by PAUL DE ROOIJ
Source: CounterPunch
One must marvel at the first few paragraphs of Amnesty International’s recent press release:

“The international community’s catastrophic failure to take concrete action to protect the people of Syria has allowed parties to the conflict, most notably the Syrian government, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with complete impunity, often with assistance of outside powers, particularly Russia. Every year we think it is just not possible for parties to the conflict to inflict more suffering on civilians, and yet, every year, they prove us wrong…

Right now, in Eastern Ghouta 400,000 men, women and children, who have been living under an unlawful government siege for six years, are being starved and indiscriminately bombed by the Syrian government with the backing of Russia. […] The international community had said ‘never again’ after the government devastated Eastern Aleppo with similar unlawful tactics. But here we are again. Armed opposition groups have retaliated by indiscriminately shelling two villages in Idleb, which they have also besieged since 2014.” [1]

This is an unambiguous call and a justification for war; it seems that AI is calling for a NATO bombing campaign similar to the one staged in Libya in 2011. There is also no ambiguity as to who AI deems to be culpable and ought to be at the receiving end of a “humanitarian bombing” campaign. Before cheering yet another US/NATO war, it is useful to analyse Amnesty International’s record in assisting propaganda campaigns on the eve of wars. It is also worthwhile reviewing AI’s reporting on Syria, and how it compares with that on other countries in the area.

A sorry record
It is not the first time that Amnesty International has played a role in a propaganda campaign in the lead up to a war. A few examples:

Before the US invasion to ouster the Iraqis from Kuwait, president George Bush Sr. appeared on TV holding an Amnesty International report claiming that Iraqi soldiers had dumped babies out of incubators. That was Amnesty International’s willing participation in spreading a hoax — a hoax fabricated by a major American PR company.

In the months prior to the US-NATO attack on Serbia, Amnesty-USA put two Croatian women on a ten city-speaking-tour to project their account of their “rape-camp” ordeal — in reality one of them was a top Croatian propaganda official, a close advisor to president Tudjman, who was also known for her acting abilities.[2] Again, this hoax was pushed by a major American PR company.

AI’s coverage/non-coverage of Israeli mass crimes also deserves to be analysed.[3] In this case, Amnesty plays a role in adulterating and reducing criticism after wars or the misery caused by its continuous occupation and abuse of the Palestinians (discussed below). Amnesty International-Israel served as a propaganda front busy manipulating “human rights” reports to suit Israel’s interests.[4] AI-London has not commented on the manipulation by its Israeli siblings.

In 2012, Amnesty erected advertising posters in the US applauding NATO’s actions in Afghanistan — “Keep the progress going”, purportedly doing something for women’s rights. This was merely crass pro-NATO pro-interventionist propaganda. [5]

Amnesty-France was instrumental in propagating anti-Libyan propaganda prior to the NATO bombing of the country in 2011.[6]

Alas, Amnesty’s sorry record is much longer than these few examples indicate.

Not anti-war
One would expect a human rights organisation to be intrinsically opposed to war, but AI is a cheerleader of so-called humanitarian intervention, and even “humanitarian bombing”.[7] In the past, when queried about its equivocal and lame statements about wars, an AI official stated that “Amnesty International is not anti-war”. Even with this predisposition AI was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize – yet another undeserving recipient for a prize meant to be given only to those actively opposed to wars. In Syria’s case, AI has given up this phoney “not anti-war” stance for one that is actively advocating war. Notice that it uses a rather dubious argument about “never again” about standing by in the face of mass crimes; in reality this is an appeal to holocaust memes meant to favour this war.

Syria today…
The Syrian government is presently rolling back the jihadis who had managed to establish themselves in an area next to Damascus. No government would tolerate to have a section of their capital city under jihadi control, an area from which the rest of the city is mortared, and an area vital to control the water supply of the city. What would happen if jihadis took over Arlington, VA, and used it to bomb the center of Washington DC? The response would be self-evident. For some reason AI doesn’t bestow this right of self-defence to the Syrian government, but instead refers to an “unlawful government siege [of Ghouta] for six years”. This is laughable.

It is remarkable to find that in none of the latest press releases or reports does AI discuss the nature of the armed groups fighting in Syria. Even those referred to as “moderates” by Washington are a rather unsavoury bunch. Most of them are foreign jihadis; a good portion of them are Saudis. (NB: Saudis offered political and criminal prisoners a way out of jail on condition of going to fight in Syria.) And they are armed/trained/financed by the US/UK/Saudi/Emirates/Turkey/Qatar… to the tune of at least $12 billion. The former US ambassador to Syria stated that the US contribution was at least $12bn [8]; this figure excludes the funds provided by the Saudis and other regimes in the area. Gareth Porter reports that the quantities of weapons supplied to the jihadis were enough to equip an army. [9] Yet, this armed gang of jihadis is barely mentioned in Amnesty’s assessment of the situation in Syria. In Ghouta, the jihadis belong to the Nusra front (or one of its rebranded versions), that is, a group with an extreme ideology; they are an Al-Qaeda offshoot. AI’s press release doesn’t mention this salient fact.

Amnesty portrays the Syrian government as at war against its own people — and Aleppo, Ghouta, etc., under siege; and not allowing the population to escape. Although AI similarly condemned the liberation of Aleppo, it didn’t interview these victims after the fact. If it interviews someone — invariably anonymous — it intones sinister fears of the government. For all its faults, the government has popular backing, and it stands in the way of a jihadi project to carve up Syria and ethnically cleanse it.

And there is a double standard
When it comes to Israeli mass crimes AI is rather cautious in the language used and in its recommendations. It is rather coy in mentioning “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”, and reference to the latter is virtually non-existent or couched in exculpatory language (favourite cushioning words: “alleged”, “could be construed as”). While it sparingly uses these accusations against Israel, it levels the same accusations against Palestinians — it applies a notion that there are crimes “on both sides”. AI’s harshest admonishment is that Israeli actions are not “proportionate”. There are no appeals to the “international community” which should not stand by, “never again…” One wonders what Amnesty has to say about the Israeli siege of Gaza, where the population has been put “on a diet” causing a dire situation for about 1.8 million people today. In this case, there are no reports, no calls to the “international community” to do anything, no accusations of “crimes against humanity”… AI uses another script altogether.

In the current press release, AI unambiguously states that both Syria and Russia are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. And if this is the case, there is an obligation for other states to act, to intervene. AI is not requesting an investigation, it is urging intervention.

While in the Israeli case AI states that crimes are committed on both sides, when it comes to Syria it is only the Syrian government that is deemed culpable. It is difficult to remove entrenched well armed jihadis who use residents as human shields. Jihadis dig themselves in and around hospitals and schools [10], and when action is taken against them there, the likes of Amnesty utter their clucking sounds.

In its latest statement AI states: “It must also send a strong message that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity will be held accountable, by referring the situation to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.” Fair enough. In 2002, Donatella Rovera, an AI researcher on the Middle East, was queried about why AI didn’t make a similar demand to hold Israel accountable at the ICC or ICJ, and she stated that AI didn’t make such demands.[11] Another standard applies.

An issue about sources…
Amnesty reports several statements made by residents of Ghouta, all giving harrowing accounts of the conditions on the ground. But all the statements blame the government for their predicament. “Like many Syrians, the humanitarian worker expressed deep distrust of the government.” Or “We hear rumours of reconciliation but that can never happen. The government hates us…” And other such unverifiable statements. And who exactly is reporting this? Does AI have a direct line to the “White Helmets”? All Amnesty has to do is compare the statements made before the liberation of Aleppo and the opinion of the residents now. If the residents are pleased with their condition without the jihadis around, then this should be sufficient to question the dubious statements originating from anonymous sources in Ghouta today.

Other examples
Amnesty International doesn’t want you to respect the Syrian government. Reviewing its press releases about Syria, it is all one-sided; the jihadis hardly merit a meaningful rebuke. But no report was as distorted as its multimedia presentation of the purported abuses in the Saydnaya Prison. Here Amnesty’s methodology was on show: accept hearsay, magnify it melodramatically, extrapolate and exaggerate [12]. This is not human rights reportage, it is crass propaganda. The timing of all these so-called reports is also dubious. On the eve of major reconciliation talks or negotiations, Amnesty publishes a report portraying the Syrian government as beyond the pale. Would anyone want to negotiate with such a party? The timing of several other AI reports coincide with attempts to resolve the conflict via negotiations. The timing of its latest press release coincides with a major Syrian government offensive into Ghouta — and portraying it as criminal in nature.

Human rights are not neutral
Harvey Weinstein, the sexual predator, made Amnesty International USA possible — he provided the funds necessary to establish the organisation. [13] Weinstein didn’t put up the funds because he fancied AI’s lovely researchers. People put up funds for such organisations to shape the way abuses and crimes are reported. In Weinstein’s case, his ardent devotion to Israel might explain his financial contribution to Amnesty USA. Amnesty is also a conduit to push propaganda desired by those who foster such organisations. The very nature of “human rights”, its very flexible nature, lends itself to prime manipulation.

A Syrian furniture salesman based in Coventry, a small city in the UK, runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Sitting in his living room, he produces reports about the latest atrocities, chemical attacks, and every other sordid detail to tarnish the Syrian government’s image. He reaches his mysterious sources by phone, invariably someone hostile to the Syrian government. The output of this one-man-band is then used by the BBC, CNN, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal,… and major media outlets to report on the situation in Syria. It is expensive for news organisations to have correspondents on the ground, it is dangerous; so what is better than “human rights” reports obtained for free! And does Amnesty International rely on SOHR? At least they should footnote their reports.

The main playbook
The US and some of its sidekicks have for decades been engaged in regime change in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America… The usual formula for this is to create civic organisations, e.g., Journalists’ union, Lawyer and Jurist guilds, select Labour unions… and human rights organisations. These people are then trained to exercise political power effectively by staging mass demonstrations, manipulating the media, spreading rumours, disrupting the government — all the way to the take over of parliaments. These are the so-called “colour revolutions”. They tried this in Syria, but opted primarily to arm and organise jihadis. The jihadis are backed by a propaganda machinery, and the US is conducting the largest disinformation/propaganda campaign in Syria today [14]. The essence of the campaign is to tarnish the image of the Syrian government, robbing it of its international legitimacy and support. Human rights reportage is essential to this campaign. By analysing Amnesty International reportage, it is evident that it is part of this campaign; it has weaponised human rights.

Currently there is a major buildup of US warships in the Mediterranean; and the Russian general staff fear that Syria will be the target of a major cruise missile attack.[15] Possibly, Russian forces will also be targeted. Couple this with the unprecedented black propaganda campaign against Russia in the US and the UK, and it seems very likely that a major shooting war is in the offing. Given that AI has lent itself in previous propaganda campaigns on the eve of wars, one finds that the latest Amnesty International report is merely a leading indicator for such a war. Amnesty International is embedded in a propaganda campaign — it will be cheerleading with blue and white pompons when the humanitarian bombs fall.

Paul de Rooij is a writer living in London. He can be reached at proox@hotmail.com

Endnotes
[1] AI, “Syria: Seven years of catastrophic failure by the international community”, 15 March 2018.
[2] Diana Johnstone, Fools Crusade, 20 Sep 2002. Johnstone documents the curious case of Jadranka Cijel. NB: AI was alerted to the fact that the accounts by the two women were questionable; it proceeded with the tour anyway.
[3] I have written quite a few articles about Amnesty for Counterpunch. The latest: Amnesty International: Whitewashing Another Massacre, CounterPunch, 8 May 2015.
[4] Uri Blau, Documents reveal how Israel made Amnesty’s local branch a front for the Foreign Ministry in the 70s, Haaretz, 18 March 2017. Neve Gordon, Nicola Perugini, Israel’s human rights spies: Manipulating the discourse, Al-Jazeera Online, 22 March 2017.
[5] Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley, Amnesty’s Shilling for US Wars, ConsortiumNews, 18 June 2012.
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RnxJ6TvFZ0&feature=youtu.be Also: Tim Anderson, The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, 2016.
[7] Alexander Cockburn reports that Amnesty was present during a US State Department briefing seeking to justify “humanitarian bombing”. How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing Raids: Those Incubator Babies, Once More? CounterPunch, April 1999.
[8] Ben Norton , US Ambassador Confirms Billions Spent On Regime Change in Syria, Debunking ‘Obama Did Nothing’ Myth, RealNews.com, 9 February 2018.
[9] Gareth Porter, How America Armed Terrorists in Syria, The American Conservative, 22 June 2017.
[10] Robert Fisk has reported on this fact in several of his articles. In “the Syrian hospital siege that turned into a massacre”, The Independent, 5 June 2015 there is a reference to tunnels under a hospital. In another article, the same, but at a school.
[11] Israel hasn’t joined the ICC, and thus ICC cannot bring any action against Israel. ICC is only meant to harass African tinpot dictators.
[12] John Wight, The Problems With the Amnesty International Report, Sputnik News, 15 February 2017. Important discussion with Peter Ford, the former British ambassador to Syria. Also, Tony Cartalucci, Amnesty International admits Syria’s ‘torture prison’ report fabricated entirely in UK, Sign of the Times, 9 February 2017. And, Rick Sterling, Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War, ConsortiumNews, 11 February 2017.
[13] Thomas Frank, Hypocrite at the good cause parties, Le Monde Diplomatique, February 2018
[14] Tim Anderson, The Dirty War on Syria, Global Research, 2016.
[15] TASS, US preparing strikes on Syria, carrier strike groups set up in Mediterranean, 17 March 2018

Source: NEO

Lately we’ve been witnessing an ever increasing number of reports and non-conspiratorial facts that expose an alliance that exists between Western liberals and jihadists. It’s hardly a secret that in Libya NATO fought a war on behalf of al-Qaeda and other radical groups to topple the legitimate government of what used to be the most prosperous and stable African state. Countries like Britain even used their intelligence services to help bring latent jihadists, some of whom were under police surveillance, in a bid to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

Even today such states as the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium are not just sponsoring radical militants across the Middle East and arming them, they are effectively providing close air support to radical forces in Syria, while helping the Saudis to aid the Wahhabist cause in Yemen.

A prominent alternative media source The Duran would note:

ISIS and al-Qaeda want to destroy secular, progressive, modern Arab governments whether Ba’athist, Nasserist or in the case of Libya one based on the Third International Theory–western leaders want the same. Jihadists believe it is their duty to replace secular governments with theocracy–western leaders back them up. Countries like secular France, Israel, Germany the US and UK don’t like to talk about the fact that Libya was a secular state with mass literacy, women’s rights, protections and safety for black people and high living standards.

Western government have been providing all sorts of assistance to radical terrorists right under our noses, acting on the pretext that they are assisting non-existent moderate rebels groups. In reality certain detachment of ISIS would pretend to be member of the so-called opposition forces in the morning, only to butcher civilians by hundreds in the evening. It comes as no surprise that recently the Salon magazine would publish a detailed report of the crimes against humanity committed by the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria, since there’s a long list of those being committed on the daily basis.

The efforts undertaken by governments, special services, civil society institutions of the Western world to support those so-called ‘moderate forces’ will inevitably lead to the continuation of the string of terrorist attacks in Western states, leading to the ever growing hatred that most Europeans have recently experienced towards Muslims.

The divide between various social and religious groups across the EU will become even deeper with every new terrorist attack. This development will transform those Muslims who have nothing in common with radical militants into outcasts, that are going to be unwelcome in most any European state. This will make the attempts to radicalize those groups that are being routinely taken by ISIS into a pretty simple task.

This means that after some time the Islamic State will become capable of enlisting enough outcasts to create a rouge army in the EU. The question is where will this army launch a jihad against the infidels in the Middle East or in Europe itself?

The ideas voiced by certain individual experts about the need to put an end to the exodus of Muslims from the conflict zones in the Middle East and North Africa look delusional at best. Judge for yourself, no European state will agree to invest massive financial resources in the rebuilding the destroyed economies of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, in a bid to create more or less decent living conditions for local residents that are fleeing their home towns in search for a better life in Europe.

Therefore, the ongoing fighting in those regions will only lead to an increase in the level of radicalization among local young people, who forced into exile and deprived of the decent and humane treatment that any individual is entitled to get.

The programs aimed at the de-radicalization introduced by a number of EU countries, in fact, are not only falling short of the expected effect, but just fail. This is especially true of the program of de-radicalization of French youth, that was adopted last May. Its failure is being manifested by the reports of two members of the French Senate: Esther Benbassa and Catherine Troendlé. Those ladies drafted a document that goes under the title of “Désendoctrinement, désensbrigadement et réinsertion des djihadistes en France et en Europe.” In short, this report subjects the attempts create centers of to deradicalization taken by the French government to an extensive amount of criticism, since local authorities have not simply failed to achieve their stated goals, but compromised the very idea of creating such centers.

Therefore, it is only logical that an ever increasing number of experts in various countries of the world has come to grips with the fact that the military defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq will not put an end to the string of terrorist attacks in Europe. That is why the problem of radicalization is, above all, the problem of European societies, and it must be solved in Europe. The Die Presse, for instance, seems convinced that it’s the only hope the EU has to put an end to the problem of terrorism.

For Germany, the defeats that the Islamic State is suffering in Syria is major security risk, since the more pressure is exerted on jihadists, the higher the threat of terrorist attacks in Western Europe, notes Christoph Wanner, a correspondent for the German TV channel N24.

That is why today the European political forces, just like their colleagues from across the ocean, must take decisive efforts in a bid put an end to radicalization of local Muslim communities and counter the spread of ISIS’ poisonous ideology.

Grete Mautner is an independent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

By John Pilger
Source: CounterPunch

The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa”. The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show”.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show”, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people. “We knew… that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be “a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammarGaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”.

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties”, of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children’s organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were under the age of ten”.

More than “giving rise” to Islamic State — ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 — these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator”, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To the Americans and British, Gadaffi’s true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African governments with military “partnerships”.

The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as “a rebel”.

Having plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south, terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida”, or the menace they had helped create.

On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. “Iraq!” he said. “We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it.”

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered “Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that “the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq … The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly”.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush’s blood-soaked “shit show”, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.

The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed”. As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

By Tony Cartalucci
Source: New Eastern Outlook
The terrorist attacks carried out in the heart of the French capital, either coincidentally or intentionally, have served as the perfect point of leverage for the West on the very eve of the so-called “Vienna talks” regarding Syria.

With its serendipitously strengthened hand and with France taking a more prominent role, the West is attempting to reassert not only its narrative, but its agenda regarding the ongoing conflict in Syria, an agenda that has – as of late – been derailed by Russia’s military intervention and recent gains made on the battlefield by Syrian military forces. The London Guardian stated in its article “Paris attacks galvanise international efforts to end Syria war” that:

The Isis attacks in Paris have galvanised international efforts to end the war in Syria, with a new deadline set for negotiations between the warring parties and for a country-wide ceasefire.

There is still no sign of agreement, however, on the key question of the future of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

It should seem extraordinary to the global public that even after the attacks in Paris, the West still insists on undermining the Syrian government toward its goal of “regime change,” which includes continued material support to armed militants – all of which are extremists, and many of which have either coordinated with, or fought under the banner of Al Qaeda and even the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS).

This is also considering the fact that the Syrian government is now currently engaged in battle with ISIS in and around Aleppo, and is currently threatening to sever its supply lines leading out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory.

Regarding this point, the Guardian would even report:

It was clear, however, that Russia and the US have again had to agree to disagree about Assad. The Paris attacks “show that it doesn’t matter if you’re for Assad or against him,” said the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. “Isis is your enemy.”

However, to explain the West’s apparent failure to prioritize, the Guardian claims:

Isis, in their [the West’s] view, is a symptom of political failings in both Iraq and Syria. The Vienna participants are to meet in Paris before the end of the year to review progress toward a ceasefire and the selection of delegations for the Syrian talks.

In reality, ISIS is not a “symptom of political failings.” It is the result of concerted, immense, multinational state-sponsorship. Entire armies of the immense scale ISIS operates on do not rise out of “political failings,” they rise from huge, preexisting financial networks, region-wide logistical support, multinational political support, intelligence networking, and experienced military planning and organizational skills.

The West and its regional allies, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, clearly constitute this immense multinational state-sponsorship ISIS has so far enjoyed. A look at any map depicting the Syrian conflict shows ISIS supply lines running directly out of NATO-member Turkey’s territory and in numerous reports, even out of the West’s most prominent papers, it is even admitted that ISIS is supplied in Syria, via Turkey.

It is clear then that “political failings” are not the “cause” of ISIS except only in the sense that the “failure” to exact regime change in Syria has prompted the West to continue propping up ISIS and other terrorist groups until the government in Damascus falls – and only when Damascus’ regional and global allies abandon it.

The West Got What it Wanted in Libya – And Created ISIS in the Process

The West’s claims during the Vienna talks that if only they get their way in Syria, the threat of ISIS will subside, is betrayed by the events surrounding the very rise of ISIS in Syria in the first place.

Just before the conflict reached critical mass in Syria during 2011, the US, UK, France, other NATO members, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), were already in the process of fully dividing and destroying Libya in pursuit of regime change.

They insisted that regime change was the only way to end the bitter fighting that had swept the country – regime change that just so happened to fulfill the long-held desire by Washington and Europe to see Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi ousted from power.

Through arming what the West called “rebels,” and through direct military intervention which included large-scale, nationwide airstrikes, naval bombardments, and even special forces, NATO devastated the country and turned it over literally to Al Qaeda. The West’s “rebels” turned out to be sectarian extremists all along, and in fact – with NATO’s help – they promptly took their weapons, fighters, and cash to begin the invasion of northern Syria via Turkey later that year.

The Business Insider would report in its article, “REPORT: The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels,” that:

The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

There have been several possible SA-7 spottings in Syria dating as far back as early summer 2012, and there are indications that at least some of Gaddafi’s 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles were shipped before now.

On Sept. 6 a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons for Syrian rebels docked in southern Turkey. The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi” who worked for the new Libyan government. The man who organized that shipment, Tripoli Military Council head Abdelhakim Belhadj, worked directly with Stevens during the Libyan revolution.

Belhadj, it should be mentioned, was the commander of US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) – which is literally Al Qaeda in Libya – and was so before, during, and after the 2011 Libyan war. Belhadj was also reportedly aligned with ISIS as it officially established itself in the shattered North African state. Fox News would report in its article, “Herridge: ISIS Has Turned Libya Into New Support Base, Safe Haven,” that:

[Catherine] Herridge reported that one of the alleged leaders of ISIS in North Africa is Libyan Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was seen by the U.S. as a willing partner in the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“Now, it’s alleged he is firmly aligned with ISIS and supports the training camps in eastern Libya,” Herridge said.

It is clear that despite Western claims that regime change in Libya would be the beginning of the end for Libya’s violence and instability, it was only the end of the beginning – and not only for chaos in Libya – but for other nations across North Africa and in Syria itself.

Using Another 9/11 to Justify Creating Another Libya

NATO’s intervention and regime change in Libya did not avert a refugee crisis, it helped create one. NATO’s intervention and successful regime change in Libya did not make the region or the world safer, it turned the entire nation into a breeding ground for terrorist organizations with so-far unprecedented reach and operational capacity. NATO’s goals in Libya did not prevent the refugee crisis, it helped start it. And with all of this in mind, having seen this and taken full stock of Libya’s outcome, the West has nonetheless moved forward with precisely the same agenda in Syria.

In all reality, the West has no intention of bringing peace or stability to Syria. Their goal is to leave Syria as divided and destroyed as Libya, and to use the chaos and instability fostered there as a springboard for other targets of the West’s proxy warfare – most likely Iran, Russia, and targets deeper in Central Asia.

The West promises that it will end the chaos in Syria, just like they promised it would end in Libya. It will not end in either.

With Libya’s fate in mind, and a repeat performance clearly taking shape in Syria should the West get its way, it must be made clear that no matter how many innocent people are killed by terrorists the West itself helped create and perpetuate, they will not get an opportunity to turn Syria into the “Libya of the Levant,” no matter how convenient and well-timed these killings are, no matter how deep they are within the heart of Europe or North America, and no matter how tragic and regrettable the aftermath is.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

By Jerome Corsi
Source: Global Research
More than 100 pages of previously classified Department of Defense and Department of State documents implicate the Obama administration in a cover-up to obscure the role Hillary Clinton and the State Department played in the rise of ISIS.

The documents were obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch.

They confirm WND reporting over the past three years of evidence that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens was involved in shipping weapons from Benghazi to support the al-Qaida-affiliated militias fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, effectively arming the Sunni jihadists who morphed into ISIS.

The documents further confirm WND reporting that the goal of the terrorists behind the Benghazi attack that killed Stevens was to force the release of Omar Abdul Rahman, the “blind sheik” in U.S. prison serving a life sentence for his involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and to avenge death of a prominent Libyan al-Qaida leader killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

“These documents are jaw-dropping,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “No wonder we had to file more FOIA lawsuits and wait over two years for them.”

Fitton referenced in particular a Defense Department document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA, dated Sept. 12, 2012. It documents that the attack on the Benghazi compound had been carefully planned by the al-Qaida and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman, BOCAR, which aimed “to kill as many Americans as possible.”

The document, dated the day after the Benghazi attack, was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Obama White House National Security Council.

“If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaida terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president,” Fitton observed.

“These documents also point to connection between the collapse in Libya and the ISIS war – and confirm that the U.S. knew remarkable details about the transfer of arms from Benghazi to Syrian jihadists,” Fitton stated.

He said the documents “show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits.”

“The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton,” Fitton said.

Plan to release the blind sheik

The heavily redacted Defense Department “information report” provides additional evidence for a WND article Jan. 27 reporting that James “Ace” Lyons – a former four-star admiral who served as the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and a founding member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi – proposed that the attack was an Obama administration-orchestrated kidnapping attempt that went “terribly wrong.”

Lyons speculated that the Obama administration wanted to give the al-Qaida-affiliated rebels operating in conjunction with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood an opportunity to kidnap Stevens and exchange him for the blind Sheik. The purpose of the plan, Lyons says, may have been to furnish the Obama administration with a pretext to justify to the American public the release of the blind sheik to then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, complying with a request Morsi made in his 2012 acceptance speech on becoming president of Egypt.

The Department of Defense documents released by Judicial Watch further reveals that a-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri sent BCOAR leader Abdul Baset, AZUZ, into Libya to seek revenge “for the U.S. killing of Aboyahiye (ALALIBY) in Pakistan.”

The documents provide additional evidence for a 2013 WND story reporting the Benghazi attack was in response to Zawahiri’s request to avenge the U.S. drone killing of Libyan al-Qaida leader Abu Yahya al-Libi in Pakistan’s Waziristan tribal area June 4, 2012.

CIA ‘not well organized’ narrative disputed

The newly released DOD and State Department documents also differ from the account of the Benghazi attack Michael Morell, the recently retired CIA deputy director, gives in his current book, “The Great War of Our Time.” On Page 206, he argues that viewing a CIA video of the Benghazi attack made in “real time” caused him to conclude that “with little or no advance planning, extremists in Benghazi made some phone calls, gathered a group of like-minded individuals to go to the TMF.”

In Morell’s narrative, the 9/11 Benghazi attack “was not well organized” but “seemed to be more of a mob that had come to the TMF with the intent of breaching the compound and seeing what damage they could do.”

“When you assess the information from the video, there are few signs of a well-thought-out plan, few signs of command and control, few signs of organization, few signs of even the most basic military tactics in the attack on the TMF,” Morrell said.

“Some of the attackers were armed with small arms; many were not armed at all. No heavy weapons were seen on the videotape,” Morell continued. “Many of the attackers, after entering through the front gate, ran past buildings to the other end of the compound, behaving as if they were thrilled just to have overrun the compound. They did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting vandalism.”

Morell stressed that the Obama administration, despite his objections to the contrary, has refused to make available for public viewing the yet classified CIA “real time” video of the Benghazi attack.

Weapons shipped to Syria

Judicial Watch also noted the DOD documents released this week contain the first official documentation that the Obama administration knew that weapons were being shipped from the Port of Benghazi to rebel troops in Syria.

An October 2012 DOD report confirmed:

Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPGs, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the (Qaddafi) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The Syrian ports were chosen due to the small amount of cargo traffic transiting these two ports. The ships used to transport the weapons were medium-sized and able to hold 10 or less shipping containers of cargo.

A DIA document further detailed:

The weapons shipped from Syria during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s and 125mm and 155mm howitzers missiles. The numbers for each weapon were estimated to be: 500 Sniper rifles, 100 RPG launchers with 300 total rounds, and approximately 400 howitzers missiles [200ea – 125mm and 200ea – 155 mm.]

The heavily redacted document does not disclose who was shipping the weapons.

Another Defense Intelligence Agency report, written in August 2012, the same time period the U.S. was monitoring weapons flows from Libya to Syria, said that the opposition in Syria was driven by al-Qaida and other extremist Muslim groups: “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.”

Judicial Watch noted the sectarian direction of the war in Syria was predicted to have dire consequences for Iraq, which included the “grave danger” of the rise of ISIS.

The DIA document noted the following:

This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI [al Qaeda Iraq] to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy, the dissenters. ISI could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.

Judicial Watch commented that some of the “dire consequences” are blacked out but the DIA presciently warned one such consequence would be the “renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.”

On Feb. 26, Judicial Watch has reported on State Department documents obtained by the Washington-based watchdog organization in a separate FOIA lawsuit that revealed aides for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, knew from the outset that the Benghazi mission compound was under attack by armed assailants tied to a terrorist group.

By Thierry Meyssan
Source: Information Clearing House

Western governments no longer hide the fact that they’re using jihadists – NATO overthrew Mouamar el-Kadhafi by using al-Qaïda as its only ground forces; Israël displaced the UN Forces to Golan, and replaced them with al-Nosra; the international anti-Daesh Coalition allowed Palmyra to fall in order to cause more problems for Syria. But while we can understand Western interests, we fail to grasp why and how the jihadists can serve Uncle Sam in the name of the Coran.

We often ask ourselves how the Pentagon and the CIA manage to manipulate millions of Muslims and send them off to fight for Uncle Sam’s interests. Of course, it’s true that certain leaders are paid agents, but all jihadists believe that they’re fighting and dying in order to gain access to Paradise. The answer is childishly simple – using the rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood as a start, it’s possible to evade human reality and send them to kill anyone you like as long as you wave a red flag at them.

Officially, the Islamic Emirate no longer recognises the authority of Ayman al-Zawahiri, and has therefore left al-Qaïda. Nonetheless, in many places, like the Qalamun mountains, it is still impossible to distinguish between them, since the same jihadists claim allegiance to both flags at once.

Of course, one could argue that this is only a personal quarrel – Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi simply wants to replace the current leader. But while the two organisations have exactly the same practices, they develop very different dialogues.

They share the slogans of the Muslim Brotherhood – « The Coran is our Constitution », « Islam is the solution ». A life of holiness is therefore very simple. It doesn’t really matter if the Creator has made us all intelligent, we must, in all cases, apply the Word of God like a machine. And when the situation is not dealt with in the Book, we should just smash it to pieces. The result is obviously catastrophic, and nowhere have these organisations been able to set up even the beginnings of the perfect society that they hope for.

History demonstrates their differences. From 1979 to 1995, in other words, from the CIA operation in Afghanistan to the Popular Arab and Islamic Congress in Khartoum, Oussama Ben Laden’s mercenaries fought the Soviet Union with public aid from the United States. From 1995 to 2011, in other words, from the Congress in Khartoum to operation « Neptune’s Spear », al-Qaïda took position against « Jews and Crusaders » while continuing its struggle against Russia in Yugoslavia and Chechnya. And since 2011, in other words, since the « Arab Spring », it has supported NATO in Libya and Israël at the Golan frontier. Generally speaking, Western public opinion has not kept up with this evolution. It remains convinced of the danger of a mythical Russian expansionism, persists in blaming the jihadists for the attacks of September 11th, has not realised what happened in Libya and at the Israeli frontier, and maintains the false idea that al-Qaïda is an anti-imperialist terrorist organisation. As for the Arabs, they do not base themselves on facts, but choose, according to the situation, between reality and Western propaganda so as to invent a romantic narrative for themselves.

From its side, the Islamic Emirate is moving away from the Coran and closer to the neo-conservatives. It claims that the main enemies are other Muslims – the Chiites and their allies. It has clearly forgotten the Bosnian episode during which Ben Laden’s Arab Legion were supported both by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Iran. But who are the allies of the Chiites? The Syrian Arab Republic (secular) and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Sunnite). In other words, the Islamic Emirate is fighting in priority against the Axis of Resistance to imperialism. De facto, it confirms that it is an objective ally of the United States and Israël in the « Greater Middle East », even though, theoretically, they are the enemy.

The malleability of these two organisations resides in their basic ideology, that of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is therefore logical that almost all of the jihadist leaders, at one time or another, have been members of one branch or another of the Brotherhood. By the same token, it is logical that the CIA has not only supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, since their reception at the White House by President Eisenhower in 1955, but also all its foreign branches and all the dissident groups. Finally, the califat that Hassan el-Bana dreamed about and that Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi pretended to want, is not the reproduction of the Golden Age of Islam, but the reign of obscurantism.

This was confirmed by Laurent Fabius in 2012, in other words, before the split between al-Qaïda and Daesh, when he declared: « On the ground, they’re doing a good job! »

Thierry Meyssan, French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.