Yemen is no stranger to conflict. Under the Obama administration, the country has been subject to years of lethal drone strikes, which Washington, for the most part, claims were targeted at al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Washington regards AQAP as the most deadly branch of al-Qaeda. However, in practice, these drone strikes have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths. […]
For indeed the unwritten rule informing this type of journalism is: if you want to get close to the ‘defence’ establishment, you better be close to the ‘defence’ establishment: ideologically, sympathetically, ‘patriotically’.
A near-perfect example of this industry-wide perceptual bias has been supplied this year by BBC diplomatic editor, Mark Urban.
The prime minister had said he would hold a vote in the next weeks. But he has apparently been forced to retreat due to fears that he is unable to secure a majority, especially following a report by parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee highly critical of British involvement.
With the collapse of the Communist countries in the 1990’s and their conversion to capitalism, followed by the advent of neo-liberal regimes throughout most of Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, the imperial regimes in the US and EU have established a new political spectrum, in which the standards of acceptability narrowed and the definition of adversaries expanded.
The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.
What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.
Putin has shown a remarkable ability to anticipate Washington’s moves and take preemptive steps to minimize their impact. Even so, it’s going to be tough sledding if Obama is able to create a sanctuary on the Turkish border where jihadis can enter and exit Syria at will keeping the country in a permanent state of turmoil. In that case, Putin would face his worse nightmare, the prospect of staying in Syria forever.
The days of the “Arab Spring” are almost over. As of now, the White House and the Kremlin are redesigning the contours of the « Greater Middle East ». However, their agreement, which was concluded before the Russian military intervention in Syria, could still be modified by the changes in the balance of power. There is no proof that Moscow will accept the stabilisation of Syria or ignore the partition of Turkey and Saudi Arabia which are soon to begin. In any event, the coming upheaval will modify the status quo which has been in place for the last five years. Most of the powers implicated are therefore scrambling to change sides before the other players.
The twin seductions of money and Washington “group think” have led our Wise Men into one disaster after another in both domestic and foreign policy. In view of their lamentable record over the last decade and a half, their advice and counsel is probably no better than that of a snake-handling shaman in the remotest hollow of West Virginia, and certainly a good deal more expensive.
Much has been reported and analysed about recent developments pertaining first to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on September 28th 2015 and shortly following that, the direct military action carried out by the Russian armed forces in relation to the conflict within Syria. Both events, it has been claimed, formally and decisively bring to […]
The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. Now, I do not want to interfere in the process of Vienna, but I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable that the fate of a person [diplomatese here for: U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Assad be removed from the Presidency of Syria] to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair.
British-based academic Sharmine Narwani, reporting from Syria, has compiled how the initial protests were infiltrated by armed agents who shot down protesters and Syrian state forces – thus sparking what the Western media mendaciously refer to as a “civil war” and “pro-democracy uprising”. There was no such thing. It was a US-led subversion from the outset, the kind of black ops that the Western imperialist powers specialise in.
There is an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American “deep state,” setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line. They do collaborate with and nurture their deep state counterparts in other countries, to whom they feel far more loyalty than their fellow citizens.
