Russia and China: the Stuff of American Nightmares

China willing to promote all-round cooperation with Russia: premier

The Dragon is scary enough to give America nightmares,

 but imagine what a Dragon AND a Bear can do working in tandem! Why they could see our sanctions against Russia and raise us  the US sovereign debt to China. They could see our T(rans)P(acific)P(artnership) and raise us the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and next Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan for starters) and the Caspian Sea Agreement (Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan). 

Russia-China — a bear dragon from Hell is what haunts our nightmares: 

 

 

Worst of all, however, is what transpired today during the visit of the Chinese premier, Li, in Russia.

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China is willing to further materialize all-round and in-depth exchange and cooperation with Russia, visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said here [Moscow] Monday.

China and Russia are each other’s biggest neighbors, with profound traditional friendship, Li said at a meeting with Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of the Russian State Duma, or the lower house of parliament.

Noting that Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have held several successful meetings since last year, Li said the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination manifests itself not only in the high-level mutual political trust, but in the increasingly broad and deep economic and trade cooperation as well as cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

China, Li said, supports the two countries’ legislatures expanding exchanges and cooperation, promoting China-Russia friendship, and actively boosting bilateral practical cooperation, so as to lay a solid foundation of public opinion for the long-term development of both nations.

For his part, Naryshkin noted that Russia and China firmly support each other on issues concerning national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The two sides closely coordinate with each other on international affairs to steadfastly safeguard global peace, stability and development, he said.

The Russia-China relationship is the most important priority in Moscow’s foreign policy, Naryshkin said, adding that Russia is willing to further deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination between the two countries.

The State Duma, he said, is ready to enhance exchanges and cooperation with the National People’s Congress, China’s national legislature, and play an active role in promoting the development of bilateral relations.

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Russia, China and Iran? Can we afford to allow them to gang up? Something must be done. Maybe a flare-up in Chechnya, more serious trouble in Hong Kong, and the “Khorasan” boys must be groomed faster for Iran. But hurry, Uncle Sam, hurry. Look, the BRICS are putting a hex on the ailing dollar:

They are all the stuff of bad dreams but the Dragon and the Bear are the worst.

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!

Judea Declares War on Russia on Behalf of the World

by Ariadna Theokopoulos on July 25, 2014

I remember the Saker’s reluctance to identify the Jewish oligarchs in ‘rump Ukraine’ supported by their global network as the real core of the junta. I remember his frequent threats to ban all ‘racist’ comments that mentioned ‘Jews.’ And I remember wondering if this meant he was just another gatekeeper.

In retrospect it seems he was only rigorously adhering to Putin’s chosen strategy to  identify the agents of chaos in Ukraine exclusively as ‘neo-nazis or ‘fascists’ aided and abetted by the US and to pretend not to notice that what the Kaplans, Nulands, Kerrys, ‘Yatse’s’ and Poroshenkos have in common is not a coincidentally shared fondness for matzes.

Now it appears that the Saker’s restraint has its limits. An article by Bernard-Henri-Levyrecently published in the New York Times tested the Saker’s patience beyond endurance. Perhaps he saw it, as I do, as much more than the usual hate-filled ramblings of this two-bit intellectual poseur and more like a ‘Judea Declares War on Russia’ declaration appearing in the same newspaper that published the infamous ‘Judea Declares War on Germany.’ He is not addressing the French; his article is in English and it was published by the international Jewish clarion — the New York Times. Levy speaks to international Jewry and to the world and he purports to speak for the world.

It is interesting to note the Jewish division of labor with regards to Russia, using the time-tested Jewish tactic of taking positions on both sides of the issue. On the one hand Israel maintains a studied neutrality towards the open and growing conflict between Russia and the US and its Lapdogs (US & L). Israel even went so far as to abstain from the U.N. Resolution condemning Russia for the ‘takeover of Crimea,’ a rare if not unique disassociation from the US voting block which the media in the US & L did not comment on.

The job of bashing Russia is delegated to those who could only in irony be called the Jewish cognitive elite’ if its representative is Levy.

The Saker’s comments (below) are followed by Levy’s article.

France’s #1 Zionist bashes Putin and Europe in the NYT

by the Saker

Yup, you probably guessed it. It’s BHL, Bernard Henri-Levi, the so-called “philosopher” and France’s ArchZionist who after declaring war in Libya and, before that, Serbia, is now declaring war on Russia. Normally, I would post the article in question. But for BHL I will make an exception and only post the link:

If you can do that and keep your breakfast down, I urge you to read his piece. His racist hatred of Russians is not even subtle: “vodka-soaked rabble army” “undisciplined louts who know only the law of the jungle” “dogs of war who follow no creed and no law”. He does not even need to say “subhuman” like Iatseniuk did – it is already quite clear.

It’s 1917 (hiding behind a thin veneer of 1941) all over again. The Trotskists want their genocide again. But this time around Russia understands it and is ready.

Putin’s Crime, Europe’s Cowardice

By BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY

Levy sporting his usual ill-advised décolletage

IN eastern Ukraine, Vladimir V. Putin has been playing with fire.

He has mobilized the worst elements to be found in the region.

He has taken thugs, thieves, rapists, ex-cons and vandals and turned them into a paramilitary force.

He has permitted ad hoc commanders of separatist groups to kill or chase off intellectuals, journalists and other moral authorities in the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk.

He has watched as a vodka-soaked rabble army destroys or takes over public buildings, hospitals, schools and municipal offices of the country it is pretending to liberate.

He has allowed a veritable gang war to take hold — without caring that he is losing control of the forces that he has unleashed, with rival bands pitted against one another and carving out fiefs amid the growing anarchy.

Most troubling of all: To this underworld without structure or discipline, to these undisciplined louts who know only the law of the jungle, to this new brand of fighting force that has only the dimmest idea of war and no idea, God knows, of the laws of war — to this motley collection Mr. Putin, the Russian president, gave a terrifying arsenal with which the amateur soldiers were unfamiliar and with which they have been playing, like kids with fireworks.

We know that Russia supplied vast quantities of heavy weaponry to the separatists and trained them to use the SA-11 surface-to-air missile system — the kind believed to have been used to bring down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

One can envision the victorious gang celebrating with its trophy, playing with it as if it were a toy — one that can reach altitudes of over 70,000 feet.

One can similarly imagine Russian military officers — not so secretly assigned by the Kremlin to watch over the missiles and their use by amateur artillery crews targeting Ukrainian military aircraft — being overtaken by events and seized with panic.

One can even imagine their consternation when Igor Strelkov, the self-proclaimed defense minister of the Republic of Donetsk, claimed responsibility for shooting down a Ukrainian military plane — which turned out to be Flight 17.

We know what happened.

Whatever the outcome of the eventual investigation — an investigation made well nigh impossible by these dogs of war who follow no creed and no law, who, as they horrified the world by leaving the bodies of their victims abandoned in fields or heaped in poorly refrigerated train cars, as they reveled in their 15 minutes of fame by deploring before the news cameras of the world that the 298 lost souls had had the bad taste to “land” on people’s houses or in reservoirs used for drinking water, were also purloining the plane’s black boxes, organizing the export to Russia of possibly compromising debris, and casually stripping the bodies of objects of value — whatever the outcome of the investigation into all of this, an undeniable result was carnage, a war crime, an attack on Ukraine, the Netherlands and Malaysia all at once.

For all of these reasons, it was hard not to side with Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko — who, it is worth noting, has shown in the terrible days since the crash the qualities of composure, dignity and authority that he exhibited during his campaign for office — when he asked the international community to classify as terrorist organizations the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Lugansk.

It is also hard not to agree with Mr. Poroshenko when, several hours after the tragedy, speaking unemotionally and with no trace of hate, he reminded France’s president, François Hollande, that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had been blacklisted by the world for his suspected involvement in a similar attack on a commercial airliner, Pan Am Flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.

Faced with this new Lockerbie, will we in the West do no more than beg Mr. Putin to provide “free and complete” access to the crash site and offer “full cooperation” in the recovery of remains?

Have we not a moral obligation to draw logical conclusions about a crime for which, because of his incendiary and irresponsible policies, deeply unworthy of the president of a great power, Mr. Putin is, in the end, wholly responsible?

Under the circumstances — with Mr. Putin having not yet agreed to back off in Ukraine, much less in Crimea — how can France morally justify its plan to deliver to Russia two Mistral-class warships, now being fitted out in the western port of St.-Nazaire? Do we want them to become the crown jewels of a Russian fleet off Sebastopol and, perhaps, Odessa?

To see the European Union acting so pusillanimously is very discouraging. France wants to hold on to its arms contracts for the jobs they are supposed to save in its naval shipyards. Germany, a hub of operations for the Russian energy giant Gazprom, is petrified of losing its own strategic position. Britain, for its part, despite recent statements by Prime Minister David Cameron, may still not be ready to forgo the colossal flows of Russian oligarchs’ ill-gotten cash upon which the City, London’s financial district, has come to rely.

In European parlance, this is called the spirit of Munich — appeasement. And it is a disgrace.

Bernard-Henri Lévy, a philosopher, is the author of “Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism.” This essay was translated by Steven B. Kennedy from the French.

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!

LIBERATION FROM DELIBERATION

Frankly speaking , I still have not come to terms with what happened with deLiberation . I don’t understand why somehow educated people- sharing a blog – would refuse to discuss something- instead of becoming defensive- while I was not attacking anyone nor interested in attacking anyone nor competing for some position or recognition. That they labeled as “silly” my post on the Native Nations instead of questioning and debating my view, is not normal for people who claim to be open . But they are not open, they want you to fit in their setting for sure , and join the chorus of the Jews behind everything theory . If you don’t join the chorus, then something must be wrong with you.

The post about Native Nations just mentioned the fact that, by mere uttering the names of places and mountains and rivers, by merely saying Nebraska or Arkansas or Mississippi or Delaware, one knows that this is Native land and not anything else , something that a five year old child is ready to admit but not deLiberation , and nobody knows why do they seek to overlook this portion of history – that is so important – which constitutes the beginning of what was going to become the United States of America . This is a question that needs to be answered, and is due probably to the fact that Jews did not play a major role in the colonization of the Americas .

As for Religion, deLiberation has taken an even more controversial attitude by attacking Religion and saying that religious texts should be altered and meddled with to fit God knows what agenda. They made themselves an authority on Religion though most of them are not religious. From where did they get this authority ? I brought up the fact that meddling with sacred religious texts is the origin of many plights among them the creation of the Zionist usurping state itself , but everything I said was met with self defense. I could not overlook this matter of extreme importance that inculpates Religion, seeing in Religion the source of all troubles and seeking in Judaism and in Jewish power alone, the origins of the creation of the usurping state of Israel, instead of a multiplicity of factors, among them western colonialism as the most prominent one .

Since I was not going to please deLiberation at the expense of my own experience of what Israel is , nor was I ready to admit that Karl Marx was working for the Jewish hegemony over the world , the relation with deLiberation started to deteriorate. What is deLiberation finally trying to do by taking people on this so called Jews behind everything trip? Is it serving some agenda that seeks to cover the national Palestinian struggle by giving it a religious dimension that will treat both Palestinians and Zionists on par as adherents to two different Religions having equal rights in Palestine.? Or is it working on fueling anti Semitic feelings reproducing the same setting that created the Jewish state as a shelter and abode for persecuted Jews and as a means to justify the threatened existence of the usurping state ?

Something must be behind this attitude of refusing the dialogue , unless this whole endeavor is an amateur’s endeavor of people in want of insight and experience.

http://www.deliberation.info/

Ariadna Theokopoulos is worried about the “Syrian “Revolutionaries”, They cannot vanish without a trace

Aiadna Theokopoulos: The “Mysterious” Disappearance of the Syrian “Revolutionaries”

Comment

Ariadna Theokopoulos is angry  the US, UK, NATO, the Saudis, Turkey and, dependably but more discreetly, Israel, are silent about 

“The mysterious disappearance of the Syrian revolutionaries — the Free Syrian Army — fighting for democracy poses a difficult problem for the upcoming Geneva conference which their representatives are supposed to attend.”

“They cannot vanish without a trace, leaving only the mercenaries, I mean volunteers, intact.” she said “Thierry Meyssan argues in the article below that they never existed. That would imply that our governments and our media have lied to us, which I find hard to believe.”

She can’t believe that her Zionist controlled media lied, and turned terrorists funded by US/UK, France and the Zionist entity into revolutionaries fighting for liberation and democracy

“They stab bellies and chests with their daggers to excavate hearts and livers and eat them and send out videos to anchors and have even used chemical weapons? Why is there no talk show discussing this barbarism on BBC Channel 4, CNN or Larry King Live Show? “

                                                                                              

Syrian Rebel funded backed by US/UK/France/Saudi alliance cutting the chest of dead Syrian soldier to excavate his heart to eat it

“What alternative explanation is there?”  Ariadna asked

“The obvious one is that Assad killed them off, which makes sense because we know that he ‘kills his own people,’” Thus she repeated her beloved media lies, “but how did he manage to accomplish this selective slaughter?”

She can’t admit that her “Syrian revolutionaries”  revealed their true color, and joined ISIL, Nusra Front, and the Saudi so-called  “Islamic Army”, many re-joined the Arab Syrian ArmyShe don’t care about the fate of the so-called “Syrian revolutionaries” her real problem is “the upcoming conference. It makes the recruitment of representatives an arduous task..”

Most Likely Ar by Ariadna Theokopoulos Forget that on July 25, 2013 

“Hundreds of insurgents/rebels/opposition forces are defecting, availing themselves of the amnesty President Assad offers those who lay down their weapons. Obviously those are Syrian men, not foreign mercenaries with no families or any other ties to Syria.”

Some links to help Ariadna Theokopoulos follow the traces of her beloved  “Revolutionaries” and some phottos for the dead ones

Pictures of Nusra Front terrorists killed on Nov, and Dec 2012

ISIL execute a FSA leader

Nusra Front Educating Decomacracy to Deraa Children

• ISIL Creeps towards Turkish Border after Heavy Fighting with FSA
• Syria Terrorists Widely Split: ISIL Grants FSA 48 Hours to Disarm
• Syria Terrorists Fighting Each Other
• 11 FSA Commanders Surrender to Syrian Army in Damascus Countryside, Over 300 Al-Qaeda Militants Killed in Eastern Syria
• Syrian Army Ambushed Nusra Militants in Damascus Countryside, Photo of terrorist’s bodies
• Washington’s New Islamic Front: Expanded U.S. Support to Al Qaeda Rebels in Syria

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WHITHER THE SYRIAN “REVOLUTIONARIES”?

by Thierry Meyssan – Voltaire Network  – 16 December 2013

On the eve of the Geneva 2 Conference, the American organizers no longer have any puppets to play the role of Syrian ‘revolutionaries’.

The sudden disappearance of the Free Syrian Army shows those who believed in it that was a fiction.

There has never been a popular revolution in Syria; just foreign aggression staged by mercenaries and billions of dollars.

The organizers of the Geneva peace conference urgently seek a representative for the armed Syrian opposition. According to Westerners, the conflict opposes an abominable dictatorship to its own people. However, armed groups that destroy Syria – from the Islamic Front to Al-Qaeda – officially call for foreign fighters, even if the former claims to be composed primarily of Syrians. Inviting them would amount to admitting that there has never been a revolution in Syria, only foreign aggression.

Indeed, the Free Syrian Army, which a few weeks ago we were told included 40,000 men, has disappeared. After its headquarters was attacked by mercenaries and arsenals were looted, its historic leader, General Salim Idriss, fled through Turkey and found refuge in Qatar.

At the time of its formation, July 29, 2011, the FSA had set a single objective: the overthrow of President Bashar al -Assad. The FSA has never specified whether it fought for a secular regime or an Islamic regime. It never adopted any political position with regards to Justice, Education, Culture, Economics, Labour, Environment, etc. . It never ​​ drafted the slightest policy program.

It was, we were told, formed of soldiers from the Syrian Arab Army who had defected. There were indeed defections during the second half of 2011, but their total number never exceeded 4 %, which is negligible on a country-wide scale.

No : The FSA did not need a political program because it had a flag, that of French colonisation. In force during the French mandate over Syria and maintained during the first years of supposed independence, it symbolized the Sykes-Picot Agreement: Syria was largely amputated and divided into ethnic and confessional states. Three stars symbolized a Druze state, an Alawite State and a Christian state. All Syrians know this fatal flag, be it only by its presence in the office of the Syrian collaborator of the French occupation in a famous soap opera.

Its first leader, Colonel Riad al-Assad, has disappeared to the dustbin of history. He was selected for his name, which is written differently in Arabic but is pronounced identically in European languages ​​with that of President Bashar al-Assad. The only difference between the two men, from a point of view of the Gulf monarchies, was that the first was Sunni and the second, Alawite.

In reality, the Free Syrian Army is a Franco-British creation as were the “Benghazi revolutionaries” in Libya (who had “chosen” the flag of King Idris I, collaborator of the English occupants).

An armed tool of NATO, intended to take the presidential palace when the Atlantic Alliance had bombed the country, the FSA has been tossed by successive plans and the successive failures of the West and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Presented a second time as the armed wing of a political council in exile, the former did not recognize the latter’s authority and obeyed only its Franco-British employers. It was in effect the armed wing of their secret services of which the Syrian National Coalition was the political front. Ultimately, the FSA could accumulate success only with the direct assistance of NATO, namely the Turkish Army that housed it in its own bases.

Created in the framework of a 4th generation war, the FSA has failed to adapt to the Second Syrian War, the Nicaraguan type. The first war (from the NATO meeting in Cairo in February, 2011 to the Geneva Conference in June, 2012) was a media staging to delegitimize power so that it would fall like a ripe fruit into the hands of NATO. Military actions were perpetrated by different factions, receiving their orders directly from the Alliance. It seved above all to give credence to media lies giving the illusion of a widespread revolt. According to the theories of William Lind and Martin Van Creveld, the FSA was a label to refer to all these groups, but which did not have its own hierarchical structure. Instead, the Second War (from the meeting of the “Friends of Syria” in Paris in July, 2012 to the Geneva 2 Conference in January, 2014) is a war of attrition to “bleed” the country until its surrender. To fulfill its role, the FSA would have had to turn into a real army, with a hierarchy and discipline, which it has never been able to do.

Feeling its end was near, since the Turkish- Iranian rapprochement, the FSA had announced its possible participation in Geneva 2 by demanding unrealistic conditions. But it was already too late. Mercenaries paid by Saudi Arabia set this NATO fiction straight. Everyone can now see the naked truth: there has never been a revolution in Syria.

by Thierry Meyssan

Original Français  ~  Italiano by Sitoaurora

Translation by Roger Lagassé
http://www.voltairenet.org/article181534.html

Gilad Atzmon Who?

Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 4:17PM Gilad Atzmon

 

A few words by GA: This is one of the most interesting articless on my work as a musician/writer and a public person. I spent two fascinating days with Ariadna in Buenos Aires. Reading this article helped me to understand my own work and the way it is perceived by others.

By Ariadna Theokopoulos

http://www.boldfacenews.com/gilad-atzmon-who/

One of the best international jazz musicians of today, philosopher, humanist thinker and author, Gilad Atzmon has been challenging all of us (and primarily Jews) for several years now to examine what defines Jewish Identity Politics (JIP), its core supremacist beliefs, and the many issues that arise from it: its strategies, the various disguises of racism, concealment and suppression of free speech.

The response has never been lukewarm: he has been hailed by some of the most distinguished intellectuals and academicians as “brilliant,” “original” and “profound” or he has been denounced with uniformly unsubstantiated accusations as being a “racist” and/or a “self-hating Jew.”
Since none of those charges carried any credibility, new ones will probably be manufactured in the attempt to silence him.

What is certain is that nobody has yet found him boring or inconsequential.

I have recently returned from a trip to Argentina where I had traveled to meet GA, who had been invited there upon the publication of The Wandering Who in Spanish (La Identidad Errante) by Editorial Canaán in Buenos Aires.

Copies of his book were available in bookstores already.

Buenos Aires is a reading town: it is hard to walk more than four blocks in any direction without finding a bookstore. Gilad marveled at seeing philosophy books displayed in the window of one. (I do not know about the UK but in the US only a bookstore manager bent on bankruptcy would display philosophy books instead of the usual shop window fare, something like “Quick Guide to Having Great Sex While Eating, Shopping and Investing Smartly.”)

He was generous with his time: I ended up spending a couple of full days with him, talking for many hours on end, accompanying him to radio interviews, to a talk he gave to history professors, an engagement in a jazz club, browsing through musical instruments stores and simply walking and enjoying together the unique and stunning beauty of Buenos Aires.

His reception was enthusiastic everywhere we went, although “la identitad politica Judia” is nowhere near as familiar a term as JIP has become in Europe and North America. Here, in South America in general, he does not (or not yet) benefit from the unintentional but helpful marketing support he has received from zionists and “anti-zionist zionists.”

I observed his interactions with people and watched their reactions to his ideas and his music, and most of all talked with him in a desultory fashion on a wide range of topics from the politics of marginal identities to sexual identity (“Sex and Character”), the difficulties of translating German philosophy in other languages, pro-Palestinian activism and its new ‘dietary laws,’ the beauty of national cultures and music, his nostalgic love of his native land, Palestine, his itinerant life style (he had flown to Buenos Aires straight from Japan), people we both know, and even about what constitutes a perfect pizza.

Turning the tables on him, so to speak, and using his own premise, it seems fair to ask:

If GA, a born Israeli Jew (who occasionally refers to himself as a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian), musician, philosopher, humanist thinker and finally a man, insists on critically examining JIP, then we have a right to try to find out who is GA, the itinerant saxophone player and story teller and what is his identity? Gilad Atzmon Who?

For each of us personal identity is made up of many strands of qualifiers with which we identify: idiosyncratic personal identity, sexual identity, professional identity, allegiance to a family, to one’s ethnic group, religion, national identity, universal human family. One of them will always be primary. After all, we know that some men rendered impotent in battle prefer to die than live without their ‘sexual identity,’ while others turned paraplegic but with their intellectual functions intact wish to live, religious zealots would rather kill and die rather than not prevail over their “enemies,” and so on.

It is reasonable to make the assumption that one’s primary identity, that which one chooses as a defining descriptor above others (e.g., “As a Jew, I think that….”) is the allegiance in whose perceived service one is willing to make the most sacrifices, often to the detriment of other “identities. “

Using that assumption, Gilad’s primary identity is without a doubt that of an artist.
What follows is like Magritte’s pipe

 
It is not Gilad. It is only my impression and rendition of him.

The Musician

At Jazz & Pop in Buenos Aires

That he is a consummate jazz player and a talented composer needs no elaboration at this point. His music has been acclaimed worldwide and not just by those who ever listened to him live or bought his CDs. When I returned to Montevideo I went to my favorite neighborhood caffe to give a gift to the owner – a copy of La Identidad Errante. He looked at it, read the author’s name and said: “I know this guy. I listen to him on youtube.”

“Songs of the Metropolis” was discussed in both of the radio interviews to which I accompanied him. They played Buenos Aires and he explained his admiration for Astor Piazzolla whose music is beautifully evoked by his song.

Gilad also expressed his delight in the Argentineans’ proud attachment to and nurturing of their musical heritage and traditions. Indeed, everywhere we went we could hear tango tunes pouring out of stores, cabs and caffes. In fact, walking in La Boca we passed by an impromptu street scene of ordinary people dancing tango, which I felt worth capturing:

Pride in the tango can be fierce and the controversy about whether the great Gardel was really a Uruguayan or an Argentinean is a cause of rancor between the two neighboring nations. In this light, Gilad’s expression of sincere and deep admiration for Piazzolla alone could make him an honorary Argentinean citizen.

The format of the two radio shows was pretty much the same: a presentation of the artist by the interviewer as musician and writer, a discussion of Songs of the Metropolis, a few intelligent questions about the transformative effect of Gilad’s early acquaintance with jazz and its stellar black performers on his thinking and ethical view of the world, including his “discovery” of Palestinians and their national tragedy, and the message of The Wandering Who. They played Buenos Aires, Tel Aviv and Scarborough and at the end gave the listeners information about his upcoming shows and about the availability of his book in Spanish in local bookstores.

I have no way to gauge the reception of the radio interviews by listeners but later I recognized some of the radio station staff among the audience in the jazz club.

The show was memorable. The jazz club was packed and Gilad seemed, if anything, energized by lack of sleep and the jetlag and totally connected with the audience.

Women seem to be thronging around him at his shows and talks, a fact he dismisses and attributes only to his fame. That is entirely plausible for some of them. It is perhaps the “triangular desire” that Rene Girard describes in Mensonge Romantique et Verité Romanesque, “mediated desire” or “desire according to others.” In other words he is “vetted” as charismatic by the arbiters of fame. Others may find him attractive because—no offense to Gilad—almost any man can become attractive when he plays his saxophone with abandon. Bill Clinton, although he never seems to have advanced beyond the saxophone version of Chopsticks surely knows that. There is perhaps something about the sight of a man passionately immersed in his playing (not the tuba though) that makes some women wish to grab some of that intense concentration and try to have it turn on themselves. John Berger thinks that “to be passionately desired is perhaps the closest one can get in this life to feeling immortal” (“ser deseado con pasión es tal vez lo mas parecido que se pueda alcanzar en esta vida a sentarse inmortal”—El Cuaderno de Bento). Nevertheless his incessant talking about his beautiful wife, with evident admiration, must be a killer to the hopes of even the most determined female stalkers or the fakers wishing to test his “male chauvinism.”

The audience was electrified by his performance (with the somewhat self-effacing Juampi Juarez trio) and brought to an ovation by his scatting, pouring forth from somewhere deep, almost in a frenzied trance.

The Story Teller

It was his scatting also that made me think that, indissolubly linked to his identity as a musician, he has a twin primary identity as the Story Teller, in the mold of Mario Vargas Llosa’s main character in the eponymous novel.

In the Amazonian jungle, among the natives, Llosa narrates, there was a Story Teller, a man whose life mission was to roam from one isolated group/tribe to another and another, all across the vast and almost impenetrable jungle to sing the truth and to record and revise history. Given the difficulties and perils of the trek he only got to visit each community once a year.

Upon his arrival all gathered to hear him sing the Story that told them about themselves and others like them, from the beginnings of creation to present day events, like news of births and deaths and impending perils in all the places he had been visiting since his last meeting with them.

The Story was never quite the same from one visit to the next not only because it was growing with more additions of news and events but also because the memory of the past was changing and enriched by new learning.

The Story reminded them that they were not alone although they were isolated and only rarely got to really know any of the other tribes, with whom they became acquainted mostly from his Story. Nevertheless, it was clear from his Story that the others were very much like them.

To be the Story Teller was a function of great responsibility but also great personal sacrifice: enduring the life of a lone wanderer.

Llosa eventually reveals that the Story Teller was a Peruvian Jew who had abandoned his “tribe” and the larger urban culture he belonged to, and chose to live among the real people of the land, the old inhabitants pushed deep into the jungle by the “civilization” of the invading colonists. When they honored him by appointing him Story Teller, he became their singer of history, keeper of truth and teacher.

His recital, in the form of a sung epic, also contained a refrain, much like an invocation, a repetition that, when uttered fast over and over unraveled words and became only sound, like scatting.
In his own way, combining music with his Story and carrying the compact universal message to all as he wanders all over the world, Gilad Atzmon is also the Story Teller.
 

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 this Blog!

Provocation against Russia/False Flags in the Making for Syria

by Ariadna Theokopoulos

Friday, January 11th, 2013

From Voice of Russia

Provocation against Russia Being Prepared in Syria
by Alexei Lyakhov, Konstantin Garibov

In separate interviews with the Voice of Russia broadcast on Thursday, a host of experts mentioned a new round of information warfare against Bashar Assad and a possible new provocation against Russia.

They commented on information about Western and Middle Eastern special services recruiting a group of those who have Slavic features to play a role of Russian “mercenaries” allegedly captured by Syrian opposition fighters.

Russian media quoted a well-informed anonymous source as saying that “actors” are being selected in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They all must handle guns and be in the know about anti-aircraft systems. According to a script, they should recognize their being recruited by Russian special services with the aim of supporting the army of Bashar Assad. Also, they ought to say that they have allegedly been delivered to Syria by warships.

According to the source, all this will be filmed in Turkey or Jordan, where fake demolished Syrian towns have already been built in the form of large-scale theatrical scenery.

Sergei Demidenko of the Institute of Strategic Assessments and Analysis in Moscow singles out similar ghost towns that were built in Qatar and Saudi Arabia to discredit the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

“According to Goebbels, if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it, Demidenko says. As for the above-mentioned provocation, it aims to provoke an international uproar by creating an image of the wicked Syrian regime only supported by Russia and Iran. Those staging the provocation want to show that but for this support, the Assad regime could have long been ousted.”

The goal of video clips about Russian “mercenaries” in Syria is to save face of those who is backing the Syrian opposition’s fight against Bashar Assad, says Semyon Bagdasarov of the Moscow-based Center for Analytical Studies.

“It is open secret that the Free Syrian Army and other military groups include citizens of Libya, Afghanistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Bagdasarov says. As for the video clip, its aims to discredit Russia’s position and show that Russians take part in hostilities in Syria. This is an information warfare which is planned by the United States, Turkey and other countries.”

Confidential information about the planned provocation against Damascus and Moscow coincided with the beginning of talks on Syria in Geneva, where UN-Arab League special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi meets a group of Russian and US diplomats. Earlier, Moscow confirmed its readiness to cooperate with Western and Middle Eastern partners to effectively contribute to resolving the Syrian crisis. In this regard, the possible new provocation against Russia will hardly help implement this task.
—-

Chinese news agency (ZTE) published an image to Doha Airport and surrounds   confirming what the Syrian television aired bout building a full scale model of the Syrian Republican Palace in Doha Airport. The image shown is not available on usual Google.

 

Proof Pictures

 ——

 

THE ANTI SYRIAN PRO ISRAHELL HAWKS,AND THE ”WASHINGTON BASED” CEDAR REVOLUTION CONVENTION AT C.I.A. FRONT FDD …. Lebanese Activists Worldwide Attend (ZIONIST) Cedars Revolution Convention in (ZIONIST) Washington

[ed notes:besides all the anti syrian propaganda they are regurgitating and laying out,key points here are basically, Assad must go,Syria is against zionist backed cedar revolution,and of course all of these shills are supported by pentagon,and us state dept!!!btw the links between cedar revolutionist frauds and syria opposition,is lebanon foundation for peace organization and stand up america headed by m.g. paul e valelly,those are just the biggest ties,the piece above shows the many more .. still think the so called destabilization of Syria isnt being promoted by zionist ran washington and israhell?if not,you are too stupid to even debate issue..also read…






 
Act One of the CIA’s “Arab Spring” – Color Revolutions and Geopolitics
Older Post – THENAKEDFACTS
free syrian armys ziocon allies at stand up – THENAKEDFACTS
 Older Post – THENAKEDFACTS
SAVE SYRIA: Demand An End to US-NATO – THENAKEDFACTS
Washington and the Lebanese Experience: Changing Tools and …
(firkra forum)
Posted by Nysoulcontrolla aka Ali at 6:23 AM

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 this Blog!

PSYCO WAR: Syria — US and NATO Closing in for the Kill

 
by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Friday, December 7th, 2012

December 07, 2012 “UPI” – Some 400 U.S. and Dutch NATO troops were massed on Turkey’s Syrian border Friday amid fears besieged President Bashar Assad was poised to use chemical weapons.

The soldiers were beefing up Turkey’s border and readying Patriot missiles three days after NATO agreed to deploy the MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile system in Turkey. Ankara had requested the installations as a defense against a Syrian missile attack, possibly with chemical weapons.

“Nobody knows what such a regime is capable of and that is why we are acting protectively here,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said of NATO’s move.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the latest intelligence reports heightened fears Assad would use chemical weapons on the rebels trying to oust him.

“The intelligence that we have raises serious concerns that this is being considered,” he said.

Over four decades, Syria has amassed one of the largest undeclared stockpiles of chemicals in the world, including huge supplies of mustard gas, sarin nerve agent and cyanide, the CIA says.

Syria denounced the NATO action and the U.S. and German statements.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad told pro-Assad Lebanese satellite TV station al-Manar, affiliated with the Shiite militant group Hezbollah: “Syria stresses again, for the 10th, the 100th time, that if we had such [chemical] weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide.”

Miqdad accused the United States and pro-opposition European countries of “conspiring” to create the impression the Assad regime would use chemical weapons to justify an intervention.

The high-stakes actions came as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a surprise meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.N.-Arab League special envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi to broker a deal that would lead to Assad’s ouster and a transitional government’s installation.

The U.S. State Department said the 40-minute meeting, which Brahimi called, was a “constructive discussion focused on how to support a political transition in practical terms.”

Brahimi said afterward his goal was to “put together a peace process” that would build on a political transition strategy Washington and Moscow worked out in Geneva in June. That strategy quickly came undone over enforcement issues, officials said at the time.

“We haven’t taken any sensational decisions,” Brahimi said. He called Syria’s situation “very, very, very bad.”

Clinton told reporters before the meeting, “We have been trying hard to work with Russia to try to stop the bloodshed in Syria and start a political transition for a post-Assad Syrian future.”

She added, “Events on the ground in Syria are accelerating, and we see that in many different ways.”

The opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said at least 89 people were killed in Syria Thursday. It said Syrian troops shelled at least 248 points, with 13 points shelled by warplanes, mostly in the Damascus suburbs.

Two points were hit with cluster bombs and four with barrel bombs, the group said.

Cluster bombs are air-dropped or ground-launched and release or eject smaller sub-munitions, or explosive “bomblets.” Barrel bombs are large oil drums packed with TNT, oil and chunks of steel and dropped from helicopters. These improvised weapons are intended to cause maximum death and destruction, British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported.

___________________________

U P D A T E



From RT:

The USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating US preparation for a potential ground intervention.

While the Obama administration has not announced any sort of American-led military intervention in the war-torn country, the US is now ready to launch such action “within days” if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the opposition, the Times reports.

Some have suggested that the Assad regime may use chemical weapons against the opposition fighters in the coming days or weeks.

The arrival of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the 11 US Navy aircraft carriers that has the capacity to hold thousands of men, is now stationed at the coast of Syria, DEBKAfile reports. The aircraft carrier joined the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, which holds about 2,500 Marines.

“We have (US) special operations forces at the right posture, they don’t have to be sent,” an unnamed US official told The Australian, which suggested that US military troops are already near Syria and ready to intervene in the conflict, if necessary.

If the US decides to intervene militarily in Syria, it now has at its disposal 10,000 fighting men, 17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers, 10 destroyers and frigates and a guided military cruises. Some of the vessels are also equipped with Aegis missile interceptors to shoot down any missiles Syria might have at hand, according to DEBKAfile.

“The muscle is already there to be flexed,” a US official told the London Times about the US military’s presence outside of Syria. “It’s premature to say what could happen if a decision is made to intervene. That hasn’t taken shape, we’ve not reached that kind of decision. There are a lot of options, but it [military action] could be launched rapidly, within days.”

The move comes after NATO made a significant strategic decision Tuesday to deploy Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems in Turkey on the border of Syria where opposition groups have the stronghold. The defense would be able to protect Turkey from potential Syrian missiles that could contain chemical weapons, as well as intimidate Syrian Air Force pilots from bombing the northern Syria border towns, which the armed rebels control. Syria is thought to have about 700 missiles.

“The protection from NATO will be three dimensional; one is the short-range Patriots, the second is the middle-range Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAD] system and the last is the AEGIS system, which counters missiles that can reach outside the atmosphere,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

DEBKAfile’s anonymous military sources claim the THAD and Aegis arrived at the Syrian coast aboard the USS Eisenhower.

“The United States now stands ready for direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict when the weather permits,” the news source wrote.

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 this Blog!

Jewish English — The New Idiom

by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Saturday, December 1st, 2012

“False friends are pairs of words or phrases
in two languages or dialects (or letters in
two alphabets)[1] that look or sound similar,
but differ significantly in meaning.”
WIKIPEDIA

Following the cancellation, under public pressure, of Stevie Wonder’s planned concert to benefit “Friends of the IDF” (FIDF), The National Director and CEO of FIDF, Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Itzak (Jerry) Gershon stated:

“We regret the fact that Stevie Wonder decided to cancel his performance at an important community event of the FIDF, an American organization supporting the educational, cultural, and wellbeing needs of Israel’s soldiers, their families, and the families of fallen soldiers. FIDF is a non-political organization that provides much-needed humanitarian support regardless of religion, political affiliation, or military activity.

I highlighted the self-definition of FIDF because it demonstrates the difficulty of learning Jewish English (JE), an idiom in which English words and concepts are expressed in terms that often have the opposite meaning to the generally accepted one or a strikingly different significance (e.g., “peace,” “purity of arms,” “self-defense”).

Although it sounds like English, JE poses similar difficulties for the non-native speaker as Yiddish does for the German speaker. Both Yiddish and JE are Jewish creations and both are offshoots of an already existent language, (linguistic corruptions like Pidgin English). That is where the similarities end, however, between Yiddish and JE. Whereas Yiddish (now virtually extinct among the younger generations) has been spoken only by Jews, JE has enjoyed a tremendous spread and is now spoken throughout the Western world, often successfully competing with English. It is the official language of the US Congress, the UK Parliament, and the Western MSM.

Most of us are colloquially fluent in JE to some degree through almost daily exposure to MSM, but the lack of an actual glossary of JE giving the Jewish definition of English words makes translations and indeed communication difficult.

This is what the definition of IDF might be in such a glossary:

“IDF = The only state-authorized Jewish real estate developer whose mission is to provide clean living space in Eretz Israel to Jews anywhere in the world through the relocation of local non-Jews by any means, irrespective of their religion or military activity.”

or another example:

“Israel: Demographic and Geopolitical Definition

Israel is a unique democracy that, although located in the ME and inhabited for the most part* by the direct descendants of the ancient semitic tribes of Israel, naturally belongs in the European Union and in organizations like NATO due to its inhabitants’ 2000-year sojourn in Europe, whose civilization and culture they created.
________________________
*Arabs very sparsely and sporadically inhabited the Israeli territory over the centuries (during the Jewish diaspora) and only started coming to Israel in large numbers after 1948 when, attracted by the prosperity of the State for Jews, they came looking for employment or, more often, for handouts, frequently creating conflicts and threatening the securty of the re-nativized Jews.”

In the video below (click to watch the vedio), Prosor, the Israeli ambassador, speaks JE. His speech can serve as a perfect exercise to test your fluency in JE. See how many of the words and phrases he uses you can define or at least interpret from the JE perspective.

The importance of studying JE and compiling glossaries, dictionaries and lexical thesauri for the improvement of global communication cannot be overemphasized.

Without a proper comprehension of the idiom, all speeches delivered in JE may just sound something like the sounds in the video below, appropriate and effective for our politicians but unintelligible and counterintuitive to the rest of us who know the “facts on the ground” they refer to:

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 this Blog!

Advice to Bibi

by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Sunday, November 25th, 2012

When you are very old, sitting in your wheelchair whose wheels play Hava Nagila, while your granchildren are playing with your combover, tell them again the story of your life.

Tell them about the mighty dome and how it failed because of the Arab djinns, tell them how you, 6 million Jews in all, were pushed into the sea and how you swam for 2,000 years in stormy waters filled with seafood, seafood everywhere and not a kosher bite to eat, until you finally arrived in Birobijan.

Tell them about the Pillar of Strength but don’t ever let them see this picture:

Photo: Courtesy of Gilad Atzmon

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 this Blog!

Ariadna Theokopoulos: Anti-semitism — an Eroded Democracy

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012 at 7:39PM Gilad Atzmon

http://www.deliberation.info

 

 

 

Although a lot of research has been devoted by distinguished institutions (e.g., ADL) to defining anti-semitism and providing detailed classifications of its forms of manifestation, the field has grown so much that it is hard now to encompass it in one discipline.
 
Abe Foxman, the head of ADL, has come up with a short test, now known as Foxman’s Five, on which even one check mark ensures certification as an anti-semite:

1. Criticism of Israel
2. Denial of the Holocaust, or (new!) ‘relativism’ on the issue
3. Criticism of the Jewish lobby/claims of Jewish global political power
4. Claiming that Jews own banking/media
5. Criticism of Jewish tribal behavior (“Jewish identity politics”)

 

The Anti-Anti-semitic Association (AAA), which accredits anti-semites, has lowered the bar so much that the anti-semite certfication is now available to anyone simply on the recommendation of two AAA experts.

 

The Holocaust criterion has been enlarged too: it used to include only “denial” but experience has shown that such a classification left a lot of desirable candidates without accreditation so, with the advent of Sophia Rosenthal and her staff of six at the State Department’s aptly named Bureau of Democracy, an addition was made:

“holocaust relativism,” i.e., quibbling with any detail in Holocaustology. This measure helped to democratize anti-semitism to some extent, opening the gates wider.

 

Nevertheless, interestingly, at the same time that the membership has grown by leaps and bounds into a vast, diverse, and vibrant community, an elite group of anti-semites has formed at the top.
The criteria by which special status is accorded to those few are not always clear. Needlessly to say, few anti-semitic plebeians would invidiously begrudge the VIP status to people like these (examples in alph order):

• Gilad Atzmon
• Paul Eisen
• John Meerscheimer
• Israel Shamir
• Stephen Walt

all of whom, armed with impressive bibliographies and CVs, ice Foxman’s test, and some of them score off the charts.
 

Perhaps it is not out of snobbery but from sincere conviction and respect for integrity that some of these high achievers oppose the induction into the ranks of anti-semites of new members like Greta Berlin and Ann Wright. They seem to reject the AAA’s argument of “Direct Contamination” as a sufficient admission criterion (i.e., Great Berlin “supports” Atzmon) as well as the “Secondary Contamination” criterion (Ann Wright supports Greta who supports Atzmon).

 

There is, however, something of a push towards exclusivism among the top stars in the anti-semites’ galaxy (e.g., Atzmon’s loud self-promotion as “Israel’s #1 enemy,” which is intimidating to those of whom Israel is not even aware).

 

Not all VIP members exhibit these anti-democratic tendencies, however. A pull in the opposite direction was seen in Eisen’s call: “We are all anti-semites now,” although he, too, succumbed to vanity and self-promotion by putting on his own site the link showing his VIP acceptance by one of the AAA agencies.

 

(On his site, greenie also touchingly has his mother’s picture):

In the most recent article by Roy Bard, in which he details the support he received from an AAA officer nicknamed greenie, Roy inadvertently reveals that he contacted greenie hoping for a stronger endorsement:
 
Tony

 You’ve publicly declared me to be an anti-semite (http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/07/indymedia-uk-three-years-on.html) and yet I am absolutely clear that people of Jewish origin are not a mono-thought clique, and that there is no common position shared by all Jews on any issue whatsoever.
So, what it is that makes me a racist?

 Note: The endorsement Roy was seeking was in fact modest: racism is a lower grade rubric than anti-semitism.
 
Nevertheless, even so, greenie, although helpful to him in the past through clumsily written but seemingly sincere endorsements, was either unwilling to give it to him this time or too inarticulate to express it properly, so all he offered was a second-tier certification:

“Yes I probably did declare you were an anti-Semite on the basis of an unqualified support for Gilad Atzmon who certainly generalises about Jews.”

In other words, “anti-semite by contamination.” Still, I find it interesting that greenie offered Roy another bite at the apple:

“Do you also find Israel Shamir an inspiring figure, because he was/is a full blooded anti-Semite and fascist.”

Is it possible to be promoted to VIP anti-semite status by proving double contamination? Perhaps there is hope there.
 
It appears that although the AAA has thrown wide open the gates to anti-semitic certification, within the certified community itself there is a nascent anti-democratic tendency while the dream of upward mobility of the middle-visibility anti-semitic class endures.
 
Nevertheless, irrespective of the stratification among the anti-semites already certified, if the accelerated admission process by AAA, ADL and other anti-semitism certificators continues at the present pace, soon we shall indeed be all “anti-semites,” and AAA will be out of business. The only things left to deal with will be:

1. Israel
2. The Holocaust lies
3. The Jewish lobby/Jewish global political power
4. Jewish ownership of global banking/media
5. Jewish tribal behavior (“Jewish identity politics”)

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 this Blog!

Beat your chest, Dissimulate, Sermonize

by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

A movement should not be judged solely by the motivations of its members. The pro-Palestinian movement known as BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) has a Janus face.
 

It includes a large number (the majority) of people animated by selfless, noble intentions, who are courageous and sincere believers that peaceful resistance methods are the only way to push Israel back/oppose its policies/make it “change its spots.” Some of them (members of ISM who also support BDS) have lost their lives for it and many of them place their lives at risk for this.

For organizations/churches/companies/unions to divest themselves of Israel-related interests is in fact a moral imperative, irrespective of whether their action does make a dent in Israeli interests or not. It is something they are morally obligated to do for themselves.

Despite the fact that some of the most ardent proponents of BDS (including a motley British mishpuchah kvetching on “greenie”‘s blog) pursue an agenda appropriately named by Gilad Atzmon “anti-zionist zionist (AZZ),” despite the clowning of one Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, superbly lampooned by David Holden, and famous for her efforts to make Israel change the labels on their oranges, despite all that …it does a soul good to see anti-Israel demonstrations in the West and protests and boycotts of Israeli emissaries, cultural or other, to see them booed.

It is definitely a selfish pleasure when you realize its lack of effect: that kind of humiliation has the opposite effect from the one intended, namely, instead of shaking the Israelis into awareness and shame, it strengthens their paranoia of eternal victims. Nevertheless, far from being an act of “vandalism” carried out by “hooligans,” it is a statement saying, “We know who you are and what you do and this is the welcome you deserve.” Such protests perhaps serve at least to educate others in the West who are ignorant of what their own governments are supporting, using their own money and perhaps to wake up some “diaspora” jews from their unquestioning support of Israel.

The other face of BDS is seen when the acronym is spelled out as “Beat your chest, Dissimulate and Sermonize, and is represented by a leadership that has shown itself to be a faithful follower of the script of Israeli interests by:

– the diligence with which they have become the helpers of Abe Foxman in “combatting anti-semitism,” declared a priority goal of pro-Palestinian activism, allegedly because of the movement’s dedicated fight against “all forms of racism and bigotry”;

– the promptness with which they condemn “violence” and “terrorism” perpetrated “by either side” (the ever present concern for “balance”) and sermonize on the nobility of “peaceful resistance”–expect quotes from Ghandi and MLK;

– their support of the “one state solution,” a goal to them, blind or willfully blind to see that one state is already a “fact on the ground”–the state for Jews, made up of three parts: the rich neighborhood (Jews) protected by one set of laws, the poor areas (Palestinians) oppressed by another set of laws, and the large prison called Gaza, the Gitmo of the ME –all one state.

It is hard to assume that the goals of these BDSers are pro-anything other than pro-themselves and their nests, which they have managed to feather with bits of straw thrown their way by pro-Israel individuals and organizations.

Yet I think that the motivations and the agendas are less relevant in judging a movement after several decades of existence, because what really counts are the results.

The results are non-existent. It is even possible that the only result is a negative one for Palestinians, feeding them false hope, encouraging them to resist “peacefully,” making them feel they “are not alone,” believing there are lots of people out there who will eventually persuade their own governments to influence the Israeli government, etc, etc. I find it amazing that in more than 60 years there have been no acts of terrorism carried out by Palestinians against the governments/interests of the big players in the West who feed and arm Israel.

BDSers often cite Rhodesia and South Africa as positive examples of apartheid regimes that fell supposedly because of the international boycotts. I used to think so too. Nothing could be further from the truth. They fell only because of the FEAR of the white minority regime of the enormous black majority who rose up in arms. Nothing but fear can make a bully back down.

Henning Mankell, who knows a thing or two about pro-Palestinian peaceful actions (he was on one of the boats trying to break the Gaza siege, was arrested, roughed up and robbed of all his possessions by the IDF) now has this to say about boycotts in his recent novel (The White Lioness, p.231):

“The Southern Rhodesia had cracked the sanctions [imposed on it by the West]. All politicians have dirty hands. Those vying for power set up and break rules according to the state of the game.

Despite the sanctions imposed by every country in the world apart from Portugal, Taiwan, Israel and South Africa, Southern Rhodesia had never run short of the goods it needed to import. Nor had their exports suffered any serious downturn. American and Soviet politicians both offered their services. The Americans, mostly senators for the South, considered it important to support the white minority government. Through an ingenious network of intermediaries, they had taken it upon themselves to lift the sanctions by backdoor methods. The Russians needed Rhodesian minerals for their industries. Soon there was nothing left but a mirage of isolation. Nevertheless, all over the world politicians continued to extol the success of their sanctions.”

Thirty years later “white South Africa, enriched by the lesson learned form its Rhodesian twin, also had many friends throughout the world, although their support was less conspicuous than what the blacks were getting.”

The fall of both regimes had nothing much to do with boycotts and everything to do with the only lever to move the white minority governments to cede power: FEAR of the black majority determined to topple them. The fear was caused by the realization that the ignorant blacks lacked schooling in peaceful resistance and did not even know the lyrics of Lennon’s ” All You Need is Love.”

“Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive, but by some skilful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black, but they have also told him how to react to the kick… He is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit.“ – Steve Biko, freedom fighter against Apartheid, killed while under police arrest.

The tough lesson from this for Palestinians is this: You ARE alone. Due to ethnic cleansing over decades you are, unlike the blacks in South Africa, a minority in “Israel” but only if you forget the exiled Palestinians. Peaceful resistance only gives Israel more time to complete the job. Respond to the kick in the way you see fit.

The lesson from this to pro-Palestinian activists is this: the Palestinians do not need lectures about Ghandi. They only need material support. If a case is being made over and over about the need to give the Syrian “rebels” “humanitarian assistance” surely you, brave leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement, can make a case of the need to give Palestinians the same kind of “humanitarian materials” to defend themselves.

Leave the fight against “anti-semitism” to Abe Foxman: he needs no help. Stop being kappos in the pro-Palestinian movement and useless noise makers.

 

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 this Blog!

 

A Profile in Treason

by Ariadna Theokopoulos

Thursday, August 30th, 2012 A Face to Launch 1,000 Ships?

No, not Helen but Ileana, not of Troy, but of the Tribe, and not ships but missiles.

Ileana Ross-Lehtinen wants Iran destroyed for the “security” of Israel.

Ileana Ross-Lehtinen, whom Alan Hart called the “zionist lobby’s First Lady” and “Zionist lobby’s chief stooge,” provides an emblematic case study of a sayan in a high position of power in the American government who works to further Israel’s and jewish power’s interests not only in disregard of but against the interests of the American people.

Who is she really?

Ileana Ross-Lehtinen

Hailing from a family of jews in Turkey who immigrated to Cuba, where she was born, she said her mother was converted to Catholicism and that she herself was Episcopalian. In recent years she has not mentioned her episcopalianism, certainly not in evidence when she twittered, “Gr8 2 speak honoring Rebbe’s #LivingLegacy; thx 2 @Lubavitch 4 & Rabbi Shemtov 4 strengthening the Jewish ppl! http://t.co/x5aFCRj4, a joyous outburst posted via web that she apparently regretted 22 seconds later when she deleted it, but not before some busybody Goy captured it.

Like Kissinger and other jews who boldly went where few jews had gone before, into the Republican party (which needed serious kosherizing), she became the first Republican elected to the House from Florida and quickly rose to prominence, all the way to the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Trying to deduce her allegiances and sympathies from her background is a difficult enterprise. If she has any nostalgia or emotional ties to the country of her birth, Cuba, its people and culture, they are more likely to be as ineffable as Proustian memories of flavors, say, the taste not of madeleines but of those sweet Cuban alfajores.

Otherwise nothing but callous indifference and hostility is evident from her support of the unlawful economic blockade imposed by the US for decades on that small island. The Cuban people are to her what Shahak described the Russian mujiks to be to the Russian jews: unwashed Goy rabble.

What does this Episcopalian actually do to “strengthen the jewish ppl”? What doesn’t she do? One of her most most generous donors is Irving Moskowitz, a very rich man who made his bundle by hard work as a “gambling magnate,” and who finances jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. It would be crude and hasty, however, to assume that it is because of his generous campaign contributions to her that she called for the US to defund the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency. I believe that Ross-Lehtinen and Moskowitz are sincerely of one mind.

She is also extremely vigilant as a peace maker and supporter of the peace process negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, which is why she vigorously objected when the Obama administration allowed the PLO to place the Palestinian flag outside its office in Washington, DC:

“Raising this flag in [the District of Columbia] is part of the Palestinian leadership’s scheme to manipulate international acceptance and diplomatic recognition of a yet-to-be-created Palestinian state while refusing to directly negotiate with Israel or accept the existence of Israel as a democratic, Jewish state.”

In 2011 she went on to condemn the Palestinian Authority’s proposed Security Council resolution reaffirming the illegality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories as “part of the same strategy aimed at extracting concessions without being required to meet international commitments.”

On the murder by Israeli commandos of the peace volunteers on board the Mavi Marmara in international waters she spoke out vehemently against Israel’s critics:

Israeli soldiers had every right to defend their lives against a lynch mob attacking them with knives and clubs.”

Keeping her eyes peeled for Israel’s enemies, she has come up with a new “axis of evil”: Iran-Nicaragua-Venezuela. She informed the House Committee of Foreign Relations (HCFR) of just how dangerous this axis is for the security interests of … the United States, of course:

““Iran’s Ahmadinejad has had a receptive audience in Chavez who has been willing to work hand-in-hand with Tehran on everything from joint banking schemes, to oil and gas ventures, to military and security agreements, to technological partnerships. Chavez is reportedly selling uranium to the Iranian regime for use in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s Banco Internacional de Desarrollo, sanctioned by the U.S. for aiding Iranian agencies involved in Iran’s nuclear proliferation, is also conducting business in Venezuela. In April of this year, Iran and Venezuela signed a defense pact in which Iran pledged to promote Venezuela’s defense capabilities. Lest we forget, though, Chavez is merely following the model first set-up by the Cuban dictatorship which has a joint bio-technology venture with the Iranian regime—a regime with a reported bioweapons program. News reports this week state that Ecuador’s Rafael Correa has agreed to host a branch of Iran’s Export Development Bank. Nicaragua now has an Iranian diplomatic mission in Managua. U.S. intelligence officials emphasize that Iran uses its embassies to smuggle in weapons and to develop and execute its deadly plans. This growing axis brings the Iranian threat closer to the U.S. and directly undermines our critical security interests. Where is the sense of urgency from U.S. officials in countering this threat?”

Her American patriotism, coupled with her Episcopalian faith, sharpen her vision, scanning the horizon for enemies of the United States, for she realizes there is always more than one axis of evil out there, and indeed she spotted another that she pointed out to HCFR in 2011, not forgetting to add her concern for her native shores:

““In Lebanon, we have witnessed the conquest of the country by the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis. The U.S. should never have been supporting a government with Hezbollah. Now, with Hezbollah in control, what is the justification for continued U.S. taxpayer investment? In Egypt and elsewhere, successive U.S. administrations failed to move beyond the status quo and prepare for the future. We should not associate the protest in Jordan and Bahrain with events transpiring in Tripoli, Cairo and Beirut. But there is one constant. We have failed to effectively use our resources to help build strong, accountable institutions that protect basic human rights. … In our hemisphere, the U.S. approach is one of misplaced priorities. The Havana tyranny has again ramped up its assault against a democracy movement in Cuba, detaining dozens of peaceful protesters, beating mourning mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, and this weekend sending its shameless thugs after the Ladies in White. Yet, the administration has repeatedly eased regulations on the Castro regime.”

Right now, prominent and predominant in her worries is the need for a vigorous push for regime change in Iran. She has sponsored the Iran Freedom Support Act, which also authorizes the president ““to provide financial and political assistance to foreign and domestic individuals, organizations, and entities that support democracy and the promotion of democracy in Iran.”

She has also sponsored House resolution 750, the “Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act,” proving that you can wrap two enemies of Israel – I mean the US—in one House bill.

She has been complaining that what is really necessary, a truly “tough approach toward Iran has yet to be fully tried,” apparently dissatisfied with the First Jewish President’s efforts in this direction.

Perhaps Obama has not disappointed her as much as he has confirmed her earlier suspicions through his ill manners. Close to the end of his first term he had still “failed to visit Israel.” Other Episcopalians like her, but on the other side of the aisle, tried to excuse Obama, pointing out defensively that Nixon and GW Bush had also visited Israel only in their second terms, while Reagan, that enduring republican icon himself, never did! As an unofficial but respected bookkeeper among many Episcopalians who keep track of the American presidents’ bending over and the number of Israeli intromissions, she is the first one to make clear that the venue where the act takes place has as much symbolic significance as the submission ritual itself.

Preoccupied with prioritizing and judiciously apportioning the limited capacity of the US for military involvement on the side of the “oppressed” around the globe, she elucidated why attacking Libya was paramount for the interests of the American people, whose national security was threatened by Libya:
“The American people expect the President, as our Commander in Chief, to determine when U.S. national security interests are at risk and what he is prepared to command the men and women of our Armed Forces to undertake in order to protect and defend them. Deferring to the United Nations and calling on our military personnel to enforce the ‘writ of the international community’ sets a dangerous precedent.

In assessing U.S. security interests and objectives, the President must also keep in mind Qaddafi’s attacks on Western targets resulting in the deaths of Americans in the 1980s.”

As then, now again, the congresswoman has the American people’s interests at heart, when she draws attention to the danger posed by Iran. In supporting the Iranian exile group MEK, and asking that they be taken off the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, she set aside her Episcopalian faith, and supported secularism, reasoning that MEK was a leading group able to establish a “secular government in Iran.”
This almost makes one impatient to be finished with Syria and Iran so that Ross-Lehtinen could then turn her attention to Israel, in search of a similar “leading group” that could turn it into a secular state.

As for the American people, dragged into wars not of necessity, but of choice, and solely to the benefit of a foreign state, the nation whose blood and treasure are spent against their best interests, the congresswoman seems as callously contemptuous of them as she is of the people of her native Cubay.

A violation of allegiance to one’s state, a betrayal of oath, trust and confidence are what constitutes treason by the dictionary definition. Patriotism means to stand up for one’s country not for a foreign state.
Ileana Ross-Lehtinen – a profile in treason.

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 this Blog!

In Fond Remembrance of Riad

by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Saturday, August 25th, 2012

Several years ago, a friend told me about The Palestine Children Welfare Fund (PCWF), an organization dedicated to helping the children of Palestine, especially orphan or sick children, and also “typical” Palestinian children whose childhood is made hell by the Israelis, who go hungry, live in improvised housing, learn in bombed out schools in open air, have few books and fewer toys, are terrified by the sights and sounds of war, or need medication their parents cannot obtain.

It turned out that it was pretty much a one-man operation carried out selflessly and tirelessly by a Palestinian teacher by the name of Riad Hamad, from Texas.

You could contribute by making a donation or buying from him the olive oil from Palestine, kuffiyas, handicrafts, hand-embroidered Christmas cards made by women in Bethlehem and other such items that provided a meager thread of employment support.

The web site of PCWF he maintained featured photos of individual Palestinian children, describing their circumstances (e.g., father and older brother killed by the IDF, disabled uncle helping the mother and her 3 children), etc and listing their most pressing needs, like hearing aids for children whose hearing was severely affected by Israeli ‘booms” and real bombs. He also solicited books, old books, schoolbooks, any books and school materials, which he sent there.

Every summer he made a “fair” with a colorful cart display of Palestinian articles and traveled with it in Texas and neighboring states. He was cheerful, incurably optimistic and a delight to know.

I talked to him on the phone many times but I never got to meet him in person. He was human kindness personified and never gave up hope that someday Palestinian children may get to have a normal childhood.

When my father died I remembered that of all the Israeli inhumanities the one that had always shocked my father the most had been the theft of water and the deliberate destruction of water wells in the OTs. I talked to Riad and decided to pay for the construction of a water well, in whatever village he knew it was needed at the time. Later he sent me a picture with the well, flanked by two olive tree sapplings and with my father’s name on it. I am sure my father would not have cared to have his name on it, just to have the well there. I have no idea if the well is still there, knowing, as I learned later, that the Israelis like to come back and destroy whatever is rebuilt in Palestine, but I hope it lasted at least long enough to make a difference. This was my very personal connection with Riad.

I knew that he was being mercilessly harassed by various zionist outfits in the US, and by the FBI. Although they lost the dirty suit against him, in which they claimed that by helping orphans of “terrorists” he was encouraging more terrorism and that his site was promoting terrorism, his persecution did not stop, on the contrary, it intensified.

I also knew that he had a daughter he loved more than life and of whom he was enormously proud. Just as she was admitted to med school, when he was thrilled by her success, he…. supposedly committed suicide, according to the published police report. The details in the articles linked above are enough to make one howl in indignation. He, according to the police, did it the hardest way: first he bound his mouth, hands and feet with tape, then somehow he crawled out of his car (found abandoned) all the way to the lake, threw himself in, and drowned.

For me, beside the shock of his assassination, an almost equal shock was the fact that the MSM could publish this account of it and justify it by saying he committed suicide because when they fished him out of the lake the bindings were loose, so of course he had taped himself. Besides they claimed, acquaintances (like who?) said he had been depressed. The fact that a newspaper could carry such a story scared me. It showed a defying cynicism I had not seen before: “Here’s an absurd lie, we know you know it is a blatant lie, but there is nothing you can do about it.”

As Kurt Nimmo wrote:

“Finally, it should be remembered that back in 2003, Israel declared its intention to embark “upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries,” according to United Press International. “The Israeli statements were confirmed by more than a half dozen U.S. foreign policy and intelligence officials in interviews with UPI. Israeli hit teams, which consist of units or squadrons of the Kidon, a sub-unit for Mossad’s highly secret Metsada department, would stage the operations, former Israeli intelligence sources said. Kidon is a Hebrew word meaning ‘bayonet,’ one former Israeli intelligence source said.”

Is it possible a neocon hit team or as likely a Mossad “bayonet” team took out the school teacher Riad Hamad?

Certainly, it makes more sense than the lame claim that Mr. Hamad wrapped himself up in duct tape and threw himself in Lady Bird Lake. “

They silenced him ad they killed PCWF, but Riad’s memory still burns bright and always will.

He has not only helped and comforted countless suffering Palestinian children but also enriched the lives of all the people who got to know him.

I remember him with gratitude and admiration and also with poignant regret for such a terrible loss to humanity.

 

For me Riad is Palestine.

 

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 this Blog!

WMDs in Syria?

by Ariadna Theokopoulos
Friday, August 10th, 2012

Under the title

Orwellian Ramifications Begin To Unfold In Syria

Dr. Ismail Salami writes in Countercurrents the following (excerpt):

“There is a horrible speculation that the insurgents in Syria may have seized hold of chemical weapons.

Apart from the catastrophically unthinkable havoc the rebels can wreak in Syria and in the region with the WMDs, the rhetorical question which remains is how these weapons of mass destruction have fallen into the hands of the insurgents who are chiefly composed of Wahhabi al-Qaeda mercenaries of different nationalities including Afghans, Iraqis, Turkish, Yemenis, Jordanians, Pakistanis, and Saudis.

The situation in Syria is assuming Orwellian ramifications and the possibility to clearly understand or dissect the situation in the country is not an easy task.

In addition to the active role the Saudi-backed Wahhabis, CIA and some western intelligence organizations are playing in Syria , there is one entity, namely Israel which is stealthily espying every single development in Syria .

For the first time, an Israeli spy official clearly stated that Israel supports regime change in Syria and that it really demands an end to the government of President Bashar Assad.

“I hope it will happen, even though I don’t know when or how,” Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said on Tuesday.

The top spy chief implicated why Assad should go and how it would damage the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“I am not going to try to calculate when Assad’s end will come, but when it happens, Iran ‘s biggest ally will be gone.”

Taking it for granted that Assad is doomed to go, he said, “I hope the new Syria will understand that joining Iran is a mistake that brings isolation from the Western world.”

* * * *

There are at least two deeply worrisome questions that arise from this report:

Is the presence of WMD in Syria real, and if so how did the “rebels” come into their possession and what is their provenance?

Is this a “leak” meant to establish that any planned future use of WMD against Syria or Iran will be blamed on their possession by “elements” associated with but not necessarily part of the Free Syrian Army?

Precedents are not reassuring. Weapons of mass destruction have been used recently in Iraq and Afghanistan and in both cases ample preparatory propaganda (Saddam Hussein’s famous and elusive WMDs) has been beemed at the world.

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 this Blog!

Palestinian Rights Are Not Negotiable

According to Ariadna Theokopoulos the below piece is an exercise in “khalidism” that summarizes some of the main characteristics of a piece of writing whose goal is to promote the Israel-NATO agenda using sectarian hatred as a method.

Yes, despite intentions, “Khalidism” serves Israel-NATO agenda, but I would like to add that “Khalidism” represents the opportionism of the brotherhood who would deal with the devil to achieve its goals.

by Ariadna Theokopoulos

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

While many are wrapping themselves in the Palestinian rights flag, most of them represent in fact different agendas they are pursuing, which have one thing in common: they are anti-Islamic.

Whom can we, Palestinians, trust? We see our brothers and sisters in Syria being butchered by a murderous tyrant who orders his army of thugs to rape women, kill children, and massacre civilians.

Israel and NATO may or may not truly wish to see the tyrant go but that should not blind us to the Truth: we should accept support from whomever helps the freedom fighters liberate Syria and bring back true Islam to its people.

Palestinian Journalist Thug : Khaled Amayreh

I am a Palestinian activist and a respected writer, as can be seen here, and here, and here (links pending), who has suffered in Israeli jails for my activities, but I say this:

I would rather live under Israeli occupation than under the power of Hezbollah and its anti-Islam, false Islam deviationists, sectarian rapists and murderers who call themselves shias.

Those who keep talking about “Israel” and “jews” — whether they are deluded muslims, anti-semites or self-obsessed jews, are trying to divert our attention from the real danger: the war on Islam going on in the world, waged by deviationists.

Palestinians are muslims first, sunnis — and therefore true muslims — and last. “Palestine” denotes just a meaningless geographical division of Islam.

‘*               *               *               *               *               *

“Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery” comes with lots of exceptions: persiflage, satire, irony, sarcasm, all turn imitation on its head.

The above piece is an exercise in “khalidism” that summarizes some of the main characteristics of a piece of writing whose goal is to promote the Israel-NATO agenda using sectarian hatred as a method. The main features are:

1. A deceiving title: the subject is most definitely not Palestinian rights, yet the piece might register in many places as “pro-Palestinian.”
2. False information about the nature of the bloodshed in Syria and its perpetrators, using the handy model of the propaganda disseminated on Libya.
3. Support for NATO’s aggression on Syria under the guise of humanitarian concern.
4. Sectarian hate used to create a poisoned split between sunnis and shias.
5. Deflection of criticism of Israel.
6. Last, and most important, a covert but unmistakable denial of Palestinian rights, deceptively called for in the title.

The bullet points are easy enough to master even for a barely articulate writer.

Add to the mix a vitriolic, invective-filled attack on any critics, masquerading as righteous indignation.
Above all, remember this, “respected Palestinian activists”:  Nothing about Palestine!

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
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Color Revolutions –The Hue of Coup d’Etat

by Ariadna Theokopoulos

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

In his article Western Leaders Slip into Their Childhood, Thierry Meyssan reviews the color revolutions, their genesis and their commonalities. He also reveals why Syria seems to be a harder nut to crack for such idealistic revolutionaries as Obama and Cameron: not enough young Syrians properly inspired.

“The slogan “Bashar must go!” was supposed to be chanted by crowds of protesters in Damascus and Aleppo. In the absence of such demonstrations, it has been taken over by Western leaders themselves even though it goes against all the conventional rules of diplomacy. Why?
 In 1985, a social scientist, Gene Sharp, published a study commissioned by NATO on Making Europe Unconquerable. He pointed out that ultimately a government only exists because people agree to obey it. The USSR could never control Western Europe if people refused to obey Communist governments.

A few years later, in 1989, Sharp was tasked by the CIA with conducting the practical application of his theoretical research in China. The United States wanted to topple Deng Xiaoping in favor of Zhao Ziyang. The intention was to stage a coup with a veneer of legitimacy by organizing street protests, in much the same way as the CIA had given a popular facade to the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh by hiring Tehran demonstrators (Operation Ajax, 1953). The difference here is that Gene Sharp had to rely on a mix of pro-Zhao and pro-US youth to make the coup look like a revolution. But Deng had Sharp arrested in Tiananmen Square and expelled from the country. The coup failed, but not before the CIA spurred the youth groups into a vain attack to discredit Deng through the crackdown that followed. The failure of the operation was attributed to the difficulties of mobilizing young activists in the desired direction.

Ever since the work of French sociologist Gustave Le Bon in the late nineteenth century, we know that adults behave like children when they are in the throes of collective emotion. They become susceptible, even if for just a critical fleeting moment, to the suggestions of a leader-of-men who for them embodies a father figure. In 1990, Sharp got close to Colonel Reuven Gal, then chief psychologist of the Israeli Army (he later became deputy national security adviser to Ariel Sharon and now runs operations designed to manipulate young Israeli non-Jews). Combining the discoveries of Le Bon and Sigmund Freud, Gal reached the conclusion that it was also possible to exploit the “Oedipus complex” in adolescents and steer a crowd of young people to oppose a head of state, as a symbolic father figure.
On this basis, Sharp and Gal set up training programs for young activists with the objective of organizing coups. After a few successes in Russia and the Baltics, it was in 1998 that Gene Sharp perfected the method of “color revolutions” with the overthrow of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

After President Hugo Chavez foiled a coup in Venezuela on the basis of one of my investigations revealing the role and method of Gene Sharp, the latter suspended the activities of the Albert Einstein Institute which served as a cover and went on to create new structures (CANVAS in Belgrade, the Academy of Change in London, Vienna and Doha). We saw them at work the world over, especially in Lebanon (Cedar Revolution), Iran (Green Revolution), Tunisia (Jasmine Revolution) and Egypt (Lotus Revolution). The principle is simple: exacerbate all underlying frustrations, blame the political apparatus for all the problems, manipulate the youth according to the Freudian “patricidal” scenario, organize a coup, and then propagandize that the government was brought down by the “street.”

International public opinion easily swallowed these stage settings: first, because of a confusion between a crowd and the people. Thus, the “Lotus Revolution” actually boiled down to a show on Tahrir Square in Cairo, mobilizing a crowd of tens of thousands, while the near totality of the Egyptian people abstained from taking part in the event; and second, because there is a lack of clarity with regard to the word “revolution”. A genuine revolution entails an upheaval in social structures that takes place over several years, while a “color revolution” is a regime change that occurs within weeks. The other term for a forced change of leadership without social transformation is a “coup d’état”. In Egypt, for example, it is clearly not the people who pushed Hosni Mubarak to resign, but U.S. Ambassador Frank Wisner who gave him the order.

The slogan of the “color revolutions” harks back to an infantile perspective. What matters is to overthrow the head of state without consideration of the consequences—“Don’t worry about your future, Washington will take care of everything for you.” By the time people wake up, it’s too late; the government has been usurped by individuals not of their choosing. At the outset though, there are cries of “Down with Shevardnadze!” Or “Ben Ali, get out!” The latest version was launched at the third conference of “Friends” of Syria (Paris, July 6): “Bashar must go!”

A strange anomaly can be detected with regard to Syria. The CIA did not locate groups of young Syrians willing to chant this slogan in the streets of Damascus and Aleppo. So it is Barack Obama, François Hollande, David Cameron and Angela Merkel themselves who repeat the slogan in chorus from their respective foreign offices. Washington and its allies are trying out the methods of Gene Sharp on the “international community”. It is a risky bet to imagine that foreign ministries can be as easy to manipulate as youth groups! At the moment, the result is simply ridiculous: the leaders of the colonial powers have been stomping their feet like angry, frustrated children over a desired object that the Russian and Chinese adults won’t let them have while ceaselessly wailing “Bashar must go!“.

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