On 23 September, Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, insisted that the Russian veto power in the Security Council was endangering its legitimacy. Russia had vetoed four Security Council resolutions on Syria. Understandably, the US rabid dogs of war are straining at the chain to which international law constrains them. How dare Russia oppose US plans for regime change in Syria and impede a further blood bath to achieve it?
The struggle captured by that video has to be seen against the backdrop of Israel’s day to day—everyday—war against the Palestinian people, men, women and children alike: shooting them, tear-gassing them, snatching them, harassing them, beating them up, burning them alive, smashing their wells, uprooting their trees, bulldozing their homes…
So now we have a military “pivot to Russia” to complement the by now notorious “pivot to Asia” — which Beijing has interpreted for what it is: a strategic containment policy — running from military encirclement (South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Western Pacific) to trade exclusion (the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP), plus the usual threat of sanctions.
Today, across the nation, we witness homicidal violence delivered against unarmed people by law enforcement officers. These beatings and killings are carried out with something close to impunity. The cops almost always get away with murder. Moreover, these crimes are nothing new; they are longstanding in practice.
Before the West spreads democracy abroad maybe it could get some for itself. The US is an oligarchy in which government is answerable to six powerful private interest groups. In Europe governments are answerable to the EU, Washington, and private bankers and not to their peoples. In the UK the military brass has declared its hold on the reins of power.
Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” — central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits.
After months of intense pressure led by unions and other social movements—including a general strike on the issue—the Uruguayan President listened to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement.
Islamist groups are being activated and supplied by the Western-backed Saudi coalition to help prosecute the counterinsurgency war against the rebels. The rebel Popular Committees are calling for a pluralist democratic government in Yemen, which would mark a dramatic change from decades of Western and Saudi-backed dictatorships in the country.
Britain is complicit with Obama’s war – selling Saudi Arabia deadly weapons like Washington. Days earlier, Oxfam CEO Mark Goldring said Yemen “descended into a humanitarian disaster putting its people at risk of famine, and the UK is materially involved through its export of arms and military support to the bombing campaign.”
All one needs to know about the intellectual caliber of the Obama administration is that it is still pondering whether to persist in “ignoring” Russian President Vladimir Putin, or invest in a real partnership to solve the Syrian geopolitical/humanitarian drama. After all, when in doubt between diplomacy or chaos, the Beltway weapon of choice still veers towards the simplistic group think uniting neocons and neoliberalcons: regime change.
Noam Chomsky on Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and the potential for ordinary people to make radical change.
The official Western narrative, pushed by the Anglo-American and EU mainstream media since 2011, has almost invariably claimed Russian intransigence on the issue of Assad. That narrative is now in tatters.
