We Need To Shut Down The Trump Administration’s Push Towards Regime Change In Iran

Last week, Trump’s lawyer and close ally Rudy Giuliani made a speech which celebrated the poverty and suffering that American sanctions have created for the people of Iran. Said Giuliani: “We saw a sign of a man trying to sell his internal organs for five hundred American dollars — probably a fortune in Iran today! This is truly pitiful. These are the kinds of conditions that lead to successful revolution, and God willing, non-violent revolution.”

This was a bluntly phrased endorsement of the strategy that the United States has taken on for instigating regime change in Iran. As congress’ rejection this May of an Iran military operations bill showed, even the most pro-war politicians see an invasion of Iran as unrealistic. And they think this with good reason; several months ago, many media headlines pointed out that the U.S. would need to reinstate the draft in order to win a military war with Iran. Since a draft would create an explosion of popular resistance, U.S. imperialists have instead chosen the route of trying to destroy Iran through economic and political sabotage.

And despite the attempts from Trump administration officials to deny that they’re working towards this goal, their actions tell us otherwise. For one piece of evidence, a Reuters report from July quoted U.S. officials as having said that “The Trump administration has launched an offensive of speeches and online communications meant to foment unrest and help pressure Iran to end its nuclear program and its support of militant groups.”

This claim is confirmed by the U.S.’ brutal recent economic sanctions against Iran, Trump’s sabotage of the nuclear deal, the direct efforts from Mike Pompeo and others to help anti-government Iranians, and the covert operations that the CIA has been carrying out in Iran. Trump’s threats against Iran at his recent U.N. speech, along with the new bogus claim from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu about an Iranian nuclear threat, show where the U.S./NATO axis of evil plans to take this campaign of aggression.

The anti-war journalist Caitlin Johnstone has astutely summed up what to think of the U.S.’ claim that it isn’t aiming for Iranian regime change: “as we saw them do with Libya and as we’ve seen them attempt with Syria, the US government has ever since the disastrous Iraq invasion had a standing policy of denying that it is pushing for regime change in key strategic regions while doing exactly that.” And we can get a sense of this operation’s potential timetable by looking to the infamous “Free Iran” speech that John Bolton made last year, which promised that Iran would be overthrown by 2019.

In short, an illegal and potentially catastrophic breach of sovereignty is being carried out, and the centers of power are trying to divert people’s attention elsewhere. It’s sadly ironic that the leaders of the Democratic anti-Trump movement have threatened mass mobilizations in defense of the Russiagate probe, while the Trump administration’s egregious actions in Iran, Syria, Yemen, and other places have been largely ignored or supported by these “Resistance” leaders. And it’s telling that Russian collusion is a still unproven charge which helps the agenda of the military/intelligence complex, whereas opposing Trump’s foreign aggressions would harm American imperialism.

We need to get past all of the political distractions and organize towards shutting down the rampage of the American empire. As the empire loses its dominance, it’s carrying out increasingly large and desperate war campaigns around the world to try to regain its former power. And as Americans, we can do a favor for the world by restraining the empire until it collapses completely.

Normal American Life Continues As Our Government Carries Out A Genocide In Yemen

It has never been a mystery to me how ordinary Germans could ignore what was going on around them. They did it the same way we ignore all of the pain that millions of strangers are going through at any given moment. As long as other people’s terror isn’t in the room with you, as long as it’s off behind barbed wire a few miles away, it’s not just easy to ignore but almost impossible to notice.-Nathan J. Robinson

Like most of the other crises the world is facing, the situation in Yemen isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of decisions that our own country is making, and as Americans we have the power to put an end to it. As Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institute recently assessed: “If the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war [on Yemen] has to end, it would end tomorrow because the Royal Saudi Air force cannot operate without American & British Support.”

All we have to do is take action against this, which I suggest people do by avoidingpaying taxes for the military, joining anti-war organizations like World Beyond War, and participating in events like Cindy Sheehan’s upcoming Women’s March on the Pentagon. If enough people do these things, the slaughter in Yemen will end, along with most of the world’s wars. And the global plutocracy that relies on these perpetual wars would lose its control in the process of this upheaval.

So when it’s come to Yemen, our government and media have successfully tried to keep Americans in the same detached mindset that the Germans were in. We sometimes hear about how the U.S. and Britain have directly supplied Saudi Arabia with the weapons that have been used to kill many thousands of people. We see how the U.S. is supporting the Saudi blockade of goods to Yemen that’s making over 100 children die every day from starvation and disease. But even people who know about these things can very easily separate themselves from it, think of it as just another detail in the news, and go on with their daily lives.

Otherwise, people either ignore the situation in Yemen or they believe the pro-Saudi talking points that are often put out by the media. For instance, neoconservative pundits characterize the Yemen conflict as “Iran’s war” while Iran has played a very small role in it for the last three years; they also claim that the Houthis are behind the main Yemen blockade, despite the Houthis neither controlling enough territory nor having the motivation to do this; Saudi Arabia’s defenders also say that the Saudis were “forced” to impose their own blockade, despite this blockade having been completely unprovoked; and the Saudis say that their 2015 blockade is only about preventing weapon smuggling, but it’s directly prevented the shipment of food and medicine to Yemen and put eight million people in danger of starvation.

Also, the Saudis’ actions are not defensive. They’ve attacked infrastructure, homes, schools, factories, busses, gas stations, farms, government buildings, water treatment facilities, and other property without any provocation, meaning that they kill civilians only for the crime of being Yemeni. They’re also using famine and disease as a weapon, causing psychological harm, and destroying culture and heritage. All of these acts fit the criteria for genocide. But this fact is whitewashed in a lot of discussions about Yemen, and the U.S.’ massive role in the genocide is deflected from.

American imperialism has always protected itself with these kinds of distortions of the truth. And a lot of the time, it’s been easiest to simply keep Americans away from any news about the wars that their government is involved in. For instance, even while Obama was bombing seven countries and keeping America at war longer than any other president, cheery headlines from the mainstream media about Obama’s partial troop withdrawals created a popular perception that the U.S. had ended its wars.

This view has continued throughout the Trump presidency, with the media’s general reluctance to report on America’s unprecedentedly vast global military operations making most Americans not give war very much thought. Between the constant distractions in our political situation, along with the stresses that people are always navigating during the era of neoliberal capitalism, it can be hard to focus on something so seemingly far away. But every person’s fight for justice is interconnected, and the powers that be are hoping we stay away from the fight.

4 Reasons Why The White Helmets Are A Front For War Propaganda

In a post-Iraq invasion world, skepticism of Western narratives is always the most reasonable position. And the suspicions about the Syria Civil Defense-commonly known as the White Helmets-have been proven completely correct. Here are four facts about this group that have backed up the claims of the supposed conspiracy theorists:

1-They were created for advancing propaganda

The White Helmets were founded in March 2013 by James Le Mesurier, a British ex-mercenary and private military contractor. Le Mesurier’s project was made in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of Transitional Initiatives, which is a political wing of the agency that’s helped with American subversion efforts in Cuba and Venezuela.

The Syria Civil Defense was soon given $123 million dollars by the U.S., U.K., and Qatari governments, and by Western NGOs. The U.S. State Department continues to fund it. And as you might have guessed, these powers haven’t invested so in much in the White Helmets because they care about “humanitarianism.” In addition to all of these suspicions details, the White Helmets’ brand was conceived by The Syria Campaign, a New York-based marketing company that’s part of a larger politically focused marketing entity called Purpose.

And what has The Syria Campaign done to show that it’s an impartial force for humanitarianism? It’s organized rallies throughout the West that have the focus of demonizing Assad and Putin, paid protesters to carry out a pro-White Helmets flash mob, and put out statements that advocate U.S. military intervention in Syria-including the infamous “no fly zone” policy that experts have concluded would result in an active war between America and Russia. When this is the entity that’s supporting the White Helmets, the following details about them aren’t surprising.

2-Their members have been caught assisting in public executions and sympathizing with Islamist terrorists

In 2015, a video came out which showed an al-Qaeda fighter publicly shooting a man in the head while they were in the rebel-held Syrian town of Haritan. Immediately after the execution, two members of the White Helmets came onto the scene and disposed of the body. Amid the fallout, the White Helmets claimed that these members were fulfilling their duty by performing “the emergency burial of the dead.” But this explanation comes off as bizarre, since these White Helmets had been waiting just off camera prior to the killing. What reason could they have had to be there other than that they were assigned to help al-Qaeda?

Questions like these again appeared in May 2017, when a video came out of a public execution in the Syrian rebel-held city of Jasim. The footage shows that just seconds after an alleged criminal was shot in the head by rebel militants, three White Helmets members rushed into the crowd to remove the body-this time while one White Helmet cheered on the killing.

The White Helmets’ attempts to Whitewash this incident were flimsy. “The White Helmets are seen, not only celebrating the grizzly murder but performing their usual mop-up by carting the bleeding body unceremoniously from the scene,” observes Vanessa Beeley. “Their later claims of giving the body a decent burial and affording the victim some dignity are rendered ridiculous when one views the video.”

Then there’s the video, posted in May 2015 by White Helmets member Muawiya Hassan Agha, which showed extremist Syrian rebels torturing two captured Syrian rebels. As well as the footage of Agha celebrating the capture if Idlib by al-Qaeda forces. It’s undeniably a trend for White Helmets members to support jihadist groups in various ways.

3-Their leaders have also helped the group collaborate with terrorists

Even amid these facts, is there still plausible deniability that this group is working with terrorists? The White Helmets claimed that their members had disobeyed their rules of impartiality by assisting in the May 2017 execution, and Agha was ejected from the group for his role in rebel atrocities. But to believe that these and the other instances of White Helmets members helping jihadists have all been accidents, we’d have to ignore the organization’s proven efforts to work with terrorist groups.

Despite the attempts to refute this charge, White Helmets members have been admitted by British journalist John Cantlie to be acting as “the Islamic State’s fire brigade;” they’ve worked in close proximity to where ISIS, al-Nusra, and al-Qaeda have operated; the Dutch government recently stopped funding the White Helmets after a report came out showing that the group’s assets have likely gone to al-Qaeda; and more broadly, they’ve served as propaganda assets for the West’s war against Assad, which is a war that directly benefits these terrorist organizations.

Also, the White Helmets have been openly welcomed by jihadist leaders as allies in the fight to overthrow Assad. In March 2017, a video came out which showed an al-Qaeda leader hailing the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of the revolution.” And the al-Qaeda linked Saudi jihadist leader Abdullah al-Muhaysini has praisedthem as “the Mujahideen of the civil defense.”

Are we also supposed to think that the White Helmets have earned this reputation from the terrorists entirely by coincidence? Many unrelated events need to be happening in order for us to be assured that this organization has no terrorist ties.

4-They’ve been shown to neglect their “humanitarian” duties so that they can advance propaganda

To support my claim from earlier that the White Helmets have served as propaganda assets, I’ll offer some facts about what the group has actually done.

Firstly, the White Helmets have hugely exaggerated the numbers of people they’ve saved. They’ve made claims about having saved “65,000” Syrian residents, when realistic population estimates of the areas where they’ve operated prove this number to be implausible. To inflate these estimates, they’ve even had to re-use people who they’ve saved in the past for their videos; as Eva Bartlett observed in a 2016 speechabout the White Helmets’: “their video footage actually contains children that have been 'recycled' in different reports; so you can find a girl named Aya who turns up in a report in say August, and she turns up in the next month in two different locations."

The idea that the White Helmets’ goal is to help war victims has also been refuted by accounts from people who the White Helmets claim to want to aid. Interviews last year with Aleppo residents found that the White Helmets save civilians only for the purpose of filming videos, and leave behind the people who don’t need to appear in their clips; one man said that “the White Helmets came to save their own. And if they found civilians, they might help, and they might not.” Another resident has described the White Helmets as “camera posers, thieves, and raiders.” The White Helmets’ videos, unsurprisingly, have been presented to the Western public as supposed evidence that Assad is to blame for Syria’s U.S.-created civil war.

The White Helmets’ defenders have responded to this interview by claiming that the Syrian civilians have said these things under duress. But if these people aren’t telling the truth, why have the White Helmets made the mentioned efforts to inflate their rescue numbers? Why have they worked with jihadists? Why have they been extensively backed by the entities that are waging a war against the Syrian government? Given all we know about this group, it would make perfect sense for them to be staging videos in this way.

Bringing these facts to light

The efforts from mainstream media outlets to “debunk” the charges against the White Helmets are not substantive. The analyses about the White Helmets from these sources have mainly attacked the character of the White Helmets’ critics, while not disproving what these critics bring up.

An article in The Guardian from last year titled “How Syria's White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine” is a good example of this; when you scrutinize the piece in detail, it only calls the concerns about the group “propaganda” while giving vague statements to support its claims.

Unfortunately, the U.S./NATO empire doesn’t need to offer too many details to make its narratives believed. Since headlines influence public opinion more than the content of articles, many people are likely to skim past articles like the one I just mentioned and conclude that the White Helmets are indeed innocent. But if independent journalists work to bring out the details that these people aren’t being exposed to, the establishment’s narratives won’t be able to hold sway.

As Capitalism Collapses, Let’s Work To Build A New World

In between the times where I’m engaging with the exhausting political fights and arguments of our current era, I like to think of these facts:

-Humanity now has the resources and the technology to give every person on Earth a safe and comfortable life. It’s a lie that the world’s hunger is due to overpopulation, and automation has made it possible to completely eliminate poverty since the 19th century. Even the neoliberal World Bank agrees with this view of global poverty.

-A permanent end to war is possible. The causes of war-which are imperialism and the military industrial complex-are not essential parts of society, and they can be eliminated if we work towards it. Wars of aggression are already illegal under U.N. rules, and war still exists only because we’ve failed to enforce those rules.

-Human civilization can coexist with the natural world if it chooses to. It’s possible for society to completely run on renewable energy. And a simple technological switch, like building homes out of hemp, would drastically reduce dependence on natural resources.

-Knowledge and creativity have never been this abundant or easy to access. There are over 4.1 billion people with internet access, and this unprecedented network of information-sharing has already made it much easier to hold power accountable, to spread knowledge, and for artists and thinkers to have exposure. The only thing stopping us from fully utilizing this tool is the propaganda and censorship that’s imposed by the people in power.

All of these goals, in fact, haven’t been realized for that same reason: the oligarchs who run the world are doing all they can to keep humanity on the path to destruction.

Yet all the time, I see evidence that a different world is emerging. The actions that we take have ripple effects, and people’s activism efforts, past and present, are improving the situation in unexpected ways. The Standing Rock protests have created an international anti-pipeline movement that’s having impact. Worker strikes and membership for socialist groups are increasing, mainly because of the work that people have put in towards building a workers’ movement. It’s easy to act like there’s no way to improve things, but any positive work that you do will have meaningful consequences that add up.

Now think of this within the context of the collapse that the old systems are undergoing. When the next global economic crash happens-and the gargantuan market and debt bubbles tell us that a crash is coming-it will likely be worse than the one from 2008. The hardships that it creates will add to the pain from the other crises that are going on, like climate change, expanding war, and the increasing violence and social repression from America’s police state.

We’re already seeing these crises converge with Hurricane Florence; South Carolina prisons haven’t been evacuated for the storm, and many people
haven’t evacuated because they’re too poor to leave their homes. Human life and the ecosystem are being destroyed on bigger and bigger scales as capitalism reaches its conclusion.

But if we can get people to react to this crisis by taking action, I think that our social movements will gain a lot of momentum. Maybe so much momentum that the power of the corporate state will be overwhelmed, like happened to the French monarchy, czarist Russia, the British empire in India, and so many other power establishments throughout history.

So even as the situation becomes more dire, recognize that we’re at a point where dramatic change is possible, and take advantage of that by doing everything possible to enact change. Given what I’ve mentioned above, human history will enter an amazing new period if we succeed.

Supporting American Syria Intervention Is Supporting Islamic Terrorists

The hypocrisy of Donald Trump’s rhetoric about radical Islamic terrorists was revealed this month, when he came out in support of the U.S.’ efforts to help jihadists in Syria. While the president has used fear of Islamic extremists to persecute innocent Muslim Americans, he’s let the U.S. military protect terrorist groups like ISIS to advance the war against the Assad government. And now that Syria and Russia are trying to reclaim Syria’s Idlib province from the jihadist rebels who’ve occupied the region, Trump is effectively siding with the terrorists by having the U.S. defend Idlib from Assad and Putin’s intervention efforts.

This is the uncomfortable truth behind all of the anti-Assad propaganda that Western politicians and pundits have been putting out for the last eight years; supporting the war against Assad is the same as supporting al-Qaeda and the other terrorist groups that are benefiting from the destabilization of Syria.

And despite the attempts from mainstream media outlets to portray America’s support for jihadists as a conspiracy theory, the evidence for this practice is undeniable. Last year, while co-sponsoring the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview that:

This isn't a matter of giving weapons to people, but they end up falling into the wrong hands. We are directly arming militants who are working under the command of al-Qaeda, all in this effort to overthrow the Syrian government. We have been providing direct and indirect support to al-Qaeda, the very group which attacked us on 9/11, that we are supposedly continuing to fight against and trying to defeat...The thing that should make everyone feel sick is that people would rather support, directly and indirectly, al-Qaeda, than actually give up their regime change goals.

If Gabbard’s claims have any deniability, even Obama official Ben Rhodes recently admitted that the U.S. has been supporting jihadists in Syria. Here’s a transcript of an interview with Rhodes from this June, wherein The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan presses Rhodes about how the terrorist factions were being treated:

MH: Oh, come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms. You know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

BR: Well, I was going to say: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

MH: You were in there as well.

BR: Yeah, but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

Despite Rhodes’ attempt in this statement to shift the blame for the war away from the West, his use of the word “yeah” confirms Hasan’s charge.

This “dirty war” strategy of directly giving these terrorist groups arms may have ended last year, but like I said, America’s current actions in Idlib continue the effort to support jihadists. As does the Trump administration’s apparent endorsement of a new regime change effort in Syria, which will result in a massive jihadist takeover of the region if Assad is successfully overthrown. Then there’s the U.S.’ ongoing support for the White Helmets, a propaganda-oriented group whose members have been repeatedly revealed to include jihadists.

These facts aren’t surprising at all when you look at the history of imperialism. The U.S. worked with Nazi scientists after World War II; during the 1980’s, the CIA aided militant Islamist groups to help fight Afghanistan’s  government; collusion with terrorist groups, dictators, and criminal organizations has been a regular part of American foreign policy for decades. But America’s support for terrorists in Syria needs to be put into the public consciousness, because the credibility of the West’s war propaganda depends on the perception that the rebels and their Western backers are noble people who want to defeat the “monster”Assad.

If we take the masks off of the “moderate” rebels, Americans will overwhelmingly reject their government’s murderous Syria policies.

Why All Of The West’s “Chemical Attack” Charges Against Assad Are Baseless

As the U.S. escalates its illegal aggressions against the Syrian government, it’s desperate to find a passable pro-war narrative. This has resulted in a recent series of unsubstantiated claims from the U.S. that Bashar al-Assad plans to commit a chemical attack, which have been helped by a U.N. report from this week which details chemical attacks that have recently happened in Syria.

What the U.N. leaves out in its attribution of these attacks to the Syrian government is the fact that Assad’s involvement in these attacks is highly implausible. The real perpetrators of the attacks are very likely the multiple U.S.-supported terrorist factions in Syria.

This is because whereas these factions have been admitted by the U.S. State Department to possess and regularly use chemical weapons, there is no evidence that Assad has a chemical weapons supply. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons concluded in January of 2016 that chemical weapons were no longer held by the Syrian government as far as the evidence tells us. When we know all of this, why does it make sense to assume that Assad is behind the attacks? Shouldn’t the prime suspects be the people who we’re already sure have chemical weapons at their disposal?

Last year, when this part of the Syria situation threatened to undermine the case for Assad’s involvement in the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident, the defenders of the official narrative were not able to come up with a compelling argument to solidify their claim. Three days after the charge against Assad was made, The New York Times’ Scott Shane published a piece in defense of the narrative titled Weren’t Syria’s Chemical Weapons Destroyed? It’s Complicated. After summarizing the pre-2016 operation to have Syria get rid of its chemical weapons, the article says:

So did that eliminate the threat? Not entirely, though by all accounts, it removed lethal weapons that could have caused slaughter and suffering on a huge scale. Even as the O.P.C.W. completed its mission, new reports emerged of scattered attacks in Syria using chlorine and other suspected chemicals.

This is a very misleading paragraph. When it talks about those attacks, it doesn’t mention the fact that the jihadist groups have chemical weapons supplies. This leads the reader to think that Assad could have been the only potential culprit. The next two paragraphs use the circular reasoning from within this statement to supposedly prove that Assad still has chemical weapons:

Obama administration officials say that they always believed Mr. Assad might be withholding at least small chemical supplies, and that in public statements, Mr. Kerry and others tried to refer to the elimination of Syria’s “declared” stocks, a nuance often lost in news reports. American officials repeatedly returned to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons with intelligence reports on remaining chemical stocks, pressing for further action.

Despite the failure to completely eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama administration officials and outside experts considered the program fundamentally a success. “We strongly believed it was better to get 1,300 tons of chemical weapons out of the hands of the Syrian regime, or let them fall into the hands of ISIL,” Jonathan Finer, who was Mr. Kerry’s chief of staff and is now a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard, said, using another name for the Islamic State.

The key part is where it admits that the Obama White House thought that Assad “might” have not given up all of the chemical weapons stash. This doesn’t support the claim in the next paragraph that Assad definitely still has these weapons. These speculative claims are given an appearance of being factual with this next paragraph, which paints a visual image of how Assad’s theoretical chemical weapons supply could have been attained:

Where did the nerve agent used in the attack this week come from? Two possibilities are receiving attention: that the agent, sarin, was in stocks Mr. Assad hid from inspectors, or that weapons specialists in the Syrian government manufactured a new supply. While it is not simple to make sarin, it is possible in a small lab that could be easily hidden in a basement, out of sight of inspectors and foreign spy satellites.

In short, the evidence doesn’t support the claim that Assad still has chemical weapons. And to believe what our leaders are telling us about Syria, you’d have to believe that Assad has retained a big enough supply of chemical weapons to have carried out numerous gas attacks since the OPCW’s report was released, or that Assad has maintained a massive chemical weapons manufacturing program all in secret. You’d have to believe that all of these attacks have been undoubtedly perpetrated by Assad, even though we know the Syrian rebels have chemical weapons. You’d have to discount the overwhelming evidence that Assad is not the one behind these incidents. And you’d have to believe that Assad, despite his having been winning the war in recent years, would knowingly provoke retaliation from the West by using illegal weapons to kill strategically unimportant civilians.

And this is where all of the chemical attack charges against Assad fall apart. Not only is there no evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons since 2015, but there are in fact no solid reasons to blame Assad for any of the chemical attacks that have happened throughout the war. The proof simply isn’t there. “It’s one of the oldest most despicable dirty tricks in the book, used to launch wars based on Big Lies or escalate them,” Strategic Culture’s Stephen Lendman wrote today. “The same ugly stunt occurred before. Not a shred of credible evidence suggests Syrian forces ever used CWs any time throughout the war –  or that it retains any now.”

There’s a reason why these facts are so actively omitted from discussion in the Western media; if people knew about them, all of the war propaganda about Syria would become ineffective.

A Reminder Of Why Our Government Hates Assad

WikiLeaks has shown that in July of 2012, an email exchange between Hillary Clinton and one of her aides (seen above) revealed one of the true motives behind the West’s campaign against the Syrian government: to benefit Israel by sparking a Sunni-Shiite war that would happen after Assad was overthrown. This email was written by Sidney Blumenthal, but Blumenthal’s boss agreed with its basic premise, as was hinted at by the jihadist rebel troop mobilizations, anti-Assad psyops, and shipments of chemical weapons to rebel forces that happened during Clinton’s time as secretary of state.

Add this to the email that Clinton aide James P. Rubin had sent in April 2012 which also suggested that America should destabilize Syria for Israel’s sake, and we have direct evidence that the members of the Obama administration were not driven by the values of “humanitarian” interventionism when they began their war against Syria. They were thinking about how they could help the U.S./NATO empire and the corporations that control it.

Beyond what WikiLeaks has told us, we know that Israel has long wanted to gain control over Syria’s Golan Heights region. We know that the Genie oil company, which has deep ties to the Israeli and U.S. governments, seeks to exploit the Golan’s oil reserves. And we know that Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying in recent years to get Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan recognized by the U.S. (These connections probably have something to do with the Syria escalations that have happened under the Trump administration, since the Trump family has strong ties to Israel and Trump’s cabinet is filled with Israel-linked figures like John Bolton.)

The Obama administration may have rejected Netanyahu’s 2015 request for recognition of Israeli dominance in the Golan, but as we’ve seen, the Obama White House’s actions in Syria were greatly focused on how to serve Israel. And they were a continuation of an effort to destabilize Syria whose development had started in the Bush administration; in 2007, General Wesley Clark had revealed that the U.S. was planning to “take out” Syria, and the U.S. has been arming and training jihadists in Syria at least as far back as 2005. Dick Cheney, interestingly, is on Genie’s Strategic Advisory Board.

Since then, more than half a million people have died so far in the Syrian war, and around 13.5 million Syrians have come to require humanitarian assistance. But it’s all been worthwhile for Israel and Genie Oil, which got a major victory last year when President Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan. And the Western imperialists aren’t finished, with officials like Bolton and Pompeo planningmore strikes against Syria and putting forth a potential new regime change attempt.

Why do I believe that these figures aim to use a false flag chemical attack to advance their goals in Syria, as the Russian MoD is claiming? I believe this because these people are not motivated by compassion for the Syrians that they say they want to “save.” They’re working to help the global corporate oligarchy, and they only hate Assad because Assad threatens this goal. History has shown that when a government has this mindset, false flags are a given.

Western Media Demonizes Russia’s Forces For Defending Syria From Terrorists

In a media environment where the U.S. government can legally insert covert propaganda into the information that Americans are exposed to, it’s good to look for odd patterns that appear in the news headlines. In the last week or so, just such a trend has come up, and it’s involved truly Orwellian revisions of who Americans are supposed to view as the enemy.

As U.S.-backed jihadist “moderate rebel” forces have continued their occupation of Syria’s Idlib, and as Trump administration hawks like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo have pushed for massive escalations with Syria in recent weeks in a desperate attempt to keep control over Idlib, a trend has come up where pundits characterize Russian and Syrian forces as the malicious aggressors against Syria’s innocent rebels. For instance, on September 8th The Guardian’s George Monbiot-who’s been known to make misleading statements that help the Western empire’s case for Syria involvement-tweeted this:

Why are so many of those who rightly deplore Western military intervention in the Middle East silent about or even supportive of Russian military intervention in #Syria? Please RT if you oppose Russian bombing.

This is a false equivalency, and it very effectively manipulates a Western public that’s already been conditioned in recent years to see Russia as an enemy. Russia is defending an ally that’s been besieged by terrorists, and that will no doubt need
Russia’s help as U.S. attacks continue. Monbiot’s response to this fact has been to write a tweet claiming that Russia’s help for Syria is no different from South Vietnam’s support for the U.S. during the Vietnam War, which really just rephrases his earlier, similarly falacious argument.

In addition to Monbiot’s strange misrepresentations of the Syria situation, many
media outlets have recently attempted to demonize Russia’s involvement in the conflict and to portray the terrorists in a good light. This is the message that a was implied in a New York Times article, which praises the vaguely defined Syrian rebels before briefly acknowledging that these rebels consist of al-Qaeda fighters. This avoidance of calling the rebels terrorists served the article’s other purpose, which was to portray Putin and Assad as the ones to blame for the catastrophe in Idlib.

This bizarre narrative about Russia’s role in Syria has become dominant in the Western media, like when The Atlantic recently made the misleadingly phrased assessment that “As Bashar al-Assad and Russia prepare to assault Idlib, there are up to 3 million people with nowhere to go.” The article also greatly downplayed the fact that the U.S. is backing terrorists, emphasizing the fact that U.S. troops “operate exclusively against ISIS” while leaving out America’s support for jihadist forces. Also notable is the Daily Beast headline from yesterday which sensationally reads: “Putin Is Pushing for Total Victory in Syria No Matter How Many Civilians Die.”

In short, Western imperialists are slaughtering Syrians with bombs and jihadist fighters while trying to shift attention onto the most convenient scapegoats. What comes to mind is this (deceptively made) line from Joseph Goebbels in a speech at the 1934 Nuremberg rally: “The cleverest trick used in propaganda against Germany during the war was to accuse Germany of what our enemies themselves were doing.”