Civilisation and Anti-Civilisation

May 28, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Religion is the key of history – Lord Acton

Civilisation

The word ‘Civilisation’ comes from the Latin word ‘civitas’, or city, and so ‘civilised’ simply means to live in cities. This word ‘civitas’ gives us words like civilian, civic and civil. Civilisation means that people no longer live as nomadic hunter-gatherers, but are settled. Although therefore they have organised agriculture, they are not dependent on everyone working in agriculture as there are food surpluses, greater than for the numbers of human-beings working to grow food. This means that not all have to live off the land and many can do other things and live in cities. They can live off agricultural surpluses, traded in markets for other goods, created by technology, such as building materials, clothing, footwear and utensils, as well as being able to buy and sell services such as education and medicine. All civilisations have not only trade, but also a set of sacred or spiritual values which are at the heart of any civilisation, which is called Religion. Religion is at the core of the culture and creates sacred architecture (ziggurats, pyramids, temples, monasteries, cathedrals, mosques…), painting, sculpture, literature and sets the moral values which people live by.

Historians and philosophers of civilisation, such as Christopher Dawson, Arnold Toynbee or Samuel Huntingdon, have pointed out the particularity of Western civilisation. To quote from Christopher Dawson in his work ‘Religion and the Rise of Western Culture’, written nearly a century ago: ‘Why is it that Europe alone among the civilisations of the world has been continually shaken and transformed by an energy of spiritual unrest that refuses to be content with the unchanging law of social tradition which rules the oriental cultures? It is because the religious ideal has not been the worship of timeless and changeless perfection, but a spirit that strives to incorporate itself in humanity and to change the world’. This means that, unlike Chinese, Indian, Buddhist, Amazonian, Orthodox Christian, Muslim or any other civilisation, Western civilisation is unique, as it has continually sought to spread itself aggessively in a missionary way, imposing itself on, meddling in and taking over the rest of the world. In other words, it alone claims to be global. No wonder that today it openly calls itself ‘Globalism’.

Western Civilisation

The Western world has long pretentiously called itself ‘The Civilised World’, as if to say ‘there is no civilisation outside our civilisation’. This is why it condemns all other civilisations, both in the present and in the past, as ‘primitive’, ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’, and therefore arrogates to itself the right to annihilate them. This is why it uses euphemisms to define itself as, for example, ‘the international community’, when in fact it is anti-international, imposing a one size fits all ideology on all and proposing a world dictatorship subjected to its elite. ‘Western’ has come in its eyes to mean Universal. This is why, ironically, it calls itself ‘Judeo-Christian’. We shall return to the use of the word ‘Christian’ later. The claim to be ‘Judeo’ (a racial religion confessed by fewer than 0.2% of the world population, is particularly curious. However, we must understand that what it means by ‘Judeo’ (1) is actually Zionist, that is universalist. From here we understand the very accurate descriptive term for it of ‘Anglo-Zionist’, as used by The Saker. For it is the Anglo-Saxon (2) world or Anglosphere, initiated by the genocidal Cromwell (who, by the way, was idolised by the monetarist Thatcher), financed by Dutch Jews, and spread to the North American colonies, which is today the ideological centre of ‘the West’.

Western civilisation uses some very twisted definitions. For instance: For it to ‘civilise’ means to massacre the natives, so then it can asset-strip their country. The classic case is North America, but there are dozens of other examples around the world, from Bolivia to Guatemala and the Congo to Afghanistan; justifiers of colonisations claim, ‘yes, but we brought them the benefits of civilisation like the railways’. In fact, railways were built in countries like India so that minerals could be exploited and troops could be transported in order to quell popular wars of liberation against oppressive and exploitative foreign rule; then we have the promise that, in the name of freedom and democracy ‘we shall bomb them back into the Stone Age’ (attributed to US General Curtis ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay, speaking of Vietnam). As for the Viennese Hitler, that great spreader of Western civilisation, he opposed ‘Jewish and Asiatic’ Bolshevism and murdered 27 million in the ultimate Holocaust. He never knew that Asia is the source of advanced civilisations and religions, including Christianity, which was not European, for Christ was hardly some pale, blond-haired Nordic ‘Aryan’.

Western War

Western war has always consisted of highly organised violence, aided by the most aggressive high technology. Advances in military technology have all been initiated by the West. It used to be castles against arrows, the lethal crossbow against pikes, cannon against stone walls, the musket against bows, the Maxim gun, invented by the Anglo-American ‘Sir’ Hiram Maxim (3) against spear-throwing Africans, then it was poison gas (as used by Hitler, that is Churchill (sorry for the Bushism, ‘anyway’) against the Kurds), then Agent Orange, cluster bombs and uranium-tipped shells against rifles. To illustrate this, let us think about how those used to the way that such technology is exploited criticise the special operation (not war) in the Ukraine (4). They claim that the progress of the Russian operation, carried out by relatively small numbers of liberation forces from Donetsk and Lugansk and of Confederate Russian troops, is ‘too slow’.

Here they misunderstand how the Allied/Confederate forces use their military technology. It is quite unlike the US and its Union NATO vassals. The latter carpet bomb, they cause ‘collateral damage’ (the NATO euphemism for the mass murder of innocent victims) and are hugely destructive, as though war was all a special effects show, a spectacle for entertainment as in Hollywood films, most of which portray great destruction. This is why nearly 20 years ago the American Rumsfeld spoke of the US destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iraq as ‘shock and awe’, which is just another euphemism – Hitler would have called it ‘Blitzkrieg’. Yes, of course, Russian civilisation conducts military operations ‘slowly’ (5): it is not a US-style special effects operation, it is meant to avoid civilian and military casualties. You cannot translate ‘collateral damage’ into Russian, you can only paraphrase it.

Western Religion

Western religion has a similar story to tell. As we have said, every civilisation has a set of sacred values. The Western too and though it calls its religion ‘Christianity’, it is not. For instance, it insists on calling the Crusaders and Teutonic Knights ‘Christians’. But just because you are a bloodthirsty barbarian who commits genocide with a cross on your uniform, that does not make you a Christian. Just as Nazis wore a belt with ‘Gott mit uns’ (‘God with us’) stamped on it, that did not make them Christian either. And when the Nazis put crosses on their tanks and dive-bombers, it did not make them Christian either (though the crosses did take in some naïve Western Ukrainians in 1941). And just because God ‘told’ George Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, that did not make him or his forces Christian. Frankly, the Western use of the word Christian is blasphemous to Orthodox Christians and the more accurate use of words like ‘Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ is insulting to those who are of those religions.

It is notable that when Western colonisation took its so-called ‘Christianity’ to its colonies, it did not ‘sell’ in Asia, where they have a more sophisticated sense of religion, whether, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. It sold or rather was forced down throats at swordpoint, and then only in specific forms, only to animists in Latin America, Africa and the Philippines. Western religion is a State-organised and manipulated affair, the ‘opium of the people’ (6), more exactly, something, together with football, to keep the toiling masses under control. Even in Western places of worship, people file in under control and are seated in carefully controlled rows like sheeple. Western religion is a subversion of faith, for it is manipulated by Western States into whatever they want it to be. For example, sodomy was once considered outrageous by Western religion; today it is officially approved. After all, the State has spoken. Indeed, today Western religion is secularism, the sense of the sacred is gone, and whatever the politically correct elite has decided is their religion, regardless of whether you still believe in the ‘old superstition’ that God exists. In other words, contemporary Western religion is Anti-Religion.

Anti-Civilisation

This brings us to consider some sort of definition of today’s Western Civilisation. If its Unsacred Religion is Secularism, an Anti-Religion, then surely its Civilisation must be an Anti-Civilisation? The record of ‘Western Civilisation’ does tend to confirm that. The current events in the Ukraine, where the Western elite is intent on destroying as many Ukrainians as possible, both soldiers as well as civilians used as human shields, stationing troops inside hospitals and schools, creating a massive refugee crisis, indebting the country for ever, possibly creating a famine there and in other areas of the world, possibly provoking violent riots and revolts among the impoverished peoples of Western Europe and North America, would suggest that whatever Western Civilisation once was, it is no more.

Notes:

1. Another Western misuse, or rather abuse, is the term ‘Anti-Semitic’. It makes no sense, since the Arab peoples, including the Palestinians, who are dispossessed and oppressed in the Gaza Strip concentration camp and elsewhere, by Jews, are Semites. Anti-Jewish is the correct term.

2. We use the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ not in its incorrect academic sense of Early English/Old English/pre-Norman, but in its modern sense of Anglo-American, as in the term WASP, ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestant’.

3. In 1882 in Vienna an American had told Maxim: ‘If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others’ throats with greater facility’.

4. The 19th century Hapsburg usage of the word ‘Ukraine’, meaning simply ‘borderlands’ in Slavonic languages, that is, in this case the area on the eastern borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is absurd when used for areas far from those borders.

5. Even so, in only some ninety days, of the remaining 24 provinces of the Ukraine (the 25th, the Crimea was returned in 2014), five of the richest Ukrainian provinces under Kiev regime oppression have either completely or else in large part been liberated. These are: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhe and Kharkov. If Allied forces wish to take all of the Eastern Ukraine/Novorossiya, there remain only the three provinces of Dnipropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa. Together these eight heavily-populated provinces have about half of the population of the Ukraine, some 20 million people. Of the other two-thirds of the country, presumably the nine provinces of Central Ukraine will remain as part of the real Ukraine, a future, demilitarised Russian Protectorate, leaving the seven provinces of Western Ukraine to be demilitarised and shared out between Poland, which could perhaps receive five of them, and the other two perhaps shared out between Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. See:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=eM4VvHKW&id=D41BB09993EA43F02FD3617266E48C1FA7851C1C&thid=OIP.eM4VvHKWoEFurXt6XstsPAHaEU&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.78ce15bc7296a0416ead7b7a5ecb6c3c%3Frik%3DHByFpx%252bM5GZyYQ%26riu%3Dhttp%253a%252f%252fwww.globalsecurity.org%252fmilitary%252fworld%252fukraine%252fimages%252fmap-ukraine-regions.jpg%26ehk%3DAaAXuTdVqechE9%252fzD9%252fJk23wmB9q0jbo8y7c9iQzjQc%253d%26risl%3D%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0&exph=466&expw=800&q=ukrainian+provinces&simid=608019201669861769&form=IRPRST&ck=EDE32962B9810A9A5BA8D82FA9811707&selectedindex=7&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&vt=0&sim=11

Little wonder that even the failed diplomat Kissinger is calling for the Ukraine to meet at least some of Russia’s demands. Clearly, all of them will have to be met, but at least one 98-year old pensioner can show the beginnings of pragmatism. He shows that some in the West realise that they have lost.

6. Let us not, however, forget the famous saying that Marxism is ‘the opium of the intellectuals’.

Iran: Socialism’s ignored success story

May 23, 2017

by Ramin MazaheriIran: Socialism’s ignored success story

Iran just completed their presidential election, but this article will not discuss the candidates, the result or the political consequences.

I work for Iran’s Press TV, which essentially makes me a civil servant, and I think it is correct for me to not reveal who I voted for in order to preserve my independence within the government. I’m quite happy to work for “the people” instead of “a person” – as in private media – and I will support which ever candidate the people choose.

Why will I support Iran’s government, whoever is in charge? Truly, it is not for my paycheck.

I support Iran because I support socialism where ever I can find it, and Iran has socialism in abundance.

Iranian Socialism has been so successful at redistributing wealth to the average person; has safeguarded the nation’s security despite being ringed by US military bases and repeated threats; has grown the economy despite an international blockade; has produced a foreign policy motivated on political principles; and has fought against the divisive identity politics which undermine human solidarity.

I have actually seen Iran over the decades, unlike 99% of the journalists who claim to understand Iran, so you can’t dissuade me.

And I’m not even going to try to persuade you. This is not that article, either.

This article is to lay out for left-wing readers and supporters of socialism what should be crystal clear: Iran is a socialist nation. Even more than that: Iran is a socialist success story.

Iran, like all nations, has had its unique developmental history; of course we have been reading Marx just as long as anyone else, as well.

But the most convincing and simplest way I can put it to non-Iranians is this: Europe came to socialism through industrialization, theory and war, but Iran came to socialism through its religious and moral beliefs. The ends are the same, and that is all that should matter to anyone who is truly trying to promote socialism for the benefits it brings to the average person.

The problem is not us, it is you

I repeat: The problem is not us, it is you…when it comes to looking at Iran’s contributions to socialism.

I believe that around 99% of Westerners have no idea at all what Iran is really like. Unfortunately, this total ignorance about Iran and the Muslim world is the historical norm in the West.

The greatest contribution of Middle East scholar Edward Said was that his book, “Orientalism”, definitively proved through historical scholarship that the West has never, ever, ever been favorable towards the Muslim world.

Not in the 8th century, when Muslims were occupiers of the Iberian Peninsula, not in the following centuries when Islam was an ideological competitor to Christianity; not in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire occupied the Balkans; not in the 19th century, when the Europeans occupied the Middle East & North Africa; not in 1916, when they redrew the borders for the West’s benefit; not in 1945, when they bombed countries like Syria which had fought on their side against the Germans and the Italians; not in the 1960s, when their reaction to independence was neo-colonialism; not in 1979, when they created the forerunner of the Taliban; not during 2 wars in Iraq, a war in Syria today, etc. Said’s point was: Never has the West viewed or treated the Muslim world as equals, much less intellectual equals.

Given this history, why should us Iranians expect the reality of our high-achieving modernity to be accepted and admired?

LOL, believe me, I am over it! I write this to enlighten you, not me! I humbly hope that it works.

I will address the elephant in the room, and quickly: Yes, I assume that a large part of this prejudice is religious. Some Christians cannot accept that Islam promotes the most recent prophet of the monotheism which they both share.

Such religious prejudices are not my problem, and they do not blind my analysis of 2017 Iran.

No socialist believes in a “clash of civilizations” or “religious war”, anyway.

My point is not to criticize Europe for a lack of brotherhood with their fellow Abrahamic religion: My point is to criticize them in 2017 because most Westerners believe that that even the most leftist Iranian cannot even qualify as merely a “conservative social democrat”!

Can there never be a Muslim “democrat” or an Iranian “republican”?

The proof of this bias is the decades of Western support for the oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian Revolution and any Muslim attempt to allow their religion into their politics. This is even though Christian Democratic parties governed Europe for decades after WWII, and it is absurd to think that the Christian dogma is not upheld and promoted in European politics today.

So, if Iranians cannot even be allowed to fulfill 19th century notions, why would the West accept that 2017 Iran can be even more truly leftist than the merely centrist ideology of European social democracy?

Of course, the average European cannot accept this, and this is why Western Socialists are aghast at my idea that Iran is an “ignored Socialist success story”.

The radical left of European Socialism, which seeks to destroy organized religion, is especially aghast, but they are a tiny minority and on the way out, thankfully. They do not realize that they have already been drastically tempered, if not ousted, in the still-Socialist countries they purportedly admire: Cuba is full of Santeria and Pope pictures, yin-yangy Confucianism is being promoted in China, etc.

But these Western radicals are a minority who simply cannot accept that spirituality cannot be rubbed out, largely because they see it as a choice or a social conditioning instead of a part of many people’s intrinsic nature (if not theirs). A modern Socialist must accept that this fight has already been fought and decided. The capitalists certainly advance as we chase our tails….

Even if leftist detractors can get past religion, they immediately will talk about Iran’s human rights faults.

I respond: Yawn yawn yawn African-Americans fill US jails; Muslims fill France’s jails; this is the centenary of the British-orchestrated Persian Famine, which killed 8-10 million people and actually made Iran the biggest victim of WWI, that is just one Western/capitalist inspired famine/death/human rights violation yawn yawn yawn.

I am not here to say Iran is perfect – only God can be – I am saying that Iran is absolutely no worse than the West. It is an undeniable fact that the current Islamic Republic of Iran has far less blood on its hands than most – and Iran has not invaded a country in 300 years!

Religion, human rights – these are all classic diversions from the facts presented against socialist societies, and Iran certainly is one.

Iran checks all the boxes as a Socialist nation, and as Revolutionary Socialists

What are the key components of socialism? Let’s clarify our terms.

The first is leadership by an avant-garde party committed to defending the revolution: Iran certainly has this, and it crosses over Principlist/Reformist party lines.

The second is central planning of the economy: Whoever had won, they would be largely implementing the 6th Five-year plan (2016-2021). And there is also the “Resistance Economy” approach promoted by many, which is certainly anti-globalization.

The third is control over the media: This is mixed – I would say Iran does not really have this in the traditionally Socialist sense. Cuba has no private media, for example, while Iran has dozens of private newspapers and innumerable TV satellites. But Iran does have limitations, so let’s check this box.

The fourth is support for foreign liberation movements: When the history of Palestinian liberation is finally written, just as a now-free South Africa thanks Cuba for sending troops to Angola, will not Palestinians do the same for Iran’s decades of support? The same with Lebanon and now Syria, correct?

The fifth is democratically devolving as much democracy as possible in order to empower the average person: There is no doubt that Iran is the most vibrant democracy in the Middle East, and by a huge margin. The difference between Iran’s social-democratic procedures and guarantees in 2017 when compared with 1978 is obviously laughable. I write this from Paris, a nation in an 18-month state of emergency with no end in sight….

If your country has these five crucial components: Congratulations! You are in a socialist country!

A little bit more on each for the naysayers….

An Avant-Garde Party:

Iran is a one-party system – that party defends the 1979 Revolution. China is a one-party system – promoting Chinese communism. Many would say that the US is a one-party system – promoting imperialist capitalism.

The difference between Iran & China and the US is that in the former their one-party systems are formalized, explicit and well-known; in the US it is informal, but just as strong, and maybe even stronger.

I don’t think this needs much further explanation but, for example, you cannot propose to end the Iranian Revolution and run for office. In France a presidential candidate in their recent election (Jean-Luc Melenchon) won 20% of the first-round vote by proposing to abolish France’s current 5th Republic.

Like all socialist countries, Iran is criticized for not having democracy but they do: it is simply within their own particular structure. Just as in the USSR, there was lively debate about how to advance their own system – should we following the right-wing model of socialism of Bukharin/Khrushchev or the left-wing model socialism of Lenin/Trotsky? – but there was no debate about deviating from their chosen national system, i.e. communism. When they did allow such debates under Gorbachev, Soviet Socialism was almost immediately subverted by capitalist reactionaries and consigned to oblivion.

Again, please examine the repression of communism in the US, South Korea, Greece, Italy, Chile, etc. for historical examples of capitalist “one-party systems”, which are definitely NOT avant-garde and promoting socialism….

The idea that Iran has no avant-garde party but is some sort of totalitarian structure governed by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is only expressed by those who are supremely ignorant about Iran. For the second presidential election in a row Hassan Rouhani won despite not seeming to be Khamenei’s preferred candidate, after all.

Central Planning of the Economy:

I think I can illustrate Iran’s state of economic socialism with this anecdote: Back in 2013 all 8 presidential candidates were pushing for more privatization…not to promote capitalism, but because everything has already been nationalized for so long, LOL!

So Iran has already done the nationalizing, and maybe they need to do more? However, socialist countries have increasingly agreed that some revenue-producing businesses are needed to meet some of the basic needs of their people: North Korea has the Kaesong Industrial area, Cuba’s Port Mariel is giving some space to completely foreign-owned businesses, Vietnam and China have plenty of state-run capitalist enterprises, etc. The reality is that even producing things as simple as soap need some expertise, and very often only capitalist corporations can have that expertise.

That’s why the Iranian government went on a spending spree in 2016, but it was decidedly not your typical capitalism. (I do not want to appear to credit only the Rouhani administration because economic policy is produced by the entire government in 5-year development plans, as already noted.)

Iran was feted like a king in places like France and Italy because they were prepared to spend dozens of billions of euros. But what pleased me was how Iran spent: They demanded equal partnerships, joint ventures and technology transfers.

These are the ways in which foreign investment can be mutually beneficial and not exploitative – this was good for France too. I am not a dogmatic person who is absolutely against all capitalism, but I am against all exploitative capitalism.

My point is: It was a socialist spending spree, not a capitalist one. Iran did not just give money away; they did not waste money on vanity projects; this was not one billionaire dealing with another for their own benefit; they invested in Iran via long-term central planning, i.e. the socialist view of economic management.

This is not like France’s ruling “Socialist Party” recently selling off national industrial jewel Alstom to the United States’ General Electric: The French people got nothing for that. That was capitalism; that was globalization

Iran is not in favor of globalization – they are not even a member of the World Trade Organization, unlike 164 other countries. Some will say this is solely due to the opposition of the United States, but it is not: As many in Iran said during the election: membership in the WTO is against Iran’s principles…and these are socialist principles regarding the economy – there is nothing about the WTO in the Koran.

Control over the Media:

It’s true you can’t have Charlie Hebdo in Iran – hardly a major loss –but Iran is certainly no Cuba.

Iran’s refusal to crack down on TV satellites which permit reactionary, anti-revolutionary channels like BBC Persian and VOA Persian (UK and US government-funded respectively) appears to be a dangerous fire which Havana will not tolerate. This tolerance does give Iran “human rights” credibility with the West – well it doesn’t, but it should!

I would suggest that Iran is simply confident that foreign propaganda cannot overwhelm the obvious successes of the 1979 Revolution. I imagine that Cuba feels that they cannot take chances, being just 100 kilometers from the USA.

Of course, Cubans simply laugh at Western propaganda channels like the US government’s pathetic Radio Marti. Cubans are supremely intelligent politically and, after all, their education programs are decades older than Iran’s.

Iran, like Cuba and China, bans pornography. I note that such respect for sexuality and for women is a very basic tenet of Socialism. If your utopia includes unfettered access to porn I suggest that you are a libertarian, and not a socialist.

I remind again that the media glasnost implemented by Gorbachev was a major driver in the catastrophic implosion of the Russian Revolution. To privatize media means, necessarily, that you are giving those few people rich enough to actually start newspapers the chance to promote their obviously capitalist worldviews.

I, for one, am not about to cry over the lack of published capitalist, imperialist, sexist, racist, regressive anti-revolutionary nonsense, and neither are most Iranians. As sad as the Dutch may be about it – Iran is not Amsterdam!

Support of foreign liberation movements:

Some will say that Palestine is just a “distraction” from Iran’s own problems. Nonsense – this is a point of pride to all Iranians. This is a point of admiration for Iran from the entire Muslim world, just as it is a negative point for much of the Western world.

This is another way Iran is revolutionary Socialist country: they support oppressed countries on the basis of ideology. Perhaps Iran is not the “Mecca of Revolutionaries” which Algeria was in the 1960s, but let’s agree that the rate and scope of revolutionary movements worldwide are at a much lower level today, sadly.

Russia may support Syria, for example, but it appears more for Moscow’s self-interest and the idea of national sovereignty – which is the idea of national self-interest – rather than a moral-based ideology.

Call Iran the same as Russia – no insult there – but you cannot deny that Iran supports Palestine for reasons which are clearly to the detriment of their own success, i.e., they do it out of solidarity and morality. Were Iran to recognize Israel they would surely have the international dogs called off them…but Iran is a revolutionary Socialist society, as you are hopefully agreeing with by now.

Iran is also an anti-racist society, like all modern socialist societies.

They constitutionally protect minorities, with parliamentary seats for Armenians, Assyrians, Christians and Jews, despite their small numbers. Iran may not promote them, but their tolerance of local languages like Azeri and Kurdish far exceeds that of many minorities in Western Europe. Iran accommodates the 5th-largest number of refugees in the world, while French authorities put up gates and even ‘’anti-migrant boulders’’ to deny refugees even the barest shelter.

When it comes to religion they are extremely tolerant of ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism and all of the pre-Prophet Muhammad Abrahamic religions. Any religion after Prophet Muhammad? Well…it is an “Islamic” Revolution, after all.

This is perhaps a pedantic point but an important one on a verbal, Foucauldian level: Has there been any “revolution” in the world since WWI which was not “socialist”? I can’t think of any, because without a socialism component it cannot be a revolution – it can only be a continuation of the capitalist/feudalist/bourgeois status quo, or a military coup.

Empowering people:

The two fundamental tenets of socialism are redistribution of wealth and empowering the average person so that they can reach their full potential. Dismantling the social roadblocks thrown up by capitalism against the non-wealthy has clearly been a major goal of the Islamic Revolution, and I can quite easily prove it has been achieved with a tremendous amount of real-world success.

Since 1990 – when the West’s attack dog of Iraq was beaten off – no country’s Human Development Index has improved more than Iran’s, with the lone exception of South Korea.

Everyone should take notice, especially Socialists, as it is we anti-capitalists who prize human development – not economic development – above all.

That’s why I’m going to leave the Human Development Index as the only proof of success. For me, I have so many other econometrics, anecdotes and personal reflections to prove that Iran has succeeded in creating a new, better, modern society that to do so is quite boring.

Bottom line: It is obvious that I do not have to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Despite the tremendous amount of opposition, violence and propaganda, Iran has advanced the most in the past 3+ decades.

I say “the most” because, unlike South Korea, Iran has done this without 30,000 US troops currently on its soil; it was not preceded by decades of brutal dictatorship which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people (mainly leftists); and they did not collaborate with the Americans in the division of their nation which currently causes the greatest possibility of thermonuclear war.

Iran didn’t get to #1 as many others did: by capitalism and imperialism.

Iran’s recent election had a 73% voter turnout rate, ranking it #12 in the world. Unlike many of these other 11 countries, Iran does not compel citizens to vote. There is obviously tremendous support for the Iranian system from the Iranian people because…they are not blind to success, I would say!

The hardest thing to get people to do when it comes to socialism (or Iran) is to think realistically: Nobody can achieve “perfect” socialism. No country has 100% voter turnout. No country has zero human rights violations.

But for Iran you have add on another layer of misconception: Many of the “restrictions” in Iranian society predate 1979 by centuries: women were largely wearing the hejab before then; unmarried people, especially young women, also lived at home before 1979; alcohol could send you to prison then and now.

My point is: Iran is a culturally conservative nation, and it was like that long, long before 1979. You will have to simply trust me that Iranians don’t need a government to make them want to live in a society which appears conservative to modern Western standards.

Again, Iran is not Amsterdam, LOL! Maybe you can talk about the royal court in Shiraz in the 14thcentury as being a hotbed of drunken poetic reveling, but this is does not reflect the reality of life for the average person.

Only an Iranian will agree quickly with this statement and move on: Take away the 1979 Revolution and you would still have many of the same rules in place – they would just be enforced informally.

I will, lastly, put it this way: Take away the mullahs, and you still have to deal with my grandmother!!!!!

But to believe that the government has not empowered people since 1979…well, back then the average woman had 7 children, was illiterate 70% of the time, and the UN was not calling its health care system “excellent”.

Today, the birthrate is 1.7 children per woman, the overall literacy rate is 93% and the right-wing Washington DC-based think-tank the Brookings Institution runs dumbfounded articles with headlines like “Are Iranian Women Overeducated?”.

All in 30+ years…and have you thought it was capitalism that did it?!

Socialists who ignore Iran are not really Socialists at all

Do you still want to think that Iran is a country solely motivated by religious radicalism and not the ideals of socialism? Well, then I place you on the right and the left, and that is the point of this article.

It is bad enough that the right (capitalists, imperialists) not only co-opt Socialist ideas as their own (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, affirmative action programs, welfare, free schooling, free nurseries, etc.), but it is laughable when the left refuses to see the leftism in Iran because it does not fit with their preconceived, totally inflexible notions.

Any true Socialist/Communist should realize that attacking Iran is doing a capitalist’s job for them.

And how can someone who proclaims to be a “leftist” have the exact same interpretation of Iran as a right-wing capitalist does?

Again, it is simply laughable that Iran is “not” what it really is.

But this is what always happens: Chinese communism “is not really communism”…despite having 1-party rule, a state-run economy, control over the media, support for Vietnam and North Korea, and the 2nd highest HDI improvement from 1970-2010.

North Korean communism is just a “cult of personality”…despite expelling the Japanese, resisting the Americans, maintaining their independence, security and high-level of education. Cuba is just the Castro dictatorship and, again, not communism.

This is all anti-socialist propaganda – for capitalism there can never be ANY “Socialist success story”.

You remain adamant that you do not want to implement all the principles of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in your country?

Fine, it is your country to decide for as you like. Like I wrote, no worries – Iran hasn’t invaded in 300 years and it sure seems like our military is necessarily focused on defense.

But just because you disagree with some aspects of the 1979 Revolution I encourage you not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I remind you that I needed only one fact to prove that Iran has been improving at a rate which is essentially the best in the world over the last 3 decades – how far below Iran does your country rank, hmm?

I write this article because practically no media in the English language will ever pursue the links between Iran and socialism. We leftists know this not just anti-Iran bias, but a much larger anti-Socialist bias.

However, it is truly suicidal to ignore the left-wing successes in Iran because, even if you reject some of them, Iran has clearly found MANY modern solutions to our MANY modern problems: surely some of them can be of use to you, right? Is Iran ALL wrong?

Of course not – only Satan can be all wrong.

Therefore, I advise those fighting against capitalism and imperialism: Please afford Iran a bit more respect and interest than you would afford Satan!

And now I take our victory lap

I can only laugh at those who say Iran’s revolution has failed!

“Oh really? Who was the puppet that was installed? Who was the king that was restored? What is the name of the popular democratic revolution which replaced the peoples’ one of 1979, because I have not heard of it and I still see many familiar faces from 1979?”

The revolution has succeeded, and I am not sorry to say so.

Not that I care about your opinion – this is for YOUR own benefit: YOU will not win socialism, anti-capitalism or anti-imperialism in your country if you cannot learn from the successes of others.

But sadly, your inability to recognize socialism in Iran imperils all of us, because the people worldwide cannot win in the long term if even like-minded leftists cannot stick together to work against fascism, capitalism and racism.

But Iran, Cuba, China, etc. – we can win enough of these things for ourselves, at least.

We are doing just fine – steady as she goes, eh? All thanks to central planning, as the capitalists veer from crisis to crisis, with the 1% sucking up a greater percentage every time. Our election had huge participation rates, as usual, dwarfing the European cultures who probably want to claim they invented voting, along with everything else. Asia has heard it all before….

For the non-Western readers: I know that the vast majority of you already support Iran. I have talked with too many of you over my life – I know better. I also know that for us “field slaves” we have to give that impression in order to survive, sometimes, or at least to avoid annoyances.

Anyway, many Westerners appear to misunderstand Socialism completely: they don’t realize it is intrinsically a global idea; they think the Franco-German-Russian (European) variety is the only one. More Eurocentrism blinding them to reality, and necessarily limiting them….

But I look across the West and I see nothing but leftist failure after leftist failure: The fall of communism in Russia, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the obvious absorption of “left” parties into the dominant right-wing parties, the rise of austerity, the advance of globalization at the expense of national interests….

So the next time you look at Iran, you should applaud it as a rare socialist success. Iranians will certainly keep living their path of creating modern socialism, Inshallah.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.

The Globalization of War, America’s “Long War” against Humanity by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 23, 2017

The Globalization of War is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. 

In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world.   Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

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The following text is the Preface of  Michel Chossudovsky’s New Book entitled: The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity

The Book can be ordered directly from Global Research Publishers.  

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PREFACE

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Ukraine, Syria and Iraq are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy. We are not dealing with piecemeal military and intelligence operations. The July-August 2014 attack on Gaza by Israeli forces was undertaken in close consultation with the United States and NATO. The actions in Ukraine and their timing coincided with the onslaught of the attack on Gaza.

In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currencies markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies.

The United States and its allies have launched a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. As we go to press, U.S. and NATO forces have been deployed in Eastern Europe including Ukraine. U.S. military intervention under a humanitarian mandate is proceeding in sub-Saharan Africa. The U.S. and its allies are threatening China under President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.

In turn, military maneuvers are being conducted at Russia’s doorstep which could potentially lead to escalation.

The U.S. airstrikes initiated in September 2014 directed against Iraq and Syria under the pretext of going after the Islamic State are part of a scenario of military escalation extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to Central and South Asia.

The Western military alliance is in an advanced state of readiness. And so is Russia.

Russia is heralded as the “Aggressor”. U.S.-NATO military confrontation with Russia is contemplated.

Enabling legislation in the U.S. Senate under “The Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA) has “set the U.S. on a path towards direct military conflict with Russia in Ukraine.”

Any U.S.-Russian war is likely to quickly escalate into a nuclear war, since neither the U.S. nor Russia would be willing to admit defeat, both have many thousands of nuclear weapons ready for instant use, and both rely upon Counterforce military doctrine that tasks their military, in the event of war, to pre-emptively destroy the nuclear forces of the enemy.1

The Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) is the culmination of more than twenty years of U.S.-NATO war preparations, which consist in the military encirclement of both Russia and China:

From the moment the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran. It has brought 12 countries in central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the NATO alliance. U.S. military power is now directly on Russia’s borders.2

The Globalization of War by Global Research

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Worldwide Militarization

 From the outset of the post World War II period to the present, America’s s global military design has been one of world conquest. War and globalization are intricately related. Militarization supports powerful economic interests. America’s “Long War” is geared towards worldwide corporate expansion and the conquest of new economic frontiers.

The concept of the “Long War” is an integral part of U.S. military doctrine. Its ideological underpinnings are intended to camouflage the hegemonic project of World conquest. Its implementation relies on a global alliance of 28 NATO member states. In turn, the U.S. as well as NATO have established beyond the “Atlantic Region” a network of bilateral military alliances with “partner” countries directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. What we are dealing with is a formidable military force, deployed in all major regions of the World.

The “Long War” is based on the concept of “Self-Defense”. The United States and the Western World are threatened. “The Long War” constitutes “an epic struggle against adversaries bent on forming a unified Islamic world to supplant western dominance”. Underlying the “Long War”, according to a study by the Rand Corporation, the Western World must address “three potential threats”:

  • those related to the ideologies espoused by key adversaries in the conflict,
  • those related to the use of terrorism • those related to governance (i.e., its absence or presence, its quality, and the predisposition of specific governing bodies to the United States and its interests). … in order to ensure that this long war follows a favorable course, the United States will need to make a concerted effort across all three domains.3

Our objective in this book is to focus on various dimensions of America’s hegemonic wars, by providing both a historical overview as well as an understanding of America’s contemporary wars all of which, from a strategic viewpoint, are integrated.

Our analysis will focus on the dangers of nuclear war and the evolution of military doctrine in the post-9/11 era.

The central role of media propaganda as well as the failures of the anti-war movement will also be addressed. While the first chapter provides an overview, the subsequent chapters provide an insight into different dimensions of America’s long war.

Chapter I, Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity provides a post World War II historical overview of America’s wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. There is a continuum in U.S. Foreign Policy from the Truman Doctrine of the late 1940s to the neocons and neoliberals of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.

Part II focuses on the dangers of nuclear war and global nuclear radiation.

Chapter II, The Dangers of Nuclear War Conversations with Fidel Castro consists of Conversations with Fidel Castro and the author pertaining to the future of humanity and the post-Cold War process of militarization. This exchange took place in Havana in October 2010.

Chapter III focuses on the doctrine of Pre-emptive Nuclear and the Role of Israel in triggering a first strike use of nuclear weapons against Iran.

Chapter IV, The Threat of Nuclear War, North Korea or the United States? focuses on the persistent U.S. threat (since 1953) of using nuclear weapons against North Korea while labeling North Korea a threat to global security.

Chapter V, Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War. The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation examines the dangers of nuclear energy and its unspoken relationship to nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

Part III illustrates at a country level, the modus operandi of U.S. military and intelligence interventions, including regime change and the covert support of terrorist organizations. The country case studies (Yugoslavia, Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine) illustrate how individual nation states are destabilized as a result of U.S.-NATO covert operations and “humanitarian wars.” While the nature and circumstances of these countries are by no means similar, there is a common thread. The purpose is to provide a comparative understanding of country-level impacts of America’s long war against humanity. In all the countries analyzed, the intent has been to destroy, destabilize and impoverish sovereign countries.

Chapter VI, NATO’s War on Yugoslavia: Kosovo “Freedom Fighters” Financed by Organized Crime examines the role of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as an instrument of political destabilization. In Yugoslavia, the endgame of NATO’s intervention was to carve up a prosperous and successful “socialist market economy” into seven proxy states. The political and economic breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s served as a “role model” for subsequent “humanitarian military endeavors.”

Chapter VII, The U.S. led Coup d’Etat in Haiti against the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide was carried out in February 2004 with the support of Canada and France. In a bitter irony, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti James Foley, had previously played a central role as U.S. special envoy to Yugoslavia, channeling covert support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In Haiti, his responsibilities included U.S. aid to the Front pour la Libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN) (National Liberation and Reconstruction Front) largely integrated by former Tonton Macoute death squads. Closely coordinated with the process of regime change and military intervention, the IMF-World Bank macroeconomic reforms played a crucial role in destroying the national and impoverishing the Haitian population.

Chapter VIII, “Operation Libya” and the Battle for Oil: Redrawing the Map of Africa reveals the hidden agenda behind NATO’s 2011 humanitarian war on Libya, which consisted in acquiring control and ownership of Libya’s extensive oil reserves, that is, almost twice those of the United States of America. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) played a key role in the war on Libya in coordination with NATO.

Libya is the gateway to the Sahel and Central Africa. More generally, what is at stake is the redrawing of the map of Africa at the expense of France’s historical spheres of influence in West and Central Africa, namely a process of neocolonial re-division.

Chapter IX, The War on Iraq and Syria. Terrorism with a “Human Face”: The History of America’s Death Squads examines U.S.-NATO’s covert war on Syria, which consists in creating Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist entities. The U.S.-led covert war consists in recruiting, training and financing Islamist death squads which are used as the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance. The ultimate military objective is the destruction of both Iraq and Syria.

Chapter X, War and Natural Gas. The Israel Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields focuses on Israel’s attack directed against Gaza with a view to confiscating Gaza’s offshore gas reserves.

In Chapter XI, The U.S. has Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine, the structure of the U.S.-EU sponsored proxy regime in Kiev is examined. Key positions in government and the Armed Forces are in the hands of the two neo-Nazi parties. The Ukraine National Guard financed and trained by the West is largely integrated by Neo-Nazis Brown Shirts.

Part IV is entitled Breaking the American Inquisition. Reversing the Tide of War focuses on some of the contradictions of the antiwar movement.

Chapter XII, The “American Inquisition” and the “Global War on Terrorism” analyzes the central role of America’s “war on terrorism” doctrine in harnessing public support for a global war of conquest. The “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is a fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the multi-billion dollar U.S. intelligence community.

Today’s “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is a modern form of inquisition. It has all the essential ingredients of the French and Spanish Inquisitions. Going after “Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to “protect the Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.

In turn, “The Global War on Terrorism” is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

Chapter XII, “Manufactured Dissent”, Colored Revolutions and the Antiwar Movement in Crisis examines the role of corporate foundations in funding dissent and the inability of “progressive” civil society organizations and antiwar collectives to effectively confront the tide of media disinformation and war propaganda.

Michel Chossudovsky, Montreal, December 2014

COMMENDATIONS

The Globalization of War is an extraordinarily important book. It tags the origin of a long series of wars and conflicts, from the end of World War II to the present, as being direct products of U.S. Foreign Policy. Nothing happens by accident. U.S. provocateurs, usually agents of the CIA, incite one conflict after another in what Michael Chossudovsky labels America’s “Long War” against Humanity.

It comprises a war on two fronts. Those countries that can either be “bought,” or destabilized by a corrupt international financial system, are easy targets for effective conquest. In other cases insurrection, riots and wars are used to solicit American military intervention to fill the pockets of the military-industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned us about. The “End Game” is a New World Order embracing a dual economic and military dictatorship prepared to use atomic weapons and risk the future of the entire human species to achieve its ends.

Michel Chossudovsky is one of the few individuals I know who has analyzed the anatomy of the New World Order and recognized the threat to the entire human species that it is. The Globalization of War is a must read for anyone who prefers peace and hope to perpetual war, death, dislocation and despair. Hon. Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of National Defence

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the most realistic of all foreign policy commentators. He does not lie for money and position, and he does not sell his soul for influence. His book provides an honest appraisal of the extreme danger that hegemonic and demonic American neoconservatism poses to life on earth. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury, former Wall Street Journal editor,  former Wm. E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. 

At these moments when  the threat  of humanity’s  extinction  by the forces  unleashed by the  empire  and its vassals,  it is imperative that we  grasp  the nature of the beast  that threatens us with  its endless wars perpetrated in the name of the  highest levels of freedom.

This  vital work by an outstanding teacher  will remain an enduring testimony  of the author’s  all-embracing  humanism and scholarship that has always been inseparable  from his political activism  that spans  several decades.    It should be mandatory reading  for those seeking to understand , and thus  to contain and repel,   the  compulsive  onslaughts   of the hegemon’s  endless wars with its boundless bestialities and crimes against humanity..Dr Frederic F. Clairmonte, award winning author and political economist, distinguished (former) economic analyst at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The Globalization of War is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. It comes from the pen of one of the most insightful and incisive writers on global politics and the global economy alive today.

In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world. This Machiavellian, indeed, diabolical agenda not only centres around wars of conquest and subjugation but also seeks to dismember and destroy sovereign states. Russia, China and Iran are the primary targets of this drive for dominance and control. The underlying economic motives behind this drive are camouflaged in the guise of a civilized West fighting “barbaric Islamic terrorism” which as Chossudovsky exposes is sometimes sponsored and sustained by intelligent networks in the West.

Chossudovsky has aptly described this US helmed agenda for hegemony as a “long war against humanity.” It is an assertion that is backed by solid facts and detailed analysis in a brilliant work that should be read by all those who are concerned about the prevailing human condition. And that should include each and every citizen of planet earth. Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and former Professor of Global Studies at the Science University of Malaysia.

The media, political leaders, academics and the public at large often forget to put into historical perspective the spiral of daily news: we tend to concentrate on the latest events and crisis.

This may explain why the latest report of the US Senate on CIA’s rendition flights, detention places in black wholes and use of torture following 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq has been received as a surprise and shocking news. Such practices have been well known by the international community and depicted, among others, in a number of United Nations documents as well as in Dick Marty’s reports to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

This CIA’s behavior has a long history including assassination plots of political leaders, coups d’Etat, terrorist attacks and other subversive actions that merge into a recurrent pattern.

The Pax Americana like the Pax Romana has been built through wars and domination. General Smedley D. Butler, a hero and the most decorated soldier of the United States had already denounced the US policy in his book “War is a racket”, written over 70 years ago.

Michel Chossudovsky’s book “The Globalization of Warfare” has the great merit of putting into historical perspective the hegemonic project that has been carried out by the United States through various centuries for the control and exploitation of natural resources. Jose L. Gomez del PradoUN Independent Human Rights Expert, Former Member UN Group on the use of mercenaries

Michel Chossudovsky leads the world in communicating critical information that few or none know. He is a perfect guide for the East European to Russia war now in the making. John McMurty, professor emeritus, Guelph University, Fellow of the Royal Society of  Canada

Michel Chossudovsky ranks as the world’s leading expert on globalization – a hegemonic weapon that empowers financial elites and enslaves 99 percent of the world’s population. The Globalization of War exposes covert operations waging economic warfare designed to destabilize national economies deemed to be inimical to the USA and her NATO allies. The military dimension of western hegemonic strategies threatens to trigger a permanent global war. Chossudovsky’s book is diplomatic dynamite – and the fuse is burning rapidly. Michael Carmichael, President of the Planetary Movement 

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

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Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

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Twenty-six Things About the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) that Obama Does Not Want You to Know About

Global Research, May 19, 2017
Global Research 18 November 2014

This article was first published in November 2014.  

Recent developments confirm what is known and documented: Washington is behind the Islamic State (ISIS-ISIL-Daesh) and at the same time it is behind the moderate Al Qaeda terrorists, which the Trump administration is supporting as part of America’s alleged campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS). And they expect us to believe that they are committed to waging a campaign against terrorists.

The US is protecting both Al Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL-Daesh.

The US Airforce is acting on behalf of the terrorists, bombing Syrian government forces

The Islamic State (ISIS) was until 2014 called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Al Nusra is an al Qaeda affiliate which has committed countless atrocities in Syria.  It is now considered by the US administration as the “Moderate Opposition”, fighting against Syrian government forces. 

America’s “anti-terrorist campaign’ consists in supporting a so-called “moderate” Al  Qaeda entity (Al Nusra, now renamed)  with a view to going after another al Qaeda entity entitled The Islamic State, formerly designated as Al Qaeda in Iraq.  

“Al Qaeda is going after Al Qaeda”, and both wings of al Qaeda are supported covertly by US intelligence. 

The Liberation of Aleppo

While Aleppo has been liberated against the scourge of US-supported terrorism, most mainstream media are accusing Syrian government forces of committing atrocities against civilians, describing Aleppo as a humanitarian crisis. What they fail to mention is that for the last four years the Eastern party of  Aleppo has been occupied by Al Qaeda terrorists who are now upheld as “opposition” rebels. 

The terrorists are described as the victims of Syrian government aggression. From the very outset, the atrocities committed by the terrorists are casually blamed on Syrian government forces.  

Moreover, the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels responsible for countless atrocities are trained and financed by US-NATO and its allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel.  

Realities are turned upside down. The terrorists are portrayed as heroes and “freedom fighters”. 

The defeat of the terrorists is described as a crime against humanity. 

The Liberation of Aleppo is tagged as a humanitarian disaster. 

Those who recruited, trained and financed the terrorists are upheld by the “international community” as the guardians of World Peace. The latter include the heads of state and heads of government of the US, Britain, France and Turkey among others. It’s called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

  • Turkey provided a corridor for the terrorists into Northern Syria, they recruited and trained them in liaison with NATO.
  • Saudi Arabia and Qatar provided money, training and weapons to Al Qaeda.
  • The Obama administration ordered an air campaign directed against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh). 
  • What the US-led coalition was doing was PROTECTING ISIS-DAESH, while bombing the civilian infrastructure of Syria and Iraq as part of a so-called “counterterrorism operation”.
  • The Terrorists R Us…. 
  • The mainstream media applauds, The Lie becomes the Truth. 
  • It’s official: Obama’s counterterrorism campaign requires upholding Al Qaeda as a “moderate opposition.”

It’s all for a good cause: install a puppet Islamic State in Damascus (modelled on Afghanistan), spread “Democracy Made in America” throughout the Middle East, confiscate the regions extensive oil and gas reserves, transform countries into open territories…  

The diabolical plan of sending terrorists into Syria as the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance has failed. 

Aleppo has been liberated: a Sad Day for the War Hawks. 

The Truth is a powerful weapon.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 13, 2016, May 19, 2017

*      *      *

The US led war against  the Islamic State is a big lie.

Going after ” Islamic terrorists”, carrying out a worldwide pre-emptive war to “Protect the American Homeland” are used to justify a military agenda.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.  

The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.

The counter-terrorism mandate is a fiction. America is the Number One “State Sponsor of Terrorism” 

The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies. If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June. 

The  Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been  -from a military standpoint-  a rapid and expedient surgical operation  

In this article, we address 26 concepts which refute the big lie.  Portrayed by the media as a humanitarian undertaking, this large scale military operation directed against Syria and Iraq has resulted in countless civilian deaths.

It could not have been undertaken without the unbending support of  the Western media which has upheld Obama’s initiative as a counter-terrorism operation.  

THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF AL QAEDA

1. The US has supported Al Qaeda and its affiliated organizations for almost half a century since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war. 

2. CIA training camps were set up in Pakistan.  In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 jihadists from 43 Islamic countries were recruited by the CIA to fight in the Afghan jihad.

“Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the Jihad.”

3. Since the Reagan Administration, Washington has supported the Islamic terror network.

Ronald Reagan called the terrorists “freedom fighters”. The US supplied weapons to the Islamic brigades.  It was all for “a good cause”: fighting the Soviet Union and regime change, leading to the demise of a secular government in Afghanistan.

Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1985 (Reagan Archives)

4. Jihadist textbooks  were  published by the University of Nebraska. “. “The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings”

5. Osama bin Laden, America’s bogyman and founder of Al Qaeda was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihadist war against Afghanistan . He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.

Al Qaeda was not behind the 9/11 Attacks. September 11, 2001 provided a justification for waging a war against Afghanistan on the grounds that Afghanistan was a state sponsor of terrorism, supportive of Al Qaeda. The 9/11 attacks were instrumental in the formulation of the “Global War on Terrorism”.

THE ISLAMIC STATE (ISIL)

6. The Islamic State (ISIL) was originally an Al Qaeda affiliated entity created by US intelligence with the support of Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), Ri’āsat Al-Istikhbārāt Al-’Āmah ( رئاسة الاستخبارات العامة‎).

China unlikely to join Obama's anti-ISIS coalition: Report

7. The ISIL brigades were involved in the US-NATO supported insurgency in Syria directed against the government of  Bashar al Assad.

8.  NATO and the Turkish High Command were responsible for the recruitment of ISIL and Al Nusrah mercenaries from the outset of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011. According to Israeli intelligence sources, this initiative consisted in:

“a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011.)

9.There are Western Special Forces and Western intelligence operatives within the ranks of the ISIL. British Special Forces and MI6 have been involved in training jihadist rebels in Syria.

10. Western military specialists on contract to the Pentagon have trained the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons.

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

11. The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

12. Recruited by America’s ally, a large number of ISIL mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades. 

13. Israel  has supported  the ISIL and Al Nusrah brigades out of the Golan Heights.

Jihadist fighters have met Israeli IDF officers as well as Prime Minister Netanyahu. The IDF top brass tacitly acknowledges that “global jihad elements inside Syria” [ISIL and Al Nusrah] are supported by Israel. See  image below:

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon next to a wounded mercenary, Israeli military field hospital at the occupied Golan Heights’ border with Syria, 18 February 2014″

Inline images 1

SYRIA AND IRAQ

14 The ISIL are the foot soldiers  of the Western military alliance. Their unspoken mandate is to wreck havoc and destruction in Syria and Iraq, acting on behalf of their US sponsors.

15. US Senator John McCain has met up with jihadist terrorist leaders in Syria. (see picture right)

16  The Islamic State (IS) militia, which is currently the alleged target of  a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, continues to be supported covertly by the US.  Washington and its allies continue to provide military aid to the Islamic State.

17. US and allied bombings are not targeting the ISIL, they are bombing the economic infrastructure of Iraq and Syria including factories and oil refineries.

18.  The IS caliphate project is part of a longstanding US foreign policy agenda to carve up Iraq and Syria into separate territories: A Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, a Republic of Kurdistan.

THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM (GWOT)

19. “The Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) is presented as a “Clash of Civilizations”, a war between competing values and religions, when in reality it is an outright war of conquest, guided by strategic and economic objectives.

20 U.S. sponsored Al Qaeda terror brigades (covertly supported by Western intelligence) have been deployed in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Somalia and Yemen.

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America’s “War on Terrorism” By Mchel Chossudovsky

These various affiliated Al Qaeda entities in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa  and Asia are CIA sponsored “intelligence assets”. They are used by Washington to wreck havoc,  create internal conflicts and destabilize sovereign countries.

21 Boko Haram in Nigeria, Al Shabab in Somalia, the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) (supported by NATO in 2011),  Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM),  Jemaah Islamiah (JI) in Indonesia,  among other Al Qaeda affiliated groups are supported covertly by Western intelligence.

22. The US is also supporting Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of China. The underlying objective is to trigger political instability in Western China.

Chinese jihadists are reported to have received “terrorist training” from the Islamic State “in order to conduct attacks in China”. The declared objective of these Chinese-based jihadist entities (which serves the interests of the US)  is to establish a Islamic caliphate extending into Western China.  (Michel Chossudovsky, America’s War on Terrorism, Global Research, Montreal, 2005, Chapter 2).

HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS

23 The Terrorists R Us:  While the US is the unspoken architect of the Islamic State,  Obama’s holy mandate is to protect America against ISIL attacks.

24 The homegrown terrorist threat is a fabrication.  It is promoted by Western governments and the media with a view to repealing civil liberties and installing a police state. The terror attacks by alleged jihadists and terror warnings are invariably staged events. They are used to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

In turn, the arrests, trials and sentences of “Islamic terrorists” sustain the legitimacy of America’s Homeland Security State and law enforcement apparatus, which has become increasingly militarized.

The ultimate objective is to instill in the minds of millions of Americans that the enemy is real and the U.S. Administration will protect the lives of its citizens.

25.  The “counter-terrorism” campaign against the Islamic State has contributed to the demonization of Muslims, who in the eyes of Western public opinion are increasingly  associated with the jihadists.

26  Anybody who dares to question the validity of the “Global War on Terrorism” is branded a terrorist and subjected to the anti-terrorist laws.

The ultimate objective of the “Global War on Terrorism” is to subdue the citizens, totally depoliticize social life in America, prevent people from thinking and conceptualizing, from analyzing facts and challenging the legitimacy of the inquisitorial social order which rules America.

The Obama Administration has imposed a diabolical consensus with the support of its allies, not to mention the complicit role of the United Nations Security Council.  The Western media has embraced the consensus; it has described the Islamic State as an independent entity, an outside enemy which threatens the Western World.

The Big Lie has become the Truth. 

Say no to the “Big Lie”. Spread the message.

The truth is ultimately a powerful weapon.

Please help us continue. We rely on the support of our readers.

Consider donating to Global Research. 

For Peace and Truth in Media, Michel Chossudovsky

The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)

 

Foreword by the Saker: the four articles below, combined into one, are an exception to the normal rule which is that this blog doe not republish articles already published in the past.  In this case, at the request of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, I decided to make an exception due to the importance and interest of the topic: the origins of the Neocon movement.  I am particularly grateful to Paul and Elizabeth who have agreed to my request to remove the original copyright restrictions on this material for publication on the Saker blog.  The analysis they wrote offers a very valuable insight into the roots and history of the Neocon phenomenon.

The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)

By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

Part 1 – American Imperialism Leads the World into Dante’s Vision of Hell

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“The Gate of Hell” by Gustave Doré for Dante’s “Inferno.” (Wikimedia)

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Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. (Abandon all hope ye who enter here.)”
—Dante, “The Divine Comedy,” Inferno (Part 1), Canto 3, Line 9

Before the Tomahawk Missiles start flying between Moscow and New York, Americans had better educate themselves fast about the forces and the people who claim that Russia covered up a Syrian government gas attack on its own people. Proof no longer seems to matter in the rush to further transform the world into Dante’s vision of Hell. Accusations made by anonymous sources, spurious sources and outright frauds have become enough. Washington’s paranoia and confusion bear an uncanny resemblance to the final days of the Third Reich, when the leadership in Berlin became completely unglued. Tensions have been building since fall with accusations that Russian media interfered with our presidential election and is a growing threat to America’s national security. The latest WikiLeaks release strongly suggested that it was the CIA’s own contract hackers behind Hillary Clinton’s email leaks and not Russians. The U.S. has a long reputation of accusing others of things they didn’t do and planting fake news stories to back it up in order to provide a cause for war. The work of secret counter intelligence services is to misinform the public in order to shape opinion and that’s what this is. The current U.S. government campaign to slander Russia over anything and everything it does bears all the earmarks of a classic disinformation campaign but this time even crazier. Considering that Washington has put Russia, China and Iran on its anti-globalist hit-list from which no one is allowed to escape, drummed up charges against them shouldn’t come as a surprise. But accusing the Russians of undermining American democracy and interfering in an election is tantamount to an act of war and that simply is not going to wash. This time the United States is not demonizing an ideological enemy (USSR) or a religious one (al Qaeda, ISIS, Daesh etc.). It’s making this latest venture into the blackest of propaganda a race war, the way the Nazis made their invasion of Russia a race war in 1941 and that is not a war the United States can justify or win.

The level and shrillness of the latest disinformation campaign has been growing for some time. But the American public has lived in a culture of fake news (formerly known as propaganda) for so long many have grown to accept fake news as real news. George Orwell saw this coming and here it is. As a big supporter of U.S. military intervention in Cuba and avowed practitioner of “yellow journalism”, in 1897 William Randolph Hearst admonished the illustrator he’d sent to Cuba who’d found no war to illustrate; “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst eventually got his war and America’s experiment in imperialism was off and running.

Americans should know by now that their country’s wars are fertile ground for biased, one-sided, xenophobic, fake news and the United States has been in a permanent state of war since 1941. Although the targets have shifted over the years, the purpose of the propaganda hasn’t. Most cultures are coerced, cajoled or simply threatened into accepting known falsehoods demonizing their enemies during wartime but no matter how frequently repeated or cleverly told—no lie can hold if the war never ends. The legendary Cold Warrior, Time and Life Magazine’s Henry Luce considered his personal fight against Communism to be “a declaration of private war.” He’d even asked one of his executives whether or not the idea was probably “unlawful and probably mad?” Nonetheless, despite his doubts about his own sanity, Luce allowed the CIA to use his Time/Life as a cover for the agency’s operationsand to provide credentials to CIA personnel.

Luce was not alone in his service to the CIA’s propaganda wars. Recently declassified documentsreveal the CIA’s propaganda extended to all the mainstream media outlets. Dozens of the most respected journalists and opinion makers during the Cold War considered it a privilege to keep American public opinion from straying away from CIA control.

Now that the new Cold War has turned hot, we are led to believe that the Russians have breached this wall of not-so-truthful journalists and rattled the foundation of everything we are supposed to hold dear about the purity of the U.S. election process and “freedom of the press” in America.

Black propaganda is all about lying. Authoritarian governments lie regularly. Totalitarian governments do it so often nobody believes them. A government based on democratic principles like the United States is supposed to speak the truth, but when the U.S. government’s own documents reveal it has been lying over and over again for decades, the jig is up.

Empires have been down this road before and it doesn’t end well. Americans are now being told they should consider all Russian opinion as fake and ignore any information that challenges the mainstream media and U.S. government on what is truth and what is the lie. But for the first time in memory Americans have become aware that the people Secretary of State Colin Powell once called “the crazies”, have taken the country over the cliff.

The neoconservative hitmen and hit-ladies of Washington have a long list of targets that pass from generation to generation. Their influence on American government has been catastrophic yet it never seems to end. Senator J. William Fulbright identified their irrational system for making endless war in Vietnam 45 years ago in a New Yorker article titled Reflections in Thrall to Fear.

“The truly remarkable thing about this Cold War psychology is the totally illogical transfer of the burden of proof from those who make charges to those who question them… The Cold Warriors, instead of having to say how they knew that Vietnam was part of a plan for the Communization of the world, so manipulated the terms of the public discussion as to be able to demand that the skeptics prove that it was not. If the skeptics could not then the war must go on—to end it would be recklessly risking the national security.”

Fulbright realized that Washington’s resident crazies had turned the world inside out by concluding, “We come to the ultimate illogic: war is the course of prudence and sobriety until the case for peace is proved under impossible rules of evidence [or never]–or until the enemy surrenders. Rational men cannot deal with each other on this basis.” But these were not rational men and their need to further their irrational quest only increased with the loss of the Vietnam War.

Having long forgotten the lessons of Vietnam and after a tragic repeat in Iraq that the highly respected General William Odom considered “equivalent to the Germans at Stalingrad,” the crazies are at it again. With no one to stop them, they have kicked off an updated version of the Cold War against Russia as if nothing had changed since the last one ended in 1992. The original Cold War was immensely expensive to the United States and was conducted at the height of America’s military and financial power. The United States is no longer that country. Since it was supposedly about the ideological “threat” of Communism, Americans need to ask before it’s too late exactly what kind of threat does a Capitalist/Christian Russia pose to the leader of the “Free World” this time?

Muddying the waters in a way not seen since Senator Joe McCarthy and the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” signed into law without fanfare by Obama in December 2016 officially authorizes a government censorship bureaucracy comparable only to George Orwell’s fictional Ministry of Truth in his novel 1984. Referred to as “The Global Engagement Center,” the official purpose of the new bureaucracy will be to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” But the real purpose of this totally Orwellian Center will be to manage, eliminate or censor any dissenting views that challenge Washington’s newly manufactured version of the truth and to intimidate, harass or jail anyone who tries. Criminalizing dissent is nothing new in time of war, but after 16 years of ceaseless warfare in Afghanistan, a Stalingrad–like defeat in Iraq and with Henry Kissinger advising President Trump on foreign policy, the Global Engagement Center has already assumed the characteristics of a dangerous farce.

The brilliant American satirical songwriter of the 1950s and 60s Tom Lehrer once attributed his early retirement to Henry Kissinger, saying “Political satire became obsolete [in 1973] when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” Kissinger’s duplicitous attempts at securing an “honorable peace” in America’s war in Vietnam deserved at least ridicule. His long, drawn out negotiations extended the war for four years at the cost of 22,000 American lives and countless Vietnamese. According to University of California researcher Larry Berman, author of 2001’s No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam, the Paris peace accords negotiated by Kissinger were never even expected to work, but were only to serve as a justification for a brutal and permanent air war once they were violated. Berman writes, “Nixon recognized that winning the peace, like the war would be impossible to achieve, but he planned for indefinite stalemate by using the B 52s to prop up the government of South Vietnam until the end of his presidency… but Watergate derailed the plan.”

The Vietnam War had broken the eastern establishment’s hold over foreign policy long before Nixon and Kissinger’s entry onto the scene. Détente with the Soviet Union had come about during the Johnson administration in an effort to bring some order out of the chaos and Kissinger had carried it through Nixon and Ford. But while dampening one crisis, détente created an even worse one by breaking open the longstanding internal-deep-state-struggle for control of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. Vietnam represented more than just a strategic defeat; it represented a conceptual failure in the half-century battle to contain Soviet-style Communism. The Pentagon Papers revealed the extent of the U.S. government’s deceit and incompetence but rather than concede that defeat and chart a new course, its proponents fought back with a Machiavellian ideological campaign known as the experiment in competitive analysis or for short; Team B.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times in August 2004 in an article titled It’s Time to Bench “Team B”, Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985 came forward on what he knew to be the real tragedy represented by 9/11. “The reports of the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence missed the real problem facing the intelligence community, which is not organization or culture but something known as the “Team B” concept. And the real villains are the hard-liners who created the concept out of an unwillingness to accept the unbiased and balanced judgments of intelligence professionals.”

Part 2 – How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books

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An 1898 cartoon features newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst dressed as a cartoon character of the day, a satire of their papers’ role in drumming up U.S. public opinion for war by Leon Barritt (Wikimedia))https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PulitzerHearstWarYellowKids.jpg

Most Americans outside of Washington policy circles don’t know about Team B, where it came from or what it did, nor are they aware of its roots in the Fourth International, the Trotskyist branch of the Communist International. Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985 attributed the intelligence failure represented by 9/11 to Team B and had this to say about it in a 2004 article for the Los Angeles Times.

“The roots of the problem go back to May 6, 1976, when the director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush, created the first Team B… The concept of a “competitive analysis” of the data done by an alternative team had been opposed by William Colby, Bush’s predecessor as CIA director and a career professional… Although the Team B report contained little factual data it was enthusiastically received by conservative groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger. But the report turned out to be grossly inaccurate… Team B was right about one thing. The CIA estimate was indeed flawed. But it was flawed in the other direction.”

Korb went on to explain that a 1978 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence review concluded; “that the selection of Team B members had yielded a flawed composition of political views and biases. And a 1989 review concluded that the Soviet threat had been ‘substantially overestimated’ in the CIA’s annual intelligence estimates… Still, the failure of Team B in 1976 did not deter the hard-liners from challenging the CIA’s judgments for the next three decades.”

Now long forgotten, the origins of the Team B “problem” actually stretched back to the radical political views and biases of James Burnham, his association with the Communist Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and the creation of powerful eastern establishment ad hoc groups; the Committee on the Present Danger and the American Security Council. From the outset of the Cold War in the late 1940s an odd coalition of ex-Trotskyist radicals and right wing business associations had lobbied heavily for big military budgets, advanced weapons systems and aggressive action to confront Soviet Communism. Vietnam was intended to prove the brilliance of their theories, but as described by author Fred Kaplan, “Vietnam brought out the dark side of nearly everyone inside America’s national security machine. And it exposed something seamy and disturbing about the very enterprise of the defense intellectuals. It revealed that the concept of force underlying all their formulations and scenarios was an abstraction, practically useless as a guide to action.” (Wizards of Armageddon page. 336) Kaplan ends by writing “The disillusionment for some became nearly total.” Vietnam represented more than just a strategic defeat for America’s defense intellectuals; it represented a conceptual failure in the half-century battle to contain Soviet-style Communism but for Team B, that disillusionment represented the opportunity of a lifetime.

Trotskyist Intellectuals become The New York Intellectuals become Defense Intellectuals

Populated by an inbred class of former Trotskyist intellectuals, the Team B approach represented a radical transformation of America’s national security bureaucracy into a new kind of elitist cult. In the 1960s Robert McNamara’s numbers and statistics justified bad policy decisions, now personal agendas and ethnic grudges would turn American foreign policy into an ideological crusade. Today those in control of that crusade fight desperately to maintain their grip, but only by de-encrypting the evolution of this secret “double government” can anyone understand America’s unrelenting post-Vietnam drift into despotism over the last 40 years.

Rooted in what can only be described as cult thinking, the Team B experiment tore down what was left of the CIA’s pre-Vietnam professional objectivity by subjecting it to politicization. Earlier in the decade, the CIA’s Office of Strategic Research (OSR) had been pressured by Nixon and Kissinger to corrupt their analysis to justify increased defense spending but the Team B’s ideological focus and partisan makeup so exaggerated the threat, the process could never return to normal.

The campaign was driven by the Russophobic neoconservative cabal which included Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle and a handful of old anti-Soviet hardliners like Paul Nitze and General Danny Graham. It began with a 1974 article in the Wall Street Journal by the famed nuclear strategist and former Trotskyist Albert Wohlstetter decrying America’s supposed nuclear vulnerability. It ended 2 years later with a ritualistic bloodletting at the CIA, signaling that ideology and not fact-based analysis had gained an exclusive hold on America’s bureaucracy.

The ideology referred to as Neoconservatism can claim many godfathers if not godmothers. Roberta Wohlstetter’s reputation as one of RAND’s preeminent Cold Warriors was equal to her husband’s. The couple’s infamous parties at their Santa Monica home acted as a kind of initiation rite for the rising class of “defense intellectual”. But the title of founding-father might best be applied to James Burnham. A convert from Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky’s inner circle, Burnham’s 1941, The Managerial Revolution and 1943’s The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom championed the anti-democratic takeover then occurring in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy while in1945’s Lenin’s Heir he switched his admiration, if only tongue in cheek, from Trotsky to Stalin.

George Orwell criticized Burnham’s cynical elitist vision in his 1946 essay Second Thoughts on James Burnham, writing “What Burnham is mainly concerned to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic society has never existed and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud… Power can sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never without fraud.”

Orwell is said to have modelled his novel 1984 on Burnham’s vision of the coming totalitarian state which he described as “a new kind of society, neither capitalist nor Socialist, and probably based upon slavery.”

As a Princeton and Oxford educated English scholar (one of his professor’s at Balliol College was J.R.R Tolkien) Burnham landed a position as a writer and an instructor in the philosophy department at New York University just in time for the 1929 Wall Street crash. Although initially uninterested in politics and hostile to Marxism, by 1931Burnham had become radicalized by the Great Depression and alongside fellow NYU philosophy instructor Sidney Hook, drawn to Marxism.

Burnham found Trotsky’s use of “dialectical materialism” to explain the interplay between the human and the historical forces in his History of the Russian Revolution to be brilliant. His subsequent review of Trotsky’s book would bring the two men together and begin for Burnham a six year odyssey through America’s Communist left that would in this strange saga, ultimately transform him into the agent of its destruction.

As founder of the Red Army and a firebrand Marxist, Trotsky had dedicated his life to the spread of a worldwide Communist revolution. Stalin opposed Trotsky’s views as too ambitious and the power struggle that followed Lenin’s death splintered the party. By their very nature the Trotskyists were expert at infighting, infiltration and disruption. Burnham reveled in his role as a Trotskyist intellectual and the endless debates over the fundamental principle of Communism (dialectical materialism) behind Trotsky’s crusade. The Communist Manifesto approved the tactic of subverting larger and more populist political parties (entrism) and following Trotsky’s expulsion from the Communist party in November 1927, his followers exploited it. The most well-known example of entrism was the so called “French Turn” when in 1934 the French Trotskyists entered the much larger French Socialist Party the SFIO with the intention of winning over the more militant elements to their side.

That same year the American followers of Trotsky in the Communist League of America, the CLA did a French turn on the American Workers Party, the AWP in a move that elevated the AWP’s James Burnham into the role of a Trotsky lieutenant and chief advisor.

Burnham liked the toughness of the Bolsheviks and despised the weakness of the liberals. According to his biographer Daniel Kelly, “He took great pride in what he saw as its hard-headed view of the world in contrast to philosophies rooted in ‘dreams and illusions.’” He also delighted in the tactics of infiltrating and subverting other leftist parties and in 1935 “fought tirelessly for the French turn” of another and far larger Socialist Party the SP some twenty thousand strong. The Trotskyists intended “to capture its left wing and its youth division, the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL),” Kelly writes “and take the converts with them when they left.”

Burnham remained a “Trotskyist Intellectual” from 1934 until 1940. But although he labored six years for the party, it was said of him that he was never of the party and as the new decade began he renounced both Trotsky and “the ‘philosophy of Marxism’ dialectical materialism” altogether. He summed up his feelings in a letter of resignation on May 21, 1940. “Of the most important beliefs, which have been associated with the Marxist Movement, whether in its reformist, Leninist, Stalinist or Trotskyist variants, there is virtually none which I accept in its traditional form. I regard these beliefs as either false or obsolete or meaningless; or in a few cases, as at best true only in a form so restricted and modified as no longer properly to be called Marxist.”

In 1976 Burnham wrote to a legendary secret agent whom biographer Kelly referred to as “the British political analyst Brian Crozier” that he had never swallowed dialectical materialism or the ideology of Marxism but was merely being pragmatic given the rise of Hitler and the Depression.

But given the influential role Burnham would come to play in creating the new revolutionary class of neoconservatives, and their central role in using Trotsky’s tactics to lobby against any relationship with the Soviet Union, it’s hard to believe Burnham’s involvement with Trotsky’s Fourth International was only an intellectual exercise in pragmatism

Part 3 – How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for ‘Unconventional Warfare’

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“The Evil Spirits of the Modern Day Press”. Puck US magazine 1888 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puck112188c.jpg ) [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

The odd, psychologically conflicted and politically divisive ideology referred to as Neoconservatism can claim many godfathers. Irving Kristol, father of William Kristol, Albert Wohlstetter, Daniel Bell, Norman Podhoretz and Sidney Hook come to mind and there are many others. But in both theory and its practice the title of founding-father of the neoconservative agenda of endless warfare that rules the thinking of America’s defense and foreign policies today might best be applied to James Burnham.

His writings in the 1930s provided a refined Oxford intellectual’s gloss to the Socialist Workers party and as a close advisor to Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International he learned the tactics and strategies of infiltration and political subversion first hand. Burnham reveled in his role as a “Trotskyist intellectual” pulling dirty tricks on his political foes in competing Marxist movements by turning their loyalties and looting their best talent.

Burnham renounced his allegiance to Trotsky and Marxism in all its forms in1940 but he would take their tactics and strategies for infiltration and subversion with him and would turn their method of dialectical materialism against them. His 1941book The Managerial Revolution would bring him fame and fortune and establish him as an astute, if not exactly accurate political prophet chronicling the rise of a new class of technocratic elite. His next book The Machiavellians would confirm his movement away from Marxist idealism to a very cynical and often cruel realism with his belief in the inevitable failure of democracy and the rise of the oligarch. In 1943 he would put it all to use in a memo for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services the OSS in which his Trotskyist anti-Stalinism would find its way into the agency’s thinking. And in his 1947 book The Struggle for the World, Burnham would expand his confrontational/adversarial dialectic toward the Soviet Union into a permanent, apocalyptic policy of endless war. By 1947 James Burnham’s transformation from Communist radical to New World Order American conservative was complete. His Struggle for the World had done a French Turn on Trotsky’s permanent Communist revolution and turned it into a permanent battle plan for a global American empire. All that was needed to complete Burnham’s dialectic was a permanent enemy and that would require a sophisticated psychological campaign to keep the hatred of Russia alive for generations.

The rise of the Machiavellians

In 1939 Sidney Hook, Burnham’s colleague at NYU and fellow Marxist philosopher had helped to found an anti-Stalinist Committee for Cultural Freedom as part of a campaign against Moscow. During the war Hook too had abandoned Marxism and like Burnham somehow found himself in the warm embrace of the right-wing of America’s intelligence community during and after World War II. Hook was viewed by the Communist Party as a traitor and “counter-revolutionary reptile” for his activities and by 1942 was informing on his fellow comrades to the FBI.

Selling impoverished and dispossessed European elites on the virtues of American culture was essential to building America’s empire after the war and Burnham’s early writings proved the inspiration from which a new counter-culture of “Freedom” would be built. As veterans of internecine Trotskyist warfare both Burnham and Hook were practiced at the arts of infiltration and subversion and with Burnham’s The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom as their blueprint they set out to color anything the Soviets did or said with dark intent.

As Burnham articulated clearly in his Machiavellians, his version of Freedom meant anything but intellectual freedom or those freedoms defined by America’s Constitution. What it really meant was conformity and submission. Burnham’s Freedom only applied to those intellectuals (the Machiavellians) willing to tell people the hard truth about the unpopular political realities they faced. These were the realities that would usher in a brave new world of the managerial class who would set about denying Americans the very democracy they thought they already owned. As Orwell observed about Burnham’s Machiavellian beliefs in his 1946 Second Thoughts, “Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to use the masses…”

By 1949 the CIA was actively in the business of defrauding the masses by secretly supporting the so called non-Communist left and behaving as if it was just a spontaneous outgrowth of a free society. By turning the left to the service of its expanding empire the CIA was applying a French Turn of its own by picking the best and the brightest and the creation of the National Security State in 1947 institutionalized it. Assisted by Britain’s Information Research Department the IRD, the CIA recruited key former Soviet disinformation agents trained before the war who had managed non-Communist front groups for Moscow and put them to work. As Frances Stoner Saunders writes in her book, The Cultural Cold War, “these former propagandists for the Soviets were recycled, bleached of the stain of Communism, embraced by government strategists who saw in their conversion an irresistible opportunity to sabotage the Soviet propaganda machine which they had once oiled.”

By its own admission the CIA’s strategy of promoting the non-Communist left would become the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism for over the next two decades. But the no holds barred cultural war against Soviet Communism began in earnest in March 1949 when a group of 800 prominent literary and artistic figures gathered at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a Soviet sponsored “Cultural and Scientific” conference that would sue for peace. Both Sydney Hook and James Burnham were already actively involved in enlisting recruits to counter Moscow’s Communist Information Bureau’s (Cominform) efforts to influence Western Opinion. But the Waldorf conference gave them an opportunity for dirty tricks they could only have prayed for.

Demonstrators organized by a right-wing coalition of Catholic groups and the American legion heckled the guests as they arrived. Catholic nuns knelt in prayer for the souls of the Communist atheists in attendance. Gathered upstairs in a tenth floor bridal suite a gang of ex-Trotskyists and Communists led by Hook intercepted the conference’s mail, doctored official press releases and published pamphlets challenging speakers to admit their Communist past.

In the end the entire conference became a twisted theatre of the absurd and Hook and Burnham would use it to sell Frank Wisner at the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination on taking the show on the road.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom: By Hook or by Crook

Drawing on the untapped power of the Fourth International, the coming out party came on June 26, 1950 at the Titania Palace in occupied Berlin. Named for Hook’s 1939 concept for a cultural committee, The Congress for Cultural Freedom’s fourteen-point “Freedom Manifesto” was to identify the West with freedom. And since everything about the West was said to be free, free, free then it went without saying everything about the Soviet Union wasn’t.

Organized by Burnham and Hook, the American delegation represented a who’s who of America’s post war intellectuals. Tickets to Berlin were paid for by Wisner’s Office of Policy Coordination through front organizations as well as the Department of State which helped arrange travel, expenses and publicity. According to CIA Historian Michael Warner the conference’s sponsor’s considered it money well spent with one Defense Department representative calling it “unconventional warfare at its best.”

Burnham functioned as a critical connection between Wisner’s office and the intelligentsia moving from the extreme left to the extreme right with ease. Burnham found the Congress to be a place to inveigh not just against Communism but against the non-communist left as well and left many wondering whether his views weren’t as dangerous to liberal democracy as Communism. According to Frances Stoner Saunders, members of the British delegation found the rhetoric coming out of the Congress to be a deeply troubling sign of things to come. “Hugh Trevor-Roper was appalled by the provocative tone… ‘There was a speech by Franz Borkenau which was very violent and indeed almost hysterical. He spoke in German and I regret to say that as I listened and I heard the baying voices of approval from the huge audiences, I felt, well, these are the same people who seven years ago were probably baying in the same way to similar German denunciations of Communism coming from Dr. Goebbels in the Sports Palast. And I felt, well, what sort of people are we identifying with? That was the greatest shock to me. There was a moment during the Congress when I felt that we were being invited to summon up Beelzebub in order to defeat Stalin.’”

The Congress for Cultural Freedom didn’t need Beelzebub, it already had him in the form of Burnham, Hook and Wisner and by 1952 the party was just getting started. Burnham worked overtime for Wisner legitimizing the Congress as a platform for the Machiavellians alongside ex-Communists and even Nazis, including SS General Reinhard Gehlen and his German Army intelligence unit which had been brought into the CIA after the war, intact. E. Howard Hunt, Watergate “plumber” famous as a CIA dirty trickster remembered Burnham in his memoirs, “Burnham was a consultant to OPC on virtually every subject of interest to our organization… He had extensive contacts in Europe and, by virtue of his Trotskyite background, was something of an authority on domestic and foreign Communist parties and front organizations.”

In 1953 Burnham was called upon again by Wisner to reach beyond Communism to help overthrow the democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Teheran apparently because Wisner thought the plan needed “a touch of Machiavelli.” But Burnham’s greatest contribution as a Machiavellian was yet to come. His book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom would become the CIA’s manual for displacing Western culture with an alternative doctrine for endless conflict in a world of oligarchs and in the end open the gates to an Inferno from which there would be no return.

Part 4 – The Final Stage of the Machiavellian Elites’ Takeover of America

From Trotsky to Burnham, from Burnham to Machiavelli and Machiavelli to neoconservatism, the circle of British imperialism closes

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Machiavelli_Principe_Cover_Page.jpg

Cover of the 1550 edition of Machiavelli’s Il Principe and La Vita di Castruccio Castracani da Lucca.

public domain wiki commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Machiavelli_Principe_Cover_Page.jpg

The recent assertion by the Trump White House that Damascus and Moscow released “false narratives” to mislead the world about the April 4 Sarin gas attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria is a dangerous next step in the “fake news” propaganda war launched in the final days of the Obama administration. It is a step whose deep roots in Communist Trotsky’s Fourth International must be understood before deciding whether American democracy can be reclaimed.

Muddying the waters of accountability in a way not seen since Senator Joe McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” signed into law without fanfare by Obama in December 2016 officially authorized a government censorship bureaucracy comparable only to George Orwell’s fictional Ministry of Truth in his novel 1984. Referred to as “The Global Engagement Center,” the official purpose of this new bureaucracy is to “recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The real purpose of this Orwellian nightmare is to cook the books on anything that challenges Washington’s neoconservative pro war narrative and to intimidate, harass or jail anyone who tries. As has already been demonstrated by President Trump’s firing of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian government airbase, it is a recipe for a world war and like it or not, that war has already begun.

This latest attack on Russia’s supposed false narrative takes us right back to 1953 and the beginnings of the cultural war between East and West. Its roots are tied to the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to James Burnham’s pivot from Trotsky’s Fourth International to right-wing conservatism and to the rise of the neoconservative Machiavellians as a political force. As James Burnham’s The Struggle for the World stressed, the Third World War had already begun with the 1944 Communist-led Greek sailors’ revolt. In Burnham’s Manichean thinking the West was under siege. George Kennan’s Cold War policy of containment was no different than Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. Détente with the Soviet Union amounted to surrender. Peace was only a disguise for war and that war would be fought with politics, subversion, terrorism and psychological warfare. Soviet influence had to be rolled back wherever possible. That meant subverting the Soviet Union and its proxies and when necessary, subverting Western democracies as well.

The true irony of today’s late stage efforts by Washington to monopolize “truth” and attack alternate narratives isn’t just in its blatant contempt for genuine free speech. The real irony is that the entire “Freedom Manifesto” employed by the United States and Britain since World War II was never free at all; but a concoction of the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board’s (PSB) comprehensive psychological warfare program waged on friend and foe alike.

The CIA would come to view the entire program beginning with the 1950 Berlin conference to be a landmark in the Cold War not just for solidifying the CIA’s control over the non-Communist left and the West’s “free” intellectuals, but for enabling the CIA to secretly disenfranchise Europeans and Americans from their own political culture in such a way they would never really know it.

As historian Christopher Lasch wrote in 1969 of the CIA’s cooptation of the American left, “The modern state… is an engine of propaganda, alternately manufacturing crises and claiming to be the only instrument that can effectively deal with them. This propaganda, in order to be successful, demands the cooperation of writers, teachers, and artists not as paid propagandists or state-censored time-servers but as ‘free’ intellectuals capable of policing their own jurisdictions and of enforcing acceptable standards of responsibility within the various intellectual professions.”

Key to turning these “free” intellectuals against their own interests was the CIA’s doctrinal program for Western cultural transformation contained in the document PSB D-33/2. PSB D-33/2 foretells of a “long-term intellectual movement, to: break down world-wide doctrinaire thought patterns” while “creating confusion, doubt and loss of confidence” in order to “weaken objectively the intellectual appeal of neutralism and to predispose its adherents towards the spirit of the West;” to “predispose local elites to the philosophy held by the planners,” while employing local elites “would help to disguise the American origin of the effort so that it appears to be a native development.”

While declaring itself as an antidote to Communist totalitarianism, one internal critic of the Program, PSB officer Charles Burton Marshall, viewed PSB D-33/2 itself as frighteningly totalitarian, interposing “a wide doctrinal system” that “accepts uniformity as a substitute for diversity,” embracing “all fields of human thought – all fields of intellectual interests, from anthropology and artistic creations to sociology and scientific methodology;” concluding, “That is just about as totalitarian as one can get.”

Burnham’s Machiavellian elitism lurks in every shadow of the document. As recounted in Frances Stoner Saunder’s The Cultural Cold War, “Marshall also took issue with the PSB’s reliance on ‘non-rational social theories’ which emphasized the role of an elite ‘in the manner reminiscent of Pareto, Sorel, Mussolini and so on.’ Weren’t these the models used by James Burnham in his book the Machiavellians? Perhaps there was a copy usefully to hand when PSB D-33/2 was being drafted. More likely, James Burnham himself was usefully to hand.”

Burnham was more than just at hand when it came to secretly implanting a fascist philosophy of extreme elitism into America’s Cold War orthodoxy. With The Machiavellians, Burnham had composed the manual that forged the old Trotskyist left together with a right-wing Anglo/American elite. The political offspring of that volatile union would be called neoconservatism whose overt mission would be to roll back Russian/Soviet influence everywhere. Its covert mission would be to reassert a British cultural dominance over the emerging Anglo/American Empire and maintain it through propaganda.

Hard at work on that task since 1946 was the secret Information Research Department of the British and Commonwealth Foreign Office known as the IRD.

Rarely spoken of in the context of CIA-funded secret operations, the IRD served as a covert anti-Communist propaganda unit from 1946 until 1977. According to Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, authors of Britain’s Secret Propaganda War, “the vast IRD enterprise had one sole aim: To spread its ceaseless propaganda output (i.e. a mixture of outright lies and distorted facts) among top-ranking journalists who worked for major agencies and magazines, including Reuters and the BBC, as well as every other available channel. It worked abroad to discredit communist parties in Western Europe which might gain a share of power by entirely democratic means, and at home to discredit the British Left”.

IRD was to become a self-fulfilling disinformation machine for the far-right-wing of the international intelligence elite, at once offering fabricated and distorted information to “independent” news outlets and then using the laundered story as “proof” of the false story’s validity. One such front enterprise established with CIA money was Forum World Features, operated at one time by Burnham acolyte Brian Rossiter Crozier. Described by Burnham’s biographer Daniel Kelly as a “British political analyst” in reality the legendary Brian Crozier functioned for over fifty years as one of Britain’s top propagandists and secret agents.

If anyone today is shocked by the biased, one-sided, xenophobic rush to judgement alleging Russian influence over the 2016 presidential election, they need look no further than to Brian Crozier’s closet for the blueprints. As we were told outright by an American military officer during the first war in Afghanistan in 1982, the U.S. didn’t need “proof the Soviets used poison gas” and they don’t need proof against Russia now. Crozier might best be described as a daydream believer, a dangerous imperialist who acts out his dreams with open eyes. From the beginning of the Cold War until his death in 2012 Crozier and his protégé Robert Moss propagandized on behalf of military dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, organized private intelligence organizations to destabilize governments in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa and worked to delegitimize politicians in Europe and Britain viewed as insufficiently anti-Communist. The mandate of his Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) set up in 1970 was to expose the supposed KGB campaign of worldwide subversion and put out stories smearing anyone who questioned it as a dupe, a traitor or Communist spy. Crozier regarded The Machiavellians as a major formative influence in his own intellectual development, and wrote in 1976 “indeed it was this book above all others that first taught me how [emphasis Crozier] to think about politics”. The key to Crozier’s thinking was Burnham’s distinction between the “formal” meaning of political speech and the “real”, a concept which was of course grasped only by elites. In a 1976 article Crozier marveled at how Burnham’s understanding of politics had spanned 600 years and how the use of “the formal” to conceal “the real” was no different today than when used by Dante Alighieri’s “presumably enlightened Medieval mind.” “The point is as valid now as it was in ancient times and in the Florentine Middle Ages, or in 1943. Overwhelmingly, political writers and speakers still use Dante’s method. Depending on the degree of obfuscation required (either by circumstances or the person’s character), the divorce between formal and real meaning is more of less absolute.”

But Crozier was more than just a strategic thinker. Crozier was a high level covert political agent who put Burnham’s talent for obfuscation and his Fourth International experience to use to undermine détente and set the stage for rolling back the Soviet Union.

In a secret meeting at a City of London bank in February 1977 he even patented a private sector operational intelligence organization known at the 6th International (6I) to pick up where Burnham left off; politicizing and of course privatizing many of the dirty tricks the CIA and other intelligence services could no longer be caught doing. As he explained in his memoir Free Agent, the name 6I was chosen “Because the Fourth International split. The Fourth International was the Trotskyist one, and when it split, this meant that, on paper there were five Internationals. In the numbers game, we would constitute the Sixth International, or ‘6I’”.

Croziers cooperation with numerous “able and diligent Congressional staffers” as well as “the remarkable General Vernon (‘Dick’) Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence,..” cemented the rise of the neoconservatives. When Carter caved in to the Team B and his neoconservative National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plot to lure the Soviets and into their own Vietnam in Afghanistan it fulfilled Burnham’s mission and delivered the world to the Machiavellians without anyone being the wiser. As George Orwell wrote in his Second Thoughts on James Burnham, “What Burnham is mainly concerned to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic society has never existed and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud… Power can sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never without fraud.”

Today Burnham’s use of Dante’s political Treatise, De Monarchia to explain his Medieval understanding of politics might best be swapped for Dante’s Divine Comedy, a paranoid comedy of errors in which the door to hell swings open to one and all, including the elites regardless of their status. Or as they say in Hell, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire and The Voice. Visit their websites at invisiblehistory and grailwerk

sources:

Part 1: American Imperialism Leads the World Into Dante’s Vision of Hell
Part 2: How Neocons Push for War by Cooking the Books
Part 3: How the CIA Created a Fake Western Reality for ‘Unconventional Warfare’
Part 4 – The Final Stage of the Machiavellian Elites’ Takeover of America

What will be the future of the region ….a competition or a conflict? المنطقة إلى أين… تنافس أم صراع؟

يناير 22, 2017

 

Written by Nasser Kandil,

This question is not proposed in the beginnings of the Arab Spring which seemed that it was foreshadowing of a call for a change (revolution) before it becomes clear that it is foreshadowing of a chaos and mystery, that affect the fate of the national entities which emerged after the two World Wars taking them away from the dream of unity towards fragmenting the fragmented and dividing the divided, and driving them into civil wars after destroying the national armies which often were symbols of the repression of the central state, but soon they became symbol of the national identity which is threatened of demise in favor of ethnic, sectarian, and tribal identities, and combating identities that are involved in fateful wars till the death, till the protection of the survival of the entities which were generated by Sykes-Picot as a project of fragmentation became a national demand that worth the enormous sacrifices, as the preservation of the armies has become an issue of the preservation of the backbone of a  regressed country that is threatened of passing away. This question is not proposed too especially after the wars of the US Empire which aim to create a new World system that is based on the collapse of the system which was expressed by the engagement rules after the Second World War, and was known as the Cold War, in addition to what was proposed on the people in our region especially options that their sweetest were bitter, such as the standing against the wars after the fall of Berlin Wall defending on regimes from which their people were suffering, or the standing in the bank of the war of independence where there was no place for life, freedom, independence, and identity. The imperial project carries its philosophy to the new world and it foreshadows one of its bilateral at the spokesman of Francis Fukuyama; the end of the history and the fall of the identities, and what does it mean the unilateral savage globalization or the clash of the civilizations according to Samuel Huntington, a clash in which the people and the nations which stick to privacy and identity are crushed, and their fate is not better than the fate of the Indians as the original indigenous of the country, those who stick to a life style, culture, and a behavior that it is inconsistent with the unified collective identity and which is proposed to be applied on all humans at the end of the history.

The question is proposed after there was a justification to propose it, the US imperial project is cracking and the question became legitimate, To where America is moving. The Arab Spring has got a distorted outcome which is ISIS, an accumulative outcome of the overwhelming chaos which the region has entered or which inserted to it. Thus the normal question becomes: To where the region is moving after the failure of the US imperial project, the failure of the Arab Spring and the anticipated victory on ISIS. The questions starts from determining our awareness which has changed in us, is it enough to answer the question without the ill awareness that the wars under the name of the victory on others are our wars instead of our peace, construction, development, knowing that originally they are our countries, and communities?

When Thomas Friedman tried in his book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” to formulate the concept of the globalization which was adopted by the US wars in developing what he has started in the openings of New York Times promoting for these wars in the era of the US President Bill Clinton which Europe was its arena, before it was the turn of Asia in the era of George Bush, he considered that the Olive tree is a symbol of identity and privacy, while the Lexus car is a symbol of luxury, concluding that there is no place in the new world for the private identities but to follow the luxury, generalizing the slogan uproot your olive tress by yourselves and follow the Lexus before this car uproots your trees, because your olive trees have no place in the world of tomorrow in both cases. Thus the US wars, then its Arab Spring or its smart war and later the birth of ISIS reveal three dangerous facts. First, the Lexus car was employed by the olive tree to uproot the trees of others for its account. In our region the only tree which is allowed to be left is the Israeli tree, so it is not a coincidence the rise of the US globalized imperial project with the declaration of Israel of its intention to develop the identity of its project for more vulgarity in persisting in the private provocative identity which is different to Friedman’s recipes and launches its project as a Jewish state. The second fact is that the seek to destroy our national olive trees was in favor of our other olive trees which do not produce fruits, they are our fighting and killing identity, where the clans, tribes, sects, and doctrines have got all necessary sponsorship to grow at the expense of the national state, and thus having parties, armies, flags, and states. The third fact is that ISIS as an accumulative legitimate outcome of the failure of the two projects; the imperial military and the  revolutionary intelligence; Summer and Spring, has got its strength from a distorted example of an obscure identity in history to the extent of suffocation in the form and the content, but the surprising fact is that the end started in the state of origin of the savage globalization by returning to the racist crude private identity,  which depends on its olive tree, as an example produced successively by the formations of the rising political speech in the West from America Donald Trump to Britain which got out of the European Union towards France which is more French, less European, and less global as described by Francois Fillon the luckiest presidential candidate.

In the equation of the conflict of the identities the danger of the fall of the seek for luxury, civilization, and modernity becomes present, and the balance between formulating the identity that is able to meet the challenges and the accord of the facts of history and geography at the same time in a spontaneous way becomes the politics. While the small wars inside the borders of the countries in order to fragmentize and dispel them or between the countries in order to waste their resources and to arouse their tribalism become the clearest expression of the non-politics, and because it is impossible after all of what has happened to talk about a friendly game of chess which according to its result the stones are re-arranged as in the first half, while in the war, the second half is waged from where the first half ends no repetition from the beginning, so it must be said that there is a project that was defeated and there are forces that win, but there is no later project that wins. It is clear from the approach of the international regional scene that those who stood in the bank of the US wars have put themselves in the bank of losers, in return today they are weaker than producing a project, since their project has fallen, because the American is regressing to inside the borders to reform himself, while the countries which antagonize and resist the US project can boast that they are in the bank of winners, but they cannot claim possessing a project but just having a golden vocabulary that forms one of the pillars of the desired project, it is the resistance, it is a vocabulary for the territory, its conflicts and identities, but it is not a sufficient vocabulary to describe the project of the national identity and the project of the national state or the forms of the alliances and the reconciliations which form politics while formulating the project items.

The fate of the region between the competition and the conflict depends on two things, first will those who were defeated commit suicide and run an adventure and a risk generalizing the example of ISIS and pushing more geography and capacities in its account, thus it will have new reasons of power, as having control over the cultural and intellectual background that is consistent with its project and the most important oil wealth in the region from Libya to the Gulf?, or will they have the courage to get out of war with determining the losses and engage in the regional settlements in which the competition is revolving, but  through a political mind as in the scientific politics. Second, and the most important is do those who won and accumulated the surplus of power have the humility of victory, thus they succeed in tuning the surplus of power into additive value. The most important additive value is the national settlements, thus the victory turns from the victory of forces into a victory of a project that has visions of forming the national state.

What is going till now in Lebanon nationally and what will be the consequences of the war in Syria regionally and internationally encourage talking about the preference of the competition to the conflict especially in the light of the scarcity of resources which affect everyone. The wars have their bad consequences on us, so the final word will be what will Iraq do nationally and regionally? Do the main players in it have the ability to raise their regional limits towards the integration with Syria which alone forms an attractive pole for the renaissance project, and the ability to reduce their national limits towards formulating courageous settlements that re-attract those who suffer from the concern of marginalization of politics, as well as innovating solutions for the projects of separation, secession, and division by promoting the characterization of the unified Iraq in which it stays away from the rules of the conflict of the divisional identities, and thus the revenue of the concession for the national consensus will be bigger than the revenue of the virtual division, or a dream, or an illusion of separation?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

المنطقة إلى أين… تنافس أم صراع؟

يناير 14, 2017

ناصر قنديل
– لا يُطرح هذا السؤال مع بدايات الربيع العربي الذي بدا مبشراً بدعوة للتغيير والثورة قبل أن يتّضح كمبشّر بالفوضى والغموض الداكن يلفّ مصير الكيانات الوطنية التي تولّدت بعد الحربين العالميتين، ويأخذها عكس حلم الوحدة، نحو تفتيت المفتَّت وتقسيم المقسّم وإدخالها في حروب أهلية بعد تدمير الجيوش الوطنية التي غالباً ما كانت رموزاً لقمع الدولة المركزية، وسرعان ما صارت رمزاً للهوية الوطنية المهدّدة بالزوال لحساب هويات أتنية وعرقية وطائفية وقبلية ومذهبية، هويات متناحرة متورطة بانفعال غرائزي قاتل في حروب حتى الموت، حتى صارت حماية بقاء الكيانات التي ولّدتها «سايكس بيكو» كمشروع تفتيت مطلباً وطنياً يستحق التضحيات الجسام، كما صار الحفاظ على الجيوش قضية حفاظ على عمود فقري لدولة تتداعى مهدّدة بالاندثار. ولا يطرح السؤال أيضاً بعد حروب الإمبراطورية الأميركية لإنشاء نظام عالمي جديد تأسيساً على انهيار النظام الذي عبّرت عنه قواعد الاشتباك بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية وما عُرف بالحرب الباردة، وما صار معروضاً على الشعوب في منطقتنا، خصوصاً من خيارات أحلاها مرّ، الوقوف بوجه حروب ما بعد سقوط جدار برلين دفاعاً عن أنظمة أذاقت شعوبها الأمرّين، أو الوقوف في صف حرب استتباع لا مكان فيها لحياة وحرية واستقلال وهوية. والمشروع الإمبراطوري يحمل فلسفته للعالم الجديد ويبشّر على لسان فرانسيس فوكوياما بإحدى ثنائيته، نهاية التاريخ وسقوط الهويات، وما تعنيه العولمة التوحشية الأحادية أو صدام الحضارات وفقاً لصموئيل هنتغتون، صداماً تُسحَق فيه الشعوب والأمم التي تتمسّك بخصوصية وهوية، ولا يكون مصيرها أفضل من مصير الهنود الحمر، كسكان أصليين للبلاد، كل البلاد، وأي بلاد، يتمسكون بنمط عيش وثقافة وسلوك، لا تنسجم مع الهوية الجامعة الموحّدة والمعروضة للاستنساخ على البشرية في زمن نهاية التاريخ.

– يُطرح السؤال وقد دار الزمان دورة كافية لتبرير طرحه، فالمشروع الامبراطوري الأميركي يتهاوى والسؤال صار مشروعاً: أميركا إلى أين، والربيع العربي نتجأ،تاستولد حمله الشرعي بمولود مشوّه هو داعش، كثمرة تراكمية للفوضى العارمة التي دخلتها المنطقة أو أُدخلت إليها، ليصير السؤال الطبيعي المنطقة إلى أين، بعد فشل المشروع الإمبراطوري الأميركي وفشل الربيع العربي والانتصار المنتظر على داعش. والسؤال يبدأ من تحديد قدرتنا على وعي الذي تغيّر فينا، وهل هو كافٍ لنجيب عن السؤال برؤيا تستشرف ولا تعيد إنتاج وعي الذات المريضة بعيون مريضة، لتنتج باسم الانتصار على حروب الآخرين، حروبنا نحن، بدلاً من سلامنا وعمراننا، وتنميتنا، وبالأصل دولنا، ومجتمعاتنا؟

– عندما حاول توماس فريدمان في كتابه سيارة اللكزس وشجرة الزيتون، أن يصيغ مفهوم العولمة الذي تحمله الحروب الأميركية، في تطوير لما بدأه في افتتاحيات نيويورك تايمز ترويجاً لهذه الحروب في عهد الرئيس الأميركي بيل كلينتون وكانت ساحتها أوروبا قبل أن يحين دور آسيا مع جورج بوش، اعتبر أن شجرة الزيتون ترمز للهوية والخصوصية، وسيارة اللكزس ترمز للرفاه، مستنتجاً بحصيلة كتابه أن لا مكان في العالم الجديد للهويات الخاصة بل للحاق بركب الرفاه، مطلقاً شعار اقتلعوا أشجار زيتونكم بأنفسكم والتحقوا بركب الركض وراء اللكزس قبل أن تقتلع اللكزس أشجاركم، فزيتونكم لا مكان له في عالم الغد في الحالتين، لتتكشف الحروب الأميركية ومن بعدها ربيعها العربي أو حربها الذكية، وختامها ولادة داعش، ثلاث حقائق خطيرة: أولها أن سيارة اللكزس كانت تشتغل لحساب شجرة زيتون بعينها يُراد اقتلاع أشجار الغير لحسابها، وفي منطقتنا الشجرة الوحيدة المسموح ببقائها هي الشجرة «الإسرائيلية»، فليست مصادفة أن يتزامن صعود المشروع الإمبراطوري الأميركي المعولم مع إشهار «إسرائيل» نيتها تطوير هوية مشروعها لمزيد من الفظاظة في الإمعان بالهوية الخصوصية المستفزة والمغايرة لوصفات فريدمان وتطلق مشروعها كدولة يهودية. والحقيقة الثانية أن السعي لتدمير أشجار زيتوننا الوطنية كان لحساب أشجار زيتوننا الأخرى التي لا تنتج ثمراً، وهي هوياتنا القاتلة والمتقاتلة، التي حظيت عشائر وقبائل وطوائف ومذاهب بكل الرعاية اللازمة للنمو على حساب الدولة الوطنية لتمتلك كل منها أحزاباً وجيوشاً وأعلاماً ودويلات. والحقيقة الثالثة هي أن داعش كمولود شرعي تراكمي لفشل المشروعين الإمبراطوري العسكري والاستخباري التثويري، الصيف والربيع، استمد قوته من نموذج مشوّه لهوية غارقة في التاريخ حتى الاختناق في الشكل والمضمون، لكن الحقيقة المفاجئة هي أن النهاية بدأت في بلد المنشأ للعولمة المتوحشة بالعودة للهوية الخاصة الفجة والعنصرية، لكن المستندة إلى شجرة زيتونها، في نموذج تفرزه تباعاً تشكيلات الخطاب السياسي الصاعد في الغرب من أميركا دونالد ترامب إلى بريطانيا الخارجة من الاتحاد الأوروبي وصولاً لـ«فرنسا الآتية»، كما يصفها فرانسوا فيون المرشح الرئاسي الأوفر حظاً، أكثر فرنسية أقل أوروبية، وأقل وأقل عالمية.

– مع معادلة صراع الهويات يصير الخطر سقوط السعي للرفاه والتمدن والحداثة حاضراً، ويصير التوازن بين صياغة الهوية القادرة على ملاقاة التحديات ومواءمة حقائق التاريخ والجغرافيا في آن واحد بصورة غير مفتعلة، هو السياسة. وتصير الحروب الصغيرة داخل حدود الدول إمعاناً في تفتيتها وتشتيتها، أو بين الدول تضييعاً لمواردها واستنهاضاً لعصبياتها، التعبير الأوضح عن اللاسياسة. ولأنه يستحيل بعد كل الذي جرى الحديث عن لعبة شطرنج ودية، يُعاد بنتيجتها رصف الحجارة، كما في الشوط الأول، بينما في الحرب يُخاض الشوط الثاني، من حيث انتهى الشوط الأول لا تكرار بالبدء كما بدأ، وجب القول إن ثمة مشروعاً هُزم، وقوى انتصرت، لكن ليس ثمة بعد مشروع ينتصر. والواضح من مقاربة المشهد الدولي الإقليمي أن الذين وقفوا في خندق الحروب الأميركية وضعوا أنفسهم في صف الخاسرين، وبالمقابل فإنهم اليوم أعجز من إنتاج مشروع، ومشروعهم قد سقط، لأن الأميركي وهو عمود خيمتهم يرتدّ إلى داخل الحدود لإعادة صياغة ذاته، بينما بالمقابل تستطيع الدول التي ناوأت وقاومت المشروع الأميركي أن تباهي بوقوفها في ضفة النصر، لكنها لا تستطيع ادعاء امتلاك مشروع، على أهمية امتلاكها مفردة ذهبية تؤسس أحد أركان المشروع المنشود وهي مفردة المقاومة، لكنها مفردة للإقليم وصراعاته وهوياته، لكنها ليست مفردة كافية لتوصيف مشروع الهوية الوطنية ومشروع الدولة الوطنية، ولا أشكال التحالفات والمصالحات التي تشكل السياسة بعينها في صياغة بنود المشروع.

– المنطقة بين التنافس والصراع وقفٌ على اثنتين، الأولى: هل يذهب الذين هزموا إلى الانتحار، ويخوضون مغامرة ومخاطرة تصعيد نموذج داعش وضخ المزيد من الجغرافيا والمقدرات في حسابه ما يمنحه أسباب قوة جديدة من عيار سيطرته على بيئة ثقافية وفكرية تنسجم مع مشروعه وثروات النفط الأهم في المنطقة من ليبيا إلى الخليج، أم يمتلكون شجاعة الخروج من الحرب بتحديد الخسائر والذهاب بعقل سياسي بمعنى السياسة العلمي نحو الانخراط في التسويات الإقليمية، التي في قلبها تدور المنافسة. أما الثانية والأهم فهي هل يمتلك الذي انتصروا وراكموا فائض قوة تواضع الانتصار، فينجحوا بتحويل فائض القوة إلى قيمة مضافة، والقيمة المضافة الأهم هي التسويات الوطنية، ليتحول النصر من نصر قوى بعينها إلى انتصار لمشروع يملك رؤيا بناء الدولة الوطنية؟

– ما يجري حتى الآن في لبنان وطنياً، وما تذهب إليه معادلة الحرب في سورية إقليمياً ودولياً يشجّعان على الحديث عن ترجيح كفة التنافس على الصراع، خصوصاً في ظل شح الموارد التي يقع الجميع تحت أثقالها، وقد أكل ما مضى من الحروب أخضر بلادنا واليابس في البشر والحجر، لكن تبقى الكلمة الفصل لما سيفعله العراق، وطنياً وإقليمياً، وهل يملك اللاعبون الرئيسيون فيه قدرة رفع سقوفهم الإقليمية نحو التكامل مع سورية الذي ينشئ وحده قطباً جاذباً لمشروع نهضة، وتخفيض سقوفهم الوطنية، نحو صياغة تسويات شجاعة تستعيد الواقعين تحت قلق التهميش إلى السياسة، وتبتكر حلولاً لمشاريع الانقسام والانفصال والتقسيم بتوصيف للعراق الموحّد، يبتعد عن تلازمه مع قواعد صراع الهويات البينية بين رابح وخاسر فيها، فيصير عائد التنازل للتوافق الوطني أكبر من عائد الانقسام الافتراضي أو حلم أو وهم الانفصال؟

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The knot of Syria exceeds the knot of Vietnam عقدة سورية تتفوّق على عقدة فييتنام

Updated; English translation added

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Since the end of the sixties of the last century, Vietnam has occupied a crucial role in the dual formation of the collective mind of the peoples of the world in the East and the West. It was constituted what was known later as Vietnam’s knot at the level of the Western public opinion in general and the American in particular. It is the description which the experts launched for the refusal of the peoples to grant the authorization of military interventions outside the borders to their rulers, under the slogan of ensuring the strategic interests and achieving the requirements of the national security. While the peoples of the East who were living under the burden of occupation, aggression, and the Western client systems were affected by the example and the model presented by Vietnam about the abilities of the peoples to impose the will and defeating the mightiest colonial powers when they stick to their cases despite the enormous differences in capabilities. It is not secret that the peoples who arouse for their freedom after the victory of Vietnam have faced better conditions to achieve their goals due to suppressing the ability of intervention which was caused by Vietnam’s knot.

According to the historic concept of the developments of the communities and the countries, the imperial project which America represented the peak of the capacity which it possessed has been defeated, but what has been defeated is the traditional imperial project, which means the military colonialism project which was made by the advanced industrial state to open the markets and to have control on the raw materials and the energy sources. And because the capital momentum was at its peak with the new technical discoveries, most notably the ability to develop the information and the communications sector, the capital markets and their structures, the world has transferred to the great  imperial phase through which America has succeeded despite the defeat in Vietnam in overthrowing the Soviet Union, sticking to the value of freedom against the value of justice which the Soviet experience has failed in making its practical example identical to its theoretical proposal. Through the power of the system of freedom, such as the freedom of belief, religion, the individual property, the freedom of media, the freedom of parties, the freedom of demonstration, the freedom of exchanging the goods, the freedom of market, and the freedom of movement of money, a global wave has been launched and has produced organizations and institutions, that led the world for decades from the World Trade Organization, Stock Market, and Wall Street to the organizations of human rights and the organizations of the civil community towards the systems of communications and internet, Facebook, the social media, the satellites, and the audible and visual channels,  thus the national state has fallen and the globalization has emerged, in addition to what has permitted to the philosophers of the new imperial era through marketing the theories of the world’s end, the clash of the civilizations which their end depends on the ability to survive. The intention surely is the consuming culture which Thomas Friedman has summarized in his book “Lexus and the Olive tree” by the invasion of Lexus, which means the aspiration to luxury for all the olives fields, which means the private identities.

The project of the great imperialism has been completed with the seizure of the legacy of the patient Soviet man in Europe; the European Union has been constituted as an example of the first freedom committee. The war of globalization started its way from Afghanistan to Iraq to the war of July in Lebanon. Where the modern heavy wagon which was equipped with the techniques of laser has crashed with small stones that disabled its movement. The first consequences of the globalization with all its systems such as the fall of the major issues, creeds, homelands, and the penetration of the privatization to the structures of the armies is that the nations, the countries, and the armies wanted a war without blood, so they lost the ability to fight and their wars including the shameful immoral and inhuman confusions which their success was ensured by a commodity from the medial consumption market have been transmitted on air directly to the people’s homes, where the families which acquainted with the culture of claim of the moral superiority, where the families of the soldiers,  and the systems of the human rights which were formed for invading  the countries of others. The West which wanted to wage its war by plucking out the olive tress of others has discovered that it has become without its own olive tree or at least it did not find who can feed its olive tree by its blood because everyone wanted Lexus.

The war of Syria has occurred to culminate all the wars which preceded it, and thus it became the war of wars on which the fate of the project of the great imperialism determined, which based on the virtual economy, it was born from the virtual transcontinental geography and from virtual history of the pirates, the gold dealers, the killers of the indigenous people, and the new settlers. The project of the great imperialism wants to form a virtual state to rule the world, but against which many countries and real nations of real history, real economy, and real geography stood. The countries of the fixed assets have met the countries of the stock exchanges and the virtual stocks. So Washington did not find for its new project but a virtual recipe that borrows from the mid history an olive tree and another one from the far history to face the real olive trees of countries and nations that have national identities and which wage the movement of their independence, refusing the globalization of the huge three dimensions scanners, they insisted on the civilization of interaction and exchange, do not accept the freedom that only works in one way, they have the goods and the money while  they were prohibited on the humans. This time the imperial weapons was their contrary, two dried olive trees one of them is the Ottoman and the other is the ignorance which is represented by Al-Qaeda organization in its original version Al Nusra, and its modified version which is represented by ISIS.

In Syria the real modern civilization wins over the virtual civilization which the mercenaries of the Ottoman and the ignorance are fighting for its account, they are those ideologues who stick to the illusions of their olive trees, they are mercenaries as projects leaders whose their motivation is the illusions of sultanate and the caliphate, they are ideologues in the bodies of their followers who stick to the illusions of what they think that it is the absolute truth, and thus the hybrid imperial project falls as a result of the contradiction of its ideology which based on freedom and the fall of identity, because it does not find who can serve its project but only zealots to the extent of savagery in the identities which they foreshadow of , and through the ideological hostility toward the freedom. Syria has presented through its humanitarian project which based on accepting the other who is different religiously, comparing with Europe which could not offer something alike, and through its humanitarian alliances which based despite the difference of its premises on the tripartite the diversity, the national identity, and the civilization what can make the livelihood of the people better through well-being, law, and institutions.

The size of the challenge which was imposed by the war of Syria on the humanity in testing the ideas is much more than the challenge of blood, destruction and devastation which caused by the brutal experience which America brought to people who have long experience in the human civilization, but what is foreshadowing of goodness is that the ideas and the ideologies are as waves die and live by the power of the ability to form emerging power that has a viable project, that can withstand till it has the opportunity of exposing to the real test, so either it overwhelms by the power of success or it will fade under the influence of the failure. It is not a secret that the ottoman and the ignorance are the worst versions of the political investment for the fall of the positive ideologies. Their failure in solving the major issues, as well as the return of the people in the East and West to the religion will not make them survive after the resounding experience of their fall in Syria. The Ottoman and the ignorance will fade accompanied with the culture of extremism and atoning, and thus the religious and the secular thought will has the opportunities for the search for the humanitarian commons from the gate of Syria, Russia, and Iran, and the philosophical knot of Syria will be bigger than its military and political one according to America, and more inspiring to the people who seek for identity and protecting the olive tree.

As the major Israel and the great Israel have fallen by the fall of the occupation and the deterrence force and after the resistance has the honor of achieving this historic transformation which the war on Syria was needed to overthrow its effects, the project of the great imperialism which based on wars has been culminated by the fall of the great imperialism which based on wars by proxy, accompanied with the fall of the hypocrite project of globalization which based on the abolition of the national identities. Therefore Syria has become the castle in the two victories and on the two fronts, so just few years the libraries of the American books will be filled with philosophical, political, and cultural attempts that try to answer the question how did that happen, and who is that genius and who is that man who could from his office that locates off Mount Qassioun write this new page in the history of humanity?

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

ناصر قنديل

– منذ نهاية الستينيات في القرن الماضي احتلت فييتنام دوراً حاسماً في صياغة مزدوجة للوجدان الجمعي لشعوب العالم على ضفتي الغرب والشرق، حيث تشكل ما عرف لاحقاً بعقدة فييتنام على مستوى الرأي العام الغربي عموماً والأميركي خصوصاً. وهو التوصيف الذي أطلقه الخبراء على رفض الشعوب منح التفويض لحكامها بتدخلات عسكرية خارج الحدود، تحت شعار ضمان المصالح الاستراتيجية وتحقيق مقتضيات الأمن القومي، بينما لدى شعوب الشرق التي كانت تعيش تحت وطأة الاحتلال والعدوان والأنظمة العميلة للغرب، فقد قدمت فييتنام النموذج والمثال، على قدرة الشعوب عندما تأخذ قضيتها بين أيديها، على فرض هذه الإرادة وإلحاق الهزيمة بأعتى القوى الاستعمارية، رغم الفوارق الهائلة في المقدرات، وليس خافياً أن الشعوب التي نهضت لحريتها بعد نصر فييتنام واجهت ظروفاً أفضل لتحقيق أهدافها بفعل لجم قدرة التدخل الذي تسببت به عقدة فييتنام.

– بالمفهوم التاريخي لتطور المجتمعات والدول، هزم المشروع الإمبريالي الذي كانت تجسّد أميركا ذروة القدرة التي يمتلكها، لكن الذي هزم هو المشروع الإمبريالي التقليدي، أي مشروع الاستعمار العسكري الذي تقوم به الدولة الصناعية المتقدمة لفتح الأسواق ووضع اليد على المواد الخام ومصادر الطاقة، ولأن قوة الدفع الرأسمالية كانت في أوج صعودها مع الاكتشافات التقنية الجديدة، وأهمها القدرة على تطوير قطاع المعلومات والاتصالات، وأسواق المال وهيكلياتها، انتقل العالم إلى مرحلة الإمبريالية العظمى، الذي نجحت معه أميركا رغم الهزيمة في فييتنام، من إسقاط الاتحاد السوفياتي، متمسكة بقيمة الحرية، بوجه قيمة العدالة التي فشلت التجربة السوفياتية في جعل نموذجها العملي مطابقاً لعرضها النظري، وبقوة منظومة الحرية، حرية المعتقد والدين وحرية الملكية الفردية، وحرية الإعلام، وحرية الأحزاب، وحرية التظاهر، وحرية التبادل للبضائع وحرية السوق، وحرية تنقل الأموال، انطلقت موجة عالمية أنتجت منظمات ومؤسسات، قادت العالم لعقود، من منظمة التجارة العالمية وبورصة وول ستريت، إلى منظمات حقوق الإنسان ومنظمات المجتمع المدني، وصولاً لمنظومات الاتصالات والإنترنت، والفايسبوك وشبكات التواصل الاجتماعي، والأقمار الصناعية والفضائيات المرئية والمسموعة، لتسقط الدولة الوطنية، وتظهر العولمة، ما أتاح لفلاسفة العهد الإمبريالي الجديد، التسويق لنظريات نهاية العالم، وصدام الحضارات، المحسومة نهايته للأقدر على البقاء، والقصد طبعاً الثقافة الاستهلاكية، التي اختصرها توماس فريدمان في كتابه سيارة اللكزس وشجرة الزيتون، باجتياح اللكزس، أي التطلّع نحو الرفاه، لكل حقول الزيتون، أي الهويات الخصوصية.

– اكتملت عضلات مشروع الإمبريالية العظمى، مع الاستيلاء على تركة الرجل السوفياتي المريض في أوروبا، وتشكل الاتحاد الأوروبي كنموذج لجنة الحرية الأولى، وبدأت حرب العولمة طريقها من افغانستان إلى العراق إلى حرب تموز في لبنان، واصطدمت العربة الثقيلة العصرية والمزودة بكل تقنيات اللايزر، بحجارة صغيرة، عطلت مسيرتها، فكانت أولى ثمار العولمة بكل منظوماتها ومنها سقوط القضايا الكبرى والعقائد والأوطان وتغلغل الخصخصة إلى هياكل الجيوش، أن الشعوب والدول والجيوش صارت تريد حرباً بلا دماء، ففقدت القدرة على القتال، وصارت حروبها بما فيها الارتكابات المشينة واللاأخلاقية واللاإنسانية، التي تضمن نجاحها سلعة من سوق الاستهلاك الإعلامي تنقلها الشاشات على الهواء مباشرة إلى بيوت الناس، حيث العائلات المشبعة بثقافة الادعاء بالتفوق الأخلاقي، حيث أسر الجنود، وحيث منظومات حقوق الإنسان التي تشكلت لغزو بلاد الغير. واكتشف الغرب الذي أراد خوض حربه لاقتلاع أشجار زيتون الآخرين، أنه بات بلا شجرة زيتون تخصّه، أو على الأقل لا يجد مَن يفدي شجرة زيتونه بدمه، فالكل يريد سيارة اللكزس.

– جاءت حرب سورية لتتوّج كل الحروب التي سبقتها، وتكون حرب الحروب التي يتوقف عليها تحديد مصير مشروع الإمبريالية العظمى، الذي يقوم على الاقتصاد الافتراضي، وولد من جغرافيا افتراضية عابرة للقارات، ومن تاريخ افتراضي للقراصنة وتجار الذهب وقتلة السكان الأصليين، المستوطنون الجدد، ويريد أن يشكل دولة افتراضية لحكم العالم. وقفت قبالته دول وشعوب حقيقية، بتاريخ حقيقي واقتصاد حقيقي، وجغرافيا حقيقية، وتلاقت دول الأصول الثابتة مع دول البورصات والأسهم الافتراضية، فلم تجد واشنطن لمشروعها الجديد إلا وصفة افتراضية تستعير شجرة زيتون من الماضي المتوسط وأخرى من الماضي السحيق، لتواجه أشجار الزيتون الحقيقية لدول وشعوب لديها هوياتها الوطنية، تخوض حركة استقلالها، وترفض عولمة الناسخات الضخمة الثلاثية الأبعاد، وتصرّ على حضارة التفاعل والتبادل، ولا تقبل حرية لا تعمل إلا باتجاه واحد، وتحظى بها البضائع والأموال وتحظر على البشر، فكان السلاح الإمبريالي هذه المرة نقيضها، شجرتا زيتون مخشبتان، واحدة اسمها العثمانية والثانية اسمها الجاهلية التي لبس ثوبها تنظيم القاعدة بنسختيه الأصلية التي تمثلها النصرة ونسخته المعدلة التي يمثلها داعش.

– تنتصر في سورية المدنية الحديثة الواقعية، على المدنية الافتراضية التي يقاتل لحسابها مرتزقة العثمانية والجاهلية العقائديون المتمسكون بأوهام أشجار زيتونهم. فهم مرتزقة كقادة مشاريع حافزهم أوهام السلطنة والخلافة، وعقائديون، بأجساد مريديهم المتعلقين بأوهام ما يظنونه الحقيقة المطلقة، ليسقط المشروع الإمبريالي المهجن، بتناقض عقيدته القائمة على الحرية وسقوط الهوية، بأنه لم يجد مَن يخدم مشروعه إلا متزمتون حتى التوحش في الهويات التي يبشرون بها، وبالعداء العقائدي للحرية، وقدّمت سورية بمشروعها الإنساني القائم على قبول الآخر المختلف دينياً بما لم تستطع أوروبا بعد تقديم مثله، وبتحالفاتها الإنسانية القائمة رغم اختلاف منطلقاتها على ثلاثية التعدد والهوية الوطنية والتمدن، بما هو الأخذ بما ترفد به عقول البشر شوط حياتهم للأفضل من رفاه، وقانون، ومؤسسات.

– حجم التحدي الذي فرضته حرب سورية على البشرية، في اختبار الأفكار أكبر بكثير من تحدي الدم والدمار والخراب الذي خلفته التجربة المتوحشة التي جلبتها أميركا لشعب كان له باع طويل في كتابة الحضارة الإنسانية، لكن ما يجب الالتفات إليه ويبشّر بالخير، هو أن الأفكار والعقائد هي موجات تموت وتحيا بقوة القدرة على تشكيل قوة صاعدة، تحمل مشروعاً قابلاً للحياة، وتستطيع الصمود حتى تتاح لها فرصة التعرّض للاختبار الواقعي، فإما أن تطغى بقوة النجاح أو تتهاوى وتتلاشى تحت تأثير الفشل، وليس خافياً أن موجتي الجاهلية والعثمانية، كأسوأ نسختين للاستثمار السياسي لسقوط العقائد الوضعية، وفشلها في حل القضايا الكبرى، وعودة الشعوب شرقاً وغرباً للتدين، لن تكون لهما قابلية عيش بعد التجرية المدوية لسقوطهما في سورية، فالجاهلية والعثمانية ستتلاشيان ومعهما ثقافة التطرف والتكفير، وسيكون للفكر الديني والعلماني فرص البحث عن مشتركات إنسانية من بوابة سورية وروسيا وإيران، وستكون عقدة سورية الفلسفية أكبر من عقدتها العسكرية والسياسية بالنسبة لأميركا، وأشد إلهاما للشعوب على ضفاف البحث عن الهوية وحماية شجرة الزيتون.

– بمثل ما سقطت إسرائيل الكبرى وإسرائيل العظمى، بسقوط قوة الاحتلال وقوة الردع، وكتب للمقاومة شرف إنجاز هذا التحول التاريخي، الذي أريد للحرب على سورية إسقاط مفاعيله، توّج سقوط مشروع الإمبريالية الكبرى القائمة على الحروب، بسقوط الإمبريالية العظمى القائمة على حروب الوكالة، ومعهما سقط مشروع العولمة المخادع، القائم على إلغاء الهويات الوطنية، وكتب لسورية أن تكون القلعة في الانتصارين وعلى الجبهتين. وسنوات قليلة ستمتلئ خزائن الكتب الأميركية بمحاولات فلسفية وسياسية وثقافية تحاول الإجابة عن سؤال، كيف حدث هذا، وأي عبقري هو هذا الرجل الذي استطاع من مكتبه القابع قبالة جبل قاسيون أن يكتب هذه الصفحة الجديدة في تاريخ الإنسانية؟

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Snagging the Pipelines Cobweb: a checkmate for the US?

Strategic Culture Foundation

EDITOR’S CHOICE | 13.12.2015 | 12:00

The civil war in Syria, the attempts of ousting Bashar Al-Assad from Syrian Government and the consequent formation of new terrorist groups have deep roots and untold causes that have to be investigated, yet. What about their consequences in the near future?

US is gambling credibility away in the Syrian conflict. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama’s administration in foreign policy has become closer to George W. Bush’s in terms of results and involvement in different war scenarios. Stars and stripes-mojo is now fading away and Fukuyama’s “End of History” is going together with Samuel P. Huntington “Clash of Civilization” in the ash heap of History. The promotion of global American leadership seems to be a long-gone concept if compared to the geopolitical strategy and the moves that US is making now on the worldwide geopolitical chessboard.

Russia is now emerging from the ashes of post-soviet destruction (remember “Black October 1993”?) and seems to be in advantage in every field previously occupied by the US. Russian preponderance is clear in the Syrian scenario: on one side, Russia and Syria are really fighting Islamic extremism, on the other US are showing worldwide, despite the coverup made by Western media, their “throwing pillows” attitude at terrorists. US and their allies are playing a dangerous game on the edge of the razor in order to regain lost ground. It seems that they are paving the path for another war centered on geopolitical and strategic advantages.

For those who really analyze international politics, human rights and humanitarian reasons have little to do with the real interests in the Near-Middle East Region. Despite the undeniable Russian interests in Syria, especially for the Tartus area where the URSS built a naval supply and maintenance base in 1971, it’s also obvious that Syria is a meeting point of US and their allies’ interests. The interests of US have a reflection on the ‘bureaucracy empire’ of EU and its subjugated states. Europe has been long looking for energetic independence, but it seems there’s no way alternative to Russia to achieve it, despite some leading-to-nowhere proposals.

iran-pars1It becomes clear that a further implementation of a US-friend state role in the field of energy, would be a strategic advantage in order to divide again the Eurasian continent. Starting from this background context we can assume that there’ll be a great competition to gain access to european energetic market. In order to achieve this objective, two states, Qatar and Iran began fighting a strategic war. Qatar and Iran have control on the South Pars natural gas consolidate field, located in the Persian Gulf. Each of these two states has a different project in order to expand its turnover. On one side, Iran has been planning for years a cooperation project with Iraq and Syria with the construction of a 5.600 km natural gas pipeline named “Islamic Pipeline”. On the other side, Qatar has its own alternative project called the “Qatar-Turkey Pipeline” involving Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and necessarily Syria. Of course, Bashar Al-Assad’s government is unwilling to approve the construction of this pipeline and here comes the necessity for Qatar to bring chaos inside the Syrian State and hope in a forthcoming turnover of the Syrian government.

The shooting down of the Russian SU-24 in Syria led to the suspension of the negotiations on Turkish Stream, another natural gas pipeline connecting Russia and Turkey via Black Sea. US “divide and conquer” tactic, is again producing its consequences in Eurasia, but it seems that the new front in the “War on Terror” is bringing many negative consequences to their own allies and proxy actors, while foreign fighters and the so called “moderate rebels”, once smuggling oil in Turkey, are creeping away from Syria leaving behind their back proofs of weird connections – as denounced in a Amnesty International report about Islamic State weapons indirect supply.

US and their loyal petrol-states are making for the economic annihilation of their own allies, and it seems that only Russia and China have the power to pull them over before the “point of no return” in Syria.

The final question question is: will the US allies (European Union and others) continue to follow a foreign policy based on the “Assad must go” mantra or they will start building a new Eurasian dimension in their policy realizing the losses they suffer as a result of NATO and US unilateral actions in Syria?

Marco Nocera, orientalreview.org

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Saving World Heritage – The West’s New R2P Pretext

SYRIA 360°

By Finian Cunningham

Is the defence of world heritage sites in Iraq the new «responsibility to protect» doctrine to justify Western intervention in the geo-strategically important region? The timing coincides with renewed admonitions from the United States and Saudi Arabia for a coalition of ground forces to defeat the Islamic State network in Iraq and Syria – and just when Iraqi and Syrian forces appear to be decisively pushing back the extremists in both countries.

The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon this week added his voice to calls for an international coalition of forces to prevent the continuing destruction of ancient cultural sites and artefacts by the IS terror group. The initiative comes after the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) condemned the campaign of IS looting and obliteration of antiquities as a war crime.

IS cadres – also known by alternative acronyms ISIL or ISIS – have issued propaganda videos of wholesale vandalism of museums, churches, sculptures and other archaeological treasures in northern Iraq. Images of bulldozers and sledgehammer-wielding militants tearing down 3,000-year-old porticos and statues have indeed shocked the world.

Cities under IS control, Mosul and Nimrud, have seen priceless artefacts destroyed in unspeakable acts of nihilism. Nimrud is the ancient capital of Assyria dating back to 800 BC and has associations with the great grandson of the reputed biblical prophet Noah. The next target for the Islamists is the city of Hatra, which is home to some of the oldest known architecture in the world.

click to enlarge

The land of Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers – straddling what is now modern Syria and Iraq – is known as «the cradle of human civilisation». Its rich tapestry of cultural heritage is reflected in the hitherto peaceful coexistence of religions. The systematic campaign to delete antiquities by the IS network goes hand-in-hand with the group’s lethal intolerance and persecution of other people who do not share its obscurantist Wahhabi ideology. Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Yazidis and others have all been brutally victimised, with graphic images of beheadings and crucifixions of men, and women and children being sold into slavery.

The suspicion is that the West is preparing to use this powerful emotive backdrop as a new pretext to justify military intervention. This seems especially the case because erstwhile pretexts, such as «protecting human rights», have run out of credibility as a political lever on public opinion.

The US and its Western allies have long used the doctrine of «responsibility to protect» or «R2P» as a flimsy pretext for military intervention. The concept can be traced back to the administration of President Bill Clinton during the 1990s when Washington and its NATO allies invoked the «moral imperative» to use military force in former Yugoslavia to supposedly protect human rights. The much-vaunted ethical principle has thus served as a means to interpret international law in such a way that justifies Western military interventions, even when those interventions involve NATO bombardment of cities, as happened in Belgrade. It is also a convenient public relations device in order to convince Western popular opinion to rally around foreign military deployment.

Of course, an ethical dimension has always purportedly been used to justify US and Western wars abroad. We can go back to the First World War and the Wilsonian declaration of «defending the rights of small nations». But the explicit use of human rights under the R2P doctrine became elevated to a primary motivating principle for military intervention during the past two decades. Part of its appeal was its emotive leverage on public sentiments. «It is our moral duty to protect our fellow human beings by force,» goes the argument. It was promulgated by such «liberal hawks» as the current US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and President Barack Obama’s National Security advisor Susan Rice.

Another formative factor was that a new ideological rationale was needed to replace the Cold War propaganda narrative of the US in which it was claimed to be «defending the free world from Godless communism». For nearly five decades that old chestnut served well to give legal and moral acceptance for American foreign interventions all around the globe, from South America to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the US and its NATO partners needed a new ideological cover for imperialist war-making to replace the then redundant Cold War narrative. They found success with various tropes, including the «War on Terror», the elimination of «weapons of mass destruction», and the Responsibility to Protect» human rights.

R2P was famously rolled out to justify the NATO role in Libya during 2011, which eventually saw the toppling of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and the ongoing internecine wracking of the North African country. In March 2011, the US and its NATO partners claimed that the setting up of a No-Fly Zone was necessary to prevent a bloodbath by pro-Gaddafi forces in the eastern city of Benghazi. The bloodbath never came but the NATO No-Fly Zone quickly transmogrified into a seven-month aerial bombing campaign that led to IS-related jihadists take over Libya, following the street lynching of Gaddafi in mid-October 2011.

The trouble with all propaganda narratives is that there is a danger of them running out of credibility steam at some point. The threadbare War on Terror and the risible ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction (as in Saddam’s Iraq) have become tarnished like the R2P «doctrine». These propaganda devices have become riven with contradictions, futile self-defeating blowback effects, as well as being replete with absurd hypocrisies and double standards. The evident NATO destruction of Libya and descent into a Mad Max-type warlordism – all in the name of human rights – is indelibly illustrative of the fraudulent pretensions of Washington and its European allies.

This partly explains why the Cold War narrative is being resurrected with new attempts to paint Russia under President Vladimir Putin as an «expansionist threat to global security». But the new Cold War cliché of demonising Russia has nowhere near the potency of the former narrative. It just doesn’t sound credible, with barely a semblance of facts.

Likewise, the US-led aerial coalition to defeat IS in northern Syria and Iraq suffers from a fatal credibility gap. A significant constituency in the Western public knows that Washington and its European allies, along with their despotic Arab monarchies, are largely responsible for the creation of IS and other extremist groups, stemming from the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the West’s proxy war against the Syrian government of President Bashar al Assad beginning in March 2011. The flood of refugees in the region and the brutal persecution of communities by IS are all attributable to Western interventions and intrigue. Therefore the invoking of R2P as a «principle» to justify more Western military intervention just does not wash with the public. Indeed, it sounds downright ridiculous and morally reprehensible.

No, some new emotive appeal is necessary. And this is where the latest calls for a coalition to «protect world cultural heritage» seems to fit the bill – at least superficially.

Last week, while visiting the Wahhabi Saudi rulers, US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement saying that «military pressure» may be needed to oust Assad. His Saudi hosts – who have funded IS both financially and theologically – also stated that «a new coalition force is needed to defeat IS on the ground».

Significantly, these US and Saudi appeals for increased military intervention in the Middle East come at a time when Syria and Iraq – both backed by Iran and Russia – have made appreciable gains against the Islamist militants. Assad’s forces are tightening the noose on the militant-held northern city of Aleppo, while the Iraqi army is pushing against the IS strongholds of Tikrit and Mosul.

In other words, the ground war in Syria and Iraq is not suiting the objectives of Washington as it is consolidating gains for Russian and Iranian allies.

A countervailing Western/Wahhabi Arab intervention would be desirable. However, the ideological arsenal of pretexts for US military interventions are depleted, redundant, spent or throughly disgraced.

«Saving world heritage» and 3,000-year-old artefacts could be just the new version of «R2P» that is needed by the US and its Western allies.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  

 

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

https://uprootedpalestinians.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/a30bf-why-america-and-israel-are-the-greatest-threats-to-peace.jpgThe Israeli army confirmed today that up to 130 Palestinian civilians were slaughtered in Rafah last Friday following the triggering of the Hannibal protocol – an IDF directive that is designed to thwart the capture of Israeli combatants.

Israel unleashed its full firepower and flattened an entire neighbourhood using tanks, artillery and gunships murdering130 Palestinians just to make sure that one Israeli soldier, Lt. Hadar Goldin didn’t fall into Hamas’ hands alive.

The only interpretation of this massacre is that Israel is a homicidal state completely immune to international conventions and without any respect for civilian lives.

In the light of the actions taken by the Jewish State in the last few days and the overwhelming support for Israel from Jews around the world, it is evident that we are witnessing a clash of civilizations. Humanity is faced with a savage tribe that shows a complete absence of empathy yet for some peculiar reason believes itself to be chosen.

For the sake of world peace, humanity has to use whatever resources it has to dismantle the Jewish State and its lobby.

Enough is enough.

Gilad Atzmon

The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity politics and Jewish Power in particular – available onAmazon.com  & Amazon.co.uk