John Pilger: The War You Don’t See

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Keld Bach


A powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of embedded and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq.

As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an electronic battlefield in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?

John Pilger says in the film: “We journalists… have to be brave enough to defy those who seek our collusion in selling their latest bloody adventure in someone else’s country… That means always challenging the official story, however patriotic that story may appear, however seductive and insidious it is.

For propaganda relies on us in the media to aim its deceptions not at a far away country but at you at home… In this age of endless imperial war, the lives of countless men, women and children depend on the truth or their blood is on us… Those whose job it is to keep the record straight ought to be the voice of people, not power.”

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John Pilger’s New Film: UTOPIA

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Keld Bach


John Pilger’s film, Utopia, about Australia, is released in cinemas on 15 November and broadcast on ITV in December. It is released in Australia in January.

When I began filming this secret Australia 30 years ago, a global campaign was under way to end apartheid in South Africa. Having reported from South Africa, I was struck by the similarity of white supremacy and the compliance and defensiveness of liberals. Yet no international opprobrium, no boycotts, disturbed the surface of “lucky” Australia. Watch security guards expel Aboriginal people from shopping malls in Alice Springs; drive the short distance from the suburban barbies of Cromwell Terrace to Whitegate camp, where the tin shacks have no reliable power and water. This is apartheid, or what Reynolds calls, “the whispering in our hearts”.

Full article: The brutal past and present are another country in secret Australia

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Fighting Against Peace: Why US Doesn’t Want an End to Wars

Posted on November 7, 2013 by Keld Bach

A Pakistani protester from United Citizen Action (UCA) holds a burning US flag as others shout anti-US slogans during a protest against the killing of Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a US drone attack in Pakistani tribal region, in Multan on November 2, 2013. (AFP Photo/S. S. Mirza)

By Neil Clark

The only surprising thing about the news that the US is sabotaging peace moves in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that anyone should find the news surprising.

As reported on RT, Pakistan has accused the US of sabotaging peace talks between the authorities in Islamabad and the Taliban following last Friday’s drone assassination of the Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud.

“The murder of Hakimullah is the murder of all efforts at peace,” Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisa said. “Brick by brick, in the last seven weeks, we tried to evolve a process by which we could bring peace to Pakistan and what have you [the US] done?”

The killing of Hakimullah Mehsud comes less than a month after the US effectively wrecked the Afghan government’s efforts to engage with the Taliban by capturing Latif Mehsud, Hakimullah’s lieutenant. Latif Mehsud was the man that the Afghan government hoped would be a go-between for peace talks with the Taliban. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was reported to have been furious about the US operation. Karzai has also said that the drone strike against Hakimullah Mehsud “took place at an unsuitable time.”

The fact is that on several important occasions in the last 30 years or so, the US has wrecked peace efforts and used its power to provoke or prolong conflicts which could have been avoided or solved without further bloodshed.

1. Iraq 1990-1991

From August 1990 to January 1991, there were plenty of chances to achieve a diplomatic solution in relation to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and which would have resulted in an Iraqi withdrawal, but Washington was determined to go to war. When the war started, they rejected diplomatic moves, such as the plan put forward by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to end the conflict before ground troops were deployed in Kuwait.

Saddam Hussein’s forces could have been removed from Kuwait without a war in which many thousands were killed, but Washington didn’t want it.

2. Kosovo

That was at the start of the ’90s. Now let‘s fast forward to the end of that decade. In order to complete the destruction of Federal Yugoslavia, Washington aggressively championed the cause of a hardcore terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army, in the late 1990s. The US marginalized Kosovar leaders who wanted to pursue a peaceful path towards independence, such as the politician Ibrahim Rugova, who urged passive resistance. Instead they pushed for a violent solution to the problem of Kosovo’s status: their strategy being to provoke a retaliation from the government in Belgrade, which would then provide the pretext for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

The Rambouillet Conference of March 1999 was ostensibly about trying to broker a peace deal between the Kosovar Albanian delegates and the Yugoslav authorities. But the terms were deliberately made so onerous – Appendix B allowed NATO forces freedom of movement throughout the whole of Yugoslavia – so as to guarantee its rejection by Belgrade.

“I think certain people were spoiling for a fight in NATO at that time,” revealed Lord Gilbert, a UK minister of state for defense procurement, in 2000. “If you ask my personal view, I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable. How could he possibly accept them? It was quite deliberate.”

Even Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state and a man who can hardly be labeled a ‘peacenik‘, admitted: “The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing.”

Again, Washington had sabotaged a peaceful solution to a dispute and war ensued, with all its horrors.

3. Iraq 2002-2003

In 2002/3 we had the contrived WMD ’crisis’ with Iraq.

If Washington had genuinely been concerned about the possibility of Iraq being in possession of WMDs, they would simply have waited for Hans Blix and his team of UN weapons inspectors to finish their job. However, as we all know, the WMDs issue was merely a pretext for war, with the US knowing full well that the country was disarmed. The Iraqis were desperate to avert an attack on their country, but diplomatic offers from Baghdad in the lead-up to the illegal invasion were dismissed.

The result of the US opting for war and not peace in Iraq has been the deaths of at least 500,000 people since 2003.

4. Libya

In 2011, a UN resolution ostensibly about protecting civilians was used by the US and its NATO allies as a pretext for forcibly removing from power the government of Libya. During this ‘humanitarian’ intervention, which led to a sharp spike in the death toll, Washington and its allies frequently rejected calls for a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution. Today, Libya is – like Iraq – a wrecked country. But it all could have been very different, if Washington, instead of opting for war, had worked to bring warring factions to the negotiating table.

5. Syria

In Syria too, the US has set out since 2011 to prevent a peaceful solution to the country’s internal divisions. While an outright NATO attack on Syria has, at least for the time being, been avoided, it’s been public opinion in Western countries and adroit Russian diplomacy which has prevented World War III from breaking out in the Middle East this year, rather than America’s leaders suddenly turning over a new leaf.

If the US genuinely wanted an end to the terrible bloodshed in Syria they’d be encouraging the so-called ‘rebels’ to halt their campaign of violence and sign up to the political process and contest elections.

The Baathists have made significant reforms in Syria in the past two years, not least ending the party’s near five-decade long political monopoly, but Washington hasn’t been interested in peaceful democratic change, only in the violent overthrow of President Assad and his replacement by someone who will do its bidding. The result of this policy has been catastrophic for the people of Syria who, like the people of Iraq and Libya, watch as their country is destroyed before their very eyes.

While promoting itself as the great ‘peacemaker’, it’s the sober truth that no country has done more to stoke up conflicts and sabotage peaceful solutions to them in recent years than the US, with the killing of Hakimullah Mehsud being only the latest example.

Why does the US act in this destructive way? It’s important to understand that the US government doesn’t act in the interests of the ordinary, decent Americans, who are sick and tired of war and military ‘interventions’, but in the interests of Wall Street and what President Eisenhower famously referred to as ‘the military-industrial complex’.

The very last thing that Wall Street and the military-industrial complex want is peace. They thrive on wars and conflicts. Wars and conflicts mean profits. Nice, big, juicy profits. As Charlie Chaplin‘s anti-hero Monsieur Verdoux put it, “Wars, conflicts – it’s all business.”

Last month a report by the Public Accountability Initiative revealed that many of the leading ‘commentators’ who went on US TV stations to call for military strikes against Syria had undisclosed ties to military contractors. The report “identifies 22 commentators who weighed in during the Syria debate in large media outlets, and who have current industry ties that may pose conflicts of interest. The commentators are linked to large defense and intelligence contractors like Raytheon, smaller defense and intelligence contractors like TASC, defense-focused investment firms like SCP Partners, and commercial diplomacy firms like the Cohen Group.”

Among the ‘commentators’ supporting strikes on Syria was Madeline Albright, the US secretary of state at the time of the phony ‘peace’ conference at Rambouillet in 1999.

Bombing Yugoslavia, bombing Syria. With the violent destruction of Iraq and Libya along the way, to say nothing of the turmoil US policies have brought to Afghanistan and Pakistan. John Lennon implored us to ‘give peace a chance’, but until the US radically changes its political system and power is returned to ordinary people and away from those with a vested interest in endless war, its stoking up of conflicts and sabotaging of peace initiatives will only continue.

Source: Russia Today

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Yasser Arafat Poisoned with Polonium, Swiss Study Shows

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Keld Bach


Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said that they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, which they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death.

A 108-page report by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.

The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after his body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Dave Barclay, a renowned UK forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered.

“Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time.”

Source: Al Jazeera

What is Polonium?

One gramme of polonium-210 could theoretically poison and kill about 10 million people [EPA]

Polonium is a rare and highly radioactive element. It is found naturally in the atmosphere and in the earth’s crust, though in miniscule quantities. World-renowned scientist and Nobel laureate Marie Curie discovered the element in the late 19th century and named it after her native country Poland (Polonia in Latin).

Polonium has dozens of isotopes. One of the most common is polonium-210, which emits highly radioactive particles, known as alpha particles. This was the isotope found on Yasser Arafat’s personal effects during Al Jazeera’s initial investigation into What Killed Arafat?

Because of its radioactivity, polonium has been used as a trigger for nuclear weapons, and as a power source for satellites and other spacecraft. The Russian space programme used it to heat rovers that landed on the Moon in the 1970s.

Polonium is harmless when it is outside the body, but after ingestion it becomes one of the deadliest substances know. An amount equivalent to the size of a particle of dust is lethal.

Ingesting just 50 nanogrammes, or inhaling 10 nanogrammes, of the substance can cause death. This means one gramme of polonium-210 could theoretically poison and kill about 10 million people.

Source: Al Jazeera

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Azizi bin Habeebi: The Division Game

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Keld Bach
Music and lyrics by Azizi bin Habeebi
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Assad Advisor: With Political Will, Syrian Crisis Over in 2 Weeks

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Keld Bach


There’s a chance to end the Syrian crisis in two weeks if there’s political will on all sides, according to Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, political and media advisor to the Syrian president.

“If the various parties have the political will to put an end to the Syrian suffering, to the Syrian crisis, they can do it within weeks. If they can only stop financing the arming [of Syrian rebels] and the smuggling of terrorists across the border from Turkey, 50 percent of the Syrian crisis would be over in two weeks’ time,” Dr. Shaaban said in an exclusive interview to RT.

She said that the Syrian government was ready to take part in Geneva-2 peace talks without any preconditions. President Bashar Assad’s government is ready to sit down for peace talks with “people who represent the political opposition” of the Syrian population, but not the armed rebel groups, Dr. Shaaban said.

For example, the coalition represented by Saudi Arabia “has nothing to do with the Syrian people,” she said.

Source: RT News

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Documentary on Syrian Volunteers (National Defense Forces)

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Keld Bach


The National Defense Force is a Syrian military group organized by the Syrian government during the Syrian Conflict. The goal was to form an effective, locally based, highly motivated force out of pro-government militias. The NDF receives salaries and military equipment from the government.

The force acts in an infantry role, directly fighting against rebels on the ground and running counter-insurgency operations in coordination with the army which provides them logistical and artillery support. Many NDF fighters are drawn from Syrian minority groups such as Alawites, Christians, and Druze. According to the Washington Post and several analysts, the creation of the group has been successful and has improved the military situation for the government in Syria.

The force is reported to be 60,000-strong as of mid-2013 and is set to grow to 100,000.

Meet the Syrian Lionesses


After their country was subjected to the worst aggressive ‘war for terror’ supported by a collection of countries that each has a bad enough reputation in brutality, war crimes, oppression and long history of blood spilling, and after the Wahhabi religion clerics issued fatwas for ‘Sex Jihad’ in their country, the Syrian women saw no other choice but to learn and train on defending themselves, their families and their country.

Welcome to the world of Syrian Lionesses.

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Syria has Changed

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Keld Bach

Damascus, the oldest still inhabitant capital in the world. Photo by Abdulhameed Shamandour.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

By Thierry Meyssan

While in Damascus, the Special Envoy of the Secretaries General of the Arab League and the UN, Lakhdar Brahimi, presented “his” draft peace conference project, Geneva 2. A conference whose objective would be to end the “civil war”. This terminology rehashes the analysis of one side against another, of those who argue that this conflict is a logical continuation of the “Arab Spring” against those who argue that it has been manufactured, fueled and manipulated from the outside.

The war according to the armed opposition

For Westerners and the majority of the National Coalition, Syria is experiencing a revolution. Its people have supposedly risen up against a dictatorship and aspire to live in a democracy like the United States. However, this view is contradicted by the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army. For them, the problem is not one of freedom, but the personality of Bashar al-Assad. They would be willing to keep the same institutions if the President agreed to step aside for one of his vice-presidents. However, this version is in turn contradicted by the fighters on the ground, for whom the problem is not the personality of the president, but the tolerance that he stands for. Their goal is to establish a Wahhabi system where religious minorities would be subdued or destroyed, and where the Constitution would be replaced by Sharia.

Freedom of expression

At first, when snipers were killing people, they said that it was the regime gunmen who were trying to impose fear. When cars exploded, it was said it was a false flag attack by the secret services. When a massive attack killed members of the Security Council, Assad was accused of having eliminated his rivals. Today, nobody doubts that these crimes were the work of jihadists and they continue to commit more.

In the beginning, there was emergency law. From 1963 on, demonstrations were banned. Only a trickle of foreign journalists was allowed entry and their activities were closely monitored. Today, emergency law has been lifted. There are still few demonstrations because of the fear of terrorist attacks. Numerous are the foreign journalists in Damascus. They move freely without any supervision. Yet most continue to report that the country is a horrible dictatorship. They are allowed to go on in hopes that they will tire of lying when their governments cease to preach the “overthrow of the regime.”

Initially, Syrians did not watch national television channels. They considered these to be propaganda and their preferred source was Al- Jazeera. On live TV, they followed the exploits of the “revolution” and the crimes of the “dictatorship”. But with time, they found themselves confronted directly with events. They saw for themselves the atrocities of the peudo-revolutionaries and they often owed their survival solely to the national army. Today, people watch national television much more, and especially Al- Mayadeen, a Lebanese-Iraqi channel that recovered the audience of Al Jazeera in the Arab world and who is developing an openly nationalist point of view.

Freedom of conscience

At first, the armed opposition claimed to be multi-denominational. People from religious minorities supported it. Then came the Islamic Courts sentencing to death and slitting the throats of the “bad” Sunni “traitors” to their community, the Alawites and Shiites, tortured in public, and Christians expelled from their homes. Today everyone understands that one is always a heretic when one is judged by “the pure ones”, the Takfirists.

While intellectuals argue that Syria was destroyed and needs to be redefined, people know what it is and are often willing to die for it. Ten years ago, every family had a teenager they were trying to exempt from military service. Only the poor were considering a career in the armed forces. Today, many young people enrol in the army and their elders join the popular militias. They all defend eternal Syria where various religious communities live side by side and they all venerate the same God when they have one.

During the conflict, many Syrians themselves evolved. At first they mostly watched events from the sidelines, most declaring not seeing themselves in any camp. After two and a half years of terrible suffering, everyone who remained in the country had to choose to survive. War is but an attempt by the colonial powers to blow on the embers of obscurantism to incinerate civilization.

Political freedom

For myself, having known Syria for a decade and having lived in Damascus for two years, I realize how much the country has changed. Ten years ago, each spoke in a low voice of the problems he had encountered with mukhabarats poking their noses into everything and anything. In this country, of which the Golan is occupied by Israel, the Secret Service had indeed acquired extravagant power. Yet they saw and knew nothing of the preparations for war, of the tunnels what were dug and of the weapons that were imported. Today, a large number of corrupt officials have fled abroad, the mukhabarats have refocused on their mission of homeland defense about which only the jihadists have to complain.

Ten years ago, the Ba’ath Party was constitutionally leader of the nation. It alone was allowed to field candidates in elections, but it was already no longer a mass party. Institutions were gradually moving away from the citizens. Today, it’s hard to follow the birth of political parties as they are so numerous. Anyone can run for office and win. Only the “democratic” opposition from Paris and Istanbul have decided to boycott rather than lose.

Ten years ago, one did not talk politics in cafes but only at home and only with people you knew. Today, everyone is talking about politics everywhere in government-controlled areas and never in areas controlled by armed opposition groups.

Where is the dictatorship? Where is the democracy?

Class reactions

The war is also a class conflict. The rich, who have assets abroad, left when Damascus was attacked. They loved their country, but especially wished to protect their lives and property.

The bourgeois were terrified. They paid “revolutionary” taxes when insurgents demanded, and asserted state support when the army questioned them. Worried, they awaited the departure of President Assad which Al-Jazeera announced as imminent. They only lost their anxiety when the United States abandoned plans to bomb the country. Today, they think only of redeeming themselves by supporting the associations of families of martyrs.

The little people knew from the beginning where it was at. There were those who saw the war as a means to take revenge for their economic conditions, and those who wanted to defend freedom of conscience and free public services.

The United States and Israel, France and the United Kingdom, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia who waged the secret war and who lost, did not anticipate this result: to survive, Syria has liberated its energies and regained its freedom.

If the Geneva Conference 2 stands, the great powers will decide nothing there. The next government will not be the result of a diplomatic arrangement. The only power of the conference will be to propose a solution which can be applied only after it has been ratified by a popular referendum.

This war has bled Syria, half of its cities and infrastructure were destroyed to satisfy the appetites and fantasies of Western and Gulf powers. If something positive emerges from Geneva 2, it will be the financing of the reconstruction by those who have made the country suffer.

Source: Voltaire Network (article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License)

Related: A Short History of the War on Syria (2006-2014) | The New Alliances in Syria

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A Manifesto for the Truth by Edward Snowden

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Keld Bach

Image by The Guardian

This open letter was written by Edward Snowden on November 1, 2013 in Moscow and sent to Der Spiegel staff over an encrypted channel.

In a very short time, the world has learned much about unaccountable secret agencies and about sometimes illegal surveillance programs. Sometimes the agencies even deliberately try to hide their surveillance of high officials or the public. While the NSA and GCHQ seem to be the worst offenders – this is what the currently available documents suggest – we must not forget that mass surveillance is a global problem in need of global solutions.

Such programs are not only a threat to privacy, they also threaten freedom of speech and open societies. The existence of spy technology should not determine policy. We have a moral duty to ensure that our laws and values limit monitoring programs and protect human rights.

Society can only understand and control these problems through an open, respectful and informed debate. At first, some governments feeling embarrassed by the revelations of mass surveillance initiated an unprecedented campaign of persecution to supress this debate. They intimidated journalists and criminalized publishing the truth. At this point, the public was not yet able to evaluate the benefits of the revelations. They relied on their governments to decide correctly.

Today we know that this was a mistake and that such action does not serve the public interest. The debate which they wanted to prevent will now take place in countries around the world. And instead of doing harm, the societal benefits of this new public knowledge is now clear, since reforms are now proposed in the form of increased oversight and new legislation.

Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.

Source: Antiwar.com

Related: Snowden, Assange, Manning, Vanunu – the True Heroes of Our Time

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US Promises to Consult with Israel on ANY Iran Deal

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Keld Bach

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman (screen capture: Channel 10)

The US will inform and consult with Israel about any nuclear deal world powers arrive at with Iran before it is carried out, because the Jewish state’s security is paramount, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 on Sunday.

“Whatever agreement we reach Israel will know about, understand and consulted with us on, because Israel’s security is bedrock and there is no closer security relationship than what we have with each other,” she said.

Throughout the interview, however, the US’s chief nuclear negotiator refused to disclose details of the talks between the P5+1 and Tehran, which are set to reconvene later this week. Sherman noted that, unlike previous talks, the latest round of negotiations with Iran showed “for the first time a serious and substantive negotiation,” and Tehran’s silence about the particulars of the talks “speaks to the seriousness of the negotiations.”

Source: The Times of Israel

Israel Buys the US Congress: Sabotaging the US-Iran Peace Negotiations

by James Petras

The question of war or peace with Iran rests with the policies adopted by the White House and the US Congress. The peace overtures by newly elected Iranian President Rohani have resonated favorably around the world, except with Israel and its Zionist acolytes in North America and Europe. The first negotiating session proceeded without recrimination and resulted in an optimistic assessment by both sides. Precisely because of the initial favorable response among the participants, the Israeli government escalated its propaganda war against Iran. Its agents in the US Congress, the mass media and in the Executive branch moved to undermine the peace process. What is at stake is Israel’s capacity to wage proxy wars using the US military and its NATO allies against any government challenging Israeli military supremacy in the Middle East, its violent annexation of Palestinian territory and its ability to attack any adversary with impunity. To understand what is at stake in the current peace negotiations one must envision the consequences of failure: Under Israeli pressure, the US announced that its ‘military option’ could be activated – resulting in missile strikes and a bombing campaign against 76 million Iranians in order to destroy their government and economy. Teheran could retaliate against such aggression by targeting US military bases in the region and Gulf oil installations resulting in a global crisis. This is what Israel wants. We will begin by examining the context of Israel’s military supremacy in the Middle East. We will then proceed to analyze Israel’s incredible power over the US political process and how it shapes the negotiation process today, with special emphasis on Zionist power in the US Congress.

Full story at the: Voltaire Network

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