The truth is that the NATO countries have been using ISIS et al to destabilise Syria for years, and it has not worked as well as they would like. The truth is that this “civil war” was started in much the same way as the Afghan civil war in 1979 – from the outside, with Western money and western weapons. And the truth is that, no matter how many “chemical attacks” they invent, or how many “barrel bombs” Assad uses…nobody wants a war with Syria. And the truth is now the Russians are coming.
The “responsibility to protect” is not enshrined in any generally accepted international treaty – certainly nothing that overrides the provisions of the UN charter – and is not accepted by the large majority of the countries in the world. It is not customary international law and remains a propaganda phrase, not a legal concept.
For all of the celebration of him as a “grand strategist,” as someone who constantly advises presidents to think of the future, to base their actions today on where they want the country to be in five or 10 years’ time, Kissinger was absolutely blind to the fundamental feebleness and inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. None of it was necessary; none of the lives Kissinger sacrificed in Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Mozambique, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, East Timor, and Bangladesh made one bit of difference in the outcome of the Cold War.
Pope Francis is said to have brought “Liberation Theology into the Vatican”, in the footsteps of Francis of Assisi. While highlighting his commitment to peace and social justice, the Western media fail to mention that Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis I) has been a staunch supporter of US imperial interests in Latin America for more than 30 years.
A Saudi airstrike in the Yemeni village of Bani Zela in the northwestern province of Hjjah kills at least 25 civilians, mostly women and children, residents and medics say.
“People were fleeing their homes as the helicopters pursued, They committed a massacre for no reason,” one resident, calling himself Khaled, said on Sunday.
Pope Francis may be a breath of fresh air compared with his predecessors from his humble embrace of the poor and socially marginalised. But he still retains the stench of sycophancy towards the world’s biggest criminal state-sponsor of war and terrorism. God Bless America indeed.
“This is bigger than me, it’s bigger than all of us. We are so close to a nuclear disaster it is shocking, and
yet everybody is accepting the risk to the public.”
Putin is bound to deliver a showstopper at the UN. Spare a thought for the Obama administration’s foreign policy ‘muppets’, including the neocon cell at the State Department. Putin, under the glare of global public opinion, will frame the absolute defeat of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh as the key geopolitical issue of these times; he will commit Russia to it; and he will propose for the “West” to join in.
You have to hand it to Russia. In recent weeks, one move after another by Moscow over the Syrian crisis could be accompanied by the audible word “check”, leaving Washington and its minions grappling with disorientation about how to respond to the Russian moves.
According to Stone, the U.S. government’s destabilizing role actually goes back much further than ISIS. His new series pinpoints moments of American intrusion in the region as far back as the 1930s and follows it all the way to the CIA-backed Iranian coup in 1953, support for Afghanistan-based, anti-Soviet Union militants in the 1980s, George H.W. Bush’s Iraq invasion of 1990, and present-day efforts in Iran, Syria, and other countries.
The ongoing atrocities by Saudi Arabia and its “coalition partners” in Yemen reflect powerfully – and horribly – on both the U.S. and UK. That’s true not only because those two countries in general are among the closest allies of the Saudi regime, but also because they are specifically lavishing Saudi despots with the very arms and intelligence being used to kill large numbers of Yemeni civilians.
Since 2011, the member states of the CSTO have observed the NATO operation known as the « Arab Spring », which was designed to overthrow enemy régimes and also friendly régimes in the Middle East for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria), and since 2014, they have watched the triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideal with the proclamation of a caliphate which challenges both international law and human rights.
