations – there live predominantly people of mixed ethnic groups. They are considered as ‘Russians’ by western Ukrainians, but at the same time as ‘Ukrainians’ – by ethnic Russians. Eastern Ukraine – is a mix and the language spoken there is ‘surzhik’ – a mix of both languages

Betty, from the East feels a deeper Russian kinship and defends their language:

As for the language I disagree. The most awful dialect is in Kiev region. Poor children. In comparison – our surzhik is an example of aristocrat’s speech.  In Donetsk only teachers of Ukrainian language can speak it. Yes. But anti-fascism is closely connected with Russia which inherited the values of the Soviet Union.

She would like to see her area more closely tied to Russia, and would prefer local control to Ukrainian Nationalist control (they call that federalization – the opposite of what we would call it) local control loosely affiliated with either Russia or the Ukraine.  She feels Russian values would be better for her people, than the Fascists now in power.

Dmitri defines it:

 

they demand mostly federalisation – the right to elect own governors (instead of appointed oligarchs) and decide own cultural and language policy in regions…

The KEY thing, that most need to understand is this… most in the East have 3 primary motivations, I have paraphrased and expanded both of my Ukrainian friends’ comments.

 

A kind of local patriotism (on the level of a town or region) – they are loyal to their own, and want their local interests served.  The next motivation is antifascism – they do not accept far-right policy of Kiev, with all its inherent racism.

Lastly, comes a kind of pro-Russian sentiment, born not only of tradition and ties of language, but the concrete fact that Russian workers working mirror mines a few miles hither are making a wonderful wage by comparison.

So enter the Geneva agreement, loosely binding both the right wing contingent in Kiev and the resistance in Donetsk (and all factions in between) to lay down their arms and negotiate. Here is the actual wording:

 

“The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens.  All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The participants strongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance, including anti-semitism.

All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally-seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.  [But how can an illegal government in Kiev speak of illegality anywhere in the nation?]

Amnesty will be granted to protestors and to those who have left buildings and other public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of capital crimes.

It was agreed that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission should play a leading role in assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation of these de-escalation measures wherever they are needed most, beginning in the coming days. The U.S., E.U. and Russia commit to support this mission, including by providing monitors.

The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.

The participants underlined the importance of economic and financial stability in Ukraine and would be ready to discuss additional support as the above steps are implemented.”

It has left many here on the left wondering if Putin has lost his mind; right now the interim (and quite illegal) government is in control and likely will not disarm in the name of security… and by bedding with the US/EU in monitoring the constitutional process is bending over for the big fat capitalist gift that never stops giving.

Or perhaps, as happened in Syria – Putin is again outmastering the chessmaster by appearing to be calm and reasonable, and setting up the West to have to show their overt face of conquest and colonization – something that did not play well last time, and is increasingly damned by the Global Community.

If, as part of the process, the West shares power with the East, has to allow languages other than Ukrainian to be spoken, they risk being overthrown yet again by the extremists of Maidan, who will see this as an ultimate betrayal.

I put this question to my dear friends, and asked the general reaction of left-leaning Ukrainians to this latest development.

Betty responds what the West is after from her POV with regards to the accord:

 

in general it will be the following: try to calm protesters, give them promise and push through own agenda but not so quickly

Dmitri:

 

I don’t know all the political secrets (behind the scene) – but I hear contradictory opinions – some say that Putin bowed, some – that in fact- not. But it’s difficult to judge – actually we see what’s happening in Ukraine – and our authorities stated that they will not follow the agreement and continue crackdown on rebellious regions.  Yes, they play their own game – and can easily come to an agreement, but inside Ukraine the conflict is nevertheless being escalated.

Putin plays his own game and those rebellious regions are not so pro-Putin (or pro-Russian) as media present it – they are mostly Ukrainians too – those that do not recognise new unelected government – they demand mostly federalisation – the right to elect own governors (instead of appointed oligarchs) and decide own cultural and language policy in regions…

I countered that both sides have claimed they will ignore the agreement, which they  confirmed and was in turn confirmed by other sources throughout the day.  I asked if there was any hope of this making a difference there.

Betty:

There isn’t much hope for this part.  Europe supports the new govt and they will hide the facts I am sure and blame Russia for backing up the East.

Dmitri:

 

No, I think it’s not hopeful – the authorities understand that they can destruct people only by a war hysteria and moving militants to wage war somewhere (in other case they will crush them) – so, they already refuse to fulfill the Geneva agreements.

All in all, I am glad that both of these lovely people feel safe enough to still be traveling and going about their lives.  Dmitri’s blog has come under attack several times, but neither feel in imminent danger from violence.

Neither feels any more, nor any less hopeful about the Geneva accord, because they know their countrymen, and they know the levels of distrust and anger…they KNOW that it will bring no concrete change to what is happening there on the ground.  It is constantly escalating as rents increase, wages stagnate, and prices of everything else goes up.  It is also transforming, as troops bearing down on them defect to their side over a sandwich, being maltreated by the Kiev junta military leaders.  It lies in impatient wait, as the steadfast miners try to remain gainfully employed and almost-but-not-quite neutral for the moment until pushed.  It bubbles as deals are made between the rich, as they divvy up appointments between cronies of slightly differing ideologies just to concretize the Oligarchs grip on power.  It seethes as the neo-nazis scream from ethnic purity.

To them, what Putin is doing in Geneva is mostly irrelevant.  His troops are at the border, and they know he will not let them be slaughtered.  [The new agreement] is words on paper to people worried about heat and food. They do worry, that with Europe as their biggest gas customer, Russia may not be as honest about their welfare as he once seemed.  It is Russia for the Russians, in a way.

Betty, though she says the East will never give up to those now in power:

 

Russia is in isolation and although they try to be optimistic in fact business interests are stronger than their love of the Ukraine.

I am not sure what Putin was thinking, but I certainly know what the reports would be had he not come to the table, or refused to denounce violence.  The passion play of public opinion matters.  I am not sure this is capitulation, though it may be. I am not sure he did not find some upper hand to play in the background.  It is too soon to tell.

I still predict a divided nation, watching this play out, there are just too many factions demanding to have ultimate control, which is painting the people into the farthest corners of hell.  People in corners are more unpredictable than rattlesnakes, and twice as deadly.

I look and listen to their stories, an outsider wonk, trying to decipher something still primordial in its making.  Its shape or form has not yet presented itself.

And the only thing I could say to them, the only pearl of dubious wisdom I could utter, was one with which they BOTH heartily agreed:

 

Not to be crude, but it seems the regular people are fucked in every direction right now….

And that they are, my friends, that they are.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Gee has been causing trouble for the 0.1% for some time, as she takes living in a democracy seriously.  Besides her main blog, The Wild Wild Left, she runs the most vibrant left political discussion group on Facebook, Links for the Wildly Left




Postcards From the Ukraine

By Diane Gee, The Wild Wild Left
SPECIAL CORESPONDENT TO THE GREANVILLE POST

Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) a fascist, ultranationalist formation, hold portrait of Stepan Bandera.

Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) a fascist, ultranationalist formation, hold portrait of Stepan Bandera.

Three interactions, two from the belly of the Ukraine, one from a recent immigrant to the US.  This is the story from their perspectives.

Irina:  “Ukraine is for Ukrainian only.  I am from there, I know how all those others ruin everything…”
______________
I liked Irina.  Nearly every Wednesday of the year, I stop in the CVS drugstore to pick up prescriptions and sundries in Ann Arbor for my elderly friends who live nearby.  She is always sweet and funny, her Ukrainian accent sounding like home to me, having a Father for whom English was a second language to his native Polish.  His people were from the far eastern part of Poland; their dialect so close to Ukrainian that his brother bought a cottage in the exclusive Ukrainian community at Lake Dibrova in Brighton Michigan and it was years before they found out we all weren’t really Ukes.

I asked my Dad once, if Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian were the same language, listening to him slip in an out of each and English as a young child.  He smiled, and said, “No, Diny, but we came from a border town.  That border changed so many times through the years, my grandparents said they could never tell where they were.  We got all the leftover dialects of all of them,” and laughed heartily.  I asked if that was confusing.  He said, they couldn’t care less.  Their farm was their farm, and until the Nazis came, they didn’t give a shiesta. (phonetic – roughly “shit” – oddly there is nothing comparable in the Polish dictionary for it… dialects, indeed.)  Then his parents left.

Irina lamented last summer, her tiny apartment, how she missed gardening… how she hated not having a car, and having to rely on the buses.  An older single woman living on cashier wages, I had a soft spot for her, so used to bring her tomatoes and cucumbers when my garden came in.  I loved her accent.  She loved that I was Slavic. We always made small talk with a smile for one another.

Imagine my surprise when this Wednesday past I found out she really is a Nazi sympathizer. And thinks it is Russia, not the US who is the aggressor here.


Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos :: Postcards From the Ukraine

I was in line behind a tall, grey haired man, still strong of build despite his well past retirement age. He was saying how the US should stay the hell out of the Ukraine, and that Russia was right.  Never one to pass a random public political discussion, I heartily agreed.  She started to say, “No, no, the US does good…” When he brought up our aggression vs Russia’s, I cited the number of forward bases we maintain to support him.  We have over a thousand not on US soil, they have 7.  He was on his way out and said, “Fuck the US,” by way of leave.  As I approached, she said, “You don’t understand.  Russia plans on taking everything over again,” going on to name countries, mostly in the West.  I said, but the new, illegal government are Nazis, they want to outlaw speaking Russian and perhaps deport anyone who is ethnically Russian.  She sneered, “Is Ukraine!  They should be only Ukrainians!  They should speak our language or get out!  The new leaders are good and right.  Ukraine for Ukrainians!”   I asked, pointedly, “If the Crimeans want to be independent and allied with Russia, why should the US interfere?  I mean, look at all the places we have invaded and made war on, and Russia hasn’t to anyone.”   She looked up defiantly, “The US only does war for GOOD!  Everywhere, they bring freedom.”

Bandera (center) with friends.

Bandera (center) with friends.

I was now staring open-jawed and aghast.  “You really don’t believe that do you?  So we should back Nazis who want to deny Jews and Russians their freedom in their own country and that is for good?”

By now, another customer had walked up, my order was paid for and bagged, so we couldn’t politely continue.  She just curled her lip and whispered with a growl, “The Nationalists are good.  Ukraine is for Ukrainian only.  I am from there, I know how all those others ruin everything.”  She spit ‘others’ with a venom that made me shudder. Her hatred of Russians, Poles, and Jews so palpable as to my picturing her slamming the door on a gas chamber.  So much for that sweet old Uke lady.

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos***
Betty:  “Yes, we are fighting on the streets and on the net – some special groups “Antimaydan” and others. The new govern gave Ukraine to oligarchs. People gave their lives and giving to make them richer. Neonazis organised detachments to suppress rebellion in the Eastern and Southern provinces. But they lost the Crimea.”

I had reached out through Facebook, looking for anyone who could translate Ukrainian into English for a friend of mine who said he had a source who might send him some sensitive information.  Through a friend of a friend, I met Betty (not her real name).  We have been corresponding for a while now.

I want to quote her directly for the most part, editing the typos only.

I have just come from Kiev. I saw how the main square of the country looks like and its people. Very much shocking.

This was right after the main fighting – she was appalled at the brutality of the Nationalists.  She explained her view of the documented divide in culture there:

You know Ukraine is roughly divided into two parts – eastern where I live and western one where people come from who took part in the rebellion. We have different mentality and outlook. We consider ourselves Russian people and very close to Russia geographically and spiritually. I respect Ukrainian traditions and culture but i was brought up on Russian literature, history and arts. And the majority of people in the east. We are different. But we live peacefully until someone introduced the scenario of dividing people and therefore the country. We faced with the nationalism – Ukraine for Ukrainians! Svoboda. Once they said that the people who were not born in Ukraine can’t be its citizens – my son and the husband were born in Russia..

This message was very obvious in the speeches of protesters on the square, even when I was last listening to them yesterday. What mood? Depressing. In a corruptive state a revolution is the tool to change one mafia for the other one. The new governors are the owners of corporations – we will be their slaves. The tension is great when nationalists tried to break into eastern provinces and establish their rules. They were resisted and fought. But it concerns only ordinary people who resist. The local authorities are frightened – they have much $$ to lose.

In fact Ukraine is multinational country but Russians account about 30 per cent of the population and nationalists want to prohibit Russian Language in all walks of life!! It’s not fair. By the way Poland is against nationalism in Ukraine. They suffered a lot during the World war II.

Photobucket Pictures, Images and PhotosPolish Monument “If I forget, let The Sky forget about me ” – engraved in stone. The monument was created on the basis of the real pictures of violence against children, killed by screwing wire to the posts to save on cartridges, by Svoboda’s hero Stepan Bandera.  The Poles hate him and the Nazis to this day.  This is why they support Putin in this dispute, and won’t recognize the new government.This is what the people fear.  Even their opponents are now bowing to them, in fear. Fear, and perhaps raw opportunism.  Rich people only have loyalty to gold.

You can begin to see how the members of the former government began to be coopted.  If they didn’t work with the Rich now in Power, they stood to lose their position and their money.

I asked for clarification of Svoboda and the Nationalists, to verify what I have read.

“Among the Ukrainian rebels – mostly radical nationalists from Galicia – three provinces: Lviv , Ivano- Frankivsk and Ternopil south . During the Great Patriotic War [the Russian name for World War II—Eds] an entire division of Ukrainian volunteers of these places – it was called ” SS – Galicia” – fought on the side of the Third Reich.  Today the guys from the same region – also against Russia . What is happening in Ukraine now, needs to be clarified with the help of historical examples. One March morning in 1942 in a village in the north of Belarus Velevschina SS troops entered . His men talked, however, not in German [but] in Ukrainian . 201st Police Battalion commanded by the then little-known future hero of Ukraine Shukhevych. Punishers, coming immediately got down to business . ” They shot both children and adults. Some were thrown alive into the pit.”

Then added her own perspective:

“This political party won 11 percent at the last election to the parliament. Now they are supposed to win about 20 or more.  Like in Germany of 30s people here are charmed with the ideas of nationalists.”

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos1941, when the nationalists together with facists persecuted Judes in Lviv.  They did the same with the Ukrainian soldiers who safeguarded presidential administration near Maydan.A few days later, she sent me a video from there, with the explanation:

“Ukrainian nationalists in Ukraine and Russia. They fought in Chechnya on the side of terrorists. They earned $3000 per month. Real bandits! The last shot is in Ukrainian procurator’s office where Sashko Byely is threatening the procurator with the gun. It was two weeks ago. He’s one of the leading participants of rebellion.”

It reiterated the new Government is seen widely there as criminals.

She went on to express concerns for the people’s safety, that the new government was creating their own police/military and keeping activists opposed to them, like mine workers and unions, away at gunpoint.

When Crimea changed hands, she explained that some (the rich) were sad, they wanted a NATO base there and more money.  She thought it for the best though.  Mostly, as Ukrainian citizen, she mourned the loss of a beautiful and restful vacation spot.  Travel between the two would no longer be seamless, if at all possible.

But Russia is building a bridge to Crimea, that will be ready by fall.  If they can travel to Russia, that is, they can get there that way. She is happy for the Crimean people though, very happy.

By early this week, she reported from her hometown:

Governor of Donetsk region Taruta paid the cost of the fifty aircrafts to dig trench 4 m wide, 2.5 deep shaft and top two meters along the border of Donetsk with Russia, “Therefore our border will be secured enough to resist.”

I asked why the Eastern town of Donetsk, so very Russian in culture would do this.

The governor was appointed by the new government – non elective position. It was his personal together with govenment decision to dig a trench for blocking Russians tanks to interfere the city. The majority of people here support Putin although it’s threatening.

Here is a you tube of that trench:

Of course, with a little humor, she also posted Russia’s likely resolution to that problem, with a disclaimer.  Quite genius.

“They could but wouldn’t. Putin declared about ending up military actions against Ukraine. He took over Crimea as a strategic [area] for Russia’s security. He explained his doings by the historical reference – it has always been Russian land. Truth.”

It gets more serious as the week unfolded though…

Yesterday 50 NATO militaries were seen in the supermarket in Donetsk, eastern hot spot of Ukraine.

This is not the only report I have had as such, as I will show with my 3rd and final vignette.

She added:

Diane, I don’t know about this incident but the American militaries have been seen in my city – it’s a real fact.

Mostly, she is a hard working, married Mom, who has to travel from Donetsk to Kiev to work.  She thinks the people are mostly good, and misses the Ukraine that was, for all its flaws… a place where ethnic differences mattered not, in a unified Ukraine.  We agreed all governments are corrupt at most levels, and that the rich, the “oligarchs” if you will, frequently, if not always, line their pockets more at the expense of the poor.

Most of the people were happy that the EU agreement wasn’t signed, because that would only lead to MORE oligarchs stealing from them. But?  There were legitimate protests too, before the Nazis took over.  Between deals with the East and deals with the West, the people deserve more.  The West-backed takeover by the Nazis, and the ensuing paramilitary state will never do that for them, and they are well aware of it.

Picture David Duke overthrowing the US government.  The US government is corrupt, but a Nazi extremist is not the answer, and we on the left, and those not of white ethnicity would be shaking in our boots.  That is how [thinking] Ukrainians feel for the most part.  Tense, wary, afraid of their future… all while trying to go about the business of earning a wage, going to college, feeding their families, taking care of their kids and marriage.

And they have NO DOUBT that this is CIA backed.

There are pockets of resistance everywhere, at great risk to themselves.  Some are even guarding weapons caches against the new government accessing them.

Our activists are blocking the stores with arms in salt mines here in Artemovsk. They are taking risks and [for themselves and their] families.  These arms are considered to use against population and to equip the new National Army made of neo nazi. As I know.  A lot, a lot of mines here and miners are very serious people.

We spoke of why there were caches in abandoned mines, and about guns on general.

I have never taken the arm in hands. It’s prohibited here only hunters can buy it after a lot of checking. Medical check and other.  You are lucky – if we have it [could legally own guns] here they couldn’t treat us like that.

I was told, during the writing of this essay about breaking news.  So far, they have arrested close to 1000 separatists, and in the replacing of the local authorities some were former Governors.  Some Governors escaped. This is an ongoing process to purge and replace the entire Ukraine with only appointed lackeys of the neo-nazi nationalists.

Today the leader of Svoboda Tyagnibok told that they need to start lustration among all who work.  Checking if they support Russia and repress them – firing and other

As we chatted, she explained, as a teacher she could be lustrated.  Essentially, in order to work there anywhere, you have to pass a political purity test!  You can even lie and swear allegiance to the party, but they will background check you, and see if you have written or spoken against them in the past.  You would be fired at least, arrested at worst.  This is going to begin with a MASS LUSTRATION starting in 2 weeks.

For the most part, she feels there are far, far, too many of them in the Donetsk area for that to happen, but worries about friends back west.  She thinks they would not provoke Russia by mass-ejecting so many from the workforce at once in the East.  But cannot be sure of that, either.

In another humorous quip, she informed me they went door to door all over the country to raise money for their new military, and only raised enough for 1/2 of a tank… and that the majority of that money came from one Psychiatric hospital.  Even under all this stress, we laughed at the poetry of psycho neo nazi supporters.

Mostly we talk of husbands and work, her PHD defense, the weather and our kids.  She has a soft spot for animals.  She is just like me in so many ways.

***Dmitri: “Yes, there is actually a war between two clans – and one group of oligarchs tries to take over business of others and they use nazi paramilitaries for this purpose. People are certainly frightened and it actually led to the secession of Crimea.”

Another friend, Dmitri Kolesnik, is a leftist in a very dangerous time for leftists. His communications with me are far more pointed and political.  His blog is here, and the English translator works quite well.

http://liva.com.ua/translate.html

He often cites this website, the heart of the Leftist resistance in the Ukraine and a very worthy resource.

http://borotba.org/newsen.html

Note, his spelling of Maydan/Maidan differs from hers, in their translations to English… he is referring not to the park in Kiev where the protests took place, so much as what they are now calling the group that took over illegally there.  The Nationalists, the Nazis, Svoboda.

From the 14th:

It means that we had a kind of riot of oligarchs too – they left ruling party (after government suspended to sign free-trade agreement) and joined opposition. Almost all the media were under their control and the Maidan protests were inspired by western NGOs and media (TV) as well. As usual our billionaires try to support different parties at once. Now many oligarchs were appointed by new government as regional governors (and that also contributed to the people’s anger that inspired new – counter-rebellion against Maidan). Yesterday in the counter-rebellion in Donetsk 3 men were killed (members of Maidan). So, actually it’s oligarchic neoliberal coup where nazis were used as paramilitary forces to overthrow government. Although now they in fact went out of control…

He lives near Kiev, and as I expressed my worry about his personal safety, he replied:

I know – some comrades have already went underground or moved somewhere. It’s not good time for the lefts here

We spoke about the expulsion rhetoric, and the banning of any language but Ukrainian.

I don’t think that they can expel all of them. But the total situation is rather uncertain as far as many nazi-gangs roaming the streets and they are not under smb’s control at all. Still nobody knows here what will be the next. Ukraine can be another Syria. But nobody knows exactly…

Note, this was prior to the Lustration decree.

To the oil angle:

Yes Immanuel Wallerstein have written just about it recently – they need gas- pipeline net so that both EU and Russia will be more dependent. But they can use for this purpose only nazi-teenagers as those who are ready to die – as they think for the nation, though in reality just for big business profit. As for ‘Europe as promise land’ – it’s difficult even to explain something to people – media can raise a real hysteria – too many people in result are convinced that they will be rich in Europe and somebody just prevent it. Although joining EU was even not the agenda (EU doesn’t offer it – only free-trade agreement – like that the US has with Mexico)

I offered a local comparison, from that agreement…

Which, ultimately closed all the car plants in Detroit (the general area I am from) and poisoned whole cities in Mexico to the point no one can live there. They did that to get around pollution law here. And paid them miserable wages to get cancer.

He expounded, brilliantly.

In Ukraine it is going to be the same as in Mexico – one of the first orders of the new government (junta) was to lift the ban for transporting to Ukraine nuclear waste. And encircling russia (and seizing its military base in Crimea) – is also one of the reasons. There are some others too: to get new market for EU goods (and that would kill local industry), to get large steel-industry in Ukraine

About possible civil war and splitting…

It’s rather possible. The country was actually split – there is a big difference (cultural, language, religious) between eastern and western parts. The whole problem – attempts to impose the will of one part to another and nepotism (or crony capitalism) – when people from one part of the country hold most official positions. It leads to a split inevitably. Either the country is multicultural or it splits and then both parts will split further. In result each small part will be dependent from external forces

By the 16th I was asking about the veracity of the story about a US drone being brought down from Crimean airspace.  He confirmed claims that our military presence on the ground as well.  Both Betty and Dmitri have claimed Blackwater, UN and other Western forces have been at play all along….

Yes, it was reported about US drone brought down here too. And about blackwater mercenaries and other western militaries in Ukrainian cities too. moreover, we have military training of NATO held on Ukrainian borders and Russian troops that are being concentrated on another border.

Today, I asked about the mood and lustration.

Yes, there is actually a war between two clans – and one group of oligarchs tries to take over business of others and they use nazi paramilitaries for this purpose. People are certainly frightened and it actually led to the secession of Crimea. Especially, when nazi-paramilitaries behave like that (yesterday in city of Lvov)

This is the now viral video:

Their “Freedom of Speech Minister” made the actual attack.

Svoboda MPs stormed the offices of Ukraine’s state television, NTU, after NTU broadcast the Russian parliament signing a treaty with Crimea. They broke into the office of NTU President Aleksandr Panteleymonov and forced him to sign a resignation letter.

“Write your resignation! Sit down! I told you, sit down!” they shout. When Panteleymonov refuses, they drag him through the room, punch him in the face and threaten: “Here is a paper, pen, write the resignation now quickly, you animal… You Russian piece of shit. Write your resignation now. You bloody Muscovite, do it.”

When Panteleymonov replies, “I am not a Muscovite, I am a Ukrainian,” they hit him again and yell: “You are Ukrainian? You are a piece of shit, not a Ukrainian. You fucking dirtbag. You are a traitor.”

The Svoboda party is employing the worst type of McCarthyism, at the point end of gun barrels on their citizens.  Having agreed to another election, when as noted above, they previously got only 11% and most generous projections last week only said 20% tops? They are trying to beat, fire, and bully the election, as Dmitri explains.

Yes, they want to have guarantees of own victory in next elections banning the participation of the ex-ruling party, of communists. It also assumes the changing of officials and (especially) in army and police – the appointing only those who are loyal to new government… loyal to new government.  The authors of the bill about lustration – are MPs from the far-right ‘Svoboda’ party too.Yes, actually the next elections will be most likely fraud. moreover, new government adopts new election law according to which the elections will be legitimate even if in most constituencies it failed. Thus, in principle even election in one village can determine the results if in all other they will be acknowledged as ‘irrelevant’

He explains, this is now a battle of the right, the left is not even in the equation anymore.

Yes, but the issue not only in them – there are other far-right parties. actually there will be contest among right and far-right parties.There are not only Svoboda, but current ruling party ‘Fatherland’ has many extreme rights (including Andriy Parubiy – the head of the Euromaidan paramilitaries)

Yes, there will be no communists (they had about 7-8%), no ex-ruling party of Regions – it had about 40%. And many others will be excluded too

Essentially, from the ground, they now have no hope of going back to normalcy. No hope of pre-coup sanity.  There will be a forced, repressive government, friendly to the West, but Nazi in ideology. He reminded me, that the former government was never left, either…

Actually it was not left government – (communists were included in ruling coalition as minor partners) – it was a corrupt government representing the interests of mostly of one clan of oligarchs. But now we have not only another clan of oligarchs in power but in coalition with hard-line nazis. As people say here – we had a corrupted policeman and we have another corrupted policeman but who is a nazi in addition.I compared earlier our protesters in euromaidan with the extreme right wing of Tea-party movement

Dmitri is just like me.  He is a political activist and writer, with a deep understanding of what is happening on every level.  We are both small minorities in our homelands, and both committed to empowering the actual people against the Oligarchies.

***So there you have my Postcards thus far, offered not as a dissertation on the geo-political chessboard of events within the Ukraine, but as snippets of what people on the ground are thinking.

The first, a nazi sympathizer.

The second, a working housewife who was pretty apolitical prior to the coup.

The third, a left leaning journalist and editor.

All, just living their lives, doing their jobs, going home to eat and sleep.  They, like us, have so little control over what the Oligarchs do, or how they use and divide us like pawns and cannon fodder, to see which Oligarch will be the last man standing when the dust settles.

But their thoughts should be considered.  The words should be heard.

I have promised to give them voice, now and in the future.

I will leave you with one last video, and while it won’t embed, if you watched none of the others, this is the one you should see!

Sometimes, you have no choice but to become political.

http://www.odnoklassniki.ru/vi…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DIANE GEE is a writer and political / social justice activist residing in Michigan, and a special correspondent for The Greanville Post and Cyrano’s Journal Today. She maintains a personal blog, The Wild Wild Left, and probably the most intelligent left discussion [anglophone] group on Facebook, Links for the Wildly Left.  A single mother now, after recently losing her spouse to cancer, she struggles bravely to keep her ship sailing against huge odds. Her essays are republished widely across the web.




UPDATE: Accusations Continue, But Still No Evidence of a Syrian Military Gas Attack

syrianKilledGasAttack

Children supposedly killed by gas canisters fired by Syrian army batteries. The proof remains elusive and many details point to a false flag event mounted by the rebels themselves with help from Western intel.

As accusations and posturing continue on the Western media, blaming the Syrian government for the crimes stemming from the Syrian civil war, the Obama administration solemnly and theatrically (it’s all theater & p.r., after all) begins once again to rattle the sabre indicating the high probability of heavy American involvement—this time in the open since the US and Israel have been secretly involved in the toppling of the Assad regime for years, perhaps over a decade. Here’s some dissenting voices and their arguments. —Eds

what’s left, edited by By Stephen Gowans

The US and its accomplices seeking UN cover for expanded war in the Middle East.

Two days after a possible chemical weapons attack in Syria we know that:

• The United States does not have “conclusive evidence that the (Syrian) government was behind poison-gas attacks.” [Wall Street Journal, 1]
• “Neither the United States nor European countries…have a ‘smoking gun’ proving that Mr. Assad’s troops used chemical weapons in the attack.” [New York Times, 2]
• The State Department doesn’t know “If these reports are true.” [New York Times, 3]
• The White House is trying to “ascertain the facts.” [Wall Street Journal, 4]

All the same, the absence of evidence hasn’t stopped the Pentagon “from updating target lists for possible airstrikes on a range of Syrian government and military installations”; [5] hasn’t stopped Britain and France from accusing the Syrian government of carrying out an atrocity; and hasn’t diminished the enthusiasm of newspaper editors for declaring Assad guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“There is no doubt,” intoned the editors of one newspaper–with an omniscience denied to lesser mortals, including, it seems, US officials who are still trying “to ascertain the facts”—“that chemical weapons were used” and that Assad “committed the atrocity.” [6]

In a editorial, The Guardian (supposedly a liberal newspaper) avers that the Syrian military “is the only combatant with the capability to use chemical weapons on this scale.” Yet The Wall Street Journal’s Margaret Coker and Christopher Rhoads report that “Islamist rebel brigades have several times been reported to have gained control of stockpiles of chemicals, including sarin.” [7]

That might account for why the White House admitted two months ago that while it believed chemical weapons had been used in Syria, it has no evidence to indicate “who was responsible for (their) dissemination.” [8]

And given that the US president claimed chemical weapons use by the Syrian military would be a red line, the rebels have a motivation to stage a sarin attack and blame it on government forces to bring the United States into the conflict more forcefully on their side.  For the Syrian government, however, the calculus is entirely different. Using chemical weapons would simply hand the United States a pretext to more muscularly intervene in Syria’s internal affairs. Since this is decidedly against Damascus’s interests, we should be skeptical of any claim that the Syrian government is defying Obama’s red line.

Another reason for skepticism: Why use chemical weapons to produce the limited number of casualties that have been attributed to chemical agents use in Syria, when conventional weapons can just as easily produce casualties of the same magnitude—without proffering an excuse to Western countries to launch air strikes?  Last month, the New York Times’ Rick Gladstone reported on a study which “found evidence of crudely manufactured sarin, a nerve agent, delivered via an unguided projectile with a crude explosive charge — not the sort of munitions stockpiled by the Syrian military.” [9]

So, no, the Syrian military is not the only combatant capable of using chemical weapons in Syria. But unlike the rebels, it has no motive to do so, and compelling reasons not to.  That’s not to say that chemical weapons were used, rebel forces used them, and the Syrian military did not. The evidence is murky.  But that’s the point. The rush to blame the Syrian military, and to update target lists for possible airstrikes, on the basis of no evidence, smacks of political motivation.

Clearly, the United States, France and Britain want public opinion on their side for stepped up intervention in Syria. They’ve decided to declare Assad and the Syrian military guilty of using a weapon of mass destruction.  But the conviction of guilt, as is evident through the statements of politicians and reporting of newspapers, rests on no sound evidentiary basis—indeed, on no evidence at all.

Stephen Gowans is one of Canada’s leading left writers and political analysts. He is founding editor of What’s Left.

1. Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Inti Landauro, “U.S. weighs plans to punish Assad”, The Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2013
2 Mark Landler, Mark Mazzetti and Alissa J. Rubin, “Obama officials weigh response to Syria assault”, The New York Times, August 22, 2013
3. Landler, Mazzetti and Rubin.
4. Entous, Barnes and Landauro.
5. Entous, Barnes and Landauro.
6. “Syria: chemical weapons with impunity”, The Guardian, August 22, 2013.
7. Margaret Coker and Christopher Rhoads, “Chemical agents reflect brutal tactics in Syria”, The Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2013
8. Statement by Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes on Syrian Chemical Weapons Use, June 13, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/13/statement-deputy-national-security-advisor-strategic-communications-ben-
9. Rick Gladstone, “Russia says study suggests Syria rebels used sarin”, The New York Times, July 9, 2013

 •••••

British MP: Israel provides terrorists in Syria with chemical weapons

Syrian children are killed in a nerve gas attack by foreign-backed terrorists.

George Galloway

George Galloway

A British lawmaker says he believes the Israeli regime was the main culprit behind killing hundreds of civilians in Syria, because it provided terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda with chemical weapons they used against civilians.

“If there’s been any use of nerve gas, it’s the rebels that used it…If there has been use of chemical weapons, it was Al Qaeda who used the chemical weapons”, said Respect Party MP for Bradford West, George Galloway.

“Who gave Al Qaeda the chemical weapons? Here’s my theory: Israel gave them the chemical weapons”, Galloway MP added.

Meanwhile, media reports had it that Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV and Reuters news agency published the news of massacre in East Ghouta, Damascus “one day” before the massacre happened.

According to the reports tens of videos were uploaded before foreign-backed terrorists announced and accused the Syrian government of conducting chemical attacks on its own people. Those evidences show the terrorists massacred people, including women and children, then recorded and uploaded the scenes to deceive the world’s public opinion, but they did so hurriedly and gave themselves up.

The question here is why the Syrian government and its army should have committed such a heinous mass murder using chemical weapons when the United Nations inspectors are visiting the country to investigate the use of such weapons?

The foreign-backed terrorists and mercenaries hired by certain regional Arab countries are making up those allegations against the popular government of President Bashar al Assad to invoke a foreign armed intervention in Syria the same as what they did in Libya.

Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV published the news of the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian army, citing unknown activists as its source.

A website funded by foreign-backed terrorists also uploaded videos of the alleged attacks and wrote that “Baath Regime used chemical weapons in East Ghouta, Damascus, Jobar, Ain Tarma, Zamalka, Western Ghouta, Muaddamiyah around 03: 30 am.”

At the same time, one of the well-known pro- terrorists’ Youtube account ‘SHAMSNN’ swiftly uploaded tens of videos between 03: 00 and 04: 00 am, 20 August. The same people behind all these scenarios accused the government of Syria and its army of carrying out chemical attacks on 21 August.

Now, even if the chemical attacks had happened at 03:30 on 20 August, it’s not possible to film the scenes and upload tens of videos of these heinous crimes with the best quality pictures.

Therefore, all the evidence shows is that foreign-backed terrorists perpetrated the crimes, filmed and uploaded the scenes and went to their mouthpieces such as al Jazeera, al-Arabiya, Sky News and Reuters to accuse the Syrian government of a massacre the terrorists did.

Another best evidence of such brutality by the terrorists, who are regularly coming close to their end of life, is that they had gathered innocent civilians including women and children into certain places, killed them by nerve gas and filmed the brutal murder scenes, then they did what they were ordered to accuse the Syrian government.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi highlighted certain countries’ hostile stance towards his country telling the world that a media and political campaign of lies is being circulated by certain Arab and foreign media outlets including al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, Sky News and others which are involved in the shedding of Syrian blood and supporting terrorism, with the objective of distracting the UN committee of inspectors of its mission to investigate which party to the conflict has used chemical weapons.

“The cries of terrorists and their calls for aid accompany the fact that the Armed Forces are advancing on the ground, and also accompany the fabricated campaign waged by some channels in desperate bid to imbue false morale in the armed terrorist groups,” he said.

Omran al-Zoubi described the support by some Arabs and the so-called Arab League for these allegations as ridiculous, naïve and illogical.

SELECT COMMENT

A Perspective
Aug 24, 2013 1:15 PM
New Allegations of Chemical Weapons Use in Syria Based on
US Political Motives, not Facts
BY S. GOWANS

Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest: Lying for the empire. A rewarding career awaits.

Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest: Lying for the empire. A rewarding career awaits.

 

The United States is once again, without evidence, accusing Syrian forces of using chemical weapons.

A senior White House official spoke of “strong indications” of “a chemical weapons attack—clearly by the (Syrian) government,” but added “we need to do our due diligence and get all the facts.” [1] In other words, we haven’t got the facts, but that won’t stand in the way of our making the accusation.

odajdsjdjkw
The New York Times called the accusation into question with this headline: Images of Death in Syria, but No Proof of Chemical Attack. [2]  The newspaper went on to say that according to experts, videos of the attack’s aftermath “did not prove the use of chemical weapons.” It added that,

Gwyn Winfield, editor of CBRNe World, a journal that covers unconventional weapons, said that the medics would most likely have been sickened by exposure to so many people dosed with chemical weapons—a phenomenon not seen in the videos. [3]

The Syrian military vehemently denies that it used chemical weapons. That, of course, doesn’t prove its innocence. The Syrians could be trying to cover up to avoid a backlash. But if they’re concerned about a backlash, why use the weapons at all?

It makes no sense to use gas, a weapon of mass destruction, to kill only as many people as can be killed readily with conventional weapons [4], while handing the United States, France and Britain—countries with histories of finding excuses to topple economically nationalist governments—a pretext to step up their intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.

The White House’s contention that Syrian forces are using chemical weapons but “keeping strikes small…possibly to avoid mass casualties that could spark a stronger international response” [5] doesn’t add up. It’s like accusing a country of using nuclear weapons, but keeping casualties low to avoid eliciting a punitive international response. If your objective is few casualties and no strong international response, why use weapons that produce neither?

The White House set the standard earlier this year for hurling baseless accusations in connection with Syria when it announced that it had concluded that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons, but admitted it had no proof.

On June 13, Deputy US National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes announced that: “Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” [6]

Further down in the statement Rhodes admitted that the evidence the United States had collected “does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination (emphasis added).” [7]

Read that again: The White House’s evidence “does not tell us…who was responsible.”

Contrast the rush to find Damascus guilty on the basis of no evidence with the White House’s ridiculous refusal to conclude that the Egyptian military carried out a coup d’etat, despite overwhelming and conspicuous evidence it did. For Washington, it seems, facts are facts, and conclusions are conclusions, but they exist in separate, unconnected, worlds.

So why is the United States baselessly accusing the Syrian military of using chemical weapons? For the same reason it calls the Syrian government the Assad regime. Both serve to create a demon. And creating demons, as Michael Parenti has pointed out, gives you license to intervene. (8)

In a letter to a US Congressman, the United States’ top military officer, General Martin Dempsey, acknowledged that the war in Syria is fuelled by “underlying and historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues’—a substantially different, and more realistic, take on the war than the simple-minded pro-democracy-rebels-fighting- against-dictatorship twaddle favored by the manufacturers of public opinion. Dempsey went on to say that the Pentagon could intervene in Syria to tip the balance in the war, but that there are no opposition groups “ready to promote their interests and ours.” [9]

Since it’s absurd to say that there are no opposition groups ready to promote their own interests (what group doesn’t promote its own interests as its members understand them?) it can only be concluded that what Dempsey really meant was that there are no groups that see their interests as consonant with those of the United States, and until Washington can create such a group and the group has broad public support, the Pentagon will wait to intervene more forcefully.

Until then, we can expect that Washington will continue to demonize the Syrian government and its leader—even if it has to draw conclusions from thin air to do so.

Stephen Gowans is one of Canada’s foremost leftist analysts of current events.

1. Sam Dagher, Farnaz Fassihi, and Adam Entous, “U.S. Suspects Syria Used Gas,” The Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2013
2. Ben Hubbard and Hwaida Saad, “Images of Death in Syria, but No Proof of Chemical Attack,” The New York Times, August 21, 2013
3. Hubbard and Saad.
4. Estimates range from “scores” to 130 to over 1,000 people killed in the latest incident, depending on the source.
5. Dagher, Fassihi and Entous.
6. Statement by Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes on Syrian Chemical Weapons Use, June 13, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/13/statement-deputy-national-security-advisor-strategic-communications-ben-
7. Rhodes.
8. Paul Weinberg, “The Face of Imperialism: An interview with Michael Parenti”, rabble.ca, November 3, 2011, http://rabble.ca/news/2011/11/face-imperialism-interview-michael-parenti. Parenti said, “Once you convince the American public there are demons, you have the license to bomb their people.”
9. Thom Shanker, “General Says Syrian Rebels Aren’t Ready to Take Power,” The New York Times, August 21, 2013

ADDENDUM

were definitely manufactured in the US, thus were definitely brought there by some agency that was not related 

to the Syrian government, as Syria imports its gas masks from Russia.

She wondered if this portended an imminent False Flag chemical weapons attack, whereby NATO would deploy 

responsible were the Syrian military.

A major chemical attack allegedly occurred in Syria, the day before yesterday, killing hundreds in a Damascus 

Video (about four and a half mins):

Syrian Girl Warns of Chemical Weapons False Flag Months Ago
http://www.ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.com/page/24334.html

CHOMSKY CLASSICS: Telling the Truth about Imperialism

Virtual_University7

___________________________________________________________________________________

Telling the Truth about Imperialism / Archives
Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian

International Socialist Review, November-December, 2003

NOAM CHOMSKY, internationally renowned MIT professor, has been a leading voice for peace and social justice for more than four decades. He is in such demand as a public speaker that he is often booked years in advance. And wherever he appears, he draws huge audiences. The Guardian calls him, “One of the radical heroes of our age.” He is the author of Power and Terror and Middle East Illusions. His latest book is Hegemony or Survival. He’s done a series of interview books with David Barsamian, including most recently The Common Good and Propaganda and the Public Mind.David Barsamian is the director and producer of Alternative Radio in Boulder, Colorado. He recently published Culture and Resistance, a book of interviews with Edward Said.

•••••••

NOAM CHOMSKY: THE ISSUE was that the conservative nationalist parliamentary government was attempting to take over its own oil resources. These had been under the control of a British company originally called Anglo-Persian, later called Anglo-Iranian, which had entered into contracts with the rulers of Iran that were just pure extortion and robbery. The Iranians got nothing and the British were laughing all the way to the bank. Mossadeq had a long history as a critic of this subordination of imperial policy. Popular outbursts compelled the Shah to appoint him as prime minister, and he moved to nationalize the industry, which makes perfect sense.

The British went completely berserk. They refused to make any compromises. They wouldn’t even come near what the American oil companies had just agreed to in Saudi Arabia. They wanted to continue just robbing the Iranians blind. And that led to a tremendous popular uprising. Iran has a democratic tradition. It had a majlis, parliament, which had always been suppressed. But the Shah couldn’t suppress it; the army tried and couldn’t. Finally a joint British-American coup did succeed in organizing an overthrow of the regime, and restored the Shah to power. Then comes 25 years of terror, atrocities, violence, finally leading to the revolution in 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah.

Incidentally, one outcome of the coup was that the United States took over from Britain about 40 percent of the share in Iranian oil. It had been 100 percent British. That wasn’t actually the goal of the effort, it’s just in the normal course of events. But it was part of the general displacement of British power by U.S. power in that region, and in fact, throughout the world. Just sort of a normal reflection of the distribution of power elsewhere. The New York Times had a nice editorial about it, in which they praised the coup, and said, “Underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.” And it should teach other Mossadeqs elsewhere in the world that they should be careful before trying to do something like going “berserk” and gaining control of their own resources, which of course are ours, not theirs.

But your point is quite correct. Regime change is normal policy–in fact, it’s even perfectly conceded. So, for example, maybe five years ago during the Clinton administration, the European Union (EU) brought to the World Trade Organization (WTO) a complaint against the United States, for the extended economic warfare against Cuba, which extended to secondary boycotts that are illegal under every possible interpretation of international law and have been condemned by every relevant institution. The EU brought it to the WTO as a restraint of trade and the Clinton administration simply told them, Europe is challenging policies of ours that go back to 1959 and which are aimed at overthrowing the government of Cuba (regime change) and Europe has no business interfering in the internal affairs of the United States like this. Actually, the State Department or whoever wrote that didn’t know their own history very well. If you go back to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, there was a period of real frenzy about regime change, which almost led to nuclear war. Internally, the reason given by U.S. intelligence for regime change, overthrowing the Castro regime, was that the very existence of the Castro regime was successful defiance of a policy of the United States of 150 years, back to the Monroe Doctrine. The policy of the United States is that we are the masters of the hemisphere and the very existence of the Castro regime is successful defiance of this, so of course we have to overthrow it by a campaign of large-scale terror and economic warfare. What’s interesting about this particular remark is that it’s shortly after that terrorist campaign, which was quite serious, aimed at regime change, and almost led the world to a terminal nuclear war. It was a very close thing.

RIGHT AFTER the First World War, the British replaced the Turks as the rulers of Iraq. They occupied the country, and faced, as one report says, “anti-imperialist agitation…from the start.” A revolt “became widespread.” The British felt it wise to put up a façade. Lord Curzon, the foreign secretary, said Britain wanted an “Arab façade ruled and administered under British guidance and controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff.” Just fast-forward today to Iraq, with a 25-person ruling council appointed by the American viceroy, Paul Bremer.

ACTUALLY, LORD Curzon was very honest in those days. It was an Arab façade, and then they went on, Britain would rule behind a veil of “constitutional fictions” like “buffer state” and various other terms, but it would basically be an Arab façade. And that’s the way Britain ran the whole region, in fact, the whole empire. The idea is to have independent states, but always weak governments that rely on the imperial power for their survival. And they can rip off the population if they like, that’s fine. But they have to be a façade, behind which the real power rules. That’s standard imperialism. Lord Curzon was simply being a little more honest than most.

You can find plenty of examples. Paul Bremer is one. There was a wonderful organization chart, published in the New York Times. It might have been around May 7th, just after Bremer was appointed. Unfortunately it’s not in the archived edition so you have to look back at the hard copy, but it had a chart with something like 16 or 17 boxes. It’s a standard organization chart, somebody at the top and lines going down. At the top is Paul Bremer, answering to the Pentagon, and then you go down various lines and you get to various generals and diplomats, all either U.S. or British. And each one of them has the name, the responsibility of the office in boldface in a big box, and then you get down to the bottom and there’s a 17th box at the bottom, half the size of the others, no boldface, no indication of responsibility. And this says, “Iraqi Advisors.” That’s the façade. It was a mistake to publish it–I suppose that’s why they didn’t archive it, but that expresses the thinking, and Lord Curzon would have felt it quite normal.

It’s not clear that they can handle it because, I should say, to my amazement, the occupation is not succeeding. It takes real talent to fail in this. For one thing, military occupations almost always work. The Nazis in occupied Europe had very little trouble running the countries with collaborators. Every country had plenty of collaborators who ran the place as a façade and kept order and kept the population down. That’s at the extreme level of brutality in history. Furthermore, they were under attack from the outside and the resistance was being directed and supported from abroad, rather like the Nazis claimed: “terrorists supported from abroad, directed from London.” Even the most grotesque propaganda usually has some element of truth.

Nevertheless, if it hadn’t been for the fact that they were crushed by overwhelming outside force, they wouldn’t have had any trouble running occupied Europe. The Russians had very little problem running Eastern Europe through façades, and again, that’s another very brutal regime. In fact, if you look through history, it usually works. The cases where there are uprisings against imperial rule are pretty rare. It happens, but it’s not the norm.

Furthermore, this is an unusually easy case. Here’s a country that has been devastated by a decade of murderous sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of people and left the whole place in tatters and held together by Scotch tape. Devastated by wars. Run by a brutal tyrant. It’s hard not to do better than that. The idea that you can’t get a military occupation to run under these circumstances, and of course, with no support from outside for the resistance. None. I think it’s almost unimaginable. I imagine if we got a couple of people on this floor together here at MIT they could probably figure out how to get the electricity running. So it is an astonishing failure, and it certainly surprises me. So their original planning, as illustrated in that organization chart, amazingly doesn’t look like it’s going to work. Which is why you get all this backtracking about trying to get the UN to come in and pick up some of the costs, and the domestic opposition. It’s a big surprise to me. I thought this would be a walkover.

TALK ABOUT another aspect of British imperialism. In the title essay of Towards a New Cold War, which has just been reissued by the New Press, you wrote about Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the leaders of the opposition to British rule in India. He observed that the ideology of British rule in India, “‘was that of the herrenvolk and the Master Race,’ an idea that is ‘inherent in imperialism’ and ‘was proclaimed in unambiguous language by those in authority’ and put into practice as ‘Indians as individuals were subjected to insult, humiliation and contemptuous treatment.’” Could you talk about that racism as being “inherent” in imperialism?

IT’S WORTH remembering that Nehru was pretty much an Anglophile and, I believe, if I remember, that he was writing that from a British jail during the Second World War. But yes, even for the elite–he was from the elite Indian upper classes and quite British in manner and style–the humiliation and degradation is one of the hardest things to bear. And it’s almost invariable. It’s hard to think of cases where you don’t find it. He’s right, it’s “inherent” in imperial rule, and I think you can understand the psychology. When you’ve got your boot on somebody’s neck, you can’t just say, “I’m doing this because I’m a brute.” You have to say, “I’m doing it because they deserve it. It’s for their good. That’s why I’ve got to do it.” They’re “naughty children,” as U.S. leaders described Latin Americans. They’re “naughty children” who have to be disciplined. Filipinos were described in the same way. Therefore, you don’t feel that you’re humiliating a child if you don’t let it eat poison or something. But that’s inherent in the relation of domination, unless you have unusual sensitivity among the ruling powers. You don’t have that. They’re run by people like Donald Rumsfeld, not by people like your friendly aunt. So his comment is quite accurate, and it’s quite consistent. It’s hard to think of an exception to that. It’s exactly what’s been going on in the Occupied Territories. For years. I mean, one of the worst parts of the Israeli occupation has been the constant humiliation and degradation at every moment. Same in India.

WHAT ABOUT the drive for resources?

THAT’S VERY consistently a factor in domination. It’s not always the only factor. For example, the British desire to control Palestine wasn’t because of Palestine’s resources. It was because of its geostrategic position. So there are lots of factors that enter into seeking domination and control, but resources are very commonly a factor. Take, say, the U.S. takeover of Texas and around half of Mexico about 150 years ago. That’s usually not called a resource war, but if you think about it, it was. Take a look back at the Jacksonian Democrats, Polk and presidents of that time and other people. What they were trying to do was exactly what Saddam Hussein was accused of trying to do in 1990, except they were openly trying to do it. They were trying to get a monopoly over the world’s major resource, which in those days was cotton. Cotton is what fueled the Industrial Revolution just the way oil fuels the contemporary industrial world. And the U.S. had a lot of cotton. One of the goals in taking over particularly Texas, but also the rest, was to ensure that the U.S. could gain a monopoly of cotton and bring the British to their knees, because we would control the resource on which they depended. They were the leading industrial power and the United States was then a minor industrial power. But it had this enormous resource that the British needed, so if we could control it we’d bring them to their knees. And remember, Britain was the great enemy at the time. It was the powerful force that was preventing the United States from expanding north to Canada and south to Cuba. So, yes, it was a resource war, in a deep sense, though there were other factors too. And it’s not unusual to find that. There are other motives, of say, the Israeli takeover of the West Bank. It’s partially for the water resources that are needed, but it goes way beyond that.

DEPUTY DEFENSE Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has been described as one of the main architects of the attack on Iraq. He was in Singapore last May and early June. In response to an audience question asking why the United States went after Iraq instead of the truly dangerous North Korea, Wolfowitz said that the most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no “options” in Iraq. “The country floats on a sea of oil.”

THAT’S PART of it. The other part, which he knows very well, is that Iraq was completely defenseless, whereas North Korea had a deterrent. The deterrent is not nuclear weapons. The deterrent is massed artillery at the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone, aimed at Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and at maybe tens of thousands of American troops right south of the border. And unless the Pentagon can figure out some way of taking out that artillery with precision-guided weapons or something, North Korea has a deterrent. And Iraq had nothing. They knew perfectly well that Iraq was defenseless. They probably knew where every pocketknife was in every square inch of Iraq by that time. So that’s a second factor, but yes, the first factor’s right. On the other hand, North Korea also has geostrategic significance, which is not unimportant the way the world’s shaping up now. It’s not so much North Korea itself as its position within Northeast Asia. The Northeast Asian region is the most dynamic economic region in the world. It includes two major industrial societies, Japan and South Korea, and China is increasingly becoming an industrial society. It has enormous resources. Siberia has all kinds of resources including oil. Northeas Asia’s got, I think, close to a third of world gross domestic product, way more than the United States. It has half the foreign exchange of the world. It has enormous financial resources. And it’s growing very fast, much faster than any other region including the United States. Its trade is increasing internally and it’s connecting to the Southeast Asian countries, sometimes called ASEAN plus three: Southeast Asian countries plus China, Japan and South Korea. And then, with the resource areas of Siberia, well, you know, if you take a look at the geography, pipelines are being built from the resource centers to the industrial centers. Some of them would go, naturally, right to South Korea, but that means right through North Korea. So pipelines through North Korea, if this Trans-Siberian railway is extended, as is surely planned, it would go probably the same route through North Korea to South Korea. So North Korea happens to be in a fairly strategic position with regard to this integrated area.

The U.S. is not particularly happy about Northeast Asian economic integration, just as it’s always been very ambivalent about Europe. It has always been a concern that Europe might go off on an independent course–it might be what used to be called a “third force.” And quite a lot of policy planning, from the Second World War until the present, reflects that concern. Actually, it was expressed, with his usual crudity by Henry Kissinger, very well 30 years ago, in 1973. It was called the “Year of Europe.” Europe was finally reconstituting and Kissinger gave an important address that is called the “Year of Europe” address in which the main theme was that European unification was wonderful but that Europe shouldn’t get too big for its britches. It should recognize that it has only regional responsibilities within the overall framework of order managed by the United States. And a lot of policy has been designed to prevent Europe from moving off on its own. That’s a lot of the purpose of NATO, in fact. The same issues are arising for Northeast Asia. So the world really has three major economic centers: North America, Northeast Asia and Europe. In one dimension, the military dimension, the United States is in a class by itself, but not in the others.

YOU MENTIONED one national security adviser. Another was Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, and today a frequent talk show pundit. He contends that the main task facing the managers of American Empire is “to prevent collusion and maintain dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

THAT’S PRETTY frank. Lord Curzon would have been pleased. That’s basically correct. That’s a cruder version of what Kissinger said. I take back my insult. In international relations theory, that’s called “realism.” You prevent groupings of powers from getting together to oppose hegemonic power. That’s part of the reason why conservative international relations specialists were deeply concerned and highly critical of U.S. policy even during the Clinton years. People like Samuel Huntington, and Robert Jervis–who was then-president of the American Political Science Association–and other well-known realist scholars were warning that U.S. policies are creating a situation in which much of the world would regard the U.S. as what they called a “rogue state” and a threat to their existence and would form coalitions against it. This is in the Clinton years, this is not Bush. It’s before the September 2002 Bush administration’s National Security Strategy.

JOSEPH SCHUMPETER, who was an Austrian economist, in a 1919 essay called “The Sociology of Imperialisms,” wrote: “There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest–why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing-space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs.” So if one were to land like your fictive journalist from Mars and view the United States today, and insert “the U.S.” in this Schumpeter essay every time he says “Rome,” might you be coming close to some understanding of what’s going on?

THAT’S ONE reason why that quote’s been reprinted–actually I’ve just reprinted it too. Monthly Review used that quote in a fairly recent issue in an editorial referring to Bush’s National Security Strategy, precisely because it is so apposite. You just change the words. One of the standard arguments for going to war these days is to maintain credibility. So there are cases where resources aren’t at stake. It’s credibility that’s at stake. Take, say, the bombing of Serbia in 1999, this is Clinton again. What was the point of that? The standard line is it was to prevent ethnic cleansing, but to hold that, you just have to invert the chronology. Uncontroversially, the ethnic cleansing followed the bombing and furthermore, it was the anticipated consequence of it. So that can’t have been the reason.

What was the reason? If you look carefully, Clinton and Blair said at the time, and it’s now conceded by many in retrospect, that it was to maintain credibility. To make it clear who’s the boss. Serbia was defying the orders of the boss, and you don’t do that. And it was, again, defenseless, so you don’t lose anything, and you can make up a humanitarian case if you like. You always can. So, that’s the reason, to maintain credibility, and there are plenty of other cases like this, in fact, it’s very common. It should be familiar to anyone who watches television programs about the Mafia. A very large element of the structure of the Mafia is that the Don has to make sure that people understand that he’s the boss. You don’t cross him. You may send out your goons to beat somebody to a pulp, not because you want his resources but because he’s standing up to you. That’s back to Cuba again. It was Castro’s successful defiance of the United States that made it necessary to carry out terrorist actions aimed at regime change. You don’t defy the master, and everyone else has to understand that. If the rumor is spread around that you can get away with defying the master, you’re in trouble.

YOU HAVE carefully examined declassified State Department documents over the years, and I was wondering if you could talk about whether you see any persistent themes and patterns. Let me just refer to one that you’ve cited on a number of occasions, State Department Policy Study 23, issued in 1948, which was apparently written by George Kennan: “The U.S. has about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.”

THAT’S A rather frank statement. It’s an interesting document, because that whole document, if you look at it, was from the State Department planning staff, which Kennan headed. And it kind of laid out plans, ideas, about how various parts of the world should fit into this general strategy. This particular comment happened to be specifically about Asia, but it’s general and it’s not unlike Schumpeter or British imperialism or anything else. That’s almost, well, to quote Nehru again, it’s just inherent in domination. Kennan was to be respected for having said it but it’s too bad that he kept it secret instead of telling people. Remember that he was at the soft humanist end of the planning sector. In fact, he was thrown out a couple of years later because he was considered not harsh enough, and replaced by Paul Nitze, who was much tougher.

A FEW years before Kennan’s document, the U.S. developed something called the “Grand Area Strategy.” What was that about?

THIS IS quite interesting. There’s only one good book about this, by Laurence Shoup and William Minter, called Imperial Brain Trust. It’s not an official government policy. These were programs run by the Council on Foreign Relations with the participation of the State Department, from 1939 to 1945, planning the postwar world. It began when the Second World War began and went on. They’re quite interesting. One reason they’re interesting is because the policies that were actually carried out are very similar to those they discussed. Not surprisingly, it was many of the same people in charge and the same interests represented. It’s a book well worth reading. It’s been bitterly attacked, naturally, which is a pretty good sign that it’s worth reading. And no reviews and that sort of thing…it’s kept secret. There’s very little scholarship on this, but it’s really important material. It’s obvious from just taking a look at who was doing it. It actually reads rather like the National Security Strategy.

In some recent publications I’ve compared the statements, and this is kind of Roosevelt-style liberals, remember, at the opposite end of the planning spectrum. It says the United States will have to emerge from the war as the world dominant power, and will have to make sure there is no challenge to its dominance anywhere, ever. And it will have to do this by a program of complete rearmament, which will leave the United States in a position of overwhelming strength in the world. It goes on like that. In the early stages of the war the “Grand Area” was supposed to be the non-German world. They assumed in the early stages that Nazi Germany would partially win the war, at least it would control most of Europe. So there would be a German world, and then the question was, What about the non-German world? And they said: That has to be turned into what they called a “Grand Area” run by the United States. Then they went through a geopolitical and geostrategic analysis of whatever resources we’d need, and so on and so forth.

The Grand Area would include, at a minimum, the entire Western Hemisphere, the Far East and the former British Empire. That’s the early stage of the war. As it became clear by 1943 roughly, that Germany was going to be defeated, mainly by the Russians, they began extending the policies beyond, to try to hold on to as much of Eurasia as possible, assuming there wouldn’t be a German world. And those policies later extend into the policy planning carried out in the early postwar period, and in many respects right until today. These are pretty natural and sensible plans of analysts who are thinking in terms of world domination for the interests that they represent. Of course, they will say, and probably believe, that they’re just laboring for the benefit of the ordinary person, but the Romans that Schumpeter was talking about would have said the same thing and also believed it.

TALK ABOUT America and how we benefit from empire, if I can use the collective pronoun. William Appleman Williams was an historian who wrote a book called Empire as a Way of Life. In it he writes, “Very simply, Americans of the 20th century liked empire for the very same reasons their ancestors had favored it in the 18th and 19th century. It provided them with renewable opportunities, wealth and other benefits and satisfactions, including a psychological sense of well-being and power.” What do you think of Williams’ analysis?

I THINK he’s correct about the United States, but remember that the United States was not a normal empire in the European style, so it wasn’t like the British Empire. The English colonists who came to the United States didn’t do what they did in India. They didn’t create a façade of the native population behind which they would rule. They largely wiped out the native population. That’s rather different. So the indigenous population of what’s now the United States was “exterminated,” to use the word that the founding fathers used. Not totally, but that was what was considered the right thing to do. They replaced them and it became a kind of settler state, not an imperial state. And the expansion over the national territory was that way all along, including the taking over of large parts of Mexico.

Back in the 1820s, one of the earliest issues in U.S. foreign policy was the desire to take Cuba. It was assumed in the 1820s by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and others that Cuba was the next step in expansion. But the British were in the way. The British fleet was much too powerful, and they couldn’t take Cuba at the time. John Quincy Adams made a famous statement, he was secretary of state at the time, in which he said: We should back off and Cuba will fall into our hands like a “ripe fruit” by the “laws of political gravitation.” Meaning that sooner or later, we’ll become more powerful, the British will become weaker, the deterrent will be gone and we’ll be able to pluck the ripe fruit. Which happened in 1898 under the guise of liberation.

But every expansion up until the Second World War was not establishing traditional colonies. Hawaii was taken over from its own population at the same time, 1898, stolen by force and guile. But then the native population was pretty much replaced, they weren’t colonized. Again, not totally. They’re still there, but it became essentially taken over rather than colonized. The Philippines was different. The Philippines was more like a colony. So Williams’ comments are correct but I think they refer to a different sort of imperial system. If you look at the traditional empires, say, the British Empire, it’s not so clear that the population of Britain gained from it. It’s really a very difficult topic to study, a kind of cost-benefit analysis of empire. But there have been a couple of attempts to study it. And for what they’re worth, the general range of conclusions is that the costs and the benefits probably pretty much balanced out.

Empires are costly. Running Iraq is not cheap. Somebody’s paying. Somebody’s paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They’re getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayer to U.S. corporations, indirectly, and happen to affect Iraq.

I DON’T understand. How did corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel contribute to the destruction of Iraq?

WHO PAYS Halliburton and Bechtel? The U.S. taxpayer. The military system that bombed Iraq destroyed it. Who paid for that? The same taxpayers. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population. Even if you look at the famous Marshall Plan, that’s pretty much what it was. It’s talked about as an act of “unimaginable benevolence.” But whose benevolence? It’s the benevolence of the American taxpayer. Of the $13 billion of Marshall Plan aid, about $2 billion went right to the U.S. oil companies. That was part of the effort to shift Europe from a coal-based to an oil-based economy, and parts of it would be more dependent on the United States. It had plenty of coal. It didn’t have oil. So there’s two billion of the 13.

You look at the rest of it, very little of that money left the United States. It goes from one pocket to another. If you look more closely, the Marshall Plan aid to France just about covered the costs of the French effort to reconquer Indochina. So the U.S. taxpayer wasn’t rebuilding France. They were paying the French to buy American weapons to crush the Indochinese. Partially the same was true about the Marshall Plan aid to Holland, in the early stage, and what it was doing in Indonesia. It’s a complex flow of aid and benefits.

But, going back to the British Empire, the studies of it have suggested that the costs to the British people may have been about on a par with the benefits that the British people got from it. However, it’s a transfer internally. To the guys who were running the East India Company: fantastic wealth. To the British troops who were dying out in the wilderness somewhere: a serious cost. So it’s a part of class war internally. And to a large extent that’s the way empires work. A big element of it is internal class war.

IT MAY be somewhat easy to measure the cost in lives, number of soldiers killed, and how much money is spent. How does one measure or even talk about moral degradation?

YOU CAN’T give measures to that, but it’s very real and very significant. That’s part of the reason why imperial systems or any system of domination, even a patriarchal family, always has a cover of benevolence. We’re back to the racism again. Why do you have to present yourself as somehow doing it for the benefit of the people you’re crushing? Well, otherwise you have to face the moral degradation. And one of the ways of covering for it is to say, “Well, I’m really an altruist working for the benefit of all.” A typical Hollywood joke was about the corporate executive who was laboring day and night for the benefit of the ordinary person. If we’re honest about it, human relations are often like that. And in imperial systems, almost always.

It’s hard to find an imperial system where the intellectual class didn’t laud its benevolence. That’s normal. Even the worst monsters. When Hitler was dismembering Czechoslovakia it was done with wonderful rhetoric about bringing peace to the ethnic groups who were in conflict, making sure they could all live happily together under German supervision, which was benign. You really have to labor to find an exception to that. And of course it’s true in the United States.

MARK TWAIN is known for writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but he was a staunch opponent of U.S. wars of aggression. A century ago, he was involved in something called the Anti-Imperialist League. He wrote in The Mysterious Stranger: “Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.” Why is that aspect of Mark Twain almost totally occluded?

THAT’S AN interesting story. For the last years of his life, one of his main activities was vigorous involvement in opposition to the Philippine War. Twain has wonderful anti-imperialist essays. But you don’t find reference to them. I think the first general publication of them was in a book, Mark Twain’s Weapons of Satire, edited by Jim Zwick about 10 years ago. Syracuse University Press published a collection of his anti-imperialist essays. If my memory is correct, the introduction by Zwick says that the standard biographies don’t include this material, although it wasn’t secret. Why? The question answers itself. You don’t want people to explode the aura of benevolence in which we clothe ourselves.

YOU MENTIONED the Mafia Don earlier. Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps was a highly-decorated officer, he won the Congressional Medal of Honor not once but twice. He said, “I’ve spent 33 years…being a high class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism…. I helped purify Nicaragua, I helped make Mexico…safe for American oil interests, I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street…. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotions…I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents.”

SMEDLEY BUTLER in his later years came out with some very honest and cutting comments. The honors stopped. He was also either threatened with being kicked out of the Marine Corps, or may have actually been expelled, for opposing U.S. support for Mussolini. I think Henry Stimson may have been responsible for that, because at the time, the U.S. loved Mussolini, thought he was great, but apparently Butler was opposed.

TRADITIONALLY IF you used the word “imperialism” and attached the word “American” in front of it, you were immediately dismissed as a member of some far left fringe. That has undergone a bit of a transformation in the last few years. Let’s just take Michael Ignatieff, for one. Son of a Canadian diplomat, he’s at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard where he is Carr Professor of Human Rights Policy. He writes in a New York Times Magazine cover story on July 28, 2002, “America’s entire war on terrorism is an exercise in imperialism.” Then he adds, “Imperialism used to be the white man’s burden,” echoing Kipling. “This gave it a bad reputation. But imperialism doesn’t stop being necessary just because it becomes politically incorrect.” On January 5, 2003, in yet another cover story in the New York Times Magazine, he writes, “America’s empire is not like the empires of times past, built on colonies, conquests and the white man’s burden…. The 21st century imperium is a new invention in the annals of political science, an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights, and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known.” And he has a new book out, called Empire Lite.

OF COURSE, the apologists for every other imperial power have said the same thing. So you can go back to John Stuart Mill, one of the most outstanding Western intellectuals, now we’re talking about the real peak of moral integrity and intelligence. He defended the British Empire in very much those words. John Stuart Mill wrote the classic essay on humanitarian intervention. Everyone studies it in law schools. What he says is, Britain is unique in the world. It’s unlike any country before it. Other countries have crass motives and seek gain and so on, but the British act only for the benefit of others. In fact, he said, Our motives are so pure that Europeans can’t understand us. They heap “obloquy” upon us and they seek to discover crass motives behind our benevolent actions. But everything we do is for the benefit of the natives, the barbarians. We want to bring them free markets and honest rule and freedom and all kinds of wonderful things. Today’s version is just illustrating Marx’s comment about tragedy being repeated as farce.

The timing of Mill’s comments is interesting. This was around 1859, and it was right after an event that in British terminology is called the “Indian Mutiny,” meaning those barbarians raised their heads. It was a rebellion against British rule, and the British put it down with extreme violence and brutality. Mill certainly knew about this. It was all over England, it was all over the press. The old-fashioned conservatives like Richard Cobden condemned it harshly, just like Senator Robert Byrd condemns what’s going on today. The real conservatives are different from the ones that call themselves that. But Mill, right in the midst of that, wrote about this picture of Britain as an angelic power, and I think you’d find it hard to find an exception to that.

I’m surprised that Ignatieff is not aware that he’s just repeating a very familiar rhetoric. And it’s true, even in internal records, when people are talking to themselves. A lot of Soviet archives are coming out, basically being sold to the highest bidder like everything else in Russia. It’s kind of interesting to see that they talk to each other the same way they talk in public. So, for example, you go back to 1947 or so, and Gromyko and those guys are talking to each other and saying things like, We have to protect democracy. We have to intervene to protect democracy from the forces of fascism, which are everywhere, and democracy is surely the highest value, so we’ve got to intervene to protect it. And he’s talking about the “people’s democracies.” Well, he believed it probably as much as Ignatieff believes what he is saying.

IGNATIEFF SEEMS to be a particular favorite of the New York Times. In the New York Times Magazine of September 7, 2003, “Why Are We In Iraq?” is the title of his article. He writes, “New rules of intervention, proposed by the U.S. and abided by it, would end the canard that the U.S., not its enemy, is the rogue state.” You have a book called Rogue States. What is Ignatieff getting at here, that this is a canard that the U.S. is a rogue state?

ACTUALLY, I borrowed the phrase from Samuel Huntington. In Foreign Affairs, the main establishment journal, he described how, in the eyes of much of the world, the United States is regarded as “the rogue superpower” and the “greatest external threat” to their existence. That’s in the context of criticizing Clinton’s policies leading to the building up of coalitions against the U.S.

If we define “rogue state” in terms of any kind of principles, like violation of international law, or aggression, or atrocities, or human rights violations, and so on, the U.S. qualifies rather well, as you would expect of the most powerful state in the world. Just as Britain did. Just as France did. And every one of them wrote the same kind of garbage that you’re quoting from Ignatieff. So, France was carrying out a “civilizing mission” when the minister of war was saying they were going to have to exterminate the natives in Algeria, which they proceeded to try to do. Even the Nazis. You go to the absolute depths and you’ll find the same sentiments expressed.

When the Japanese fascists were conquering China and carrying out huge atrocities like the Nanking Massacre, the rhetoric behind it brings tears to your eyes. They were creating an “earthly paradise” in which the peoples of Asia would work together, and Japan would sacrifice itself for their benefit so they would all have peace and prosperity, and Japan would protect them from the Communist bandits while they move on to the earthly paradise, and so on. Again, I’m a little surprised that some editor at the New York Times, or a dean at Harvard doesn’t see that it is just a little odd to be repeating what’s been said over and over again by the worst monsters. Why is it different now?

Notice, by the way, that one of the great benefits of being a respectable intellectual, is you never need any evidence for anything you say. So you go through those articles and try to find some evidence to support the conclusions. It’s not that it’s not there, it’s just that it would be ridiculous to put it in. It’s as if you wrote that two and two is four, and then somebody said, “Where’s your evidence?” In order to make it to the peak of respectability, you have to understand that it’s faintly absurd even to ask for evidence for the praise of those with power. It’s just automatic. Of course they’re magnificent. Maybe they made some mistakes in the past, but now they’re magnificent. And to look for evidence of that is like looking for evidence for the truths of arithmetic. So there never is any.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree writes: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglass…. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” Now that’s a pretty candid statement from the three-time Pulitzer Prize—winning New York Times columnist.

THOUGH I suspect if you quizzed him on it, tried to get him on your program, he would say, “Well, but that’s for the good.” Because Silicon Valley and the trade, it’s just helping people, and unfortunately you’ve got to keep the barbarians under control, we’re back to the Brzezinski quote you mentioned before. In fact, Mill and everyone else says the same thing. We’ve got to keep the barbarians away so everybody can benefit from these wonders that we’re bringing to them, like Silicon Valley, which of course, we’re developing for their benefit, or maybe by some invisible hand or something like that. So therefore it’s all, again, just pure benevolence.

DO YOU see some echoes of the 1960s and the so-called discussions and debate about U.S. intervention in Indochina and what’s going on today? Senator Joseph Biden and other Democrats, as well as articles in Foreign Affairs, which is published by the Council on Foreign Relations, the New York—based establishment think tank, are now talking about how they botched it. There was poor planning. They should have seen what would be needed, and they didn’t have enough translators in place.

IT’S, AS you say, in part a replica of the 1960s. It’s worth remembering that among educated elites, among intellectuals and planners, there was almost never any criticism of the Vietnam War. Even at the peak of popular protest, 1969, maybe 70 percent of the population described the war as fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. But among educated sectors you almost never heard that. The most that could be said is “it’s a mistake, bad planning, should have had more translators, we didn’t understand anything about the Vietnamese, hubris and so on and so forth.” And so, “Do it right next time,” in other words, but not that there was anything wrong with doing it. Which is why, as the Vietnam War has been reconstructed, in American intellectual culture, the U.S. turns out to be the victim. The U.S. is the victim of the Vietnamese. Literally.

THE VIETNAMESE Air Force carpet bombed the United States.

JIMMY CARTER, for whom the “soul of our foreign policy” was human rights, piety and so on, was asked in a news conference whether the U.S. owes anything to Vietnam after what happened, and he said that we owe them no debt because “the destruction was mutual.” Do a database search and see if anybody commented on that.

When George Bush Number One–who was kind of an old-fashioned conservative, not a hawk and not a dove, just kind of a mainstream moderate–was in office, he told the Vietnamese, Of course we can never forget what you did to us, but we’re willing to let bygones be bygones. We don’t insist on retribution, if you will pay proper attention to the only moral issue that’s left after the war, namely the remains of Americans missing in action. That was a particularly interesting comment because of its placement. It happened to appear on the front page of the New York Times just next to another column that was on Japan’s strange unwillingness to face up to what it had done in Asia. The article offered an elaborate etymological study of some of the words that the Japanese use when they refer to their crimes in Asia, and how they don’t have quite the right connotations, and so on and so forth. Right next to it is George Bush saying, The only moral issue after the war in which a couple of million of people were killed and the country was devastated and they’re still dying from chemical warfare, is: What about the bones of our pilots?

GEORGE BUSH the First, when he was running for president in 1988, was asked to comment on the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner over international airspace killing all 290 passengers. He said, “I will never apologize for the United States, I don’t care what the facts are.”

THAT WAS just franker than others. Ignatieff says we don’t make mistakes, or if we made mistakes they were in the past.

BUT THE intentions are always noble.

THE INTENTIONS are noble. In fact, what happened after the shooting down of the airliner? The captain of the ship got an award, some high medal, the ship when it came back, the USS Vincennes, was greeted in the port with great applause and so on. Actually, the U.S. Naval Institute Journal published an interesting article by another commander, David Carlson, who was commander of a nearby vessel, and he said he couldn’t understand it. He said that they saw this Iranian commercial airliner coming up right in international airspace, and the USS Vincennes focused its high tech radar system on it and was moving forward to shoot it down, and they couldn’t understand what these guys were doing. He said they called the Vincennes the “Robo Cruiser,” or some such term. That’s in the U.S. Naval Institute proceedings.

IN THE discussions about the attack of Iraq and the occupation, it seems that if these weapons of mass destruction are ever found, then that would eliminate all the criticism. There’s no principled dissent in terms of international law, the Nuremberg Tribunal principles or the UN Charter. Are you surprised that none of the allegations that were made, from drones of death to mobile chemical labs have been verified?

VERY SURPRISED. I have a feeling if you looked at Boulder High School, if somebody started digging out in the back fields, you’d probably find stuff from some chemistry or biology lab that could in theory be used to make chemical and biological weapons. The fact that they haven’t found anything is mind-boggling. I took for granted they must have the facilities. But there are plenty of things that aren’t discussed, like for example, why didn’t the Iraqis overthrow Saddam Hussein? Well, if you destroy a society and you force the population to become dependent on a tyrant, they don’t have any basis for overthrowing him.

If you look at other cases, there’s very good reason to agree with the Westerners who know Iraq best, and are cut out of the American press for that reason: Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, the two UN administrators. They had hundreds of people going around Iraq, they were getting information from all over the place. They are very knowledgeable. I think they probably know Iraq better than any Westerners. They both resigned in protest over the sanctions, which Halliday called “genocidal.” They’re very respected European UN diplomats with lots of experience. They said the sanctions are destroying the society. They’re strengthening the tyrant. They’re compelling people to rely on him. He was a brutal tyrant, but he ran a very efficient food distribution system and people just relied on him for survival. So you didn’t get what you got in other places.

Actually, if you look at the record of the guys who are in Washington right now, at least some people know that they supported Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities. But he wasn’t the only one. There’s quite a rogues gallery that they supported. Like take Ceausescu in Romania, he was comparable to Saddam Hussein. He was a monstrous tyrant. The Reagan and Bush I administrations supported him to the last minute, when he was overthrown from within by Romanians. Now they take credit for having overthrown him. Mobutu was another. Mobutu, another killer, was the first person invited to the Bush I White House. They supported Suharto, Marcos and Duvalier to the very end. All these guys were overthrown from within, despite enormous U.S. support. There’s no reason to think that that might not have happened with Saddam Hussein.

So that’s a question that’s overlooked. Why were we supporting Saddam Hussein right up until the invasion of Kuwait? Why wouldn’t we let the Iraqis overthrow him? There’s another simple question, too. You don’t know, when you invade a country, what’s going to happen. There could have been a humanitarian catastrophe. The fact that you’re willing to invade a country and risk that puts you on the same level as say, Khrushchev, when he put nuclear missiles in Cuba. It’s criminal lunacy. The fact that the worst didn’t happen doesn’t make it less criminal lunacy. It’s still a criminal lunacy. It holds in this case, too.

RAHUL MAHAJAN, in his new book Full Spectrum Dominance poses the question: If Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and he faced annihilation, and he didn’t use these weapons that he was alleged to have, then under what circumstances would he use them?

U.S. ANALYSIS, including the CIA and intelligence agencies, who all assumed that he must have some weapons of mass destruction capacity, as I did and everyone did, they all predicted that he’s not going to use them, but if he’s driven to desperation, then he will use them. That’s another risk that Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and the rest were willing to take. They were willing to drive Saddam Hussein to the point where he might use weapons of mass destruction. Just as they were willing to take the risk that there could be a huge humanitarian catastrophe. All of these are criminal lunacy.

YOUR NEW book is titled Hegemony or Survival. Do you understand hegemony in the same way as imperialism, as a system of domination?

IMPERIALISM is one specific form of domination. There are plenty of other forms. These terms don’t have precise meanings. But hegemony is much more general.

ANTONIO GRAMSCI, who helped popularize the term “hegemony,” wrote in 1925, “A main obstacle to change is the reproduction by the dominating forces of elements of the hegemonic ideology. It’s an important and urgent task to develop alternative interpretations of reality.” How does someone develop “alternative interpretations of reality,” as Gramsci suggests?

I RESPECT Gramsci a lot, but I think it’s possible to paraphrase that comment, namely, just tell the truth. Instead of repeating ideological fanaticism, dismantle it, try to find out the truth, and tell the truth. Does that say anything different? It’s something any one of us can do. Remember, intellectuals internalize the conception that they have to make things look complicated, otherwise what are they around for? But it’s worth asking yourself how much of it really is complicated. Gramsci is a very admirable person, but take that statement and try to translate it into simple English. Is it complicated to understand, or to know how to act?

A CERTAIN MIT professor is celebrating his 75th birthday on December 7. Do you have any information on that that you could possibly share?

IN DON’T think there is such a person.

THERE’S NO one on the faculty here?

THERE MAY be somebody who’s having a 75th birthday, but he’s not celebrating it. You’ve got to be careful with this language. Just because you’re an intellectual doesn’t mean you can use big words.

chomsky.info

REFLECTIONS ON THE OVERTHROW OF COMMUNISM and other materials of similar interest in our audio section.




Dissembling Concern Over Violence, UN General Assembly Takes a Side in Syria’s Civil War

We offer comprehensive information and analysis on this important issue—

(1) By Stephen Gowans, what’s left

Professing grave concern over Syria’s escalating violence, the United Nations General Assembly on Friday demanded that “all in Syria immediately and visibly commit to ending violence.”

This would be all to the good except that the General Assembly’s idea of what constitutes “all in Syria” and what it means by “ending violence” amounts to one side in the civil war (the Republic) laying down its arms unilaterally, while President Assad steps down and cedes his authority to an interim government approved by the “international community,” which is to say, the very same countries that are furnishing the rebels with arms, logistical support, diplomatic assistance, territory from which to launch attacks, salaries for fighters, lucre to induce government officials to defect, and propaganda.

The resolution is hardly a plea for peace. It’s a demand that the Republic capitulate. (NB: Russia and China along with a dozen other nations denounced the resolution. See addendum below.) Significantly, the resolution’s sponsor, Saudi Arabia, is the rebels’ main arms supplier. No wonder the Bolivian representative to the UN was moved to declare that the aim of the text is not to assist the Syrian population, but to ‘defeat Damascus’.” “Anybody who doesn’t believe that needs only read it,” he said.

Indeed, the text is perfectly clear: peace means regime change and regime change means peace.

“Rapid progress on a political transition,” the General Assembly said is “the best opportunity” to resolve the conflict peacefully. That is: peace equals Assad stepping down. Or, peace, yes, but on the rebels’, which is to say, the United States’, terms. And UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon, echoing US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, has underscored the equating of peace with Assad’s departure, defining “political transition” as a necessary condition of peace.

Importantly, the United States—whose efforts to eliminate Syria’s Arab nationalist government antedate the Arab Spring—opposes Assad, not because he is a “dictator” or “kills his own people” as the propaganda has it, but because his government has long charted a course on foreign and economic policy independent of Washington. Assad’s crime, in the view of Washington, is to have tried to privilege the Syrian population over the interests, both immediate and distal, of US banks and corporations.

Significantly, the resolution ignores the political and constitutional concessions the Syrian government has already made in what has turned out to be a fruitless attempt to engineer a peaceful settlement with an opposition that is hostile to peace. With Libya as a model for how a opposition with the backing of only part of the population need not negotiate with the government it opposes if it can enlist the support of the United States and Europe, the Syrian rebels have never had an incentive to sit down with Damascus and work out a modus vivendi. On the contrary, all the incentives are on the side of an intransigent commitment to violent overthrow of the government. The overthrow comes about as a result of the support in arms and political and propaganda backing the United States and its allies provide, and therefore is effectively authored in Washington, but attributed, for political and propaganda purposes, to the rebels’ own efforts. Having the US State Department, CIA and Pentagon on your side can more than adequately make up for the deficiency of failing to win the support of significant parts of the population.

The General Assembly’s text demands that “the first step in ending the violence must be made by the Syrian authorities,” who are called upon to withdraw their troops. It is highly unlikely that a US ally would ever be called upon to withdraw its troops in the face of an armed insurrection. This is a standard reserved exclusively for communist, socialist, and economic nationalist governments—those whose commitment to self-directed, independent development runs counter to the unrestrained profit-making of US banks and corporations. No international body has ever seriously demanded that Saudi Arabia refrain from violence in putting down rebellions in its eastern provinces, or that Bahrain—home to the US Fifth Fleet—cease its use of violence to extinguish its own, local, eruption of the Arab Spring (a military action against civilians ably assisted by Saudi tanks.) Asking Damascus to unilaterally lay down its arms is a demand for capitulation, disguised as a desire for peace.

Parenthetically, the uprisings in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are regularly depicted in the Western media as “Shia” and backed by Shia Iran and therefore sectarian, not as popular democratic movements against tyrannical monarchies. By contrast, the Syrian uprising, though having a strong sectarian content and being principally Sunni and supported by the Sunni monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the Sunni-dominated government of Turkey, is depicted as a democratic uprising against dictatorship, not sectarian.

The United States and Israel, in backing the General Assembly resolution, denounced Syria’s use of “heavy weapons, armour and the air forces against populated areas”—though Washington’s concern for using overwhelming military force against populated areas stops at Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Populated areas of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon have felt the heavy hand of Israeli heavy weapons, armour and air force. And Turkey’s rulers—who allow their territory to be used by the rebels as a launching pad for attacks on Syria—continue to kill their own people in their longstanding war against Kurd nationalists.

Ban Ki-moon warned the Syrian government that its actions “might constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes, which must be investigated and the perpetrators held to account,” words he never uttered in connection with Nato’s assault on Libya nor Saudi Arabia’s and Bahrain’s use of violence to quell uprisings in their countries. Nor have his predecessors uttered similar words in connection with the United States’ and Israel’s frequent and undoubted crimes against humanity and war crimes. Moreover, Ban hasn’t warned Syria’s rebels that they too will be held to account for their crimes. (The Libyan rebels haven’t been.)

Thirteen countries opposed the resolution, almost all of them committed to independent self-directed development outside the domination of the United States. These include Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Against this axis of independence are the sponsors and chief backers of the resolution: the US-vassal Sunni petro-tyrannies—champions of a Sunni rebel movement that’s supposed to be (improbably) galvanized by democratic, not sectarian, ambitions—while the United States, its Nato allies, and Israel—authors of the gravest humanitarian tragedies of recent times, hypocritically profess concern over escalating violence in Syria. The resolution can hardly be seen as a genuine expression of humanitarian concern. It’s a demand for the Republic’s, which is to say, the non-sectarian Arab nationalists’, capitulation, disguised as a plea for peace, and a blatant taking of the imperialist side in a civil war.

Stephen Gowans is the founding editor of What’s Left, a leading Canadian political events column.

(2)
UN General Assembly targets Syria as US proxy war escalates

By Alex Lantier
4 August 2012

Captured Assad supporters in Syrian rebels hands. After a brief interrogation they were beaten and then summarily executed. Of such crimes American media scoundrels have nothing to say.

The UN General Assembly voted 133-12, with 31 abstentions, to endorse a resolution denouncing the Syrian government yesterday, as fighting escalated in the US-led proxy war in Syria. The vote was the focus of a massive propaganda campaign, aiming at placing blame for the bloody proxy war waged by the US and its European and Middle Eastern allies on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Having been blocked by Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN Security Council from passing resolutions condemning Syria and giving a legal fig leaf for a US-led invasion, the US and its allies proceeded to organize a vote at the UN General Assembly.

The resolution effectively blamed Assad for the fighting, stating that “the first step in the cessation of violence has to be made by the Syrian authorities.” It denounced “the increasing use by the Syrian authorities of heavy weapons, including indiscriminate shelling from tanks and helicopters, and the failure to withdraw its troops and the heavy weapons to their barracks.”

This is nothing other than a demand that the Syrian government commit political suicide, by unilaterally disarming in the face of an international Islamist insurgency armed, financed, and organized by the US and its allies.

The vote came only days after reports emerged confirming that US President Barack Obama had previously signed a “finding” ordering US intelligence agencies to give covert aid to anti-Assad forces. It had already been widely reported that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are arming oppositional forces in Syria, which include a large number of foreign fighters recruited by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups. Their operations are directed from Adana, the site of the United States’ Incirlik air base in nearby Turkey.

Yesterday British Foreign Secretary William Hague confirmed that Britain is also giving covert support to anti-Assad forces. He said, “I do not ever comment on intelligence matters, but I can say that we are helping elements of the Syrian opposition, but in a practical and non-lethal way. We have helped them with communications of that kind, and we will help them more.”

Hague added that the British government aims to “isolate the Assad regime from its remaining associates, or friends, in the world.”
The UN General Assembly resolution also criticized the UN Security Council for its “failure” to act against Syria, in a barely veiled attack on Russia and China. They have voted against Security Resolutions criticizing Syria, fearing that such resolutions could allow Washington to openly attack Syria, the way NATO used UN resolution 1973 last year to justify its aggression in Libya. Both Russia and China voted against the resolution at the General Assembly.

With the lopsided General Assembly vote and its enthusiastic reception in the American and European press, the UN and the media functioned as lackeys of imperialism. Were it not for the deadly seriousness of the situation—the Syrian war alone has already cost over 10,000 lives, with 200,000 Syrians fleeing their country, and over 1 million turned into refugees inside Syria—the absurdity of the UN resolution would be laughable.

The UN resolution was drafted by the Saudi, Qatari, and Bahraini absolute monarchies. News reports presented the handiwork of these ultra-right Sunni-sectarian regimes, freshly covered in blood from their crushing of last spring’s mass protests in Bahrain, as part of a democratic US campaign to protect civilians from authoritarian governments!

Nor did anyone seek to explain what principles make the Assad regime’s use of heavy weapons in a proxy war with Washington more reprehensible than the Turkey’s bombings of Kurdish villages, as part of its long-standing military suppression of Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

All of these points are well known to the diplomats who gathered at the UN and voted for the resolution. One suspects that for many governments, their decision on how to vote was quickly settled by their financial dependence on US subsidies. The rest heeded the examples of heads of state who crossed Washington—Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, murdered in the streets of his bombed-out home town after being sodomized with a bayonet, or Assad, for whom the Washington Post recently predicted that the “only exit may be [a] body bag.”

In its slavish hypocrisy and propaganda, special mention must be reserved for the role of the American media, which is moving into full war mode. On Friday morning, the New York Times published a lead article by C.J. Chivers, which opened by declaring that “diplomatic efforts [are] dead and the future of Syria [is] playing out on the battlefield.” The announcement by Kofi Annan on Friday that he will resign as UN negotiator for Syria is seen as confirmation of the end to all negotiations with the Assad government.

The US media has enthusiastically endorsed the anti-Assad forces, even after it has been widely reported that Al Qaeda is active among them. This ranges from the sympathetic portrayal on last night’s ABC News show of anti-Assad youth, armed with Kalashnikovs and driven to fight by faith in Allah, to Chivers and the Times praising anti-Assad insurgents’ use of roadside bombs.
In the Orwellian world of American bourgeois politics, no one stops to ask how to resolve the crying contradiction between US policy in Syria and its claim it is fighting a “war on terror.”

If the media cannot answer or indeed even ask such questions, it is because the answer is too explosive: the “war on terror”—ostensibly the basis of US politics for over a decade—is a pack of lies. Washington makes or breaks de facto alliances with Al Qaeda purely based on the cynical calculation of its imperialist interests.

Why is Washington fighting Assad and backing the brutal regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai? The answer has nothing to with democracy or a fight against Islamist terrorism. It is that the US and its allies have first pickings of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth and enjoy the advantages of controlling its highly strategic location. Syria, however, is as an ally of Iran and Russia. It is considered a threat to Israel and, more broadly, to US hegemony in the Middle East.

As a result, the anti-Assad forces are lionized by US officials and the media, even as reports emerge of their hostility to the Syrian population and their mass killings of political opponents.

Thus yesterday Abu Ahmed, an official in the Syrian town of Azaz near the Turkish border, told Reuters: “The Free Syrian Army is causing us headaches now. If they don’t like the actions of a person, they tie him up, beat him, and arrest him. Personality differences between brigade members are being settled using kidnappings and force.”

A widely circulated video also appeared on YouTube showing the interrogation of Ali Zein al-Abidine Berri, a pro-Assad leader of an Aleppo clan who was captured by anti-Assad forces. The video shows him, his arm bandaged and his mouth bloodied, answering questions and shielding himself with his arms. He was reportedly executed after the interrogation.
____
Alex Lantier is a senior political analyst with WSWS.ORG.

 

ADDENDUM
BBC News/ Middle East
Russia says UN vote undermines peace efforts in Syria

Barbara Plett
BBC UN correspondent

Russia has said a resolution on Syria passed by the UN General Assembly undermines peace efforts there, as fighting continues on the ground. Moscow’s UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, told reporters the resolution was one-sided and supported the armed opposition.

Western nations praised the resolution, which passed by 133 votes to 12 with 31 abstentions. It criticises both the UN’s own Security Council and the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The assembly debated the resolution, which was proposed by Saudi Arabia, shortly after the resignation of UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and the failure of his six-point peace plan.

In Syria, government forces backed by tanks launched a new assault in Damascus while shelling continued in the country’s largest city, Aleppo.

The resolution condemning the Syrian government and calling for a political transition is not legally binding, but its Arab and Western sponsors see the overwhelming “Yes” vote as proof that they have world opinion behind them, despite the deadlock in the Security Council, which they harshly criticised.

Even so, the massive majority came at a price: the text had to be watered down in an attempt to win over many states, dropping explicit calls for Bashar al-Assad to step down and for member states to support Arab League sanctions.

And even though the opposition was small, it again included China and Russia. Moscow opposed the resolution as unbalanced, making clear that it believes the UN is taking one side in a civil war. So the General Assembly intervention will do nothing to bridge the fundamental divides in the Security Council, and may widen them.

Activists say more than 20,000 people – mostly civilians – have died in 17 months of unrest.

‘Strong message’
Russia voted “no” on Friday along with China, Syria, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Burma, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Among those states abstaining were India and Pakistan.

Mr Churkin told the UN that the Saudi-drafted resolution concealed “blatant support for the armed opposition”.

He said his country regretted the resolution which “only aggravates confrontational approaches to the resolution of the Syrian crisis, doing nothing to facilitate dialogue between the parties”.  It was “written as if no armed opposition existed at all”, he added.

Mr Churkin pointed out that the resolution called on the UN envoy to work towards a transition to democracy in Syria, yet the envoy’s task had been to arrange dialogue, not regime change.

Chinese deputy UN ambassador Wang Min said pressuring Syria’s government would “cause further escalation of the turmoil” and allow the crisis to spread to neighbouring countries.

Russia and China have blocked three attempts in the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against Damascus.
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, suggested Saudi Arabia and fellow resolution sponsor Qatar were trying to act as both “a fireman and an arsonist at the same time”.

The resolution expresses “grave concern” at the escalation of violence in Syria and deplores “the failure of the Security Council to agree on measures to ensure the compliance of Syrian authorities with its decisions”.

It says it is up to the Syrian government to take the “first step in the cessation of violence”.

Susan Rice, the US envoy at the UN, welcomed the passing of the resolution. The UN General Assembly “sent a strong message today: the overwhelming majority of nations stand with the people of Syria”, she wrote on Twitter.

Britain’s UN ambassador Sir Mark Lyall Grant said a “colossal majority” had supported the resolution.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “This resolution… sends a clear signal that the world stands together in condemning the Syrian regime’s systematic human rights violations and in calling for accountability.”

During the assembly’s session, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the conflict in Syria had become a “proxy war” and called on powers to overcome their rivalries in an effort to end the violence.


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