Will the US try to pull off a “Grenada” in Serbia?

November 29, 2022

Remember the 1983 US invasion of Grenada aka “Operation Urgent Fury”?

It all began on October 23, 1983 when two truck bombs blew up the buildings housing the US and French  “Multinational Force in Lebanon”.  This attack resulted in  307 people killed including 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel.  Following the bombings, US diplomats engaged in their usual frantic flag-waving and promises to never ever give in to terrorism.  The biggest problem for the US was that it had no way to retaliate in a way which would satisfy the flag-waver’s desire for blood.  Just blowing up random buildings in Lebanon made very little impact,  as for the promises to stay for as long as needed, it was obvious PR – it was clear to everybody that the time to pack and leave had come.

Of course, this was very humiliating for the wannabe “indispensable nation” cum “city upon a Hill”,,,

So Reagan, with his undeniable genius for PR and optics, ordered the invasion of Grenada just two days after the bombings in Beirut.

A day that Washington will not forget, October 23, 1983: the bombing of the Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut

The Invasion Documentary: Between the arrival of the multinational forces in Lebanon and the arrival of Amin Gemayel to the presidency After the invasion of Lebanon, the Americans sought to have Amin Gemayel reach the presidency

Why Grenada?

Well, for one thing it was barely defended (mostly by Cuban engineers and locals with small arms) and truly tiny (so tiny, in fact,  that the overwhelming majority of US Americans had no idea where it was or why there was suddenly an urgent need to invade.

Second, it was very close to the USA, so everybody could get a slice of the cake, including the 1st and 2nd battalions of the US Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, the 82nd Airborne and the Army’s rapid deployment force, U.S. Marines, Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and ancillary forces totaling 7,600 troops.  In terms of hardware, the US brought in 7,300 troops, 4 tanks, 1 LHA (USS Saipan LHA-2), 1 aircraft carrier, 3 destroyers, 2 frigates, 1 ammunition ship and even 27 F-14A Tomcats (source).

All that against a few hundred construction workers armed only with small arms!

I won’t go into all the details here, but let’s just say that this invasion was one of the worst and most poorly executed operation in the history of warfare: a truly HUGE US force was brought in to strike at a basically defenseless tiny island nation with the sole purpose of changing the optics of the disaster in Lebanon.  But, no to worry, the Pentagon handed our more medals than the number of participants, while some US special forces who wanted to press charges against helicopter pilots for cowardice (who abandoned the SOF on a runway because of small arms fire) were “counseled” against the idea.

Bottom line is this: after the epic disaster in Beirut, the US wanted to quick and easy war to restore the “prestige” of the US armed forces, only to end up with yet another epic disaster, but at least in the case of Grenada, it was simply impossible to fail no matter how inept and incompetent the entire invasion was.

Now let’s fast forward by 40 years and look at the current situation.

First, there is the abject failure of the USA in Afghanistan, but also in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and the KSA.  Then there is the humiliating Iranian bombing of CENTCOM bases which the “these colors don’t run” had to suffer without being able to do *anything* to save face.  And then they had to run 🙂

And now there is a brewing disaster in the Ukraine which will make even the fall of Kabul look like a great success in comparison to comprehensive whopping of all NATO efforts by Russia (reminder: it took Russia less than a month to basically destroy the first iteration of the “Ukrainian” army and another six months to bring the NATO forces to a standstill).

Now try to imagine that you are a hate-filled Neocon sitting in the White House and you are desperate to change the optics of the Brandon Administration.

Would it not be nice to find another “Grenada” somewhere?

Also, would it not feel good to wipe the smile off Putin’s face?

Even better – how about making Putin really unpopular in Russia by making him look weak, indecisive or maybe even an agent of the West?

I submit that the US is more or less done with the Middle East.  Venezuela is an option, but with no imaginable exit strategy, it would be the proverbial “easy in, no way out” thing the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq and could, potentially also bleed into Colombia.

I remember how during the vicious bombing of the Serbian people by the US/NATO/EU Strobe Talbott made no secret of the fact that this “execution of Serbia” was a “message” sent to Russia: see what we can do to your ally? if you don’t behave, you will be next.

After Kabul, threats against Russia look funny.  But what about Serbia?

So here are the reasons why Serbia might come under attack (again):

• Like Grenada, Serbia is completely surrounded by the Hegemony.
• Serbs (and I am referring to the people, not their leaders) are probably the most pro-Russian and even pro-Putin people on the planet.
• The Hegemony can constantly engage in provocations (say in Bosnia or Kosovo) to humiliate the Serbian people over and over again and provoke them to take action and then get a pretext to strike (For example, Ursula von der Lugen already made direct threats against Serbia).
• While the Serbian military is much more capable that the tiny Grenadian security forces, compared to NATO it simply is no match, especially if, like the last time around, the Hegemony chooses to use missile and bomb strikes and does not put “boots on the ground”.
• In Russia Serbs are often perceived as the only true friends of Russia.
• Russia still does not have the means to protect Serbia though this might change in the future (more about that below) so now is the time to act.
• Serbia is an Orthodox country and the Serbian nation is composed of those whom neither the Latins nor the Ottomans could force into converting to Latin Christianity or Islam.  Just for that they are hated by the western ruling elites (not to mention the Croats and Bosnian Muslims).
• While this is rarely admitted in the West, in spire of the absolutely terrible correlation of forces the Serbs basically fought the US/NATO into a draw in Bosnia and they are still unwilling to give up on Kosovo (I am talking about the people here, not Serbian politicians.

There are plenty more reasons which I could list, but I think that the image is clear.

Translation: Vladimir, save Serbia!

I would also note that I don’t see the US/NATO actually invading Serbia, that would be way too messy and would require even more US/NATO forces than are currently deployed in Europe.

Besides, the 5th column in Serbia and Montenego is so powerful that there is absolutely no need to invade either one of these two supposed nation (they are one in reality, of course!).

Instead, what I see as the biggest risk is that the US might decide to do with Serbia what the Zionist entity (aka “Israel”) is doing in Syria: I call it “psychotherapeutic strikes“.

Psychotherapeutic strikes are not designed to achieve any tangible military success.   The Israelis have been bombing Syria for YEARS now and all of these strikes have had exactly *zero* military impact: if anything, the Syrian authorities, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah remain firmly in control of the situation.  But it makes Jewish supremacist feel good about their putative racial superiority and it feeds their illusions about their military being as formidable as ever (heck, they even fly F-35s!  what could possibly go wrong?).

And here is the key factor to consider: just as the Israelis are never told that their strikes against Syria are, at best, useless, so does the US propaganda machine hide the magnitude of the US defeat in Grenada from the people of the USA.   Hollywood even made sure to sell the heroic version of this shameful invasion 🙂

In other words, if the US/NATO were to strike Serbia, they would not need to achieve any tangible military result.  Such a strike(s) would only serve PR purposes and as a way to distract the public from the disaster in the Ukraine.

Then there is the argument that time is running out for the AngloZionist Empire: as soon as NATO is defeated in the Ukraine, you can expect a major political crisis for both NATO and the EU and the infamous “Camp Bondsteel” in Kosovo will be threatened (if interested, you can check out my article “Kosovo will be liberated” which I wrote in 2017).  By the time NATO runs out of military hardware and the entire EU plunged into a massive economic and political crisis, Russia will have the means to provide some very real support to Serbia (assuming that by then Serbia is run by real sovereignists).

It is obvious that the NATO plans to invade Crimea next year will now have to be shelved and quickly forgotten.  Ditto for the planned “Operation Storm” but this time against the Donbass (don’t take my word for it, see here).  These ships have sailed.

[Sidebar: the fact that the Ukie Nazis were so inspired by Croatian Nazis is, of course, not a coincidence.  Both nations are the creation of the Vatican and the follow the ideology common to Pavelic and Bandera and, for that matter, Pilsudski, Franco or Mussolini]

So will we see another “Grenada” against the Serbian people?  If by that we mean a fullscale invasion, then no.  But Israeli-style “psychotherapeutic strikes” are a very real risk in Bosnia and Serbia (including, of course, Kosovo).

I would argue that as long as NATO and the EU exist, the Serbian people will be living with a gun to their heads.  In fact, NO truly sovereign nation on our planet is safe as long as NATO and the AngloZionist Empire have not been de-fanged.  Once western Europe is denazified and demilitarized, along with whatever remains of Banderastan, then peace and security (which is *always* collective!) will return to Europe and Serbia.  And then both Bosnia and Kosovo will be liberated.

Andrei

“Vatican Hatred” and Russophobia

May 25, 2022

By Prof. Slobodan Antonic, Department of Sociology, University of Belgrade (Translated for the Saker Blog)

“Vatican hatred” is not a quote from a publication on the Croatian genocide against Serbs between 1941−1945. It is a phrase used by the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder in his novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” to describe a hatred that is strong, deep, persistent, and cruel.

Of course, not everyone in the Vatican hates, nor are all haters Catholics. However, nations belonging to the cultural domain of Eastern Christianity are sometimes genuinely amazed by the depth and intensity of hatred emanating from influential Western ideologues, some powerful institutions, and numerous “voluntary executors” of various extermination projects. Formally they also are European and Christian, but they belong to a slightly different tradition and culture.

Serbs got a taste of it several times in the 20th century. They face it even today. An example is writer and Nobel Prize winner Herta Miller, Romanian-German novelist, who said publicly what most Germans think about Serbs when she endorsed the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. And Germany, at least while Serbia’s current president was prime minister, was said to be our main Western friend. What are our enemies like then?

Serbs, at least when it comes to Eastern Europe, are not the only target of Western hatred. There are, of course, also the Russians. As one American woman of Serbian origin correctly remarked while watching TV over there, “the enemies of the Western world have been stable and unchanged for 30 years: Serbia and Russia. Terrible Orthodox Serbs who, in terror, slaughtered a huge number of peaceful democratic Muslims and no less terrible Russian communists who destroyed democracy and freedom in Chechnya.”

Entire scholarly monographs on the West’s hatred of Russia have been written, and three of them have been translated in our country: “Russophobia: Two Paths to the Same Abyss” (translated in 1993) by Igor Šafarević; “Russophobia” (translated by 2016) by Giulietto Chiesa; and “Russia and the West – a Thousand Years of War: Russophobia from Charlemagne to the Ukrainian Crisis” (translated in 2017) by Guy Methane.

The word “Russophobia” is in the title of all three books. That word can be misleading. Phobias are irrational and unjustified fears, like being scared of a mouse when it jumps on a table (musophobia), even though it is a creature that will not eat us or bite our leg. However, in the case of Russia, it is not a matter of phobia, but of deep and constant hatred – a good example was recently given by James Jatras:

“Moscow could return Crimea to Ukraine, escort Kiev troops to Donbas on a red carpet, and hang Bashar Assad on a flagpole in Damascus. Sanctions imposed by Washington on Moscow would remain, and even gradually intensify. See how long it took us to get rid of the Jackson-Venik law (a law that limited trade relations with the USSR, passed in 1974 and repealed only in 2012). The Russophobic impulse that controls American policy does not come from what the Russians do, but from who they are: Russia delenda est!”

Now, in Serbia, we have a newly-published book that talks about Russia hatred in our country. It is “Russophobia among Serbs 1878−2017″, by Dejan Mirović. Where did the Serbs get this from, given that the Russians helped us get rid of the Turks and rebuild a state, that because of us in 1914 they went to war with Austria-Hungary (and Germany), that in 1944 they helped us get rid of German Nazism, and that today they defend our claim to Kosovo, sometimes better than official Belgrade?

The first source of Russophobia in Serbia, in the last two centuries, is certainly the trickling down of anti-Russianism from the West. Serbia is perceived in the West as a small, Balkan Russia”, a traditional Russian stronghold in the Balkans. That is why all anti-Russian strategic projects allocate significant funds to suppress Russia’s popularity in Serbia, primarily through open anti-Russian propaganda.

Another source of anti-Russianism is the ideology of the local elite, which wants to “modernize” Serbia, but by Westernizing it. That elite, which existed in the 19th and 20th centuries, just as it exists today, wants Serbia to take over not only Western technology but also Western institutions, Western culture, and even the Western frame of mind (“Protestant spirit”). Since the model that Serbia should strive for can only be Western countries – France or Britain in the 19th century, and the EU today – Russia must be portrayed in the worst light, as it could not be a model for anything – not even in art, culture, or religion.

The third source of anti-Russianism in our country, during the last two centuries, were different political interests and different particular interests of the ruling elites of Serbia (Yugoslavia) and Russia (USSR). For example, in the 19th century, Russia wanted to take Constantinople. That is why the Bulgarians who inhabit the eastern Balkans – which could be considered the gates of Istanbul – were more important to her than the Serbs, who were geographically further away, in the west. The Russians, therefore, preferred Bulgarians at the time, supporting a Greater Bulgaria rather than a Greater Serbia. Thus, they endangered Serbian interests not only in Macedonia, but also in south-eastern Serbia. This was the real background of a certain coldness that developed in the policy of Serbian kings Milan and Aleksandar Obrenović towards Russia (a policy given a personal stamp in the “secret convention” concluded between Serbian Prince Milan and Austro-Hungary).

Another example of divergent interests is certainly the Titoist period, 1948−1989. Tito and his associates, after 1948, in fear for the survival of their regime, cruelly persecuted not only Sovietophiles but also Russophiles. A 20-year-old student, Vera Cenic, was tortured for two years (1950-1951) in the Goli Otok concentration camp only because she frequented the Soviet Cultural Center to watch Russian films, loved Russian literature and kept a diary in which she expressed her intimate reservations toward the official policy of keeping a distance from Russia.

Radivoj Berbakov was sentenced in 1980 to two and a half years in prison, which he served in the Sremska Mitrovica prison, for “enemy propaganda.” That consisted, among other things, of being “biased in favor of Russian art and literature, in the sense of exaggerating the merits ​​of art and literature in the USSR,” which fits in with his statement that he “loves Russians and that no one can forbid him to love them.”

Of course, the Titoist nomenklature knew that a political upheaval in Yugoslavia would lead to Titoists losing not only power but also their personal freedom. That is why, at that time, as Mirović shows us in his book, a significant part of the public in Serbia was being soaked not only with anti-Soviet but also outright anti-Russian propaganda and ideology.

When it comes to today’s anti-Russianism in Serbia, its basic source is a combination of the first and second factors. As a result, contemporary anti-Russian manifestations here range from the unconscious absorption of Western ideological and propaganda clichés, to unabashed Russian hatred articulated by pro-Atlanticist, self-hating Serbs.

As an example, a truly dark, threatening and dangerous “Vatican hatred,” of the kind that Thornton Wilder was alluding to, erupts regularly in the texts of some of the columnists of the Western-financed Belgrade daily “Danas”. There, we can read that “Tsarist Russia dragged Serbia into the First World War”, and also that “Russians” took part in the 2003 assassination of the then prime minister Zoran Djindjic, on the spurious premise that “the assassination of the Prime Minister was the first step in returning Serbia to the Soviet orbit.”

In Serbia, according to this view, there is a “quisling attitude towards Russia”, that is, in our country there is a “Russian network” with “extremist groups under the obvious control of Serbian and Russian security services”. The line propounded by these circles is that “Putin’s Russia is robbing us of the remnants of European sovereignty and identity, economic potential and common sense”, warning that an “evolution from Serbian chauvinism to quisling Putinism” is taking place in Serbia.

Their buzzwords are that “Putin’s regime recognizes men as oligarchs and men, and women as either whores or grandmothers”, that “the boss in Moscow is pressuring Serbia to deviate from the democratic international order”, and that for Serbia “EU integration is a priority”.

There is also in Serbia “anti-Russian incitement propaganda,” with preposterous allegations that “half of the ministers seem to have been smuggled in from the Donetsk Republic”. The alleged concept of “Greater Serbia” was initially the object of their disdain. Now they have come up with the idea that Serbia is “in danger of becoming a Russian province”. Serbs are being told that reliance on Russia “destroys our democratic institutions and introduces us to dirty sources of financial capital,” ultimately leading Serbs to “pathological Sovietophilia”, and also enabling “treacherous conduct on the part of government organs, and even circles within the Serbian Orthodox Church”.

Of course, no other privatization project in Serbia but that of NIS has been denounced as questionable for those ideologues. The only problem they see in the area of privatization is the sale of the formerly state-owned petroleum enterprise, NIS, to Russian interests. And there is also the alleged “Putin spy center”, a Russian Emergency Situations outpost located in the city of Nis, accused of “nurturing criminal traditions and destroying fragile democracies in the region.”

The Russophobic lobby maintains that in Serbia “since 2004, the media under the supervision of each government have been preparing public opinion not only for new conflicts with neighbors, but also for World War III, which we will fight on the side of Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela”. The author of this particular diatribe goes on to wonder “how Vučić can possibly position Serbia in the victorious camp in the emerging international conflict.”

Russia and China are, according to this lobby, “factors of world disorder” because, as they absurdly argue, “the annual total of victims of state-party terror in Russia and China is almost equal to the victims of Mauthausen”. Hence, if Belgrade – which according to them is a “stinking sh##hole” opts to side with Russia, “Serbia will remain as the Balkan GDR”.

Don´t you feel a terrible, deep hatred in these words, not only towards Russia but also towards Serbia – just because Serbia is also Slavic, nationalistic, Orthodox and strives to march to its own drummer?

That hatred is unleased primarily in order to turn Serbs into someone else: Western “Protestants” and “citizens”, more precisely a consumerist crowd that lives in a territory, not a country, and which tomorrow can be replaced by some other, more “modern” and “politically correct” population.

Eruptions of such hatred are necessary in order to mould the “Serbian-European”, whose brain is crushed and the terrible “little Russian” within him is torn out. There is no doubt that this is the ultimate goal of Atlanticist policy in the Balkans. But that cannot happen without enthronement in the Serbian society of the equivalent of “Vatican hatred” – deep, systematic and cruel.

It is important to be able to recognize that hatred. It is contrary not only to our essential interests, but also to our civilizational identity that makes us special as a people and as a culture. The general public rejects it intuitively. But in the context of the announced “international conflict” – which will allegedly finally “separate the wheat from the chaff” – it serves as an early announcement of totalitarian repression against each and every one of us who loves his country and thinks for himself.

So each of us must take the risk of falling victim to “Vatican hatred”. Even you who are reading this text, dear reader.

Lebanese president emphasizes Hezbollah has no influence on the country’s security

President Aoun’s comments were made after he and Pope Francis spoke about the ‘peaceful religious co-existence’ between various sects that exists in Lebanon

March 22 2022

Pope Francis and President Michel Aoun (Photo credit: Vatican Media)

ByNews Desk

During an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica, Lebanese President Michel Aoun asserted that the Hezbollah resistance movement is not a terror group and that they have no influence in security matters.

“Resisting the occupation is not terrorism, and Hezbollah, which is made up of Lebanese people and which liberated south Lebanon from Israeli occupation, has no influence on the security reality in Lebanon,” Aoun said following a meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican on 21 March.

In the interview, Aoun emphasized there was no chance of peace for as long as the territories of Lebanon and Syria are occupied by Israel.

Regarding the dire socio-economic situation currently plaguing Lebanon, the president and the Pope said they hope the crisis can be resolved through available measures, including international aid as well as through reforms in the Lebanese government.

The two also addressed the “disastrous consequences” of the Port of Beirut explosion which occurred on 4 August 2020, noting that the families of victims still demand justice and the truth behind the tragic event.

Tarek Bitar, the judge who was overseeing the Port of Beirut explosion, is accused of politicizing the blast and was suspended multiple times due to bias.

The Pope and Aoun both noted Lebanon’s unique position in the world as a model for co-existence between different religions.

“Soon I will visit Lebanon. This is a decision I have taken, because this country remains, despite anything, a model for the world,” announced Pope Francis, as reported by the office of the Lebanese president.

Despite general co-existence throughout Lebanon, sectarianism still threatens its security.

On 14 October 2021, the far-right Lebanese Forces (LF) party opened fire on an unarmed protest against the politicization of the Port of Beirut blast investigation. The protest included members of Hezbollah and Amal, both Shia Muslim, as well as the Marada Movement, a Christian party.

Seven unarmed protestors were killed, including Maryam Farhat, a woman who was deliberately shot by a sniper while inside her home, standing by a window.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah responded to the tragedy, which was seen as an attempt to re-ignite a civil war, by stating that the Lebanese Forces party, which claim to represent Lebanese Christians, are themselves the biggest threat to Christians in Lebanon.

The LF has a history of killing other Christians, as they did during the Lebanese civil war, turning their sectarianism into a political rather than religious cause.

The Lebanese Forces party was formed out of the remnants of militias that served the Israeli occupation of Lebanon until the year 2000. Today, their foreign sponsors include Saudi Arabia.

• President Aoun to “La Repubblica” Newspaper: Resisting Occupation is Not Terrorism 

What is Bergoglio up to?

March 17, 2022

Note by the Saker: to fully understand how evil and hypocritical all this business about “consecrating” Russia to something by the Latins, you need to be aware of two things: the Ukraine is the creation of the Papacy and its goal has always been the destruction of Russia and the so-called “Marian apparitions” are just one of the many hoaxes, falsifications, forgeries and outright satanic manifestations of the typical Latin spiritual delusions (prelest).  Finally, I remind everybody that the moderation guidelines (#20.4) specifically ban the advocacy of “Latin Christianity (Papism, including the propaganda of the so-called “Marian apparitions” including the Fatima hoax)“.  Any attempts to justify these so-called “consecrations” or any attempts to justify the Latin heresy will result in the comment sent to trash the its author banned.

***

by Stephen Karganovic for the Saker Blog

Orthodox believers will remain unfazed by this, and one may also assume that many followers of the disintegrating Roman Catholic church will be equally unimpressed, but nevertheless a recent Vatican announcement about “consecrating” Russia and Ukraine on March 25 (while some derision is allowed) should not be taken lightly.

To be precise, it may and should be taken lightly only in the religious sense, but it ought to be treated with all due seriousness and respect where it counts for the Vatican, politically. Coming in close coordination with the initiation of the brutal campaign to annihilate Russia politically, morally, and economically, Bergoglio’s move, while dressed up in religious garb, is a secular power play and geopolitics, pure and simple.

The consecration is inextricably bound up with an alleged appearance of the Virgin Mary to shepherds in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, essentially replicated, following a similar pattern, many decades later, in Medjugorje, Bosnia. This is not the place to analyse the Fatima event in great detail. It suffices to say that it was extremely controversial from the start.

The thrust of the Fatima “vision” was that the subsequent fate of the world mystically depended on the “consecration of Russia” to the heart of Virgin Mary, because otherwise “Russia’s errors” would spread throughout the world. At the time that the request for Russia’s consecration was allegedly made from on high, the Bolshevik revolution was in its initial stages and the reference to “errors” which its victory might propagate globally made some sense, not just to Roman Catholics, but to people of other backgrounds as well.

The time frame and context in which the consecration request was originally made (1917) for the purpose of impeding the spread of “Russia’s errors” is extremely important for assessing the true nature and the probable motives behind Bergoglio’s current initiative to finally bring it about, and in this particular geopolitical situation.

The Bolshevik revolution succeeded in putting Russia under Communist and atheist control, and the simultaneous formation of the Communist International, precisely for the purpose of spreading the errors that concerned the Blessed Virgin, obviously should have created a clear and present threat that ought immediately to have triggered the requested consecration, assuming that the Vatican seriously believed in the authenticity of Fatima narrative.

Instead, the Vatican was engaged during most of the 1920s in pursuing an accommodation with the very Soviet regime that the heavenly mediatrix was warning against. It was offering it its implicit acquiescence in return for a free hand to annex the battered remnant of the persecuted Russian Orthodox Church and to freely propagate Roman Catholic dogma to the Russian masses.

The accommodation ultimately fell through, and the Vatican took up a militantly anti-communist and anti-Soviet position. Various Popes subsequently did make what appear to have been half-hearted and procedurally defective attempts to fulfil the Fatima consecration mandate, but in the end the consensus of most Roman Catholic authorities was that they were improperly executed (“botched,” deliberately or not) and therefore were invalid and without effect by Roman Catholic canonical standards.

In the wake of the “aggiornamento” and Vatican II, not pushing the consecration too insistently made political sense. While on one hand church conservatives had to be kept at bay with some noises indicating openness to carry out the Virgin’s mandate, practical political considerations (always foremost in Vatican’s calculations) favored building influence within the Eastern bloc in order to more easily undermine it in concert with the Western powers (the Reagan – John Paul pact). Those considerations dictated that grossly provocative gestures such as were allegedly demanded at Fatima be temporarily shelved.

And so they were, except for some harmless PR games that were played with reference to the content of the “third secret” and speculation over the possible substitution of Sister Lucia, one of the original Fatima children, by another cloistered nun more amendable to the current Vatican party line in the post-Conciliar period.

Fast forward to 2022. Outwardly, it should have come as a surprise that the until recently side-lined Fatima matter suddenly became so urgent and central in the mind of the holy father. Why the rush to fast-track a ritual that for slightly over one hundred years has lain on the Vatican’s back burner without any visible prejudice to Russia, the Ukraine, or the rest of the world?

It does not take a rocket scientist to answer that question. There is no religious urgency whatsoever. The overwhelming majority of Christians in Russia and the Ukraine are Eastern Orthodox and Vatican, Roman Catholic mumbo-jumbo is not even on their radar. It does not concern or affect them in the least. A legitimate side question, of course, is what gives the Pope and the Vatican the right to “consecrate” millions of souls who are not even affiliated with them? Would it not be polite to at least ask for their consent? It is probably late at this point to organize a consecration referendum in the lucky candidate countries because March 25 is too close, but the sheer arrogance of designating subjects for religious ritual without their consent is indeed stunning. And typical, one is tempted to add.

There is just one coherent explanation for Bergoglio’s rush to “consecrate.” It is the currently raging Ukrainian crisis and the Vatican’s determination to demonstrate urbi et orbi its political alignment with the West’s general assault on Russia. It is a signal of the Vatican’s determination that at last, over a century later, the moment is finally ripe to openly join the collective, political West in extirpating “Russia’s errors,” and if possible annihilating Russia itself.

A double irony is apparent in this charade which will soon be perpetrated by a largely spent, but still formidable, global political force masquerading as a religious institution.

First, in 1917 “Russia’s errors” may have been a genuine issue (in reality those were the false doctrines of Russia’s new rulers, rather than the beliefs of the Russian Orthodox people) and those doctrines were indeed execrable not just from the standpoint of traditional Roman Catholic teaching but of all decent people everywhere. But those are errors that contemporary Russia rejects completely, having adopted instead many of the values that at the time the Fatima Virgin allegedly spoke the Roman Catholic church technically stood for but which it has since opportunistically discarded. That fact alone gives the lie to Bergoglio’s theatrical pretensions.

The other blatant irony is that it is the collective West, with the Vatican as its spiritual centre, which owes the world an accounting for the innumerable errors that have become its dominant creed. If a ritual of consecration is necessary to disperse the errors which threaten the stability of the moral order, Bergoglio would do better to reformat the event he has scheduled for March 25. He should forget Russia and the Ukraine and, if he must, make the collective West, including the European Union and NATO, the object of his error busting consecration.

The show set by the Vatican for March 25 is not a religious exercise in any proper sense of that word. It will be stage managed by the man who during his relatively brief pontificate has hollowed out even the vestiges of his church’s traditional teaching that he found at the time of his investiture. Whether that man even believes in God is not an unreasonable question. He has far fewer divisions today than his predecessor had at the time Stalin impishly popped his famous question, but like a gambler who goes va banque he is betting all his dwindling assets on the unconditional victory of Russia’s enemies and symbolically demonstrating his allegiance to them.

He is hoping for a piece of the action in the ignominious world order that is being designed by the ungodly coalition of which his fallen institution has become an integral member. Unfortunately for him, he may have overplayed his hand and met his match. Smart money is betting that when rewards for service are set to be distributed, and the Roman pontiff has even fewer divisions than now under his command, he will be dumped unceremoniously as over the centuries he himself had dumped the Lord whose earthly vicar he insolently claimed to be.

Comparing the historical roots of Russia and Europe

January 30, 2022

What are the true roots of western civilization?

Putin, the Pope, the Schism, Franks and Romans (UPDATED)

http://thesaker.is/putin-the-pope-the-schism-franks-and-romans/embed/#?secret=X5ZHp22HZZ

Is Russia European?

Could there be a grain of truth in the Ukrainian propaganda?

http://thesaker.is/could-there-be-a-grain-of-truth-in-the-ukrainian-propaganda/embed/#?secret=D03bPscp8l

Have a great Sunday!

Cheers

Andrei

Father Elias Zahlawi: Syrian Priest’s Letters Rattle the Vatican

16 Nov 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen

Tim Anderson

Not once has the Pontiff pointed a finger at “Israel” or the USA for their roles in two decades of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, including the expulsion of Christians.

Syrian priest Father Elias Zahlawi has reportedly shaken Pope Francis over the Vatican’s vague statements on the US-driven Middle East wars. Not once has the Pontiff pointed a finger at “Israel” or the USA for their roles in two decades of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, including the expulsion of Christians.

While both men are in their 80s, Father Zahlawi has ministered in Damascus since the 1960s and, since 1975, at the Church of Our Lady of Damascus. Syrian-born, he studied in Jerusalem and founded the now famous Damascus ‘Choir of Joy’ in 1977. That huge choir has toured Europe.

Pope Francis attained the highest rank in the Catholic Church after being an Archbishop in Argentina, but he is said to be ‘haunted’ by accusations of his involvement in Argentina’s dirty war, carried out by a US-backed military dictatorship. No charge was ever laid against him but some years ago the Argentine judiciary found that the Catholic Church was “complicit in abuses”. 

According to some Syrian Christians, Father Zahlawi’s accusations over the Pope’s meaningless words – in face of the US and Israeli-led atrocities in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – touched a raw nerve. 

The gentle, humble priest in Damascus, now 89 years old, wrote a series of letters to US and Syrian leaders, to the European Parliament, and to the last two Popes. But his first two letters to Pope Francis, in 2018 and 2019, were probably the most incisive. 

On 29 June 2018, Father Zahlawi asked Pope Francis:

“Why don’t you decisively and unequivocally adopt this very clear position of Saint Peter, against a western world that has spared nothing in its pursuit of total and absolute world dominance … including the systematic and continuous killing and destruction of total peoples and countries, including my homeland Syria?

“All of that is happening … either with complete media silence or worse yet, with the roaring noise of fabricated “facts”, designed to give credence to the worst obscenities, under the banner of “human rights, democracy, and freedom”.

“I have continued to read ‘with sorrow and dismay’ … the Roman Observer, hoping that one day I will find in it even one word of activism, [but] to be honest I only find in it … empty words, of the usual clerical content that we have gotten used to since the Emperor Constantine, with very rare exceptions. Yet outside the Church, in the west, there are many courageous and honorable voices.”

On 12 February 2019, he wrote again, after the Pope’s address to ROACO, the Board of the Society for Support of the Eastern Churches, where Francis was reported to have denounced the “great sin of war”, the thirst for “domination” of great “World Powers” and a refugee crisis which carries with it the risk of “eliminating Christians” from the Middle East. 

This was a more carefully thought out letter, in which Father Zahlawi raised eight points. He began by asking, gently: “I wonder if the many grave issues you raised … did not deserve a clearer stand of more commitment and responsibility?” 

His first point was to do with the Pope’s refusal to address the ethnic cleansing in Palestine:

“You say that “In the Middle East there is also a danger … of eradicating the Christians” … [but] do you believe that your audience and consequently your readers are ignorant, as your words suggest, of the countries which strive, with open insistence, and since the establishment of Israel, to totally eradicate the Christian existence in the whole Near East at the time they are about to accomplish this in occupied Palestine, which you call “the land of Jesus” and which has become the land of injustice, vengeance and death, and whose true name has been obliterated to become only ‘The Holy Land’?

In a second point he refers to the failure of the Pope’s generic words about the “pain” of the Middle East, and of land theft by ‘World Powers’, to address the US-led assault on his own country, Syria: 

“these ‘World Powers’, at the head of which is the United States of America … forced about 140 member states countries … to declare war on my home country, Syria, and drove to it, from a hundred countries … jihadis, haunted by the evil of money, blood, avarice, and power.”

Third, Father Zahlawi chastises the Pope for suggesting that the “diminishing” numbers of Christians in the region might be due to pressure from Muslims. “If you want to suggest that the Muslims are the ones who force Christians to leave ‘the land they love’ … how can you explain their emigration at a worrisome rate since the establishment of “Israel” while they [Christians] throughout hundreds of years, lived … side by side with the Muslims?” 

In his fourth point, he asks if the Pope while speaking of the Middle East as ‘the cradle of Christianity’ can possibly be ignorant that the “the Judaising of occupied Palestine …will very soon end every presence of Christians in ‘the land of Jesus’?”

Fifth, with regard to the Pope’s references to “great churches” in the Middle East, and ignoring the role of “Israel”, Father Zahlawi says “what you are practically doing … shackled by a horrific and sickly guilt complex towards the Jews” is to ignore and close your eyes to “the atrocities that are being committed openly and in flagrant violation of all laws, against all the Arabs, Muslims and Christians equally”, while even “some distinguished Jews” speak out against these crimes.

Sixth, he finds fault in the Pope’s overly general words about “the Middle East … [as] a land of death and emigration”, as the pontiff says nothing about the displacement of 12 million of the 23 million people in Syria, “without pointing an accusing finger at those who are responsible for these planned and inhuman emigrations in a country that was considered, before the so-called Arab Spring, as one of the safest countries on earth?”

In a seventh point, Father Zahlawi cites the Pope’s reference to “the grave sin … the sin of war”. But what does this mean, he asks, “without pointing, in the end, an accusing finger to countries such as the United States of America, Britain, and France, on the global scope, and at “Israel” on the scope of the Middle East, as they do not stop exploding totally unjust war … [in the name of] Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights?”

Finally, he refers to the Pope’s call that “the Middle East is a hope that we must take care of”, linking this to a revelation said to have taken place in Soufaniyeh Alley in Damascus in 2014, in the midst of the war on Syria. This revelation likens the wounds on Syria to those on Jesus. The clear, implicit message is: why has Pope Francis not denounced those who, like Judas, betrayed the people of Syria? 

Breaking : President al-Assad and First Lady on a visit to Father Elias Zahlawi in the French hospital in Kassaa, Damascus .. pic.twitter.com/CEon368ipF

— Yusha Yuseef 🇸🇾 (@MIG29_) December 24, 2016

Open Letter To Pope Benedict XVI From Arab Catholic Priest Father Elias Zahlawi

 April 1, 2010

By Father Elias Zahlawi
Father, Your Holiness

During these hard and critical times, which the world in general and our Orient in particular is undergoing, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you what is going on in my mind, what burdens my heart, especially being an Arab Catholic priest from Syria, concerning the invitation you kindly extended a few months ago to those responsible for the Eastern Catholic Churches, to hold a convention during October 2010 to discuss the conditions Arab and non-Arab Christians are passing through throughout the countries of the Orient.

There are three points that I would like to raise and discuss with your Holiness, from a son to his father.

The first subject is in relation to this conference.

I trust that all those who received your kind invitation had lauded this initiative.

But did anybody tell you that it came too late?

I am sure that the papers, which were put into their hands received their “admiration”.

But did anybody tell your Holiness that they do not reflect the facts on the ground in our Orient, past and present, except what the West sees and wants the rest of the world to see, whether the people of the Orient like it or not?

I am certain that the Vatican’s “specialized experts” as well as your ambassadors in the Orient try to honesty report what’s going on in it.

But would any of those attending the convention, those “experts” and “ambassadors”, see in general anything bu what those responsible for the Churches of the Orient want them to see? Or what their sphere of responsibilities allows them to see?…

Last but not least, I am certain that those who shall be attending said convention had uncovered dangerous gaps in the “important” papers submitted to them.

But did anybody tell your Holiness personally or in public during the previous convention’s meetings, that there are gaps that they did not discover? And why not, the Vatican or its many or few Western “experts” just ignored in the absence or just the small number of Arab or Oriental experts?

The second point is concerning those invited to the previous and/or forthcoming councils.

It is well known that those invited are either patriarchs, archbishops and/or heads of the various monastic orders.

May I take the permission to ask your Holiness: are you fully convinced that those who are invited do really represent Oriental Christianity, in what is for or against it, especially during these critical, not to say fateful, times?

I am afraid that the majority of them are outside what the Orient as a whole expects of them, both and equally its Christians and Muslims, which is due to their costly stances and declarations, as they have learned due to their positions and their own personal considerations to avoid or mitigate them, which exclude them for incorporeal or material reasons, which is apparent to all.

I said that this conference came late… too late. But what I am afraid of is that it shall come out to the world with phoney introductions, and hollow resolutions and decisions or wishes that shall not bring advances, but rather may delay them too much, because it could add new and heavy failures and fiascos, over and above the historical heavy and exhausting weights, wrongful Western policies and internally confusing and sometimes shameful and floundering policies.

As a result, I found that it is necessary, with your permission, to suggest expending the span of invitations extended by the Apostolic See, to cover courageous and effective voices of various Christian circles both Catholic and Orthodox, both cleric and secularist, in addition to the various Islamic circles, especially as most of the inhabitants of the Orient are Muslims, it is supposed that what is to be said in this convention or what is to be issued by it, should concern them equally much as they concern Christians.

Point three, is the span of Western churches, especially the Vatican, regarding to what takes place all over the world, and especially to the Arab and non-Arab Orient.

My first question is: Is it possible that I could be distancing myself from truth if I say that everything that is taking place all over the world in general and in the Orient in particular, was done by the West, I mean the United States, Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Russia in particular, these countries that appropriate all the wealth of our globe, and solely possess the great part of the striking force around it up till now?

My second question is: Am I distancing myself from truth if I say that most of what is now taking place, first in the Arab homeland and in the Islamic world and in the second place in the Islamic areas all around the world, is nothing but a reaction to the West’s grievances, which are reactions that started and continued in most cases, demagogic, bloody and spontaneous, then some of them continued in two modes of armed movements, first legal resistance in occupied Palestine, which was unjustly described by the European Union in September 2002 as being carried out by groups they labelled as terrorist organizations, second the fundamentalist resistance, starting first in Afghanistan against Russia and later against U.S. aggression then in Iraq and Pakistan that was the case of the Taliban and the al Qaida movements.

But, is there anybody who doesn’t know that these two movements were originally created by the United States itself?

But what is taking place in the heart of the Arab homeland, which is Palestine in particular, Palestine, which you no more call it in your Western churches other than “The Holy Land”, are not but wrongful wars and occupation that deem permissible anything: killing, imprisoning, torturing, siege and displacement against all the Palestinian Arab people, Christians and Muslims, and all of that is taking place under the eye sight of the entire world, with full support of the West, and what made Mrs. Clinton say: “Attacking Israel is equal to attacking an American city like “San Diego”, and what made Mrs. Merkel, the German Chancellor, say also shamelessly: “Attacking Tel Aviv is exactly like attacking Germany in particular…”.

But what has taken place and is still taking place against Palestinian Arabs by “Israeli” Zionist occupation!

What is the relation between what happened and what is happening to the Palestinian Arab people, for longer than sixty years, by Zionist “Israeli” hands, if compared to human rights as announced in “The Human Rights Charter”, and all international treaties, especially the Geneva Conventions, as well as hundreds of resolutions taken against “Israel” by the United Nations and its miserable Security Council? Did all the West become a slave to Zionism, to follow these dissolute double standards in the West’s relations with the Zionist entity on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other, which are the weak and deemed weak peoples, on the other hand?

With all of that, all European Churches keep silent. Yes we mean all of them, starting with the Vatican itself. It kept silent after the passing away of Pope John Paul II, with the exception of the courageous the Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law.

I have been thoroughly and regularly reading for years the Vatican’s daily newspaper “corriereromano” http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.corriereromano.it, and was aware that since you became Pope, its language was flattened and neutralized in relation to the Arab / Zionist conflict, and the same concerning war tragedies, hunger, diseases, poverty, exploitation, forgery and organized plundering, which are tragedies that their beastly spreading over the world is aggravating… day in and day out!

This became apparent in a grievous manner during your personal visit to occupied Palestine, I expected from you words that are at least equal in courage and trueness of that your predecessor, Pope John Paul II, the moment he laid foot on the land of Syria in 2001, as he immediately demanded the execution of United Nations resolutions for a just and comprehensive solution of the Arab / Zionist struggle!

I was also expecting from you words, which are sympathetic, strong and courageous towards the Palestinian Arab people, that Zionism had been subjugating for more than sixty years to a terrible and continuous uninterrupted “Shoah” (Holocaust), with unlimited Western support, words that are at least a little equal to the sweeping sympathy that you expressed towards the Jewish “people”, for example what you expressed during your meeting with some of its American leaders during your visit to the United States on Feb. 12th 2009, and during the visit of the leading “Israeli” Rabbis to the Vatican on March 12th 2009! As for what you said on January 1st 2010 on the memory day of the “Shoah”, which the “corriereromano” (Page 2) that expresses that what is taking place in what remains of Palestine (The West Bank and the Gaza Strip) for over sixty years is completely absent from your memory!

I regret to add that the complete silence of Western churches was expressed in wretched words written by some Catholic bishops in France, Germany and Canada after their visits to the “Holy Land”, where they equated between the Arab victim and the Zionist butcher. They also expressed their “great” disturbance for the pains both peoples are suffering, and they were always concluding their word with calling on their peoples to raise prayers for “peace”, and to give financial help to the: “Holy Lands”.

We feel as if they have lost their eyesight, and they can no more see, erased their brains and thus can no more remember the history of Palestine, the homeland of Jesus Christ, neither the old nor the contemporary, and the vital change that is taking place in this homeland in its historical landmarks. And what happened to its indigenous population, Christians and Muslims, of massacres, displacement and genocide/extermination!

Father, Your Holiness,
At last, I have six questions, that I find necessary to raise to you at the end of this letter:

1st Question: does the anti-Semitism that the West, the Church, authority and people, practiced against the Jews, justify today’s spilling the blood of the people of the Arab and non-Arab East, starting with Palestinian Arabs, for the sake of the “poor” Jewish “people”? And does it justify all Western Churches keeping silence, concerning this injustice, while they continue to request remission for the sin of anti-Semitism, that it alone committed, excluding Arabs and Muslims?

2nd Question: isn’t it clear for all the West including these Western Churches, that this situation shall end up with two formidable evils that I find no possible forgiveness for:

The first evil, is the transforming of all the “poor” Jewish “people” to become a group of killers?

The second evil, is the emptying of all the Orient from its indigenous Christians?

3rd Question: Don’t you see with me a fearful and shameful similarity between what all Western powers are doing today all over the world in general and the Arab homeland and the Islamic world in particular, and what Western powers, which invaded the American continents starting with the 15th century had done? I mean the savage and systematic extermination of about forty to fifty million people of the indigenous population as per Western researchers themselves?

4th question, in facing all these crimes against humanity, is it enough that a new Pope to come, after four hundred years, requests the forgiveness from the slaughtered peoples, as the brave Paul John Paul II did, during his extraordinary visits to the world, so as the Church would say the Church had done what it had to do?

5th question, is it not necessary for Western churches today, and before tomorrow to get out of their silence, and speak the Gospel’s words, to defend the wronged, the poor, the hungry, the sick and the prisoners of war that Jesus identified all his love for them, who are no more individuals as Matthew the Apostle’s gospel said? On the contrary, they became peoples who cover the greater part of the world? Some may hear it and we be able to liberate some of the Western, the “rich” and the “haughty”, whether those who were fully liberated from God, or those who exploited him, as what is taking place in the United States of America, so as to finish of, in his name, with the Christians and the Muslims of all the Orient, and stir the peoples against each other, through sectarian and ethnic wars that spread day after day, and shall not grant mercy to anybody?

6th Question, which is a question that I hear you forwarding to me, as many Western bishops and priests had already addressed it to me: But “is there anybody to hear?” In turn I shall tell you and the whole Western Church: You are no better then Jesus, “He came to his special people, but they didn’t accept him”. But in spite of that, he spoke, and what Jesus said, nobody had ever said it, and nobody shall ever say it!

Yes, Your Holiness, I have something else to add.

Father, Your Holiness, please, I am your son, the Arab Catholic priest from Syria, I beg you, with all the love and importunity, to take the initiative and invite the truthful elite of those responsible in Western Churches and secularists, so as to discuss with those responsible and the truthful in the Eastern Churches and the rest of the world to discuss, discuss with Christians and Muslims, during the forthcoming convention, which you called for in October 2010, about the responsibilities of what is taking place today in the Orient and the rest of the world, so as to take the required and sincere stances before it is too late.

A lot of time has passed, and days are pregnant with new tragedies, that nobody wishes upon anybody else.

God’s world is spacious, as spacious as God’s heart, so I hope that your heart shall be spacious enough to grasp my words,

You, Your Holiness,

I beg you to pray for all my brethren in the Orient, Muslims, Christians and Jews, please accept your son’s love and respect.

Father Elias Zahlawi  – 13/3/2010

Translated from Arabic by: Adib S. Kawar and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala

This letter was published at the Palestine Think Tank on March 22, 2010

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Pope Francis meets Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq – Now what?

By Jim W. Dean, Managing Editor -March 7, 2021

…from PressTV, Tehran

[ Editor’s Note: The Pope and Sistani held an historic meeting between two of the largest religious bodies, the 1.2 billion Catholics and Sistani’s Shia Muslims. Despite Iraq’s Covid issues, the men met without masks, despite the Vatican’s ambassador to Iraq being in isolation due to exposure. Sunni Muslims later joined the talks during the Pope’s three day visit.

The topic, as expected, was peace and secuity, not only worldwide but in Iraq, a country where its once 1.5 million Christian community is estimated to be 250,000 now. And Pope Francis did not shy away from discussing religious persecution with ISIS in the crosshairs.

“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” the Pope said. “Indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings. Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred.”

He specifically singled out the Yazidi community who suffered terribly, with its women kidnapped, sexually abused, and sold openly in ISIS slave markets, all this done under the Saudi Imams having provided cover on the mass rapes of Yazidis by classifying the events as ‘temporary marriages’.

This was an act of terrorism in itself, one which not only the US never objected to, and the Saudi religious community never santioned the perpetrators. The US coalition’s stand down acted as de facto approval, because they wanted to Balkanize Syria.

A day of religious and judicial reckoning is long overdue on this horrible tragedy, with way too many taking the easy route of just looking away. May the Pope’s visit spark a badly needed flame for justice in the region… Jim W. Dean ]

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The Vatican

First published … March 06, 2021

Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, has held closed-door talks with Iraq’s prominent Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on the second day of his visit to the Arab country.

The meeting took place at Ayatollah Sistani’s residence in the holy city of Najaf on Saturday morning.

The office of Ayatollah Sistani said in a statement that he highlighted challenges facing mankind and stressed the role of belief in God and commitment to high moral values ​​in overcoming them.

Ayatollah Sistani cited injustice, oppression, poverty, religious persecution, repression of fundamental freedoms, wars, violence, economic siege and displacement of many people in the region, especially the Palestinians in the occupied territories as some of the major problems which afflict the world.

The cleric touched on the role which religious and spiritual leaders can play in tackling some of these problems. Ayatollah Sistani said religious leaders have to encourage parties invovled in conflicts, particularly the world powers, to give primacy to rationality over confrontation.

He also stressed the importance of efforts to strengthen peaceful coexistence and solidarity based on mutual respect among the followers of different religions and intellectual groups.

Ayatollah Sistani emphasized that the Christian citizens of Iraq, like all other Iraqis, should live in security and peace and enjoy their fundamental rights.

He referred to the role played by the religious authority in protecting Christians and all those who have suffered from the criminal acts of terrorists over the past years. After the one-hour meeting, Pope Francis travelled to the Iraqi city of Ur, which is believed to be the birthplace of Prophet Abraham (Peace be upon him).

The pontiff arrived in Iraq on Friday for a three-day trip amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to Ayatollah Sistani, Pope Francis has so far met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Barham Salih.

Iraq’s Christian community has seen its numbers drop from nearly 1.5 million to about 250,000, less than 1% of the population over the last two decades. Iraqi Christians fled the country to escape the chaos and violence that ensued after the US invasion of the country in 2003.

Tens of thousands were also displaced when the Daesh terrorist group overran vast swathes in northern Iraq in 2014, targeting various ethnic and religious groups of the country.

The Takfiri terrorist group was vanquished in December 2017 after a three-year anti-terror military campaign with the crucial support of neighboring Iran. Daesh’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash a new reign of terror.

The terrorist group has intensified its deadly attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the US assassinated legendary anti-terror Iranian commander General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad airport.

Saraya Awliya al-Dam group, part of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units better known as Hash al-Sha’ab, announced in a statement that it had stopped all its anti-terror operations during the pope’s visit and out of respect for Ayatollah Sistani.

The statement also condemned the assassination of al-Muhandis and General Soleimani who was targeted during an official visit to Iraq.

“We, Arabs, warmly receive our guests. Unlike the United States which betrayed the official guest of Iraq and warrior of Islam, General Soleimani, we will never follow such an approach,” the statement said.

Saraya Awliya al-Dam group also published a poster, featuring General Soleimani’s severed hand after the US drone airstrike and the Arabic words, “Does the Pope know this is the hand that brought the ringing of bells back to churches.”

Ahead of the visit, infectious disease experts had expressed concern about Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq, given a sharp rise in coronavirus infections there, a fragile health care system and the unavoidable likelihood that some people would crowd to see him.

Health experts say from a purely epidemiological standpoint, as well as the public health message it sends, the papal trip to Iraq amid a global pandemic is not wise.

Their concerns were reinforced with the news last week that the Vatican ambassador to Iraq, the main point person for the trip who would have escorted Francis to all his appointments, had tested positive for COVID-19 and was self-isolating.

BIOGRAPHYJim W. Dean, Managing EditorManaging EditorJim W. Dean is Managing Editor of Veterans Today involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. Read Full Complete Bio >>>

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The Dangerous Alliance of Rothschild and the Vatican of Francis

22.12.2020 

Author: F. William Engdahl

Holy Moly! The most globalist and interventionist Pope since the Crusades of the 12th Century has formalized an alliance with the largest figures in global finance led by none other than that noble banking family, Rothschild. The new alliance is a joint venture they call “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican.” The venture is one of the more cynical and given the actors, most dangerous frauds being promoted since Davos WEF guru and Henry Kissinger protégé, Klaus Schwab, began to promote the Great Reset of the world capitalist order. What and is behind this so-called Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican?

On their website they proclaim in a typical UN doublespeak, “The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a movement of the world’s business and public sector leaders who are working to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economic system that addresses the needs of our people and the planet.” A more sustainable, trusted economic system? Doesn’t that sound like the infamous UN Agenda 21 and its Agenda 2030 daughter, the globalist master plan? They then claim, “Inclusive Capitalism is fundamentally about creating long-term value for all stakeholders – businesses, investors, employees, customers, governments and communities.”

They continue, “Council members make actionable commitments aligned with the World Economic Forum International Business Council’s Pillars for sustainable value creation—People, Planet, Principles of Governance, and Prosperity—and that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

In announcing the deal with the Vatican, Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared, “This Council will follow the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable and sustainable model of growth.”

Their reference to Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum is no accident. The group is yet another front group in what is becoming a globalist bum’s rush to try to convince a skeptical world that the same people who created the post-1945 model of IMF-led globalization and giga-corporate entities more powerful than governments, destroying traditional agriculture in favor of toxic agribusiness, dismantling living standards in industrialized countries to flee to cheap labor countries like Mexico or China, will now lead the effort to correct all their abuses? We are being naïve if we swallow this.

Rothschild and pals

First off it is useful to see who are the “inclusive” capitalists joining forces with the Pope and Vatican. The founder is a lady who carries the name Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. She is the wife of the 90-year old retired mega-billionaire head of London’s NM Rothschilds Bank, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Lady Lynn however is from “commoner” roots, born into a US working class family in New Jersey whose father, as she tells, worked two jobs to put her and her brothers through law and medical schools. She seemed to have had some influential mentors, as she went to Wall Street then to telecoms including Motorola and made reported tens of millions before hooking up with Sir Evelyn and his reported $20 billion in assets. Reports have it that Henry Kissinger played a personal role in encouraging the Transatlantic union of the two.

Lady Lynn is interesting as well beyond her famous husband. According to the list of names of those who flew on the private jet of convicted child sex trafficker and reported Mossad operative Jeffrey Epstein, one name that appears is “de Rothschild, Lynn Forester.”

It is interesting to note, that the same Lynn Forester in 1991, before she took Sir Evelyn as her husband, generously let a British friend have full use of one of Lynn’s Manhattan apartment properties, following the apparent murder of the woman’s father, British media tycoon and Mossad agent, Robert Maxwell. The British friend of Lynn, Ghislaine Maxwell, today is awaiting trial for complicity in child sex trafficking as the partner of Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell reportedly maintained the Manhattan address of Lady Lynn until very recently to register a bizarre non-profit called Terramar that she and Epstein set up in 2012, allegedly aimed at saving our oceans. When Epstein was arrested she quickly dissolved the non-profit. One of the donors to Ghislaine’s TerraMar was something called the Clinton Foundation, which leads to the next friend.

Lady Lynn has another long-time friend named Hillary Clinton, whose husband, Bill, was also logged on Epstein’s Lolita Express private jet, around two dozen times. Lynn and her new husband, Sir Evelyn, in fact were so close to the Clintons that in 2000 the Rothschild newlyweds spent part of their honeymoon as guests at the White House of Mr and Mrs Clinton. Lady Lynn after that became a major fund-raiser in 2008 and again 2016 for a possible Hillary bid for President, called a “bundler.” She also advised Hillary on her economic program, a free market one based on Adam Smith as she described it in an interview once.

Lady Lynn’s “Guardians”

The Rothschild venture with the Vatican at this point, in addition to co-founder Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, includes hand-picked money moguls and their select foundations who pompously call themselves the “Guardians.” That’s a term sounding more like a South Side Chicago gang or some kind of mafia overlords. They call themselves the moral guardians, together now with their new friends at the Vatican, for reform of capitalism.

The Guardian member list includes Rajiv Shah, the CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation, and former partner of the Gates Foundation’s AGRA scam to introduce GMO seeds in Africa. The Rockefeller Foundation has been involved in promoting a pandemic “lockdown” since 2010, and is a core part of the WEF Great Reset agenda. He just released a Rockefeller report, Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System.

Rothschild’s Guardians also include Darren Walker the CEO of the Ford Foundation. Those two foundations, Ford and Rockefeller, have done more to shape an imperial American foreign policy than even the US State Department or CIA, including the funding of the failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, and the creation by Rockefeller funds of GMO crops.

The head of DuPont, a GMO giant and chemicals group is another Guardian as well as scandal-ridden vaccine and drug companies, Merck and Johnson & Johnson. Merck lied about the risks of its arthritis drug Vioxx until more than 55,000 users died of heart attacks. Johnson & Johnson has been involved in numerous frauds in recent years including around negative effects of its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, illegal presence of cancer-causing asbestos in its baby powder, and potentially thousands of legal actions for its role as a leading supplier of the opioid in Purdue Pharma’s deadly prescription painkiller OxyContin.

Other Guardians include CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, Allianz insurance, BP. In 2016 Visa along with USAID were behind the catastrophic Modi experiment to introduce a cashless economy in India.

Notable also is Guardian Mark Carney, former Bank of England head and also advocate of cashless digital central bank currencies to replace the dollar. Carney is now United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Carney is also a Board member of the Davos World Economic Forum, the public promoter of the Global Reset of capitalism to impose the dystopian Agenda 2030 “sustainable” economy. In fact several of Rothschild’s Guardians are on the WEF Board, including billionaire Marc Benioff, founder of cloud computing Salesforce, and OECD head Angel Gurria. And ex-Credit Suisse CEO, Tidjane Thiam is on the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.

Other Guardians of the inclusive capitalism transformation include the head of Bank of America, which bank was sued by the US Government for fraud connected with the 2008 US subprime mortgage crisis, as well as for laundering money for the deadly Mexican drug cartels and Russian organized crime. The select Guardian list also includes Marcie Frost, the controversial head of CalPERS, the huge fraud-ridden California state pension fund managing over $360 billion.

The head of State Street Corporation, one of the world’s largest asset management companies with US$3.1 trillion under management, is another Guardian. In January 2020 State Street announced it would vote against directors of companies in major stock indices that do not meet targets for environmental, social and governance changes. This is what is called Green Investing, as part of so-called Socially Responsible Investing. The WEF strategy, pushed also by WEF board members like Larry Fink of BlackRock, reward companies that they deem “socially responsible.” This is the key to the inclusive capitalism agenda of not just Rothschild’s inclusive capitalism Guardians, but also the WEF.

Their website claims that the Guardians manage more than $10.5 trillion dollars and control companies that employ 200 million workers. Now a brief look at their new Vatican partner.

Vatican Morals?

Ironically, or maybe not, Pope Francis, the partner chosen to give Rothschild’s group of mega-capitalists “moral” credibility, is himself embroiled in what could be the largest financial scandals, fraud and misuse of church funds in the modern history of the Vatican. That, despite the fact Pope Francis declared as new Pope in 2013, one of his main tasks would be to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican finances. That has hardly taken place even after more than six years. Some Vatican observers even claim the financial corruption has worsened.

The unravelling scandal revolves around now-disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu who until 2018 was de facto chief-of-staff to the Pope and regular confidante. Becciu was Substitute for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State, a key position in the Roman Curia until June, 2018 when the pope elevated him to Cardinal, ironically enough, responsible for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Becciu, clearly no saint, was able to invest hundreds of millions even billions over years of Church funds, including donations for the poor in Peter’s Pence, into projects he chose with a former banker from Credit Suisse. Projects included €150 million share in a luxury London real estate complex and $1.1 million into a film, Rocketman, about the life of Elton John. That comes to light as the ongoing Vatican child sex scandals caused Pope Francis to defrock Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, the first Cardinal to fall in the Church’s deep sexual abuse charges.

Italian press reports that the Pope knew about the dubious investments of Becciu and even praised them before the depth of the scandals broke. In November, 2020 Italian police raided the residence of Becciu’s former Vatican accountant and found €600,000 in cash and evidence the Vatican employee received $15 million in fake invoicing over years.

With a background like this, the new Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican of Lynn de Rothschild warrants close scrutiny as they clearly plan big things along with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum to “reform” the world economy, and it won’t be nice or moral we can be sure.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Phoenix and the rebirth of evil part I:

By Ken Leslie for the Saker Blog

The Poglavnik of the East^[1]

“I know no way of judging the future but the past.”

Patrick Henry, 1765

“This time, it’s different”

Any gambler bleeding thousands of dollars at a table in Las Vegas

These days we all seem preoccupied with daily events which are taking a turn for the worse. No, not everything is “bad” but only those who are sound asleep do not hear the cold winds of war rattling the windows. My previous essay “Two clicks to midnight” has caused quite a stir with over 20000 views and hundreds of comments. I put it to you that this is not the result of my brilliant writing and analytical skills (I mean this) but the ability to express something that many people keep hidden inside—questions about the true nature of the system in which we live, their inchoate fears and half-buried memories. I believe in the cathartic power of the truth (the way I see it) and it appears that so do many others. This in itself is encouraging because it means that under layers of lies, anxieties, complexes and dogmas, there lies a good human heart capable of love and redemption. Given the current state of the world, this is the only way I know of fighting for a more hopeful tomorrow—warts and all.

Our gracious host has achieved fame (he might disagree!) through a knowledgeable and timely analysis of the Western military-political nexus that is using all its power to destroy Russia and China. His prescient and nuanced assessments of the situation in the “East” have made many of us loyal visitors and contributors to this blog. Now, I can’t hope to offer anything like the military analysis a la Saker of Andrey Martyanov. And that is just as well because they are doing an excellent job. What I can do well is to observe certain historical patterns and try to interpret them in the modern setting. As knowers say, history does not repeat itself but it rhymes. It is these “rhymes” or similarities between historical events that tell us all we need to know about the limited cognitive grasp of the human beings as well as partial predictability of human behaviour. Of course, the complexity of the systems in question precludes any confident claims but nevertheless—past is all we have and we’d better learn how to use its lessons pronto.

Of course, there is danger of overestimating the importance of past events but it is equally dangerous to ignore them. In applied probability, these two types of bias are called “Hot Hand” and “Gambler’s fallacy” and they hamper any analysis of complex events. Yet, as noted by Patrick Henry above, all we have is the past and we’d better study it carefully—if judiciously.^[2] And then, there are the emotions—yearning for justice in the face of a blatant injustice and anger at the abandon with which criminal elites hiding behind the holiest of principles have destroyed innocent human lives. After decades if not centuries of demonisation of Russia in all its forms, the time has come to fight back—to turn the light of history on its enemies. As some of you might have noticed, I have focussed almost exclusively on Roman Catholicism at the risk of alienating some readers. This does not mean that evil is the exclusive province of the Vatican but that a large proportion of recent historical tragedies are closely linked with if not caused by it. Given the nature of these tragedies, I intend to explore the nefarious role of this “Official” Christianity in some detail.

In the infernal Encyclopaedia of human beastliness that is kept bound and chained to the gates of Hell there are few events as heart breaking and anger provoking as the War in Vietnam, one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in modern history. “Conflict” is not the right term here. Rather, the Wars in Vietnam which started in 1945 and ended in 1975 represent an archetype of naked criminal aggression and genocide waged by all weapons in the arsenal of the Western “democracy” against an old and proud people which only wanted to see the backs of foreign invaders. 19^th Century was very unkind to the peoples of East Asia in that it brought with it an unstoppable surge of Western imperialism greedy for raw materials and cheap labour. The British, the Dutch and finally the French swooped on the rich rubber and timber-growing fields of Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam respectively, crushing any resistance with the aid of modern weapons and advanced political warfare techniques. Although each of these examples deserves in-depth treatment, I wish to devote and dedicate this essay to Vietnam, whose suffering brings tears to any feeling person’s eyes even today 45 years after colonel Ted Serong clambered up the rickety ladder on the roof of the Saigon embassy leaving the long-suffering country in utter ignominy. If you are wondering who this is, you’ll need to wait for part II.

You may ask—why now? There are several reasons. First, historical amnesia is very dangerous and as stated by President Putin, deliberate attempts by those who fought on the side of evil to embellish their role and soothe their ravaged consciences can only bring us closer to another global tragedy. Change is inevitable and needed but not at the expense of the rehabilitation of the worst human instincts and thirst for iniquity. Second, even in the bloody milieu of European colonial conquest, Vietnam stands out as a symbol of martyrdom—in the Christian sense, despite or because most crimes against the Vietnamese people were committed in the name of a Church which calls itself the only true Christian faith. Third, obsessed by Eurocentrism, we tend to forget that lives and struggles of other peoples are equally as important. Finally, the topic I shall focus on is highly relevant in the modern era of limited and “targeted” military and paramilitary operations underpinned by a vast human and electronic intelligence apparatus and the largest military in the world. There are a lot of parallels between what happened in South Vietnam from 1967 to 1973 and more recent US-sponsored or executed crimes in different parts of the world.

Although I’d love to expound, this is not the place to retell the story of the tragedy of Vietnam which began with a mid-19^th Century scouting expedition by several French Jesuits on behalf of French capital. Their demise at the hands of Vietnamese patriots served as a pretext for what Wikipedia describes as follows: “Vietnam’s sovereignty was gradually eroded by France, which was aided by the Spanish and large Catholic militias in a series of military conquests between 1859 and 1885.”^[3] Although the Vietnamese fought bravely against the legions of newly-converted “rice Christians”, they could not withstand the onslaught of one of the premiere imperial powers of the day.^[4] After a couple of decades of resolute resistance, the kingdom of Vietnam became another French colony to be exploited and visited by adventurers.

In their obsession with the hard-nosed “it’s all about the money” agenda, many seem to ignore the fact that the conquest of a people requires the destruction and erasure of their spiritual and cultural identity. While money is of paramount importance, it is useless if the people resisting are aware of their history and culture. This allows them to draw from deep wells of history and replenish their strength. Very often, they come out victorious in the end. The strategists of the global spiritual conquest in the Vatican have been well aware of the power of religion as a weapon to be wielded against indigenous cultures. The psychology of religious conversion is a fascinating psychological topic which deserves a separate article. Once a person converts (for personal gain or under duress), he or she becomes isolated from or ostracised by their family and wider community. Exposed to the opprobrium and shame, the new convert turns to his new family—priests and laymen who are masters at leveraging the sense of guilt and anger. This is combined with the “carrot”—the convert is told that they are special because they belong to the “true” faith. They are initiated within the new ingroup and are soon ready to turn their anger against their former friends and kin.^[5]

In Vietnam, this spiritual war (which for me is the most pernicious and least explored form of aggression) resulted in the formation of a class of Vietnamese Catholic converts who struggled to reconcile their origins with a foreign religion and culture to which they were now irrevocably bound. These people became members of a nascent Vietnamese middle class whose ambition to better themselves involved supporting the French occupation and generally renouncing their Buddhist heritage. They often received a French education and tried to emulate French culture and mores. The ones who excelled were employed as low-level bureaucrats or officers. This soon brought them into conflict with those Vietnamese who saw French presence and religious encroachment for what it really was—a brazen attempt to behead the Vietnamese civilisation (which owes a lot to China) and replace it with a docile population of useful “supplétifs”, that is, deracinated aboriginals who are given just enough incentives to keep them in check. The hatred of their community would do the rest.

The ignominious defeat of the French state in 1940 was momentous for France’s colonies which soon had to decide between Petain’s Vichy and De Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine. That same year, the seemingly unstoppable Japanese Imperial Army occupied the French Indo-China and hammered out a pragmatic agreement with the Vichy colonial government which allowed the latter to continue governing the colony with the Japanese taking on a largely overseeing role. Needless to say, the fruits of the colonial plunder started travelling due East resulting in deadly famines and the birth of a movement of Vietnamese patriots who were guided by (but never subservient to) the precepts of Marxism-Leninism.^[6] This cell of exceptional individuals who devoted their lives to the struggle for freedom having spent (cumulatively) over 300 years in French prisons were led by the most exceptional of their number—one Nguyễn Sinh Cung better known as Ho Chi Minh. A tireless revolutionary, socialist, humanist and fighter against oppression, Ho had led an incredible life of adventure, adversity and reincarnation. After being largely side-lined for most of his political life, Ho grabbed the moment in 1944, when he and his comrades organised and led the indigenous guerrilla resistance to Japanese occupation. The name of the movement for the liberation of Vietnam became world-famous as the Viet Minh.

Following the war, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam in August 1945. He was keen to enlist the help of the United States whose anticolonialism under Roosevelt offered hope to many liberation movements. However, with the death of FDR, the US foreign policy doctrine experienced a U turn. Instead of continuing their assistance to Ho provided by the OSS in the fight against the Japanese, the newly-hatched American Empire decided to defend the colonial status quo on the pretext of fighting communism. Although exhausted and shamed by its wartime record, France reneged on any promises made by the pre-war Blum government and decided to restore its colonial empire in the hope that the false grandeur of pith helmets and white dress shoes would constitute a sufficient recompense for being a willing partner of Hitler’s own empire just a year earlier (resistance excepted).

To cut a long story short, after eight years of bloody struggle, the Vietminh succeeded in liberating their country following a brilliant victory at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. This gave rise to an international conference at which the USSR and China convinced Ho to agree to a temporary partition and a unification following a “free and fair” election in 1956. There was some anger at the time at the role Ho’s two mentors played but their reticence was understandable given the current political and economic situation as well as the hawkishness of the US foreign policy apparatus. Nevertheless, this was the crucial point in the evolution of Vietnamese Golgotha because the names of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap became household names overnight—the great heroes of the liberation struggle—so much so that even the Americans knew that were an election to take place, the Viet Minh would take the vast majority of votes. This was absolutely unacceptable to warmongering criminals the Dulles brothers and their minions. A free Vietnam friendly to China and the USSR was a nightmare which called for a nightmarish solution. The first task for the dark cabal was to find somebody who could rival Ho as a figure of national prominence and significance. This was impossible in principle because most prominent Vietnamese politicians (including the emperor Bao Dai) were in France’s employ and the people of Vietnam at that point would rather eat raw nettles than countenance another French puppet ruling over them. However, everything was not lost.

In one of many Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States, an austere, celibate Vietnamese man, short in stature but full of noblesse oblige was waiting to be interviewed by one of the leading RC politicians of the era, Senator Michael Mansfield. Diem had left Vietnam in 1950 ostensibly to take part in a Vatican celebration but in reality, to lobby for the RC takeover of Vietnam under his family. Diem’s reputation as a nationalist who equally opposed the French and the Vietminh was played up for the media.^[7] What was kept in the background was that Diem was a scion of the most powerful RC family in Vietnam as well as the fact that he had collaborated with the Japanese during the war. One of his brothers, Bishop Ngô Đình Thục was one of the most senior RC clerics in Vietnam and the co-ordinator of the takeover of this largely Buddhist country. Having been vetted by “Hitler’s Pope” Pius XII, Diem immediately acquired access to various offices discretely tucked away inside the massive brownstone buildings of Georgetown in which the fate of Vietnam was being decided at that very moment.^[8] Having received the necessary instructions from his Padron in Rome, the ultra-powerful Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman put into motion a process that would result in one of the greatest instances of unprovoked carnage in history.

Diem’s religious zealotry and hatred of Buddhism made him an immediate hit with the Roman Catholic elites in the USA who yearned to redeem the catastrophic “loss of China” to the Communists. Immediately, a “Vietnamese Lobby” was formed consisting of some of the most prominent and influential Roman Catholic personalities on the US scene including Cardinal Spellman, Joseph and John Kennedy, judge William O. Douglass, senator Mike Mansfield and many others. Needless to say, Diem was favoured by the Dulles brothers who would play a crucial role in the formation of his semi-secret system of oppression. Under their tutelage and boosted by American money, the hitherto unknown Catholic zealot would turn Vietnam into a bulwark of anti-Communism modelled on fascist Catholic satrapies such as Spain, Croatia and Slovakia. It did not matter that Diem was almost completely unknown to the people or that up to 90% of Vietnamese population was Buddhist. These inconvenient facts would be overcome by enthusiastic CIA engineers of chaos whose task was to ensure Diem’s rule at all costs.

What happened after this is generally well known. With the help of the CIA man Edward Lansdale, Diem crushed his opponents and became president of Vietnam after a 98.2% victory in a sham election. Soon after, he instituted a reign of terror primarily targeted against Buddhists, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects as well as members of the Viet Minh who had remained in South Vietnam after the partition. On the instigation of his American bosses, he reneged on the promise of reunification and in order to strengthen his shaky hold on power organised a massive transfer of Roman Catholics from North to South Vietnam. Despite the North’s leniency towards their religion, many fell for the expensive and effective propaganda campaign funded by various US Catholic Charities and the CIA. “Virgin has gone to the South” was a potent call for hundreds of thousands of Catholic believers to leave their ancestral homes and start afresh in the newly born Civitas Dei.^[9]

This unprecedented demographic shift had a twofold effect: it strengthened Diem’s popular base with Northern Catholics being vastly over-represented in his oppressive apparatus including military, intelligence, police as well as countless Catholic militias strewn around South Vietnam (e.g. Father Nguyen Lạc Hoa’s “Sea Swallows).^[10] On the other hand, the population movement increased the political homogeneity of the North making its preparations for a war of liberation easier. Here is a quote from a research essay by Peter Hansen: “Jean Lacouture, for example, suggested that Ngô Đinh Diệm deliberately created a “ring of steel” by strategically placing settlements of loyalist Bắc Di Cư around Sài Gòn to protect himself both from communists and from potential enemies within the RVN: ‘As a result, surrounded by fortifications turning them into strategic hamlets, some villages filled with refugees formed a sort of a belt surrounding Saigon; it was as though the beleaguered [Ngô Đinh Diệm] regime wanted to fortify its capital with an iron guard composed of those people most hostile to communism and most violently attached to militant Catholicism.’”^[11]

By 1955 everything was in place. The influx of American military and academic advisers, law-enforcement officials and economic experts gave Diem an ostensibly modern system of state repression together with his own FBI, special units, a plethora of secret services and even his own political party (Can Lao, a child of his brother Nhu’s political ambitions) which underpinned the regime’s security through the infiltration by its members into all important institutions. Diem’s secret police was headed by Dr Tran Kim Tuyen, a Catholic who excelled at cruelty and pro-regime zeal. The signal was given for an all-out campaign of anti-Buddhist and anti-left terror. Tens of thousands of innocent Buddhists were imprisoned in animal-like cages or killed by Diem’s assassination squads (akin to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen).

Like in Croatia, whole villages converted to Catholicism in order to avoid imprisonment, torture and death.^[12] Hundreds of thousands were relocated into American-funded Potemkin villages called Agrovilles which were supposed to disrupt the traditional patterns of village life deemed unfriendly to the ways of the Catholic puppet Poglavnik. The terror reached its peak in 1958 and 1959. Hitherto dormant on the orders of the Hanoi government, the surviving remnants of the Vietminh started to organise and offer minimal resistance to the crazed crusader. The signal from the North to transition to armed struggle was issued with great reluctance—only after the vast majority of old and experienced cadres was eliminated by Diem’s death squads and there was a serious risk of a rebellion against the Socialist Lao Dong party by the disgruntled activists in the south.

Despite his best (worst) efforts, Diem could never overcome the ultimate barrier which separated him from the people of Vietnam—his religion. He always viewed his role as that of a Roman Catholic autocrat who holds the power of life and death over his flock. Like most religious transplants, he did not appreciate the deep animistic, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist roots of the ancient Vietnamese civilisation. He did try to emulate these superficially for the sake of appearance but ultimately failed. He even emulated Pavelic and his successors by trying to create a congregation of “loyal” Buddhists who would support his anti-Buddhist crusade.^[13] Nevertheless, for a short time, Diem was lionised by his masters in Washington as… oh, think of something… George Washington of Asia who stood alone in his deadly struggle against “Communist oppression”!. The honeymoon might have lasted longer but for the rapaciousness and zealotry of Diem, his family and his regime enforcers. The rumours of the nation-wide killing spree which had resulted in a large number of dead, imprisoned, dislocated and dispossessed non-Catholics started to reach the pricked ears of the Western media. No amount of slick propaganda could hide the horrors of Diem’s torture chambers and death squads (shades of Papa Doc Duvalier and his Ton Ton Macoutes). Not only did Diem antagonise the absolute majority of Vietnamese people including many hitherto loyal Catholics, but his masters in Washington were starting to get alarmed—similar to the German and Italian unease with the genocidal rage of Pavelic’s Ustashe whose cruelty threatened to upset Hitler’s European apple cart.

John F. Kennedy who had by then replaced an aging Eisenhower was faced with a serious problem. As a loyal Roman Catholic and a protégé of Cardinal Spellman, he was a passionate supporter of Diem and his Independent Croatia on the Mekong. As a young senator, Kennedy owed the support of his (mainly Irish Catholic) Boston constituents who were clamouring for a war against the USSR to his rabidly anti-Soviet and anti-communist pronouncements. Once he reached the top spot, he had to face some hard truths: First, Roman Catholics were still a minority in the USA and he had to moderate his inclinations and instincts in order to appeal to the majority. Second, the instability of South Vietnam caused by Diem’s persecution of the Buddhists (large-scale resistance started only in 1961) was threatening America’s wider interests in South-East Asia. Until the very last moment, he procrastinated. Removing Diem would not only end Spellman’s dream of a Catholic Vietnam but Kennedy would have to betray all that he held dear.

To assuage his guilt, he decided to revamp the war strategy in order to bolster Diem’s regime. First, he ordered a large increase in the number of “military advisers” who by now were taking an active part in the fighting. Second, following the doctrine outlined by General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy placed the accent on the role of the special forces—specially trained paramilitary units used for targeted attacks, sabotage, training various collaborationist forces and assassination. The so-called Green Berets have their origins in the darkest days of the Cold War when the 10^th Special Forces Group was placed in Germany in order to create an elite stay-behind army. The Lodge-Philbin act ensured that large numbers of East European Catholics, many of them with strong Nazi inclinations, received the green headgear and later proved their “mettle” in Vietnam.^[14]

Kennedy’s efforts proved in vain. The elan and fighting spirit of the Viet Minh (now called Viet Cong by its enemies) could not be matched even by the heavily armed and US-assisted South Vietnamese ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam). Helicopters and fighter-bombers flown by American officers and large-calibre artillery were largely helpless against a lithe and mobile guerrilla force motivated by patriotism and belief in a better future. The most egregious example of the impotence of Diem’s military and their US advisers was the battle of Ap Bac which took place in early 1963 and was described in great detail by Neil Sheehan in his famous book.^[15] The defeat of Diem’s army and the US strategy reverberated far and wide. But this was only a side issue. By the spring of 1963, the Buddhists of Vietnam had had enough. Having failed to stop Diem’s terror through protest and civil disobedience, they resorted to the ultimate weapon of non-violent religions—public suicide.

A number of monks and nuns burned to death in city centres in full view of foreign news cameramen. Diem’s obduracy and unwillingness to heed the protest convinced many in the United States that Diem was beyond salvation (pun not intended) and that America’s interest would be better served by somebody else. The two quarrelling factions bickered for months until the newly-appointed ambassador to Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge (a protestant and a political rival of the Kennedys) started organising a coup. Diem and his brother Nhu were aware of America’s deadly grudge and tried at the last minute to start negotiations with the North Vietnamese government. But time had run out. The ever-loyal Kennedy had to accept his advisers’ recommendation and OK the removal of the would-be Catholic emperor of the East. This was executed by a junta of non-Catholic generals with a little help from an experienced CIA agent of French extraction, Lucien Conein.

Diem was overthrown soon and after an adventurous escape attempt ruthlessly killed, together with his brother while on his way to surrendering to the new government. When he heard the news, Kennedy was genuinely distraught and bereaved. Clearly, his emotions had nothing to do with the fight against communism in which Diem had been failing terribly, and everything to do with the fact that he himself was responsible for the murder of the last openly Catholic leader in Asia. Only three weeks later, he, the first Catholic leader of America would meet the same fate.

The early hope that a less repressive regime in Saigon would motivate the people to turn against the Viet Cong proved empty. Disaster after disaster followed with the guerrillas strengthened by infiltrators from the North Vietnam destroying large ARVN units without suffering major losses. Indeed, the Buddhists were not as good as Diem at killing “commies” and after a couple of years of chaos, the chastened and worried US empire decided to up the ante. The new strategy was two pronged. On the one hand, the old Catholic hands had to be quietly reactivated in order to form a “patriotic” core within the government and the army and second, the fighting would have to be done by the Americans.

By 1964, the stage was set for a drawn-out and bloody denouement of Vietnam’s struggle for freedom and independence. In its attempt to crush the Vietnamese resistance, the Americans employed every weapon and killing technique known to (in)humanity. Having laid out the broad historical context, in part II of this essay I shall analyse the strategy behind and impact of one of the most horrifying weapons wielded in an already horrific war—the Phoenix Programme.

1. “Poglavnik” was the official title (meaning the Head or Leader) of Ante Pavelic, the leader of one of the bloodiest regimes in modern history—The Independent State of Croatia. ↑
2. Another analogy is the distinction between a person suffering from delusions seeing connections and references everywhere (which does not necessarily mean they don’t exist) and another person with amnesia who is incapable of learning from past experiences. ↑
3. This is not quite correct. The Jesuit infiltration into Vietnam began much earlier. The fact that these early “explorers” happened to be Portuguese is relevant for what is to follow. Numerous Catholic militias existed well into the 1960s and were an inextricable part of the French and American war efforts. They are also mentioned in Grahame Green’s “The Quiet American”. ↑
4. There are close parallels between the Vietnamese struggle and the Chinese Boxer rebellion which was also triggered by the excesses of the (mainly RC) missionaries. ↑
5. Please remember this bit because it is directly related to the topic of the essay. Also, what I describe here has been the modus operandi not only of the right wing of the Roman Catholicism but also many militant schools of Sunni Islam. ↑
6. An excellent analysis of Vietnamese communism can be found in Gabriel Kolko’s “Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience”. ↑
7. That this was total nonsense became clear when Diem started to arrest, kill and torture anyone who had fought against the French. ↑
8. This refers to the book by John Cornwell: Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. ↑
9. The personal accounts by Catholic refugees largely fail to mention Lansdale (who might have been inflating his own role) and ascribe the decision to move to the local clergy—disciplined soldiers of the Vatican. ↑
10. JFK was particularly impressed by Father Hoa and his fiery anticommunism. ↑
11. Hansen, P. (2009). Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 3, pps. 173–211. ↑
12. Exactly the same thing happened in the Independent State of Croatia. ↑
13. From “Vietnam: Why did We Go?” by Avro Manhattan: “Before engaging upon a thorough persecution against the Buddhists, President Diem attempted to form a body of Buddhists who would support his policies of coordination and integration.” ↑
14. See William Simpson’s “Blowback” for a detailed account of this infamous episode. ↑
15. The book “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam” is an excellent if sanitised source of facts on the American strategy in Vietnam. One just needs to fill in the gaps with executions, secret torture chambers and other CIA special desserts. ↑

An open letter from an Arab Priest to his holiness Pope Francis

Source

Wednesday, 08 July 2020

Your Holiness,

In the Open Letter I addressed to you from Damascus on March 13, 2020, I asked you this question:

“Do you still believe, until today, in the survival of Jesus Christ in the Arab World?”

Today, at the dawn of July 8, 2020, I see it my duty, as an Arab Catholic Priest, to ask you another, far more dangerous, question:

“Can you deny, as the supreme spiritual leader of the Church, that this specific Church has been,effectively, the single main cause of the gradual, profound, and general,excising of Christianity on the scope of the world, starting from the West—at whose headis, as usual, the United States of America—because of its unacceptable sliding into and collusion with the slime of politics and finance since the time of Emperor Constantine until today?”

Nonetheless, Jesus Christ has always been, and will forever be, unique in His beauty, truthfulness, love, and magnetism.

Your Holiness,

At the end of a text that I wrote on April 5, 2020, entitled: “An answer to a friend in the West,” I asked this question:”

In a week, we shall celebrate the resurrection of Jesus!

I wonder: When shall we celebrate the ‘resurrection’ of His Church?” 

As we shall, in three days, celebrate the Feast of the great Syrian Saints, Peter and Paul, I allow myself to call upon you, anew, to visit Syria.

Rest assured, though, that you will not have to kiss the hands of some rich people, nor the feet of some African Chiefs, but, very simply, a handful of Syria’s holy earth… I offer to you on a wonderful piece of Damascene Broquart cloth, while I am standing proudly near our noble President.

Your Holiness,

Damascus awaits you.

Perchance this would be the dawn of the hoped-for ‘resurrection’ of the Church.

Fr Elias Zahlaoui,

Damascus, July 8 2020

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Understanding why they lie and why they get away with it

In lieu of an normal introduction: the eternally evolving BDA

THE SAKER • FEBRUARY 13, 2020 •

Over 100 US service members have been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries in the wake of the January 8 Iranian missile attack on the al Asad military base in Iraq, according to a US official with knowledge of the latest information?

On his website, Colonel Cassad offered this, shall we say, “evolution” of the truth as reported by the United States:

X stands for “surviving casualties”

Y stands for “dead”

1. X = 0, Y = 0
2. X = 11, Y = 0
3. X = 34, Y = 0
4. X = 50, Y = 0
5. X = 64, Y = 0
6. X=100+?, Y = 0
7. X> 200, Y> 80?

(that last line is, obviously, hypothetical, but at the time of writing, we are already up to 109 casualties!)

Notice that while the number of surviving wounded steadily goes up, there is no corresponding increase in the number of dead. All we have are “aircraft crashes” (all, we are told, accidental). Ask any military specialist (or military historian) and you will be told that this kind of “evolution” is exceedingly unlikely (see here for one discussion). Simply put – these kinds of numbers are pretty obviously impossible, which means that from the moment the Idiot-in-Chief tweeted “so far so good”, the US was already lying:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.

761K

6:45 AM – Jan 8, 2020

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Is there really anybody out there who will deny that the US government lies pretty much about everything and anything?. And it’s not just the Executive Branch, Congress lies possibly even more (both parties, of course). In fact, I would argue that lying is both necessary AND expected from any US politician. When somebody like Tulsi Gabbard or Ron Paul don’t abide by this rule, the media immediately dismisses them as “Putin agents” or something equally insipid.

The truth is that lies have become the norm of the western political discourse.

That is bad enough by itself. But there is worse.

The worst is not that western politicians lie, the worst is that almost nobody cares.

That is really scary.

Why?

Because in a society which expects everybody to lie, facts simply don’t matter any more.

So that is the key question: do we care or don’t we?

Well, some clearly still care. Or we would not have Howard Zinn’s books, or Oliver Stone’s movies as best sellers. Neither would we have a vibrant 9/11 Truth movement. You want more evidence? Sure! How about all the folks who are willing to go into exile (or to jail!) to uphold the rights of historians to freely investigate the history of WWII? How about Ed Snowden, Julian Assange or Bradley Manning? How about the millions of people in the West who took to the streets to protest the various GWOT wars? No, there clearly are a lot of people who care.

The problem is that their impact is minimal, and that is what I want to look into today.

Have facts and truth become redundant?

I doubt that there are many reading these lines who don’t already know for a fact that Kennedy was not killed by one “lone gunman”. Likewise, we all know the truth about the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident. Then there are those who realize that something about the Pearl Harbor attack stinks to high heaven. Some even remember the USS Liberty. Most specialists know about GLADIO. And I could go on and on. The fact is that most of the worst lies of the 20th century have been debunked beyond reasonable doubt, really.

Chris Hedges really nailed it when he spoke of an “Empire of Illusions“. He names the following types of illusions: the illusion of Literacy, the illusion of Love, the illusion of Wisdom, the illusion of Happiness and the illusion of America. The book is most interesting, and I highly recommend it. But I think that there is one crucial aspect of the Empire being an “Empire of Illusions” and that is the illusion of Reality. What do I mean by that?

I mean the following: most people are aware that there is a “reality” of some kind out there. Of course, many people are aware of how difficult it can be to ascertain what the “real reality” really is, thus they prefer to cautiously state that getting to the truth is a very difficult endeavor. These are the folks who know enough to know that they really don’t know much. But then there are also those who misinterpret this caution as to mean that there really is no such thing as reality at all and all there is, is the sum of our subjective perception thereof (of reality that is). Pretty soon we have slipped from:

• Reality is often very difficult to establish

to

• Reality is impossible to establish

to

• Reality does not really exist at all (or, if it does, it really doesn’t matter)

Of course, most people won’t directly declare that reality does not exist – they just act as if it didn’t.

It all began centuries ago by a quite formidable indifference to Truth on the part of the leaders of the Papacy. These folks were all about power, so if religion could give it to them, then religion was good, but when religion placed limits on what the Latins could or could not do (say like during the famous “Valladolid debate“), then suddenly religion became a hindrance which had to be “reformed”. And, indeed, once the original Christianity was “reformed” (be it by the Reform or the Counter-Reformation) all hell broke lose for most of mankind and the Age of Imperialism was fully ushered in and the ancient motto “exitus acta probat” became the de facto measure of morality.

Then came the first blow of the scientific revolution of the late Renaissance which left the Papacy with very little credibility left.

The next blow came during WWII when the Papacy saw its very last hurrah come and go, pretty quickly, in fact (it lasted just as long as Hitler’s “1000 year Reich” did: 12 years). By the end of the war, western Christianity was left in shambles and, even worse was the fact that none of the victors of WWII (Reformed Anglos, Atheist Soviets, Jews – secular and not, etc.) had any warm feelings left for the Christianity (truth be told, neither did Hitler or Mussolini). At this point the Papacy decided to commit suicide and organized the Vatican II Council, which must be the most massive surrender of values previously held for sacred in history. This ill-advised attempt to show “Roman Catholicism with a human face” resulted in a total failure. Those who hated the Papacy were unimpressed did not like it any more. As for the confused rank and file “Roman Catholics” (whom I refer to as “Latins”), they were were left with the following conundrum: if the Pope is infallible (which he is as per the First Vatican Council of 1868), how can he so clearly contradict the teachings of his own Church (not to mention the teachings of his putatively infallible predecessors!)? Some declared that the Pope was a heretic, others simply declared that the “Holy See” was unoccupied (“sedevacantism“), but most simply gave up in total disgust (sex scandals did not help!) and simply stopped asking “what is the truth”?

When a Church which had declared itself “The Church” (all in CAPS, and at the exclusion of all others) for 910 years (almost a millennium!) suddenly acts as if all religions were equally “true” (this is logically impossible, but never mind that) and when a once powerful “Holy Father” (and Vicar of Christ, no less!) becomes just another public figure somewhere between Kim Kardashian and Greta Thunberg, you know that something very big has taken place.

Something very bad too.

 

The truth is not only unwelcome, it does not even exist, right?!

Both world wars were the manifestation of an immense civilizational collapse. WWI saw the collapse of the traditional European monarchies and empires. WWII, and its absolutely unprecedented explosion of hatred (political, class, racial, linguistic, religious, etc.) saw Europe, once the center of our planet, being subjected to a monstrous (but also highly predictable) bloodbath which resulted in two non-European powers splitting the world into two spheres of influence (at least that was the plan). More interestingly, while nominally “Christian” rulers and countries could not openly advocate for mass terror, the “enlightened” secular folks had no such problems at all. Just read Trotsky’s brilliant, if clearly satanic, “Dictatorship versus Democracy” or Hitler’s 5th chapter in Mein Kampf (here in German if you can!).

Both Dostoevskii and Solzhenitsyn predicted what would inevitably happen to a world in which Nihilism prevails. Dostoevskii very simply summarized it all when he wrote (in the Karamazov Brothers) “if there is no God, then everything is allowed“. The Nihilists have simply logically concluded that if there is no God, and everything is allowed, then nothing really exists, most certainly not any “real” (objective) reality. Even the very notions of “good” and “evil” are absolutely meaningless absent an absolute reference system.

Bertrand Russel (and, apparently, also Voltaire) once brilliantly wrote that “God created Man in His image and Man returned Him the favor“. Amazing words, really! If we are not the creation of God, but God is our creation, that makes us very much God-like, does it not? And, as “gods” – don’t we deserve to define for ourselves what is “good” and what is “bad”? Of course we do! Once life/existence has no meaning, how could concepts such as “good” or “evil”? And that is exactly what we have done, especially our post-modern 21 century Nihilists!

Back to where we started – assessing the “so what?” defense

I have already mentioned many times the mind-blowing hypocrisy of the Dems, who all hate on Trump for his alleged “so what?” defense (which, by the way, is a mis-characterization – his defense was much more solid and logical), but have absolutely no problems with people like the Obamas or, even better, the Clintons next to whom Trump almost sounds like a paragon of honesty, integrity and an acute sense of decency. I mean, really, the Clintons made even violent mobsters (Italian or Jewish) look pure and innocent. And when they lie, this is absolutely no big deal. But when Trump lies, then he elicits the kind of blind, impotent, rage which in the Gospel is described by the words “weeping and gnashing of teeth“. Maybe that is what they refer to when they speak of a “Trump derangement syndrome” amongst US liberals?

The truth is simple: we all know that Trump lied. About the Iranian counter-strike and about many other things. We also know that Obama lied. And Baby-Bush too. And the Clinton and his no-sex cigars… And we remember “read my lips, no new taxes” just as well as we remember “We did not, I repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else [to Iran] for hostages, nor will we“. So yes, we remember.

We just don’t care anymore.

We have been completely desensitized not only to truth, but even to reality.

So what, right?

And the consequences are dire indeed!

Conclusion: life in a reality-free world

The fact that we, who live inside the Empire, live in a reality-free world has a huge impact upon the actions of our rulers. After all, if nobody really believes in, or cares about, reality, then why should our rulers bother with making reality any better, especially for us? It is much, much, simpler to simply present a “feelgood” message about how great “America” is (as in “We have the most powerful and well equipped military anywhere in the world, by far!“) and never mind that this most powerful military in the Galaxy could not even protect its own soldiers even though they knew exactly when and where the Iranian counter-strike would come.

Of course, with time, the entire edifice of lies built by US and EU politicians will come crashing down, either as a consequence of a military defeat impossible to hide, or from a major economic shock. This will be totally unexpected for those who choose to live in a reality-free world.

President Assad’s Banned Interview with Rai 24: Europe Key Perpetrator of Terror in Syria

December 9, 2019 Miri Wood

On 26 November, Syria’s President Bashar al Assad gave an interview to RaiNews24, which was supposed to have been aired in Italy on 2 December. For reasons known only to the inner elite, the Italian news station decided to censor it, and refused to give the Syrian Arab Republic an explanation for the abrupt decision. The government released it 9 December.

The interview was conducted in English. The video with Arabic captions is provided by the Syrian Presidency; the transcript by SANA.

Question 1: Mr. President, thanks for having us here.  Let us know please, what’s the situation in Syria now, what’s the situation on the ground, what is happening in the country?

President Assad:  If we want to talk about Syrian society: the situation is much, much better, as we learned so many lessons from this war and I think the future of Syria is promising; we are going to come out of this war stronger.

Talking about the situation on the ground: The Syrian Army has been advancing for the last few years and has liberated many areas from the terrorists, there still remains Idleb where you have al-Nusra that’s being supported by the Turks, and you have the northern part of Syria where the Turks have invaded our territory last month.

So, regarding the political situation, you can say it’s becoming much more complicated, because you have many more players that are involved in the Syrian conflict in order to make it drag on and to turn it into a war of attrition.

Question 2:  When you speak about liberating, we know that there is a military vision on that, but the point is: how is the situation now for the people that decided to be back in society?  The process of reconciliation, now at what point?  Is it working or not?

President Assad: Actually, the methodology that we adopted when we wanted to create let’s say, a good atmosphere – we called it reconciliation, for the people to live together, and for those people who lived outside the control of government areas to go back to the order of law and institutions. It was to give amnesty to anyone, who gives up his armament and obey the law.  The situation is not complicated regarding this issue, if you have the chance to visit any area, you’ll see that life is getting back to normal.

The problem wasn’t people fighting with each other; it wasn’t like the Western narrative may have tried to show – as Syrians fighting with each other, or as they call it a “civil war,” which is misleading.  The situation was terrorists taking control of areas, and implementing their rules.  When you don’t have those terrorists, people will go back to their normal life and live with each other.  There was no sectarian war, there was no ethnical war, there was no political war; it was terrorists supported by outside powers, they have money and armaments, and they occupy those areas.

Question 3: Aren’t you afraid that this kind of ideology that took place and, you know, was the basis of everyday life for people for so many years, in some ways can stay in the society and sooner or later will be back?

President Assad: This is one of the main challenges that we’ve been facing. What you’re asking about is very correct.  You have two problems.  Those areas that were out of the control of government were ruled by two things: chaos, because there is no law, so people – especially the younger generation – know nothing about the state and law and institutions.

The second thing, which is deeply rooted in the minds, is the ideology, the dark ideology, the Wahabi ideology – ISIS or al-Nusra or Ahrar al-Cham, or whatever kind of these Islamist terrorist extremist ideologies.

NYT suggested ‘rebels’ stop showing the world their atrocities, while The Guardian appeared not to have noticed this one. Far left, Italian national Saqar, about to murder kidnapped Syrian soldiers in Idlib, 2012.

Now we have started dealing with this reality, because when you liberate an area you have to solve this problem otherwise what’s the meaning of liberating?  The first part of the solution is religious, because this ideology is a religious ideology, and the Syrian religious clerics, or let’s say the religious institution in Syria, is making a very strong effort in this regard, and they have succeeded; they succeeded at helping those people understanding the real religion, not the religion that they’ve been taught by al-Nusra or ISIS or other factions.

Question 4: So basically, clerics and mosques are part of this reconciliation process?

President Assad:  This is the most important part.  The second part is the schools.  In schools, you have teachers, you have education, and you have the national curriculum, and this curriculum is very important to change the minds of those young generations.  Third, you have the culture, you have the role of arts, intellectuals, and so on.  In some areas, it’s still difficult to play that role, so it was much easier for us to start with the religion, second with the schools.

Question 5: Mr. President, let me just go back to politics for an instant. You mentioned Turkey, okay? Russia has been your best ally these years, it’s not a secret, but now Russia is compromising with Turkey on some areas that are part of Syrian area, so how do you assess this?

President Assad: To understand the Russian role, we have to understand the Russian principles.  For Russia, they believe that international law – and international order based on that law – is in the interest of Russia and in the interest of everybody in the world.  So, for them, by supporting Syria they are supporting international law; this is one point.  Secondly, being against the terrorists is in the interest of the Russian people and the rest of the world.

So, being with Turkey and making this compromise doesn’t mean they support the Turkish invasion; rather they wanted to play a role in order to convince the Turks that you have to leave Syria.  They are not supporting the Turks, they don’t say “this is a good reality, we accept it and Syria must accept it.”  No, they don’t.  But because of the American negative role and the Western negative role regarding Turkey and the Kurds, the Russians stepped in, in order to balance that role, to make the situation… I wouldn’t say better, but less bad if you want to be more precise.  So, in the meantime, that’s their role.  In the future, their position is very clear: Syrian integrity and Syrian sovereignty.  Syrian integrity and sovereignty are in contradiction with the Turkish invasion, that is very obvious and clear.

Question 6: So, you’re telling me that the Russians could compromise, but Syria is not going to compromise with Turkey. I mean, the relation is still quite tense.

President Assad:  No, even the Russians didn’t make a compromise regarding the sovereignty.  No, they deal with reality.  Now, you have a bad reality, you have to be involved to make some… I wouldn’t say compromise because it’s not a final solution.  It could be a compromise regarding the short-term situation, but in the long-term or the mid-term, Turkey should leave. There is no question about it.

Question 7: And in the long-term, any plan of discussions between you and Mr. Erdogan?

President Assad:  I wouldn’t feel proud if I have to someday.  I would feel disgusted to deal with those kinds of opportunistic Islamists, not Muslims, Islamists – it’s another term, it’s a political term.  But again, I always say: my job is not to be happy with what I’m doing or not happy or whatever.  It’s not about my feelings, it’s about the interests of Syria, so wherever our interests go, I will go.

Question 8: In this moment, when Europe looks at Syria, apart from the considerations about the country, there are two major issues: one is refugees, and the other one is the Jihadists or foreign fighters coming back to Europe. How do you see these European worries?

President Assad:  We have to start with a simple question: who created this problem?  Why do you have refugees in Europe?  It’s a simple question: because of terrorism that’s being supported by Europe – and of course the United States and Turkey and others – but Europe was the main player in creating chaos in Syria.  So, what goes around comes around.

Question 9: Why do you say it was the main player?

President Assad:  Because they publicly supported, the EU supported the terrorists in Syria from day one, week one or from the very beginning.  They blamed the Syrian government, and some regimes like the French regime sent armaments, they said – one of their officials – I think their Minister of Foreign Affairs, maybe Fabius said “we send.”  They sent armaments; they created this chaos.  That’s why a lot of people find it difficult to stay in Syria; millions of people couldn’t live here so they had to get out of Syria.

Question 10: In this moment, in the region, there are turmoil, and there is a certain chaos.  One of the other allies of Syria is Iran, and the situation there is getting complicated.  Does it have any reflection on the situation in Syria?

President Assad:  Definitely, whenever you have chaos, it’s going to be bad for everyone, it’s going to have side-effects and repercussions, especially when there is external interference.  If it’s spontaneous, if you talk about demonstrations and people asking for reform or for a better situation economically or any other rights, that’s positive.  But when it’s for vandalism and destroying and killing and interfering from outside powers, then no – it’s definitely nothing but negative, nothing but bad, and a danger on everyone in this region.

Question 11: Are you worried about what’s happening in Lebanon, which is really the real neighbor?

President Assad:  Yes, in the same way.  Of course, Lebanon would affect Syria more than any other country because it is our direct neighbor.  But again, if it’s spontaneous and it’s about reform and getting rid of the sectarian political system, that would be good for Lebanon.  Again, that depends on the awareness of the Lebanese people in order not to allow anyone from the outside to try to manipulate the spontaneous movement or demonstrations in Lebanon.

Question 12:  Let’s go back to what is happening in Syria.  In June, Pope Francis wrote you a letter asking you to pay attention and to respect the population, especially in Idleb where the situation is still very tense, because there is fighting there, and when it comes even to the way prisoners are treated in jails.  Did you answer him, and what did you answer?

President Assad: The letter of the Pope was about his worry for civilians in Syria and I had the impression that maybe the picture in the Vatican is not complete.  That’s to be expected, since the mainstream narrative in the West is about this “bad government” killing the “good people;” as you see and hear in the same media – every bullet of the Syrian Army and every bomb only kills civilians and only hospitals! they don’t kill terrorists as they target those civilians! which is not correct.

So, I responded with a letter explaining to the Pope the reality in Syria – as we are the most, or the first to be concerned about civilian lives, because you cannot liberate an area while the people are against you.  You cannot talk about liberation while the civilians are against you or the society.  The most crucial part in liberating any area militarily is to have the support of the public in that area or in the region in general.  That has been clear for the last nine years and that’s against our interests.

Question 13: But that kind of call, in some ways, made you also think again about the importance of protecting civilians and people of your country.

President Assad:  No, this is something we think about every day, not only as morals, principles and values but as interests.  As I just mentioned, without this support – without public support, you cannot achieve anything… you cannot advance politically, militarily, economically and in every aspect.  We couldn’t withstand this war for nine years without the public support and you cannot have public support while you’re killing civilians.  This is an equation, this is a self-evident equation, nobody can refute it.  So, that’s why I said, regardless of this letter, this is our concern.

Beloved President Bashar al Assad surrounded by thousands of Syrians

But again, the Vatican is a state, and we think that the role of any state – if they worry about those civilians, is to go to the main reason.  The main reason is the Western role in supporting the terrorists, and it is the sanctions on the Syrian people that have made the situation much worse – and this is another reason for the refugees that you have in Europe now.  You don’t want refugees but at the same time you create the situation or the atmosphere that will tell them “go outside Syria, somewhere else,” and of course they will go to Europe.  So, this state, or any state, should deal with the reasons and we hope the Vatican can play that role within Europe and around the world; to convince many states that you should stop meddling in the Syrian issue, stop breaching international law.  That’s enough, we only need people to follow international law.  The civilians will be safe, the order will be back, everything will be fine.  Nothing else.

Question 14: Mr. President, you’ve been accused several times of using chemical weapons, and this has been the instrument of many decisions and a key point, the red line, for many decisions. One year ago, more than one year ago, there has been the Douma event that has been considered another red line.  After that, there has been bombings, and it could it have been even worse, but something stopped.  These days, through WikiLeaks, it’s coming out that something wrong in the report could have taken place.  So, nobody yet is be able to say what has happened, but something wrong in reporting what has happened could have taken place.

President Assad:  We have always – since the beginning of this narrative regarding the chemical weapons – we have said that we didn’t use it; we cannot use it, it’s impossible to be used in our situation for many reasons, let’s say – logistical reasons.

Intervention: Give me one.

President Assad: One reason, a very simple one: when you’re advancing, why would you use chemical weapons?!  We are advancing, why do we need to use it?!  We are in a very good situation so why use it, especially in 2018?  This is one reason.

Second, very concrete evidence that refutes this narrative: when you use chemical weapons – this is a weapon of mass destruction, you talk about thousands of dead or at least hundreds.  That never happened, never – you only have these videos of staged chemical weapons attacks.  In the recent report that you’ve mentioned, there’s a mismatch between what we saw in the video and what they saw as technicians or as experts.  The amount of chlorine that they’ve been talking about: first of all, chlorine is not a mass destruction material, second, the amount that they found is the same amount that you can have in your house, it exists in many households and used maybe for cleaning and whatever.  The same amount exactly.  That’s what the OPCW organisation did – they faked and falsified the report, just because the Americans wanted them to do so.  So, fortunately, this report proved that everything we said during the last few years, since 2013, is correct.  We were right, they were wrong. This is proof, this is concrete proof regarding this issue.  So, again, the OPCW is biased, is being politicized and is being immoral, and those organisations that should work in parallel with the United Nations to create more stability around the world – they’ve been used as American arms and Western arms to create more chaos.

Question 15: Mr. President, after nine years of war, you are speaking about the mistakes of the others.  I would like you to speak about your own mistakes, if any.  Is there something you would have done in a different way, and which is the lesson learned that can help your country?

President Assad:  Definitely, for when you talk about doing anything, you always find mistakes; this is human nature. But when you talk about political practice, you have two things: you have strategies or big decisions, and you have tactics – or in this context, the implementation. So, our strategic decisions or main decisions were to stand against terrorism, to make reconciliation and to stand against the external meddling in our affairs.  Today, after nine years, we still adopt the same policy; we are more adherent to this policy.  If we thought it was wrong, we would have changed it; actually no, we don’t think there is anything wrong in this policy.  We did our mission; we implemented the constitution by protecting the people.

Now, if you talk about mistakes in implementation, of course you have so many mistakes.  I think if you want to talk about the mistakes regarding this war, we shouldn’t talk about the decisions taken during the war because the war – or part of it, is a result of something before.

Two things we faced during this war: the first one was extremism.  The extremism started in this region in the late 60s and accelerated in the 80s, especially the Wahabi ideology.  If you want to talk about mistakes in dealing with this issue: then yes, I will say we were very tolerant of something very dangerous.  This is a big mistake we committed over decades; I’m talking about different governments, including myself before this war.

The second one, when you have people who are ready to revolt against the order, to destroy public properties, to commit vandalism and so on, they work against their country, they are ready to go and work for foreign powers – foreign intelligence, they ask for external military interference against their country.  So, this is another question: how did we have those?  If you ask me how, I would tell you that before the war we had more than 50,000 outlaws that weren’t captured by the police for example; for those outlaws, their natural enemy is the government because they don’t want to go to prison.

Question 16: And how about also the economic situation? Because part of it – I don’t know if it was a big or small part of it – but part of it has also been the discontent and the problems of population in certain areas in which economy was not working.  Is it a lesson learned somewhere?

President Assad:  It could be a factor, but definitely not a main factor.  Some people talk about the four years of drought that pushed the people to leave their land in the rural areas to go to the city… it could be a problem, but this is not the main problem.  They talked about the liberal policy… we didn’t have a liberal policy, we’re still socialist, we still have a public sector – a very big public sector in government.  You cannot talk about liberal policy while you have a big public sector.  We had growth, good growth.

Of course, in the implementation of our policy, again, you have mistakes.  How can you create equal opportunities between people?  Between rural areas and between the cities?  When you open up the economy, the cities will benefit more, that will create more immigration from rural areas to the cities… these are factors, that could play some role, but this is not the issue.  In the rural areas where you have more poverty, the money of the Qataris played a more actual role than in the cities, that’s natural.  You pay them in half an hour what they get in one week; that’s very good for them.

Question 17: We are almost there, but there are two more questions that I want to ask you.  One is about reconstruction, and reconstruction is going to be very costly.  How can you imagine to afford this reconstruction, who could be your allies in reconstruction?

President Assad:  We don’t have a big problem with that.  Talking that Syria has no money… no, actually Syrians have a lot of money; the Syrian people around the world have a lot of money, and they want to come and build their country.  Because when you talk about building the country, it is not giving money to the people, it’s about getting benefit – it’s a business.  So, many people, not only Syrians, want to do business in Syria.  So, talking about where you can have funds for this reconstruction, we already have, but the problem is that these sanctions prevent those businessmen or companies from coming and working in Syria.  In spite of that, we started and in spite of that, some foreign companies have started finding ways to evade these sanctions and we have started planning.  It’s going to be slow, without the sanctions we wouldn’t have a problem with funding.

Question 18:  Ending on a very personal note, Mr. President; do you feel like a survivor?

President Assad:  If you want to talk about a national war like this, where nearly every city has been harmed by terrorism or external bombardment and other things, then you can talk about all the Syrians as survivors.  I think this is human nature: to be a survivor.

Intervention:  And you yourself?

President Assad:  I’m a part of those Syrians.  I cannot be disconnected from them; I have the same feeling.  Again, it’s not about being a strong person who is a survivor.  If you don’t have this atmosphere, this society, or this incubator to survive, you cannot survive.  It’s collective; it’s not a single person, it’s not a one-man show.

Journalist:  Thank you very much, Mr. President.

President Assad:  Thank you.

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Syria President Dr. Bashar al-Assad: “Every inch of Syria will be liberated”

Soon after the Syrian Presidency released the interview, Twitter placed the account on restriction:

Nomad@NoxFemme

Right after an interview with Assad about the OPCW on Chemical weapons the @Presidency_Sy account was restricted

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12:39 AM – Dec 10, 2019

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المقابلة التي امتنعت محطة راي نيوز_24 الإيطالي عن بثها.. الرئيس الأسد: أوروبا كانت اللاعب الرئيسي في خلق الفوضى في سورية

أكد السيد الرئيس بشار الأسد أن سورية ستخرج من الحرب أكثر قوة وأن مستقبلها واعد والوضع الميداني فيها الآن أفضل، مشيراً إلى ما حققه الجيش العربي السوري من تقدم كبير في الحرب ضد الإرهاب.

وفي مقابلة مع التلفزيون الإيطالي جرت في الـ 26 من تشرين الثاني الماضي على أن تبث بتاريخ الثاني من كانون الأول الجاري وامتنع التلفزيون الإيطالي عن بثها لأسباب غير مفهومة أوضح الرئيس الأسد أن أوروبا كانت اللاعب الرئيسي في خلق الفوضى في سورية ومشكلة اللاجئين فيها بسبب دعمها المباشر للإرهاب إلى جانب الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية وتركيا ودول أخرى.

وبين الرئيس الأسد أنه منذ بداية الرواية المتعلقة بالأسلحة الكيميائية أكدت سورية أنها لم تستخدمها وأن التسريبات الأخيرة حول تقرير منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيميائية تثبت أن كل ما قالته سورية على مدى السنوات القليلة الماضية كان صحيحاً وأنها كانت محقة وهم كانوا مخطئين.

وأكد الرئيس الأسد أن ما فعلته منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيميائية هو فبركة وتزوير لتقرير بشأن استخدام الكيميائي لمجرد أن الأمريكيين أرادوا منها فعل ذلك لتثبت أنها منظمة منحازة ومسيسة تستخدم كذراع لأمريكا والغرب لخلق المزيد من الفوضى.

ودعا الرئيس الأسد الدول التي تتدخل في المسألة السورية للتوقف عن هذا التدخل وكذلك التوقف عن انتهاك القانون الدولي والتزام الجميع به الأمر الذي ينعكس إيجاباً على وضع الشعب السوري.

وفيما يلي النص الكامل للمقابلة…

السؤال الأول:

سيادة الرئيس، شكراً لكم على استقبالنا. هل لكم أن تخبرونا عن ماهية الوضع في سورية الآن؟ ما الوضع على الأرض، وماذا يحدث في البلاد؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لو أردنا الحديث عن المجتمع السوري، فإن الوضع أفضل بكثير، حيث إننا تعلمنا العديد من الدروس من هذه الحرب. وأعتقد أن مستقبل سورية واعد، لأن من الطبيعي أن نخرج من هذه الحرب أكثر قوة. فيما يتعلق بالوضع على الأرض، فإن الجيش السوري يحقق تقدماً على مدى السنوات القليلة الماضية، وحرر العديد من المناطق من الإرهابيين وبقيت إدلب، حيث توجد (جبهة النصرة) المدعومة من الأتراك. وهناك أيضاً الجزء الشمالي من سورية، حيث غزا الأتراك أراضينا الشهر الماضي. أما فيما يتعلق بالوضع السياسي فيمكن القول إنه أصبح أكثر تعقيداً بسبب وجود عدد أكبر من اللاعبين المنخرطين في الصراع السوري من أجل إطالة أمده وتحويله إلى حرب استنزاف.

السؤال الثاني:

عندما تتحدثون عن التحرير، نعلم أن هناك رؤية عسكرية في ذلك الشأن، لكن ماذا عن الوضع الآن بالنسبة للأشخاص الذين قرروا العودة إلى المجتمع؟ أين وصلت عملية المصالحة؟ هل تحقق نجاحاً أم لا؟

الرئيس الأسد:

في الواقع، إن النهج الذي تبنيناه عندما أردنا خلق مناخٍ إيجابي سميناه المصالحة، لكن من أجل تمكين الناس من العيش معاً، ولتمكين أولئك الذين عاشوا خارج المناطق التي تسيطر عليها الحكومة من العودة إلى المؤسسات وسيادة القانون، منحنا العفو للجميع، وسيتخلى هؤلاء عن أسلحتهم ويلتزمون بالقوانين. الوضع ليس معقداً فيما يتعلق بهذه القضية. وقد تتاح لكِ الفرصة لزيارة أي منطقة، وسترين أن الحياة تعود إلى وضعها الطبيعي. فالمشكلة لم تكن في أن “الناس كانوا يقاتلون بعضهم بعضاً”؛ ولم يكن الوضع -كما تحاول الرواية الغربية تصويره- أن السوريين يقاتلون بعضهم بعضاً، أو أنها “حرب أهلية” كما يسمونها، هذا تضليل. واقع الحال هو أن الإرهابيين كانوا يسيطرون على تلك المنطقة ويطبقون قواعدهم. وعندما لا يعود أولئك الإرهابيون موجودين، سيعود الناس إلى حياتهم الطبيعية ويعيشون مع بعضهم بعضاً. لم تكن هناك حربٌ طائفية ولا حربٌ عرقية ولا حرب سياسية، بل كان هناك إرهابيون مدعومون من قوى خارجية ولديهم المال والسلاح، ويحتلون تلك المنطقة.

السؤال الثالث:

هل لديكم مخاوف من أن هذا النوع من الأيديولوجيا الذي طبق وأصبح أساساً لحياة الناس اليومية لسنوات عديدة، يمكن أن يظل –بطريقة أو بأخرى- موجوداً في المجتمع وأن يعود إلى الظهور عاجلاً أم آجلاً؟

الرئيس الأسد:

هذا هو أحد التحديات الرئيسية التي نواجهها. ما طرحته صحيح تماماً. لدينا مشكلتان. تلك المناطق الواقعة خارج سيطرة الحكومة كان يتحكم بها أمران: الفوضى، بسبب غياب القانون، وبالتالي لا يعرف الناس، وخصوصاً الأجيال الشابة، شيئاً عن الدولة والقانون والمؤسسات. الأمر الثاني، وهو متجذر بعمق في العقول، هو الأيديولوجيا.. الأيديولوجيا الظلامية.. الأيديولوجيا الوهابية، إن كان (داعش) أو (النصرة) أو (أحرار الشام)، أو أي نوع من هذه الأيديولوجيات الإسلامية الإرهابية المتطرفة. الآن، بدأنا بالتعامل مع هذا الواقع، لأنه عندما يتم تحرير منطقة، ينبغي حل هذه المشكلة، وإلا فما معنى التحرير؟ الجزء الأول من الحل هو ديني، لأن هذه الأيديولوجيا هي أيديولوجيا دينية، ورجال الدين السوريون، أو لنقل المؤسسة الدينية في سورية، تبذل جهداً كبيراً في هذا المجال، وقد نجحوا في مساعدة هؤلاء الناس على فهم الدين الحقيقي، وليس الدين الذي علمتهم إياه (جبهة النصرة) أو (داعش) أو الفصائل الأخرى.

السؤال الرابع:

إذاً، فقد كان رجال الدين والجوامع، بشكل أساسي، جزءاً من عملية المصالحة هذه؟

الرئيس الأسد:

هذا هو الجزء الأكثر أهمية. الجزء الثاني يتعلق بالمدارس؛ ففي المدارس، هناك مدرسون وتعليم، وهناك المنهاج الوطني. وهذا المنهاج مهم جداً لتغيير آراء تلك الأجيال الشابة، ثالثاً، هناك الثقافة ودَوْر الفنون والمثقفين، وما إلى ذلك. في بعض المناطق، ما يزال من الصعب لعب ذلك الدور، وبالتالي كان من الأسهل علينا أن نبدأ بالدين، ومن ثم بالمدارس.

السؤال الخامس:

 سيادة الرئيس، لنعد إلى السياسة للحظة. لقد ذكرتم تركيا، صحيح؟ وقد كانت روسيا أفضل حلفائكم على مدى هذه السنوات، وهذا ليس سراً، لكن روسيا تساوم تركيا على بعض المناطق التي تعتبر جزءاً من سورية. كيف تقيّمون ذلك؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لفهم الدور الروسي، علينا أن نفهم المبادئ الروسية. الروس يعتبرون أن القانون الدولي، والنظام الدولي الذي يستند إليه، هو في مصلحة روسيا ومصلحة العالم أجمع. وبالتالي، فإن دعم سورية، بالنسبة لهم، هو دعم للقانون الدولي. هذه نقطة. النقطة الثانية هي أن عملهم ضد الإرهابيين هو في مصلحة الشعب الروسي وفي مصلحة العالم بأسره. وبالتالي، فإن قيامهم بـ”مساومات” مع تركيا لا يعني أنهم يدعمون الغزو التركي، لكنهم أرادوا أن يلعبوا دوراً لإقناع الأتراك بأن عليهم أن يغادروا سورية. إنهم لا يدعمون الأتراك. إنهم لا يقولون: “هذا واقع جيد ونحن نقبله، ويتعين على سورية قبوله”. إنهم لا يقولون ذلك.

لكن، وبسبب الدور الأمريكي السلبي، والدور الغربي السلبي فيما يتعلق بتركيا والأكراد، تدخل الروس من أجل تحقيق التوازن مع ذلك الدور. لجعل الوضع، أنا لا أقول أفضل الآن، وإنما أقل سوءاً، إذا توخينا الدقة.

إذاً، هذا هو دورهم في هذه الأثناء. أما في المستقبل، فموقفهم واضح جداً: سيادة سورية وسلامة أراضيها. وسيادة سورية وسلامة أراضيها يتناقضان مع الغزو التركي، وهذا واضح بجلاء.

السؤال السادس:

إذاً، تقولون إن الروس يمكن أن يساوموا، لكن سورية لن تساوم تركيا. أقصد أن العلاقة ما تزال متوترة تماماً؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لا حتى الروس لم يساوموا بشأن السيادة. إنهم يتعاملون مع الواقع. وهناك واقع سيئ، وبالتالي عليك أن تنخرط فيه، ولا أقول للمساومة، لأن هذا ليس حلاً نهائياً. قد تكون مساومة فيما يتعلق بوضع قصير الأمد، لكن على المدى الطويل، أو المتوسط، ينبغي على تركيا أن ترحل. ليس هناك أي شك في ذلك.

 السؤال السابع:

وعلى المدى البعيد، هل هناك خطة لإجراء نقاشات بينكم وبين السيد أردوغان؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لن أشعر بالفخر إذا تعين عليّ ذلك يوماً ما؛ بل سأشعر بالاشمئزاز من التعامل مع مثل هذا النوع من الإسلاميين الانتهازيين. ليسوا مسلمين، بل إسلاميين، وهذا مصطلح آخر، مصطلح سياسي. لكنني أقول دائماً إن وظيفتي لا تتعلق بمشاعري، ولا بأن أكون سعيداً أو غير سعيد بما أفعله، وظيفتي تتعلق بمصالح سورية. وبالتالي، أينما كانت تلك المصالح، فسأتجه.

السؤال الثامن:

في الوقت الراهن، عندما تنظر أوروبا إلى سورية، بصرف النظر عن اعتباراتها بشأن البلد، ثمة قضيتان رئيسيتان: الأولى تتعلق باللاجئين، والثانية تتعلق بالجهاديين أو المقاتلين الأجانب وعودتهم إلى أوروبا. كيف تنظر إلى هذه الهواجس الأوروبية؟

الرئيس الأسد:

بداية، علينا أن نبدأ بسؤال بسيط: من خلق هذه المشكلة؟ لماذا لديكم لاجئون في أوروبا؟ إنه سؤال بسيط. لأن الإرهاب مدعوم من أوروبا، وبالطبع من الولايات المتحدة وتركيا وآخرين؛ لكن أوروبا كانت اللاعب الرئيسي في خلق هذه الفوضى في سورية. وبالتالي كما تزرع تحصد.

السؤال التاسع:

لماذا تقول: إن أوروبا كانت اللاعب الرئيسي؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لأن الاتحاد الأوروبي دعم علنا الإرهابيين في سورية منذ اليوم الأول، أو لنقل الأسبوع الأول، من البداية. حمّلوا المسؤولية للحكومة السورية؛ وبعض الأنظمة -كالنظام الفرنسي- أرسلت لهم الأسلحة. هم قالوا ذلك، أحد مسؤوليهم، أعتقد أنه كان وزير الخارجية فابيوس الذي قال “إننا نرسل أسلحة”. هم أرسلوا الأسلحة وخلقوا هذه الفوضى. ولذلك فإن عددا كبيراً من الناس – ملايين الناس لم يعد بإمكانهم العيش في سورية ووجدوا صعوبة في ذلك، وبالتالي كان عليهم الخروج منها.

 السؤال العاشر:

في اللحظة الراهنة، هناك اضطرابات في المنطقة، وهناك نوع من الفوضى. أحد حلفاء سورية الآخرين هي إيران، والوضع هناك يسير نحو التعقيد. هل لذلك أي انعكاس على الوضع في سورية؟

الرئيس الأسد:

بالتأكيد، فكلما كانت هناك فوضى، ستنعكس سلباً على الجميع، وسيكون لها آثار جانبية وتبعات، وخصوصاً عندما يكون هناك تدخل خارجي. إن كان الأمر عفوياً.. إن كنت تتحدثين عن مظاهرات وأناس يطالبون بالإصلاح أو بتحسين الوضع الاقتصادي، أو أي حقوق أخرى، فإن ذلك إيجابي. لكن عندما تكون عبارة عن تخريب ممتلكات وتدمير وقتل وتدخل من قبل القوى الخارجية، فلا يمكن لذلك إلا أن يكون سلبياً، لا يمكن إلا أن يكون سيئاً وخطيراً على الجميع في هذه المنطقة.

السؤال الحادي عشر:

هل أنتم قلقون حيال ما يحدث في لبنان، وهو جاركم الأقرب؟

الرئيس الأسد:

نفس الشيء. بالطبع، لبنان سيؤثر في سورية أكثر من أي بلد آخر لأنه جارنا المباشر. لكن مرة أخرى، إذا كان ما يحدث عفوياً ويتعلق بالإصلاح والتخلص من النظام السياسي الطائفي، فإنه سيكون جيداً للبنان. ومجددا، فإن ذلك يعتمد على وعي الشعب اللبناني بألا يسمح لأي كان من الخارج أن يحاول استغلال التحرك العفوي أو المظاهرات في لبنان.

السؤال الثاني عشر:

لنعد إلى ما يحدث في سورية. في حزيران، بعث البابا فرنسيس لكم برسالة يطلب فيها منكم الاهتمام بالناس واحترامهم، وخصوصاً في إدلب، حيث ما يزال الوضع متوتراً جداً بسبب القتال هناك، وحتى عندما يتعلق الأمر بمعاملة السجناء. هل رددتم عليه، وماذا كان ردكم؟

الرئيس الأسد:

تمحورت رسالة البابا حول قلقه بشأن المدنيين في سورية. وكان لدي ذلك الانطباع بأن الصورة ليست مكتملة لدى الفاتيكان، وهذا متوقع، بالنظر إلى أن الرواية في الغرب تدور حول هذه “الحكومة السيئة” التي تقتل “شعباً طيباً”. وكما ترين وتسمعين في نفس وسائل الإعلام بأن كل طلقة يطلقها الجيش السوري وكل قنبلة يرميها لا تقتل سوى المدنيين ولا تقع إلا على المستشفيات! إنها لا تقتل الإرهابيين بل تختار أولئك المدنيين! وهذا غير صحيح.

وبالتالي، رددت برسالة تشرح للبابا الواقع في سورية، وبأننا أول وأكثر من يهتم بحياة المدنيين، لأنك لا تستطيعين تحرير منطقة بينما يكون الناس فيها ضدك، لا تستطيعين التحدث عن التحرير بينما المدنيون أو المجتمع ضدك. الجزء المحوري الأهم في تحرير أي منطقة عسكرياً هو أن تحظى بالدعم الشعبي في تلك المنطقة بشكل عام. وهذا ما كان واضحاً على مدى السنوات التسع الماضية.

السؤال الثالث عشر:

لكن هل جعلتك تلك الدعوة تفطن، بطريقة ما، بأهمية حماية المدنيين وحماية الناس في بلدكم؟

الرئيس الأسد:

لا، فهذا ما نفكر فيه كل يوم، وليس من منظور الأخلاق والمبادئ والقيم وحسب، بل من منظور المصالح أيضاً. كما ذكرت قبل قليل، فبدون هذا الدعم، بدون الدعم الشعبي، لا يمكن تحقيق شيء، لا يمكن تحقيق التقدم سياسياً، أو عسكرياً، أو اقتصادياً أو في أي وجه من الوجوه. ما كنا سنتمكن من الصمود في هذه الحرب لتسع سنوات دون الدعم الشعبي، كما لا يمكنك أن تحظي بالدعم الشعبي بينما تقومين بقتل المدنيين، إنها معادلة بديهية لا يمكن لأحد دحضها. ولذلك قلت إنه بصرف النظر عن هذه الرسالة، فإن هذا هو هاجسنا.

لكن الفاتيكان دولة، ونعتقد أن دور أي دولة، إن كان لديها قلق بشأن أولئك المدنيين، هو أن تعود إلى السبب الرئيسي. والسبب الرئيسي هو الدعم الغربي للإرهابيين، والعقوبات المفروضة على الشعب السوري التي جعلت الوضع أسوأ بكثير، وهذا سبب آخر لوجود اللاجئين في أوروبا الآن. كيف تتسق رغبتكم بعدم وجود اللاجئين بينما تقومون في الوقت نفسه بخلق كل الأوضاع أو الأجواء التي تقول لهم: “اخرجوا من سورية واذهبوا إلى مكان آخر”. وبالطبع، فإنهم سيذهبون إلى أوروبا.

إذاً، ينبغي على هذه الدولة، أو أي دولة، أن تعالج الأسباب، ونأمل أن يلعب الفاتيكان ذلك الدور داخل أوروبا وفي العالم، لإقناع العديد من الدول بالتوقف عن التدخل في المسألة السورية، والتوقف عن انتهاك القانون الدولي. هذا كافٍ، فكل ما نريده هو التزام الجميع بالقانون الدولي. عندها سيكون المدنيون في أمان، وسيعود النظام، وسيكون كل شيء على ما يرام. لا شيء سوى ذلك.

السؤال الرابع عشر:

سيادة الرئيس، لقد اُتهمتم مرات عدة باستخدام الأسلحة الكيميائية، وقد شكل ذلك أداة لاتخاذ العديد من القرارات، ونقطة رئيسية، وخطاً أحمر ترتبت عليه العديد من القرارات. قبل عام أو أكثر من ذلك بقليل، وقع حادث دوما الذي اعتبر خطاً أحمر آخر. بعد ذلك، كانت هناك عمليات قصف، وكان يمكن أن تكون أسوأ، لكن شيئاً ما توقف. هذه الأيام، ومن خلال ويكيليكس، يتبين أن خطأً ما ارتكب في التقرير. إذاً، لا أحد يستطيع حتى الآن أن يقول ما حصل، إلا أن خطأ ما ربما حدث خلال صياغة التقرير حول ما جرى، ما رأيكم؟

الرئيس الأسد:

نحن نقول دائماً، ومنذ بداية هذه الرواية المتعلقة بالأسلحة الكيميائية، إننا لم نستخدمها، ولا نستطيع استخدامها، ومن المستحيل استخدامها في وضعنا، لعدة أسباب، دعينا نقل أسبابا لوجستية..

مداخلة:

أعطني سبباً واحداً!

الرئيس الأسد:

سبب واحد وبسيط جداً هو أننا عندما نكون في حالة تقدم، لماذا نستخدم الأسلحة الكيميائية؟! نحن نتقدم، فلماذا نحتاج لاستخدامها؟! نحن في وضع جيد جداً، فلماذا نستخدمها؟! وخصوصاً في عام 2018، هذا سبب.. السبب الثاني، ثمة دليل ملموس يدحض هذه الرواية: عندما تستخدمين الأسلحة الكيميائية، فأنتِ تستخدمين سلاح دمار شامل، أي تتحدثين عن آلاف القتلى، أو على الأقل مئات. وهذا لم يحدث أبداً، مطلقاً. هناك فقط تلك الفيديوهات التي تصوّر مسرحيات عن هجمات مفبركة بالأسلحة الكيميائية، وفي التقرير الذي ذكرته، طبقاً للتسريبات الأخيرة، ثمة عدم تطابق بين ما رأيناه في الفيديوهات وما رأوه كتقنيين وخبراء.

كما أن كمية الكلور التي يتحدثون عنها، وبالمناسبة فإن الكلور ليس سلاح تدمير شامل. هذا أولاً. ثانياً، الكمية التي عثروا عليها هي نفس الكمية التي يمكن أن تكون لديك في منزلك، لأن هذه المادة -كما تعرفين- موجودة في العديد من المنازل، ويمكن أن تستعمليها ربما في التنظيف، أو لأي غرض آخر. نفس الكمية بالتحديد. وما فعلته منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيميائية، هو فبركة وتزوير التقرير لمجرد أن الأمريكيين أرادوا منهم فعل ذلك.

لذلك، لحسن الحظ، فإن هذا التقرير أثبت أن كل ما كنا نقوله على مدى السنوات القليلة الماضية، منذ عام 2013، كان صحيحاً. نحن كنا محقّين، وهم كانوا مخطئين. وهذا هو الدليل، الدليل الملموس بشأن هذه القضية.

إذاً، مرة أخرى تثبت منظمة حظر الأسلحة الكيميائية انحيازها، وأنها مسيّسة ولا أخلاقية. وتلك المنظمات التي ينبغي أن تعمل بالتوازي مع الأمم المتحدة على خلق المزيد من الاستقرار في سائر أنحاء العالم، تُستخدم كأذرع لأمريكا والغرب لخلق المزيد من الفوضى.

السؤال الخامس عشر:

سيادة الرئيس، بعد تسع سنوات من الحرب، تتحدثون عن أخطاء الآخرين. أودّ أن تتحدثوا عن أخطائكم، إذا كان هناك أي أخطاء. هل هناك شيء كان يمكن أن تفعلوه بطريقة مختلفة، وما الدرس الذي تعلمتموه ويمكن أن يساعد بلدكم؟

الرئيس الأسد:

بالتأكيد، فعندما تتحدثين عن فعل أي شيء، لا بد أن تجدي أخطاء. هذه هي الطبيعة البشرية. لكن عندما تتحدثين عن الممارسة السياسية، لنقل، ثمة شيئان: هناك الاستراتيجيات أو القرارات الكبرى، وهناك التكتيك، أو لنقل التنفيذ. وهكذا، فإن قراراتنا الاستراتيجية أو الرئيسية تمثلت في الوقوف في وجه الإرهاب، وإجراء المصالحات والوقوف ضد التدخل الخارجي في شؤوننا.

وحتى اليوم بعد تسع سنوات، ما زلنا نتبنى نفس السياسة، بل بتنا أكثر تمسكاً بها. لو كنّا نعتقد أنها كانت خاطئة، لغيرناها. في الواقع، فإننا لا نعتقد أنه كان هناك أي خطأ فيها. لقد قمنا بمهمتنا، وطبقنا الدستور في حماية الشعب.

الآن، إذا تحدثنا عن الأخطاء في التنفيذ، فبالطبع يوجد العديد منها. لكن أعتقد أنك إذا أردت التحدث عن الأخطاء المتعلقة بهذه الحرب فلا ينبغي أن نتحدث عن القرارات المتخذة خلالها، لأن الحرب -في جزء منها- هي نتيجة لأمور حدثت قبلها..

هناك شيئان واجهناهما خلال هذه الحرب: الأول هو التطرف. والتطرف نشأ في هذه المنطقة في أواخر ستينيات القرن العشرين وتسارع في ثمانينياته، خصوصاً الأيديولوجيا الوهابية. إذا أردت التحدث عن الأخطاء في التعامل مع هذه القضية، نعم، سأقول إننا كنّا متساهلين جداً مع شيء خطير جداً. وهذا خطأ كبير ارتكبناه على مدى عقود. وأتحدث هنا عن حكومات مختلفة، بما في ذلك حكومتنا قبل هذه الحرب.

الشيء الثاني هو عندما يكون هناك أشخاص مستعدون للثورة ضد النظام العام، وتدمير الممتلكات العامة، والتخريب، وما إلى ذلك، ويعملون ضد بلدهم، ويكونون مستعدين للعمل مع قوى أجنبية وأجهزة استخبارات أجنبية، ويطلبون التدخل العسكري الخارجي ضد بلادهم.. فهناك سؤال آخر: هو كيف وجد هؤلاء بيننا؟ إن سألتني كيف، فسأقول لك إننا قبل الحرب، كان لدينا نحو 50 ألف خارج عن القانون لم تقبض عليهم الشرطة، على سبيل المثال. وبالنسبة لأولئك الخارجين عن القانون فإن عدوهم الطبيعي هو الحكومة، لأنهم لا يريدون أن يدخلوا السجن.

السؤال السادس عشر:

وماذا عن الوضع الاقتصادي أيضا؟ لأن جزءاً مما حدث – لا أعلم ما إذا كان جزءاً كبيراً أم صغيراً – تمثل في سخط السكان والمشاكل التي عانوا منها في مناطق معينة لم يكن الاقتصاد ناجحاً فيها. هل يشكل هذا درساً ما تعلمتموه؟

الرئيس الأسد:

قد يشكل هذا عاملاً، لكنه بالتأكيد ليس عاملاً رئيسياً، لأن البعض يتحدث عن أربع سنوات من الجفاف دفعت الناس لمغادرة أراضيهم في المناطق الريفية والذهاب إلى المدن.. وبالتالي يمكن أن تكون تلك مشكلة، لكنها ليست المشكلة الرئيسية. البعض أيضا يتحدث عن السياسات الليبرالية. لم يكن لدينا سياسة ليبرالية، بل ما نزال اشتراكيين، وما يزال لدينا قطاع عام كبير جداً في الحكومة. لا يمكن الحديث عن سياسة ليبرالية بينما لديك قطاع عام كبير. وكنّا نحقق نموا جيداً.

مرة أخرى بالطبع، وفي أثناء تنفيذ سياستنا، يتم ارتكاب أخطاء. كيف يمكن خلق فرص متكافئة بين الناس.. بين المناطق الريفية والمدن؟ عندما تفتح الاقتصاد بشكل ما، فإن المدن ستستفيد بشكل أكبر، وسيؤدي هذا إلى المزيد من الهجرة من المناطق الريفية إلى المدن. قد تكون هذه عوامل، وقد يكون لها بعض الدور، لكنها ليست هي القضية، لأنه في المناطق الريفية، حيث هناك درجة أكبر من الفقر، لعب المال القطري دوراً أكثر فعالية مما لعبه في المدن، وهذا طبيعي؛ إذ يمكن أن يدفع لهم أجر أسبوع على ما يمكن أن يقوموا به خلال نصف ساعة. وهذا أمرٌ جيد جداً بالنسبة لهم.

السؤال السابع عشر:

شارفنا على الانتهاء، لكن لديّ سؤالين أودُّ أن أطرحهما عليكم. السؤال الأول يتعلق بإعادة الإعمار التي ستكون مكلفة جداً. كيف تتخيلون أنه سيكون بإمكانكم تحمّل تكاليف إعادة الإعمار، ومن الذين يمكن أن يكونوا حلفاءكم في إعادة الإعمار؟

الرئيس الأسد:

ليس لدينا مشكلة كبيرة في ذلك. وبالحديث عن أن سورية ليس لديها المال. لا، لأن السوريين في الواقع يمتلكون الكثير من المال. السوريون الذين يعملون في سائر أنحاء العالم لديهم الكثير من المال، وأرادوا أن يأتوا ويبنوا بلدهم؛ لأنك عندما تتحدثين عن بناء البلد، فالأمر لا يتعلق بإعطاء المال للناس، بل بتحقيق الفائدة. إنه عمل تجاري. ثمة كثيرون، وليس فقط سوريون، أرادوا القيام بأعمال تجارية في سورية. إذاً، عند الحديث عن مصدر التمويل لإعادة الإعمار، فالمصادر موجودة، لكن المشكلة هي في العقوبات المفروضة التي تمنع رجال الأعمال أو الشركات من القدوم والعمل في سورية. رغم ذلك، فقد بدأنا وبدأت بعض الشركات الأجنبية بإيجاد طرق للالتفاف على هذه العقوبات، وقد بدأنا بالتخطيط. ستكون العملية بطيئة، لكن لولا العقوبات لما كان لدينا أي مشكلة في التمويل.

السؤال الثامن عشر:

أودُّ أن أختتم بسؤال شخصي جداً. سيادة الرئيس، هل تشعر بنفسك كناجٍ؟

الرئيس الأسد:

إذا أردت الحديث عن حرب وطنية كهذه، حيث تعرضت كل مدينة تقريباً للأضرار بسبب الإرهاب أو القصف الخارجي أو أشياء من هذا القبيل، عندها يمكنك اعتبار أن كل السوريين ناجون. لكن مرة أخرى أعتقد أن هذه هي الطبيعة البشرية، أن يسعى المرء للنجاة.

مداخلة:

وماذا عنك شخصيا؟

الرئيس الأسد:

أنا جزءٌ من هؤلاء السوريين، ولا يمكن أن أنفصل عنهم، ولديّ نفس المشاعر. مرة أخرى، الأمر لا يتعلق بأن تكون شخصاً قوياً ناجياً، لو لم يكن لديك هذا المناخ، هذا المجتمع، هذه الحاضنة -إذا جاز التعبير- للنجاة، فإنك لا تستطيعين النجاة. إنها عملية جماعية، ولا تقتصر على شخص واحد. إنها ليست عملاً فردياً.

الصحفية:

شكراً جزيلاً لكم، سيادة الرئيس.

الرئيس الأسد:

شكراً لكِ.

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The Saker

October 19, 2018

[This analysis was written for the Unz Review]

In previous articles about this topic I have tried to set the context and explain why most Orthodox Churches are still used as pawns in purely political machinations and how the most commentators who discuss these issues today are using words and concepts in a totally twisted, secular and non-Christian way (which is about as absurd as discussing medicine while using a vague, misunderstood and generally non-medical terminology). I have also written articles trying to explain how the concept of “Church” is completely misunderstood nowadays and how many Orthodox Churches today have lost their original Patristic mindset. Finally, I have tried to show the ancient spiritual roots of modern russophobia and how the AngloZionist Empire might try to save the Ukronazi regime in Kiev by triggering a religious crisis in the Ukraine. It is my hope that these articles will provide a useful context to evaluate and discuss the current crisis between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Moscow Patriarchate.

My intention today is to look at the unfolding crisis from a more “modern” point of view and try to evaluate only what the political and social consequences of the latest developments might be in the short and mid term. I will begin by a short summary.

The current context: a summary

The Patriarchate of Constantinople has taken the official decision to:

1. Declare that the Patriarch of Constantinople has the right to unilaterally grant autocephaly (full independence) to any other Church with no consultations with any the other Orthodox Churches.
2. Cancel the decision by the Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysios IV in 1686 transferring the Kiev Metropolia (religious jurisdiction overseen by a Metropolite) to the Moscow Patriarchate (a decision which no Patriarch of Constantinople contested for three centuries!)
3. Lift the anathema pronounced against the “Patriarch” Filaret Denisenko by the Moscow Patriarchate (in spite of the fact that the only authority which can lift an anathema is the one which pronounced it in the first place)
4. Recognize as legitimate the so-called “Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate” which it previously had declared as illegitimate and schismatic.
5. Grant actual grand full autocephaly to a future (and yet to be defined) “united Ukrainian Orthodox Church”

Most people naturally focus on this last element, but this might be a mistake, because while illegally granting autocephaly to a mix of nationalist pseudo-Churches is most definitely a bad decision, to act like some kind of “Orthodox Pope” and claim rights which only belong to the entire Church is truly a historical mistake. Not only that, but this mistake now forces every Orthodox Christian to either accept this as a fait accompli and submit to the megalomania of the wannabe Ortho-Pope of the Phanar, or to reject such unilateral and totally illegal action or to enter into open opposition. And this is not the first time such a situation has happened in the history of the Church. I will use an historical parallel to make this point.

The historical context:

The Church of Rome and the rest of the Christian world were already on a collision course for several centuries before the famous date of 1054 when Rome broke away from the Christian world. Whereas for centuries Rome had been the most steadfast bastion of resistance against innovations and heresies, the influence of the Franks in the Church of Rome eventually resulted (after numerous zig-zags on this topic) in a truly disastrous decision to add a single world (filioque – “and the son” in Latin) to the Symbol of Faith (the Credo in Latin). What made that decision even worse was the fact that the Pope of Rome also declared that he had the right to impose that addition upon all the other Christian Churches, with no conciliar discussion or approval. It is often said that the issue of the filioque is “obscure” and largely irrelevant, but that is just a reflection of the theological illiteracy of those making such statements as, in reality, the addition of the filioque completely overthrows the most crucial and important Trinitarian and Christological dogmas of Christianity. But what *is* true is that the attempt to unilaterally impose this heresy on the rest of the Christian world was at least as offensive and, really, as sacrilegious as the filioque itself because it undermined the very nature of the Church. Indeed, the Symbol of Faith defines the Church as “catholic” (Εἰς μίαν, Ἁγίαν, Καθολικὴν καὶ Ἀποστολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν”) meaning not only “universal” but also “whole” or “all-inclusive”. In ecclesiological terms this “universality” is manifested in two crucial ways:

First, all Churches are equal, there is no Pope, no “historical see” granting any primacy just as all the Apostles of Christ and all Orthodox bishops are also equals; the Head of the Church is Christ Himself, and the Church is His Theadric Body filled with the Holy Spirit. Oh I know, to say that the Holy Spirit fills the Church is considered absolutely ridiculous in our 21^st century post-Christian world, but check out these words from the Book of Acts: “For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” (Acts 15:28) which clearly show that the members of the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem clearly believed and proclaimed that their decisions were guided by the Holy Spirit. Anyone still believing that will immediately see why the Church needs no “vicar of Christ” or any “earthly representative” to act in Christ’s name during His absence. In fact, Christ Himself clearly told us “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen” (Matt 28:20). If a Church needs a “vicar” – then Christ and the Holy Spirit are clearly not present in that Church. QED.

Second, crucial decisions, decisions which affect the entire Church, are only taken by a Council of the entire Church, not unilaterally by any one man or any one Church. These are really the basics of what could be called “traditional Christian ecclesiology 101” and the blatant violation of this key ecclesiological dogma by the Papacy in 1054 was as much a cause for the historical schism between East and West (really, between Rome and the rest of Christian world) as was the innovation of the filioque itself.

I hasten to add that while the Popes were the first ones to claim for themselves an authority only given to the full Church, they were not the only ones (by the way, this is a very good working definition of the term “Papacy”: the attribution to one man of all the characteristics belonging solely to the entire Church). In the early 20^th century the Orthodox Churches of Constantinople, Albania, Alexandria, Antioch, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, and Romania got together and, under the direct influence of powerful Masonic lodges, decided to adopt the Gregorian Papal Calendar (named after the 16^th century Pope Gregory XIII). The year was 1923, when the entire Russian Orthodox Church was being literally crucified on the modern Golgotha of the Bolshevik regime, but that did not prevent these Churches from calling their meeting “pan Orthodox”. Neither did the fact that the Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Jerusalem Church and the Holy Mountain (aka “Mount Athos”) rejected this innovation stop them. As for the Papal Calendar itself, the innovators “piously” re-branded it as “improved Julian” and other such euphemism to conceal the real intention behind this.

Finally, even the fact that this decision also triggered a wave of divisions inside their own Churches was not cause for them to reconsider or, even less so, to repent. Professor C. Troitsky was absolutely correct when he wrote that “there is no doubt that future historians of the Orthodox Church will be forced to admit that the Congress of 1923 was the saddest event of Church life in the 20th century” (for more on this tragedy see here, here and here). Here again, one man, Ecumenical Patriarch Meletius IV (Metaxakis) tried to “play Pope” and his actions resulted in a massive upheaval which ripped through the entire Orthodox world.

More recently, the Patriarch of Constantinople tried, once again, to convene what he would want to be an Orthodox “Ecumenical Council” under his personal authority when in 2016 (yet another) “pan Orthodox” council was convened on the island of Crete which was attended by the Churches of Alexandria , Jerusalem , Serbia , Romania , Cyprus , Greece, Poland , Albania and of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. The Churches of Russia, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Antioch refused to attend (the US OCA – was not invited). Most observers agreed that the Moscow Patriarchate played a key role in undermining what was clearly to be a “robber” council which would have introduced major (and fully non-Orthodox) innovations. The Patriarch of Constantinople never forgave the Russians for torpedoing his planned “ecumenical” council.

Some might have noticed that a majority of local Churches did attend both the 1923 and the 2016 wannabe “pan Orthodox” councils. Such an observation might be very important in a Latin or Protestant context, but in the Orthodox context is is absolutely meaningless for the following reasons:

The theological context:

In the history of the Church there have been many “robber” councils (meaning illegitimate, false, councils) which were attended by a majority of bishops of the time, and even a majority of the Churches; in this article I mentioned the life of Saint Maximos the Confessor (which you can read in full here) as a perfect example of how one single person (not even a priest!) can defend true Christianity against what could appear at the time as the overwhelming number of bishops representing the entire Church. But, as always, these false bishops were eventually denounced and the Truth of Orthodoxy prevailed.

Likewise, at the False Union of Florence, when all the Greek delegates signed the union with the Latin heretics, and only one bishop refused to to do (Saint Mark of Ephesus), the Latin Pope declared in despair “and so we have accomplished nothing!”. He was absolutely correct – that union was rejected by the “Body” of the Church and the names of those apostates who signed it will remain in infamy forever. I could multiply the examples, but what is crucial here is to understand that majorities, large numbers or, even more so, the support of secular authorities are absolutely meaningless in Christian theology and in the history of the Church and that, with time, all the lapsed bishops who attended robber councils are always eventually denounced and the Orthodox truth always proclaimed once again. It is especially important to keep this in mind during times of persecution or of brutal interference by secular authorities because even when they *appear* to have won, their victory is always short-lived.

I would add that the Russian Orthodox Church is not just “one of the many” local Orthodox Churches. Not only is the Russian Orthodox Church by far the biggest Orthodox Church out there, but Moscow used to be the so-called “Third Rome”, something which gives the Moscow Patriarchate a lot of prestige and, therefore, influence. In secular terms of prestige and “street cred” the fact that the Russians did not participate in the 1923 and 2016 congresses is much bigger a blow to its organizers than if, say, the Romanians had boycotted it. This might not be important to God or for truly pious Christians, but I assure you that this is absolutely crucial for the wannabe “Eastern Pope” of the Phanar…

Who is really behind this latest attack on the Church?

So let’s begin by stating the obvious: for all his lofty titles (“His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and Ecumenical Patriarch“ no less!), the Patriarch of Constantinople (well, of the Phanar, really), is nothing but a puppet in the hands of the AngloZionist Empire. An ambitious and vain puppet for sure, but a puppet nonetheless. To imagine that the Uber-loser Poroshenko would convince him to pick a major fight with the Moscow Patriarchate is absolutely laughable and totally ridiculous. Some point out that the Patriarch of Constantinople is a Turkish civil servant. While technically true, this does not suggest that Erdogan is behind this move either: right now Erdogan badly needs Russia on so many levels that he gains nothing and risks losing a lot by alienating Moscow. No, the real initiator of this entire operation is the AngloZionist Empire and, of course, the Papacy (which has always tried to create an “Orthodoxerein Ukraine” from the “The Eastern Crusade” and “Northern Crusades” of Popes Innocent III and Gregory IX to the Nazi Ukraine of Bandera – see here for details).

Why would the Empire push for such a move? Here we can find a mix of petty and larger geostrategic reasons. First, the petty ones: they range from the usual impotent knee-jerk reflex to do something, anything, to hurt Russia to pleasing of the Ukronazi emigrés in the USA and Canada. The geostrategic ones range from trying to save the highly unpopular Ukronazi regime in Kiev to breaking up the Orthodox world thereby weakening Russian soft-power and influence. This type of “logic” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Orthodox world today. Here is why:

The typical level of religious education of Orthodox Christians is probably well represented by the famous Bell Curve: some are truly completely ignorant, most know a little, and a few know a lot. As long as things were reasonably peaceful, all these Orthodox Christians could go about their daily lives and not worry too much about the big picture. This is also true of many Orthodox Churches and bishops. Most folks like beautiful rites (singing, golden cupolas, beautiful architecture and historical places) mixed in with a little good old superstition (place a candle before a business meeting or playing the lottery) – such is human nature and, alas, most Orthodox Christians are no different, even if their calling is to be “not of this world”. But now this apparently peaceful picture has been severely disrupted by the actions of the Patriarch of Constantinople whose actions are in such blatant and severe violation of all the basic canons and traditions of the Church that they literally force each Orthodox Christian, especially bishops, to break their silence and take a position: am I with Moscow or with Constantinople?

Oh sure, initially many (most?) Orthodox Christians, including many bishops, will either try to look away or limit themselves to vapid expressions of “regret” mixed in with calls for “unity”. A good example of that kind of wishy washy lukewarm language can already be found here. But this kind of Pilate-like washing of hands (“ain’t my business” in modern parlance) is unsustainable, and here is why: in Orthodox ecclesiology you cannot build “broken Eucharistic triangles”. If A is not in communion with B, then C cannot be in communion with A and B at the same time. It’s really an “either or” binary choice. At least in theory (in reality, such “broken triangles” have existed, most recently between the former ROCA/ROCOR, the Serbian Church and the Moscow Patriarchate, but they are unsustainable, as events of the 2000-2007 years confirmed for the ROCA/ROCOR). Still, no doubt that some (many?) will try to remain in communion with both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Constantinople Patriarchate, but this will become harder and harder with every passing month. In some specific cases, such a decision will be truly dramatic, I think of the monasteries on the Holy Mountain in particular.

[Sidebar: on a more cynical level, I would note that the Patriarch of Constantinople has now opened a real Pandora’s box which now every separatist movement in an Orthodox country will be able to use to demand its own “autocephaly” which will threaten the unity of most Orthodox Churches out there. If all it takes to become “autocephalous” is to trigger some kind of nationalist uprising, then just imagine how many “Churches” will demand the same autocephaly as the Ukronazis are today! The fact that ethno-phyetism is a condemned heresy will clearly stop none of them. After all, if it is good enough for the “Ecumenical” Patriarch, it sure is good enough for any and all pseudo-Orthodox nationalists!]

What the AngloZionist Empire has done is to force each Orthodox Christian and each Orthodox Church to chose between siding with Moscow or Constantinople. This choice will have obvious spiritual consequences, which the Empire couldn’t give a damn about, but it will also profound political and social consequences which, I believe, the Empire entirely missed.

The Moscow Patriarchate vs the Patriarchate of Constantinople – a sociological and political analysis

Let me be clear here that I am not going to compare and contrast the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) and the Patriarchate of Constantinople (PC) from a spiritual, theological or even ecclesiological point of view here. Instead, I will compare and contrast them from a purely sociological and political point of view. The differences here are truly profound.

	Moscow Patriarchate	Patriarchate of Constantinople
Actual size	Very big	Small
Financial means	Very big	Small
Dependence on the support of the Empire and its various entities	Limited	Total
Relations with the Vatican	Limited, mostly due to very strongly anti-Papist sentiments in the people	Mutual support and de-facto alliance
Majority member’s outlook	Conservative	Modernist
Majority member’s level of support	Strong	Lukewarm
Majority member’s concern with Church rules/cannons/traditions	Medium and selective	Low
Internal dissent	Practically eliminated (ROCA)	Strong (Holy Mountain, Old Calendarists)

From the above table you can immediately see that the sole comparative ‘advantage’ of the PC is that is has the full support of the AngloZionist Empire and the Vatican. On all the other measures of power, the MP vastly “out-guns” the PC.

Now, inside the Ukronazi occupied Ukraine, that support of the Empire and the Vatican (via their Uniats) does indeed give a huge advantage to the PC and its Ukronazi pseudo-Orthodox “Churches”. And while Poroshenko has promised that no violence will be used against the MP parishes in the Ukraine, we all remember that he was the one who promised to stop the war against the Donbass, so why even pay attention to what he has to say.

US diplomats and analysts might be ignorant enough to believe Poroshenko’s promises, but if that is the case then they are failing to realize that Poroshensko has very little control over the hardcore Nazi mobs like the one we saw last Sunday in Kiev. The reality is very different: Poroshenko’s relationship to the hardcore Nazis in the Ukraine is roughly similar to the one the House of Saud has with the various al-Qaeda affiliates in Saudi Arabia: they try to both appease and control them, but they end up failing every time. The political agenda in the Ukraine is set by bona fideNazis, just as it is set in the KSA by the various al-Qaeda types. Poroshenko and MBS are just impotent dwarfs trying to ride on the shoulders of much more powerful devils.

Sadly, and as always, the ones most at risk right now are the simple faithful who will resist any attempts by the Ukronazi death-squads to seize their churches and expel their priests. I don’t expect a civil war to ensue, not in the usual sense of the world, but I do expect a lot of atrocities similar to what took place during the 2014 Odessa massacre when the Ukronazis burned people alive (and shot those trying to escape). Once these massacres begin, it will be very, very hard for the Empire to whitewash them or blame it all on “Russian interference”. But most crucially, as the (admittedly controversial) Christian writer Tertullian noticed as far back as the 2^nd century “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”. You can be sure that the massacre of innocent Christians in the Ukraine will result in a strengthening of the Orthodox awareness, not only inside the Ukraine, but also in the rest of the world, especially among those who are currently “on the fence” so to speak, between the kind of conservative Orthodoxy proclaimed by the MP and the kind of lukewarm wishy washy “decaf” pseudo-Orthodoxy embodied by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. After all, it is one thing to change the Church Calendar or give hugs and kisses to Popes and quite another to bless Nazi death-squads to persecute Orthodox Christians.

To summarize I would say that by his actions, the Patriarch of Constantinople is now forcing the entire Orthodox world to make a choice between two very different kind of “Orthodoxies”. As for the Empire, it is committing a major mistake by creating a situation which will further polarize strongly, an already volatile political situation in the Ukraine.

There is, at least potentially, one more possible consequence from these developments which is almost never discussed: its impact inside the Moscow Patriarchate.

Possible impact of these developments inside the Moscow Patriarchate

Without going into details, I will just say that the Moscow Patriarchate is a very diverse entity in which rather different “currents” coexist. In Russian politics I often speak of Atlantic Integrationists and Eurasian Sovereignists. There is something vaguely similar inside the MP, but I would use different terms. One camp is what I would call the “pro-Western Ecumenists” and the other camp the “anti-Western Conservatives”. Ever since Putin came to power the pro-Western Ecumenists have been losing their influence, mostly due to the fact that the majority of the regular rank and file members of the MP are firmly behind the anti-Western Conservative movement (bishops, priests, theologians). The rabid hatred and fear of everything Russian by the West combined with the total support for anything anti-Russian (including Takfiris and Nazis) has had it’s impact here too, and very few people in Russia want the civilizational model of Conchita Wurst, John McCain or Pope Francis to influence the future of Russia. The word “ecumenism” has, like the word “democracy”, become a four letter word in Russia with a meaning roughly similar to “sellout” or “prostitution”. What is interesting is that many bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate who, in the past, were torn between the conservative pressure from their own flock and their own “ecumenical” and “democratic” inclinations (best embodied by the Patriarch of Constantinople) have now made a choice for the conservative model (beginning by Patriarch Kirill himself who, in the past, used to be quite favorable to the so-called “ecumenical dialog of love” with the Latins).

Now that the MP and the PC have broken the ties which previously united them, they are both free to pursue their natural inclinations, so to speak. The PC can become some kind of “Eastern Rite Papacy” and bask in an unhindered love fest with the Empire and the Vatican while the MP will now have almost no incentive whatsoever to pay attention to future offers of rapprochement by the Empire or the Vatican (these two always work hand in hand). For Russia, this is a very good development.

Make no mistake, what the Empire did in the Ukraine constitutes yet another profoundly evil and tragic blow against the long-suffering people of the Ukraine. In its ugliness and tragic consequences, it is quite comparable to the occupation of these lands by the Papacy via its Polish and Lithuanian agents. But God has the ability to turn even the worst horror into something which, in the end, will strengthen His Church.

Russia in general, and the Moscow Patriarchate specifically, are very much in a transition phase on many levels and we cannot overestimate the impact which the West’s hostility on all fronts, including spiritual ones, will have on the future consciousness of the Russian and Orthodox people. The 1990s were years of total confusion and ignorance, not only for Russia by the way, but the first decade of the new millennium has turned out to be a most painful, but also most needed, eye-opener for those who had naively trusted the notion that the West’s enemy was only Communism, not Russia as a civilizational model.

In their infinite ignorance and stupidity, the leaders of the Empire have always acted only in the immediate short term and they never bothered to think about the mid to long term effects of their actions. This is as true for Russia as it is for Iraq or the Balkans. When things eventually, and inevitably, go very wrong, they will be sincerely baffled and wonder how and why it all went wrong. In the end, as always, they will blame the “other guy”.

There is no doubt in my mind that the latest maneuver of the AngloZionist Empire in the Ukraine will yield some kind of feel-good and short term “victory” (“peremoga” in Ukrainian) which will be followed by a humiliating defeat (“zrada” in Ukrainian) which will have profound consequences for many decades to come and which will deeply reshape the current Orthodox world. In theory, these kinds of operations are supposed to implement the ancient principle of “divide and rule”, but in the modern world what they really do is to further unite the Russian people against the Empire and, God willing, will unite the Orthodox people against pseudo-Orthodox bishops.

Conclusion:

In this analysis I have had to describe a lot of, shall we say, “less than inspiring” realities about the Orthodox Church and I don’t want to give the impression that the Church of Christ is as clueless and impotent as all those denominations, which, over the centuries have fallen away from the Church. Yes, our times are difficult and tragic, but the Church has not lost her “salt”. So what I want to do in lieu of a personal conclusion is to quote one of the most enlightened and distinguished theologians of our time, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, who in his book “The Mind of the Orthodox Church” (which I consider one of the best books available in English about the Orthodox Church and a “must read” for anybody interested in Orthodox ecclesiology) wrote the following words:

Saint Maximos the Confessor says that, while Christians are divided into categories according to age and race, nationalities, languages, places and ways of life, studies and characteristics, and are “distinct from one another and vastly different, all being born into the Church and reborn and recreated through it in the Spirit” nevertheless “it bestows equally on all the gift of one divine form and designation, to be Christ’s and to bear His Name. And Saint Basil the Great, referring to the unity of the Church says characteristically: “The Church of Christ is one, even tough He is called upon from different places”. These passages, and especially the life of the Church, do away with every nationalistic tendency. It is not, of course, nations and homelands that are abolished, but nationalism, which is a heresy and a great danger to the Church of Christ.

Metropolitan Hierotheos is absolutely correct. Nationalism, which itself is a pure product of West European secularism, is one of the most dangerous threats facing the Church today. During the 20^th century it has already cost the lives of millions of pious and faithful Christians (having said that, this in no way implies that the kind of suicidal multiculturalism advocated by the degenerate leaders of the AngloZionist Empire today is any better!). And this is hardly a “Ukrainian” problem (the Moscow Patriarchate is also deeply infected by the deadly virus of nationalism). Nationalism and ethno-phyletism are hardly worse than such heresies as Iconoclasm or Monophysitism/Monothelitism were in the past and those were eventually defeated. Like all heresies, nationalism will never prevail against the “Church of the living God” which is the “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15) and while many may lapse, others never will.

In the meantime, the next couple of months will be absolutely crucial. Right now it appears to me that the majority of the Orthodox Churches will first try to remain neutral but will have to eventually side with the Moscow Patriarchate and against the actions of Patriarch Bartholomew. Ironically, the situation inside the USA will most likely be particularly chaotic as the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the USA have divided loyalties and are often split along conservative vs modernizing lines. The other place to keep a close eye on will be the monasteries on the Holy Mountain were I expect a major crisis and confrontation to erupt.

With the crisis in the Ukraine the heresy of nationalism has reached a new level of infamy and there will most certainly be a very strong reaction to it. The Empire clearly has no idea what kind of dynamic it has now set in motion.

The Saker

A CIA lucky break? How the death of the ‘Smiling Pope’ helped Washington win the Cold War

The sudden death of Pope John Paul I, exactly 40 years ago today, stunned the world. The ‘Smiling Pope’ had only served for 33 days. His demise and replacement by John Paul II marked an important turning point in the old Cold War.

The year 1978, as I argued in a previous op-ed, was the year today’s world was made.

There was nothing inevitable about the ascendancy of Reagan and Thatcher, the rise of groups like Al-Qaeda and IS, and the downfall of the Soviet Union. The neoliberal, neoconservative world order and its associated violence came about because of key events and decisions which took place 40 years ago. The Vatican was at the heart of these events.

The drama which unfolded there in the summer of 1978 would have been rejected as being too far-fetched if sent in as a film script. In a space of two and a half months, we had three different Popes. There was no great surprise when, on August 6, the first of them, Pope Paul VI, died after suffering a massive heart attack. The Supreme Pontiff, who had served since 1963, was 80 and had been in declining health. But the death of his much younger successor, John Paul I, a radical reformer who wanted to build a genuine People’s Church, has fuelled conspiracy theories to this day.

Cardinal Albino Luciani, the working-class son of a bricklayer (and staunch socialist), from a small town in northern Italy, was a Pope like no other. He refused a coronation and detested being carried on the sedia gestatoria – the Papal chair. He hated pomp and circumstance and pretentiousness. His speeches were down to earth and full of homely observations, with regular references to popular fiction. He possessed a gentle humor and always had a twinkle in his eye. He was by all accounts an incredibly sweet man.

But there was steel there, too. Luciani was determined to root out corruption, and to investigate the complex financial affairs of the Vatican’s own bank, and its connection to the scandal-hit Banco Ambrosiano.

While he had declared communism to be incompatible with Christianity, his father’s egalitarian ethos stayed with him. “The true treasures of the Church are the poor, the little ones to be helped not merely by occasional alms but in the way they can be promoted,” he once said. At a meeting with General Videla of Argentina, he made clear his abhorrence of fascism. “He talked particularly of his concern over ‘Los Desaparecidos’, people who had vanished off the face of Argentinian earth in their thousands. By the conclusion of the 15th minute audience the General began to wish that he had heeded the eleventh-hour attempts of Vatican officials to dissuade him coming to Rome,” noted David Yallop in his book ‘In God’s Name’.

One cleric, Father Busa, wrote of John Paul I: “His mind was as strong, as hard and as sharp as a diamond. That was where his real power was. He understood and had the ability to get to the centre of a problem. He could not be overwhelmed. When everyone was applauding the smiling Pope, I was waiting for him ‘tirare fuori le unghie’, to reveal his claws. He had tremendous power.”

But John Paul I never lived to exercise his “tremendous power.” He was found dead in his bed on the morning of September 28, 1978. The official story was that the ‘Smiling Pope’ had died from a heart attack. But it wasn’t long before questions were being asked. John Paul I was only 65 and had appeared to be in fine health. The fact that there was no post-mortem only added to the suspicions. “The public speculation that this death was not natural grew by the minute. Men and women were heard shouting at the inert form: Who has done this to you? Who has murdered you?” wrote David Yallop.

David Yallop revealed that on the day of his death, the Pope had discussed a reshuffle of Vatican staff with Secretary of State Cardinal Jean Villot, who was also to be replaced. Yallop claimed that the Pope had a list of a number of clerics who belonged to the Freemasons, membership of which was strictly prohibited by the Church. The most sinister of these Masonic lodges was the fiercely anti-communist Propaganda Due (P2), which held great influence in Italy at this time, being referred to as a “state within a state.” The murky world of P2, and its leaders’ links with organized crime, the Mafia and the CIA is discussed in ‘In God’s Name’.

Another writer, Lucien Gregoire, author of ‘Murder by the Grace of God’, points the finger of blame squarely at the CIA. He notes a seemingly strange coincidence, namely that on September 3, 1978, just 25 days before the Pope himself died, Metropolitan Nikodim, the visiting leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who was later revealed to have been a KGB agent, fell dead at John Paul’s feet in the Vatican after sipping coffee. He was only 48. Gregoire says that the CIA dubbed John Paul I ‘the Bolshevik Pope’ and was keen to eliminate him before he presided over a conference the Puebla Conference in Mexico. “Had he lived another week, the United States would have been looking at a half a dozen mini-Cubas in its back yard,” he writes.

While there’s no shortage of suspects if you believe that John Paul I was murdered, it needs to be stressed that despite the contradictory statements made about the circumstances of his death, and the strange coincidences, no evidence has yet been produced to show that his death was not a natural one. What we can say though is that there will have been quite a few powerful and influential people in Italy and beyond who were relieved that the ‘Smiling Pope’ had such a short time in office.

His successor, the Polish Archbishop Karol Wojtyla, who took the name ‘John Paul II’ as a homage to his predecessor, made it clear that investigating the Vatican’s financial activities and uncovering Freemasons was not a priority. As a patriotic Pole, his appointment was manna from Heaven for anti-communist hawks in the US State Department. “The single fact of John Paul II’s election in 1978 changed everything. In Poland, everything began… Then the whole thing spread. He was in Chile and Pinochet was out. He was in Haiti and Duvalier was out. He was in the Philippines and Marcos was out,” said Joaquin Navarro-Valls, John Paul II’s press secretary.

The way that Pope John Paul II spoke out against what he regarded as communist repression, not only in his native Poland but across Eastern Europe and beyond, saw him being toasted by the neocon faction. It might not have been just words either, which helped undermine communist rule. There was a rumor that ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi, who in 1982 was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, had sent $50mn to ‘Solidarity’ in Poland on behalf of the Pope.

In May 1981, John Paul II was shot and wounded by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca. Neocons in the US promoted the narrative that it was a communist plot (organized by Bulgaria), but Sofia denied involvement. In 1985, Agca’s confederate, Abdullah Catli, who was later killed in a car crash, testified that he had been approached by the West German BND spy organization, which promised him a large sum of money  “if he implicated the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB in the attempt on the Pope’s life.”

Martin Lee, writing in Consortium News, also notes that in 1990, “ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman disclosed that his colleagues, under pressure from CIA higher-ups, skewed their reports to try to lend credence to the contention that the Soviets were involved. ‘The CIA had no evidence linking the KGB to the plot,’ Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee.” 

In 2011, a new book entitled ‘To Kill the Pope, the Truth about the Assassination Attempt on John Paul II’, which was based on 20 years of research, concluded that the CIA had indeed tried to frame Bulgaria, in order to discredit communism.

The great irony of course is that after the Berlin Wall came down, Pope John Paul II became a strong critic of the inhumane ‘greed is good’ model of capitalism which had replaced communism. In Latvia, he said capitalism was responsible for “grave social injustices” and acknowledged that Marxism contained “a kernel of truth.” He said that “the ideology of the market” made solidarity between people “difficult at best.” In Czechoslovakia, he warned against replacing communism with materialism and consumerism.

Having enlisted the assistance of the Vatican in helping to bring down ‘The Reds’, the neo-liberals and neo-cons then turned on the Church. The Church survived communism, but it hasn’t fared too well under consumerism. The Vatican is nowhere near as influential as it was in 1978. The US, meanwhile, unconstrained by a geopolitical counter-weight, threw its weight around the world after 1989, illegally invading and attacking a series of sovereign states.

One can only wonder how different things might have been if the ‘Smiling Pope’ had lived.

By Neil Clark
Source

Pope Francis says ‘defenseless’ being killed in Holy Land after Gaza bloodshed #enoughisenough

Pope Francis says ‘defenseless’ being killed in Holy Land after Gaza bloodshed

Source: Vatican Media

Pope Francis, in his Easter address on Sunday, called for peace in the Holy Land two days after 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers on the Israeli-Gaza border, saying the conflict there “does not spare the defenseless”.

The pope made his appeal in his “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to tens of thousands of people in the flower-bedecked square below where he earlier celebrated a Mass.

He also appealed for an end to the “carnage” in Syria, calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed to enter, and for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Francis appeared to refer directly to the Gaza violence last Friday, calling for “reconciliation for the Holy Land, also experiencing in these days the wounds of ongoing conflict that do not spare the defenseless.”

Israel’s defense minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into the killings by the military during a peaceful Palestinian demonstration.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, and other leaders have called for an independent investigation into the bloodshed.

The Pope also begged for peace for “the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war.”

“This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course … ” he said.

He spoke a day after the Assad regime command said it had regained most of the towns and villages in eastern Ghouta. Tens of thousands of people have now evacuated once-bustling towns in the suburbs east of the capital, which had nearly 2 million people before the start of the conflict and were major commercial and industrial hubs.

Francis called for international assistance for Venezuela, so that more people would not have to abandon their homeland because of the economic and political crisis.

He hoped the “fruits of dialogue” would advance peace and harmony on the Korean peninsula, where the two sides are set to hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearisation.

Francis, celebrating his sixth Easter as Roman Catholic leader since his election in 2013, urged his listeners to work for an end to the “so many acts of injustice” in the world.

He prayed the power of Jesus’ message “bears fruits of hope and dignity where there are deprivation and exclusion, hunger and unemployment, where there are migrants and refugees – so often rejected by today’s culture of waste – and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery”.

The battle was neither in Riyadh nor in Jerusalem…. It was in Tehran and has ended المعركة لم تكن في الرياض ولا في القدس … لقد كانت في طهران وانتهت

The battle was neither in Riyadh nor in Jerusalem…. It was in Tehran and has ended

يونيو 4, 2017

Written by Nasser Kandil,

Apparently it seemed that there were two battles in the region, their hero is Donald Trump, one in Riyadh to convince the leaders of the Arab and the Islamic countries of a barter, its basis on reconciliation, cooperation, and normalization the relation with Israel in exchange of an international front led by Washington under the cover of the Islamic world which was held under the slogan of Saudi Arabia to isolate Iran and besieging it. The second battle seemed in Jerusalem led by Trump to convince the leaders of the occupation entity to wage different more serious settlement by facilitating the formation of a Palestinian state with some modifications which take into consideration the Israeli security and similar modifications on the files of Jerusalem and the refugees.

Practically Trump ended his tour in Gulf and its three summits; he got what he wanted in addition to a lot of money which he wanted to revive his stagnant economy, to fix his confused rule, and to apply his slogan; linking the relationship with Saudi Arabia as a milking cow with the quantity of milk it produces. Practically Trump went to Jerusalem but he did not achieve any of his promises, he shared with Netanyahu idle talk that just includes the reassurances to subdue the Gulf and its acceptance to join to the alliance with Israel against Iran. As he postponed transferring the US embassy to Jerusalem he postponed the negotiating tripartite summit which combines him with Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, so this affected Abbas after he paid a humiliated bill for Hamas Movement for its political document which accepts the promised settlement, by announcing that it is terrorism from Riyadh’s platform.

Trump’s tour which passed by Vatican towards the summit of seven which led by Washington and culminated with the meeting of NATO was planned to emerge from these platforms according to Trump’s promises to each the Saudi King and the Head of the occupation government as besieging and isolating Iran as well as agitating the situations against Hezbollah. What has happened is that the actual battle which was a condition for the continuation of Trump of his mission was going on in Tehran. Iran has not timed its elections on the date of Trump’s visit, but the opposite has happened. All of what has happened before the elections and the announcement of the summits of Riyadh, the mobilization against Iran, and the indication to cancel the understanding on the nuclear program as well as increasing the sanctions on it on the eve of the elections were to urge it to re-choose the option of severity which is considered by the Americans and their allies a condition for the success of the mobilization against Iran and a cause of the internal division on its options and constants, taking into consideration its moderate politicians and investing the economic pressure to destabilize it. It seemed that the game is going on according to what the Americans want, because in the electoral competition there was one a most strict symbols Al Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi who was supported, and for his favor all those who are severe withdrew, the western mass media were prepared to consider him as the coming President of Iran according to the equation of Raisi versus Trump.

The question in Tehran was, when the winning of Raisi is announced and when the Riyadh summits formulate their final statements what would be the expected path? the answer is having the plea to question the credibility of Tehran commitment to the nuclear understandings and having the justification to expand the campaign of the political, media, legal, and the diplomatic escalation against it, moreover to address the Iranian interior in way that beholds the words of constants the responsibility of blockade, sanctions, and the economic decline just for its issuance by strict spokesman, then to divide the Iranians between two disputing or possibly quarreling halves, and the possession of the West of ways to seduce the frustrated half due to the results and the doubtful of their credibility. The reverse question in Tehran was what about if the President Hassan Rouhani won by the speech of the same Iranian constants by defending the choice of resistance and Hezbollah and in characterizing the Americans as responsible for the terrorism, and beholding the Gulf countries the responsibility of sabotaging the stability in the region. The answer was Iran will unite behind him and the Russians and the Chinese will support Iran strongly, while the Europeans will get confused in meeting the US demands.

It is not important who asked and who answered in Tehran, as the importance of that the Iranian democratic game has expanded and then was the result. We have heard the President Rouhani in the speech of constants after his winning, and we have heard the European and the international positions asking him not to drive Iran to escalation which was started by the Riyadh’s summits against Iran. Before the end of Riyadh summits Trump discovered that the mission has ended and that the plan has failed, so he has to accelerate to reserve the funds promised by the Saudis, and that he has to go to Jerusalem and Bethlehem on a religious tourist and political visit to share the congratulations with Netanyahu to celebrate the financial and the political spoils. Therefore the battle is neither in Riyadh nor in Jerusalem it was in Tehran and has ended.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

المعركة لم تكن في الرياض ولا في القدس … لقد كانت في طهران وانتهت

ناصر قنديل

مايو 23, 2017

– ظاهرياً بدا أن هناك معركتين شهدتهما المنطقة، بطلهما دونالد ترامب، واحدة في الرياض لإقناع زعماء الدول العربية والإسلامية بمقايضة قوامها التصالح والتعاون والتطبيع مع «إسرائيل»، مقابل جبهة دولية تقودها واشنطن بغطاء العالم الإسلامي المنعقد تحت لواء السعودية لعزل إيران وحصارها، والمعركة الثانية بدت في القدس يخوضها ترامب لإقناع قادة كيان الاحتلال بخوض غمار تسوية مختلفة وأكثر جدية بتسهيل قيام دولة فلسطينية مع بعض التعديلات التي تراعي الأمن «الإسرائيلي» وتعديلات مشابهة تناسبها على ملفي القدس واللاجئين.

– عمليا أنهى ترامب جولته الخليجية وقممها الثلاث بالحصول على ما طلب من المجتمعين وفوقه حصل على مال كثير يريده لتنشيط اقتصاده الراكد وتثبيت حكمه المرتبك، وتطبيق شعاره بربط العلاقة مع السعودية كبقرة حلوب بكمية الحليب التي تدرّها عليه. وعملياً ذهب ترامب إلى القدس فلم يحقق شيئاً من وعوده، وتقاسم مع نتنياهو كلاماً فارغاً ليس فيه إلا التطمينات لخضوع الخليج وقبوله الانضمام لحلف مع «إسرائيل» بوجه إيران، وبمثل ما أجّل نقل سفارته إلى القدس أجّل القمة الثلاثية التفاوضية التي تجمعه مع بنيامين نتنياهو ومحمود عباس فأصاب عباس في المقتل، بعدما سدّد لحركة حماس فاتورة مذلّة وهواناً على وثيقتها السياسية التي ترتضي التسوية الموعودة، بإعلانه لها إرهاباً من منبر الرياض.

– جولة ترامب التي تعبر بالفاتيكان وصولاً لقمة السبعة الذين تتزعمهم واشنطن وتتويجاً باجتماع حلف الناتو، كان مقدراً لها أن تخرج من هذه المنابر بما وعد ترامب كلاً من الملك السعودي ورئيس حكومة الاحتلال، من فرض الحصار والعزلة على إيران، والذهاب بعيداً في تعبئة مناخات العداء لحزب الله، لكن الذي جرى أن المعركة الفعلية التي كانت شرطاً لمواصلة ترامب المهمة كانت تجري في طهران، حيث لم تكن إيران قد وقّتت انتخاباتها على موعد زيارة ترامب، بل العكس هو الذي حصل، وكان كل ما جرى قبل الانتخابات والإعلان عن القمم التي شهدتها الرياض، والتعبئة ضد إيران وشيطنتها، والتلويح بإلغاء التفاهم حول الملف النووي وزيادة العقوبات عليها عشية الانتخابات، لدفعها دفعاً نحو إعادة خيار التشدد الذي يعتبره الأميركيون وحلفاؤهم شرطاً لنجاح التعبئة ضد إيران وللتسبّب بالانقسام الداخلي فيها حول خياراتها وثوابتها، واستيعاب الجناح المعتدل من سياسييها واستثمار الضغط الاقتصادي لزعزعة الاستقرار فيها، وبدا أن اللعبة تسير وفقاً لما يريد الأميركيون، فقد ظهر إلى الساحة الانتخابية رمز من أقوى رموز المتشددين هو السيد إبراهيم رئيسي، واحتشد خلفه وانسحب لصالحه كل المنتمين لخط التشدّد، وتهيأت وسائل الإعلام الغربية لاعتباره رئيس إيران القادم، وفقاً لمعادلة رئيسي مقابل ترامب.

– كان السؤال في طهران هو، عندما يعلن فوز رئيسي وقمم الرياض تصيغ بيانها الختامي ماذا سيكون المسار المتوقع، والجواب هو، امتلاك ذريعة التشكيك بصدقية التزام طهران بالتفاهمات النووية، وامتلاك المبرر لتوسيع نطاق حملة التصعيد السياسي والإعلامي والقانوني والدبلوماسي ضدها، ومخاطبة الداخل الإيراني بلغة تحمًل خطاب الثوابت لمجرد صدوره بلسان متشدّد مسؤولية الحصار والعقوبات والتراجع الاقتصادي، وتالياً قسمة الإيرانيين نصفين متخاصمين وربما متحاربين، وامتلاك الغرب جسوراً تراهن على استمالة بعض النصف المحبط من النتائج والطاعن بصدقيتها، وكان السؤال المعاكس في طهران ماذا لو فاز الرئيس حسن روحاني بخطاب الثوابت الإيرانية نفسها، بالدفاع عن خيار المقاومة وحزب الله وتوصيف الأميركيين كمسؤولين عن الإرهاب، وتحميل دول الخليج مسؤولية تخريب الاستقرار في المنطقة؟ وكان الجواب، ستتوحّد إيران خلفه، وسيقف الروس والصينيون مع إيران بقوة، وسيرتبك الأوروبيون في تلبية الطلبات الأميركية.

– ليس مهماً مَن سأل ومَن أجاب في طهران، بقدر أهمية ان اللعبة الديمقراطية الإيرانية اتسعت لتظهير هذه النتيجة، وقد سمعنا الرئيس روحاني في خطاب الثوابت بعد فوزه، وسمعنا المواقف الأوروبية والدولية تتمنى عليه عدم الانجرار لحفلة التصعيد التي بدأتها ضد إيران قمم الرياض، واكتشف ترامب قبل انتهاء قمم الرياض أن المهمة قد انتهت وأن الخطة قد فشلت، وأن عليه المسارعة لحجز الأموال التي وعده السعوديون بها، وأن عليه الذهاب إلى القدس وبيت لحم في زيارة سياحية دينية وسياسية يتقاسم التهنئة مع نتنياهو بما حصدا من غنائم مالية وسياسية، فالمعركة ليست في الرياض ولا في القدس، فقد كانت في طهران وانتهت.

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Trump Visits Bethlehem Bearing Gifts to Child Killers

Finian Cunningham

May 20, 2017

US President Donald Trump makes his first overseas visit this weekend, beginning in the Middle East and continuing to Europe. His tour to the “holy land” is being presented with feel-good, messianic spin.

Trump touches down first in Saudi Arabia, then will go Israel and from there make a pilgrimage to Bethlehem in the Palestinian territories. After his stop at the reputed birthplace of Jesus, the American president will then fly to the Vatican, where he will be greeted by Roman Catholic Pope Francis. He will later meet NATO military leaders in Brussels.

resenting the president’s Middle East itinerary like a momentous religious event, Trump’s senior national security adviser General HR McMaster said:

“This trip is truly historic. No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths all on the same trip. And what President Trump is seeking is to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress and prosperity.”

The White House, reported the Washington Post, described it as “an effort to unite three of the world’s leading religious faiths in the common cause of fighting terrorism, reining in Iran and unifying the world against intolerance.”

Hold it. Screech the brakes on this Hollywood-type script of Saint Donald saving the world. What utter claptrap.

The main purpose of his sojourn is to cut a record arms deal with Saudi Arabia and the other closely aligned Gulf Arab monarchies. While in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, addressing regional leaders about “world peace,” Trump is set to sign off weapons deals worth $350 billion. That’s more than double what his predecessor Barack Obama flogged to the Saudi rulers during his presidency.

According to Bloomberg, topping the list of US arms transfers are warships, helicopter gunships, anti-missile systems and tanks.

The THAAD anti-missile system, recently debuted in South Korea, is said to be among the inventory for the Saudis and other Gulf states to the tune of $10 billion. The crisis in Korea provides a convenient sales pitch to the Saudis. Maybe that’s partly why the Trump administration has dangerously provoked the tensions in Asia, precisely to push through their THAAD sales in the Middle East.

In addition to the weapons purchases, the Saudi rulers are also promising to invest $40 billion from their oil-rich sovereign wealth funds in American companies.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and personal adviser, has been instrumental in lining up the mega sales, in conjunction with the Saudi deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The 30-year-old son of King Salman, who is also the defense minister, has been courting the Trump presidency ever since the election last November.

The Saudi prince, known as MBS by the Trump inner circle, is the chief strategist behind the Saudi war on Yemen since March 2015. That war is a blatant aggression on Yemen carried out by Saudi forces supplied by the US and Britain. Thousands of children have been killed in Saudi air strikes, using internationally banned cluster bombs in indiscriminate attacks on civilian centers.

Just days before Trump’s departure to the Middle East, Saudi air strikes reportedly killed 23 civilians, including six children, near the southern Yemeni city of Taiz.

Millions of other Yemeni children are dying from starvation and preventable diseases like cholera because of a naval blockade imposed on the country by Saudi and American forces. No doubt the new warships that Trump is lining up for Saudi Arabia will add to the “efficacy” of the genocide that is underway in Yemen.

With staggering cynicism, the Trump administration is “justifying” this ramped-up military support for Saudi Arabia as an effort to “fight terrorism” and to “counter Iranian meddling” in the region.

It is alleged that Iran is sponsoring militia in Yemen, Syria and Iraq and this is posing a threat to regional stability. Such claims are an insult to common intelligence, when we know that it is the American CIA and their Saudi client regime who have bankrolled and directed terrorism across the entire Middle East over many years in order to serve hegemonic interests of regime change.

But what is disturbing is just how braindead the Trump administration is. Trump is recklessly promoting the ridiculous fantasy that Saudi Arabia and its despotic terror-sponsoring clients are somehow the custodians of law and order. He is also pumping up the surreal Saudi narrative that Iran is largely responsible for the Middle East’s conflicts.

When the American president addresses Saudi and other Muslim leaders in Riyadh this weekend supposedly on the challenges of finding regional peace, two nations are banned from the gathering – Iran and Syria.

Saudi rulers have recently threatened Iran with fomenting a Syria-style proxy war inside Iran. The record arsenal of weapons that Trump is bringing to Saudi Arabia will only embolden its House of Saud tinpot dictators to pursue even more confrontation with Iran. Much of the small-arms weaponry that the Americans supply to Saudi Arabia already ends up in the hands of terror groups like Jabhat al Nusra and Daesh (so-called Islamic State).

There are perplexing signs that the US under Trump is ratcheting up military aggression toward Iran and its ally Syria. This week, US warplanes reportedly attacked Syrian armed forces and Iranian allies Hezbollah in southern Syria. It was the second such direct assault on Syria after Trump ordered Tomahawk missile strikes on the Shayrat airbase in April.

Syrian sources claim that the latest US air strike was carried out to protect militants being trained by American special forces inside Syrian territory. Those militants, known as Maghaweer al Thawra, are part of the Al Qaeda terror network, according to independent journalist Vanessa Beeley in email correspondence with this author.

Seems more than coincidence that the latest US operation was timed with Trump’s departure for Saudi Arabia. This is the kind of military action that the Saudis were constantly pushing the Obama administration to carry out. The strike on Iranian interests too will no doubt endear the new US commander-in-chief even more to his Saudi clients.

Trump’s messianic zeal to visit the Middle East – his first foreign destination being the dubious human rights “haven” Saudi Arabia – is all about flogging ever more deadly weapons to the already explosively-charged region. So desperate is Trump to pimp billions of dollars that he is willing to fuel war with Iran and perhaps Syria’s other ally, Russia, in the pursuit of lucre.

And to add further insult to injury, the whole tour of the “holy land” is being sold by the American government and media as some kind of benevolent religious duty to mankind and world peace.

The only “gifts” that Trump is bringing to Bethlehem and the region are ever more monstrous ways to murder children.

If Pope Francis had any integrity, or even news savvy, he should cancel Trump’s call at the Vatican, and explain exactly that child-killing regimes are not welcome.

Source: Sputnik

Donald of Arabia: Trump in the Middle East

by ROBERT FISK

Not since Ibn Batuta, travelled the Middle East in the 14th century has anyone set out with higher ambitions that Donald Trump. Batuta, a Moroccan Muslim traveller and scholar, had a few things in common with Trump. He reached what is now Saudi Arabia. He went to Jerusalem. He even had a keen eye for nubile ladies – there were a few wives, not to mention a Greek slave girl to be groped. But there the parallels end. For Ibn Batuta was sane.

Yet now we know that Trump thinks he’s touching the three monotheistic religions because he’s going to Riyadh, Jerusalem and then the Vatican (not quite in the Middle East but what’s a hundred miles for a guy like Trump). A few problems, of course. He can’t go to Holy Mecca because Christians are banned and the old king of Saudi Arabia represents a head-chopping Wahabi autocracy some of whose citizens have paid for – and fought alongside – the dreaded Isis which Trump thinks he is fighting.

Then when he goes to Jerusalem, he will meet Benjamin Netanyahu who hardly represents world Jewry and plans to go on thieving Arab lands in the West Bank for Jews, and Jews only, whatever Trump thinks. Then he’ll turn up at the Vatican to confront a man who – great guy though he may be – only represents Roman Catholics and doesn’t much like Trump anyway. Ibn Batuta was away from home for around a quarter of a century. Thank heavens Trump’s cutting that back to three days.

Of course, he’s no more going to be talking to “Islam” in Saudi Arabia than he is “Judaism” in Jerusalem. The Sunni Saudis are going to talk about crushing the “snake” of Shia Iran – and we must remember that Trump is the crackpot who shed crocodile tears over the Sunni babies killed in Syria last month but none for the Shia babies killed in Syria a few days later – and hope they can re-establish real relations between their execution-happy kingdom with the execution-happy US. Trump might just try to read UN rapporteur Ben Emmerson’s latest report on the imprisonment of human rights defenders and the torture of “terror” suspects in Saudi Arabia. No. Forget it.

Anyway, the king is no imam. Any more than Netanyahu is a rabbi. But Jerusalem will be a great gig because Trump will be able to ask Netanyahu for help against Isis without – presumably – realising that Israel bombs only the Syrian army and the Shia Hezbollah in Syria but has never – ever – bombed Isis in Syria. In fact, the Israelis have given medical aid to fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, which is part of al-Qaeda which (maybe Trump has heard of this) attacked the United States on 9/11. So maybe the Vatican will be a relief.

Of course, Trump might have dropped by Lebanon to meet Patriarch Beshara Rai, a Christian prelate who at least lives in the Middle East and who might have been able to tell Trump a few home truths about Syria. Or, since Trump would be “honoured” to meet the Great Leader of North Korea, he might even have shocked the world by dropping by for a couple of hours with Bashar al-Assad. At least Ibn Batuta got to Damascus.

But no, Trump is searching for “friends and partners” to fight “terrorism” – something which has never, of course, been inflicted on Yemen by Saudi Arabia or on Lebanon and the Palestinians by Israel. Nor will it be mentioned by the boys and girls of CNN, ABC and all the US media titans who will – in the interest of promoting their importance by pretending that their President is not mad – grovellingly follow their crackpot President around the region with all the usual nonsense about “policies” and “key players” and “moderates” (as in “moderate Saudi Arabia”) and all the other fantastical creatures which they inject into their reports.

Oh yes, and Trump also wants to bring “peace” to the Holy Land. And so he will move from the king of head choppers to the thief of Palestinian lands and end up with the poor old Holy Father who is wisely giving the President only a few early-morning minutes before his weekly general audience. Since the Pope described Trump’s views as “not Christian” – an unsaintly thing for Pope Francis to say of a mentally ill man – and Trump called the Pope’s words “disgraceful”, this is not going to be a barrel of laughs.

But then again, the Pope shook the hand of the Sultan of Egypt only a week ago, the equally saintly Field Marshal President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, whose coup overthrew an elected president and who now “disappears” his enemies. Trump should be a piece of cake after that. Ibn Batuta, by the way, got as far as Beijing in his travels but was never “honoured” to meet the “smart cookie” who was ruling in Korea (which did actually exist in the 14th century).

But being a verbose chap, Ibn Batuta did record his homecoming in these words: “I have indeed … attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the Earth, and I have attained this honour, which no ordinary person has attained.” That’s a real “honour” by the way. But you couldn’t fit Ibn Batuta into a tweet.

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Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared. 

More articles by:ROBERT FISK

Goodbye Fidel

The Saker

November 27, 2016

by Jimmie Moglia 

“He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.”

Hamlet, act 1, sc. 2

For many across the world, the death of Fidel Castro strikes us with an obscure sensation, like that which would be felt from the sound of darkness. And though expected, there was an indistinct unuttered hope that this news could be postponed to a future yet undated and unnamed. But,

“… all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity” (1)

In some European countries, newspaper articles written before the death of some important figure, are called “crocodiles”, lumping together those lamenting or rejoicing at that death, whenever it may occur.

And as we know, the European historical left has disappeared, replaced by an assembly of sycophants, buttock-lickers of transatlantic masters, muddled applauders of neo-liberal philosophy and regurgitators of grotesque distortions.

In one of which distortions, for example, the inimical, colonial role of the US towards Cuba is not even mentioned. Instead, Castro is labeled as a doctrinarian, bent on absolute dictatorship, who became a Marxist and eliminated all his opponents. Even clashing with the ideas of Che Guevara who was forced to try his luck at a revolution somewhere else.

Nor is it mentioned that in some fields Cuba is the most advanced country in Latin America, notably medicine. Including, for example, Cuba’s critical contribution to the defeat of the Ebola virus. And other unique pharmaceutical innovations, such as the only available treatment that prevents the amputation of the so-called “diabetic foot.” Medication until recently unavailable in the US due to the siege of Cuba, usually referred to as “embargo.”

Therefore, the European “crocodiles” reflect the crass negation of factual reality, or rather an Orwellian reality inspired by the tenets of post-democracy, post-truth, post-mathematics and even post-statistics, as the recent, uniform and unanimous Clinton-the-winner polls by mainstream media and academia demonstrate.

Yet, by an unexpected turn of history, the Cuban revolution has meanings as relevant today as in the late 1950s. For the revolution aimed both at social reforms and national independence. Nor the reforms could have been possible without independence. For the presence of “the few who had all” and “the all who had nought” was inherently linked to the neo-colonial (today re-baptized neo-liberal) policy of the effective, de-facto imperial ruler, 90 miles away.

Just as today, allowing for a change in times and circumstances, we can consider the so-called “European Union” as a kind of pre-Castro territory ruled by the United States, via its perennial proxies, much as Latin America had always been, barring recent exceptions. Meaning that there can be no reforms without returning to national independence.

The US elites assumed that Castro’s revolution would result in a minimal restructure of the Cuban administration, leaving untouched the massive inequalities, the immense private land-holdings, the state of servitude and the bordello-economy (even portrayed by Hollywood). In other words, an orange-revolution to strengthen a banana republic – a structure held together by American interests, and by the military, when necessary, as in all other Latin American countries.

But “in the reproof of chance lies the true proof of men.” (2) Incredulous, bewildered and amazed with wonder at the turn of Cuban events, the US leadership developed the thesis that the Cuban revolution would die if they killed Fidel. And following his death, the hated socialism would collapse like a house of cards. As a keen commentator noted, the thesis was also a way to exorcize the unthinkable idea that a socially-inspired government could exist at a short distance from the imperial coast, and in the conditions created and imposed by the embargo.

The US elite could not accept, let alone explain the popular consensus of the Cuban people for and towards Fidel Castro. Who can forget the images of Revolution Square in Havana, filled to the brim by people intently listening to Fidel’s extended, eloquent and at times even amusing oratory?

Unable to create an ISIS before its times, the US engaged into a series of assassination attempts, that would even be laughable, were it not for the many people who died in the process.

“That he should die is worthy policy;
But yet we want a colour for his death” (3)

Or so they thought, when they staged the Bay of Pigs invasion, supposedly attempted by “revolutionaries” in the payroll of the CIA. Invasion that also showed, after the fact, the lengths to which the parties responsible for the fiasco went, to cover their asses.

Nor we should forget Operation Northwood, intended to sink an American ship, kill American citizens on the mainland, and accuse Castro of the crimes. As we know, Kennedy rejected the program and it may have contributed to his assassination. Which, by extension, should also tell us some something about who did 9/11 and about the elephant in the room, that apparently no one in charge can see.

Much has been made by the Western media and governments that Castro stifled dissent. I remember clearly the words of Castro on the subject. We do not mind – he said – do not condemn or regret people who complain about this or that aspect of the government, because it is their government after all. But we cannot accept those people who are paid and financed by our enemies to work against our government.

After the experience of Ukraine (“We spent 5 billion $ to turn Ukraine into a “democracy” – said Victoria, f…k-the-Europeans, Nuland), who could still criticize Castro for his position on the issue?

He was accused of being a communist and a Russian ally. He actually wasn’t until the empire tried the Bay of Pigs invasion. The missile crisis, as we know, was both a result of the Bay of Pigs attempted invasion and of the US installation in Turkey of nuclear missiles aimed at the USSR.

Besides, the most recent historical developments have amply proven that communism was a convenient flag under which to conceal an inherent US-Western Russophobia, as evident in the current posture, political and military towards Russia, by the US and its minions. For a review of this subject see http://thesaker.is/the-ancient-spiritual-roots-of-russophobia/

Against Castro the US cabal tried it all and all was unsuccessfull. Eventually, they hoped that the fall of the USSR would lead to the fall of Cuba. They even had Pope Woytila visiting Havana, hoping that he would create there another Poland. Instead, he almost obtained the opposite effect. Contrary to relentless propaganda, Castro did not repress religion. But, as he expressed publicly to the Pope, the Catholic hierarchy, notably at the onset of the revolution sided with the oppressors, with the bordello keepers and the casino holders. Opposition to certain religious leaders does not mean opposition to religion, said Castro. Woytila was forced to declare, however platonically, against the embargo.

Still unable to explain the success of the Cuban revolution, some mainstream media pundits have now produced another theory. It was the very embargo that kept alive the Cuban regime.

Yet, these late hour explanations, the pleasure displayed at Castro’s death or the reflections on his regime are anachronistic. The system that for 60 years lay siege on Cuba and tried to kill her leader, seems to be sinking in its own contradictions, after the millions it killed worldwide and the commission of seemingly endless unspeakable crimes. A system so much depraved that the best it could produce for the world was a Clinton and a Trump. Along with the promise of new brothels, new oligarchs, new monopolists of consumerism and new XXI century Batistas. Which should be sufficient evidence that “something is rotten in the state of imperialism and neo-liberal economics.” (4)

While in Europe, a massively parasitic European parliament wants to censure (read ‘block’) politically unpalatable Internet channels. Perhaps it has not yet sunk into the minds of these people that the official media is but a sewer of lies and deception. And that for one censored site, uncounted more are ready to take over.

It was historically only yesterday when there was, effectively, only one media, with one message and one ideology. Other voices were unheard, for they were inaudible. And criticism was confined to metaphorically saying, “It is not nor it cannot come to good: but break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.’ (5)

Nevertheless, it is still true that,

“…. Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit” (6)

… the spirit that now is heard at large through the miracle of expanded electronic communications.

I will close by citing verbatim the homage to Fidel by George Galloway.

“Fidel Castro did not die. He is not dead, he lives-on in all of us and in the lives of our children, even though as yet unborn. And that is why these gold-tooth, scar faces are dancing in Miami today, because they think that they will be going be back to business as it was before.
The greatest legacy of Fidel Castro is that Cuba will never ever again be anybody’s casino, anybody’s bordello. It is a free country, thanks to the Cuban revolution and its leader Fidel Castro, one of the greatest human beings who ever lived, who ever walked this earth.
We were privileged to live in his era. Some of us were privileged to be his comrade and friend and to spend many hours with him.
He is not gone. Hasta la victoria siempre, Comandante Fidel Castro! Presente!”

1. Hamlet
2. Troilus and Cressida
3. King Henry VI, part 2
4. after Hamlet
5. Hamlet
6. Julius Caesar

In the play (opening quote). Hamlet’s comment on his father, slain by Hamlet’s uncle Claudius.