Stephen Lendman

Bullies choose easy adversaries to pummel. Equal fights are shunned. It's the same in schoolyards or battlefields. America and Israel operate this way. They avoid foes able to give as much as they take. Rogue governments never say they're sorry.

During Cast Lead in January 2009, Professor Jeremy Salt wrote "A Message to the brave Israeli Airmen." His comments apply to what's now ongoing.

What’s it like firing missiles at people you can’t see, he asked? Does it help being unable to see who you're killing? Is your conscience eased by inflicting disproportionate force on people unable to fight back and civilian infrastructure? Are you comfortable about slaughtering civilian men, women, children, and infants? Does this weigh on your conscience, or are you at ease? Do you sleep well or have nightmares about men, women and children you killed at home, in beds, kitchens, living rooms, schools, mosques, at work, or at play? Do farmers in their fields, mothers with children, teachers in classrooms, imams in mosques, children at play, the elderly, frail or disabled threaten your security? Do you ever question what you’ve done and why? Have you no shame, no sense of decency, no idea of the difference between right and wrong? Do you know the law? If so, why do you violate it? Doing so makes you complicit in crimes of war and against humanity? Do you know that? Do you blindly follow orders or have a mind of your own? Have you murdered civilians before? Will you do it again if ordered? Will you keep following orders blindly or do the right thing?

"Brave" Israeli airmen, soldiers, sailors, and other security force personnel are cowards. They've acted lawlessly for decades. Palestinian suffering is a way of life. Imagine living every day not sure if you'll live or die. Imagine young children growing up this way. Do Israeli children know what Palestinian ones endure? Are they told? Do they care? Do their parents?

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William Blum

Syrian Rebels/Free Syrian Army/CIA Death Squad
hold up their rifles as they "secure" a street in Saqba,
in Damascus suburbs. (Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah)

"Today, many Americans are asking — indeed I ask myself," Hillary Clinton said, "how can this happen? How can this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated, and at times, how confounding the world can be." [1]

The Secretary of State was referring to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya September 11 that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans. US intelligence agencies have now stated that the attackers had ties to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.[2]

Yes, the world can indeed be complicated and confounding. But we have learned a few things. The United States began blasting Libya with missiles with the full knowledge that they were fighting on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. Benghazi was and is the headquarters for Muslim fundamentalists of various stripes in North Africa. However, it's incorrect to claim that the United States (aka NATO) saved the city from destruction. The story of the "imminent" invasion of Benghazi by Moammar Gaddafi's forces last year was only propaganda to justify Western intervention. And now the United States is intervening — at present without actual gunfire, as far as is known — against the government of Syria, with the full knowledge that they're again on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. A rash of suicide bombings against Syrian government targets is sufficient by itself to dispel any doubts about that. And once again, the United States is participating in the overthrow of a secular Mideast government.

At the same time, the Muslim fundamentalists in Syria, as in Libya, can have no illusions that America loves them. A half century of US assaults on Mideast countries, the establishment of American military bases in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, and US support for dictatorships and for Israel's genocide against the Palestinians have relieved them of such fanciful thoughts. So why is the United States looking to forcefully intervene once again? A tale told many times — world domination, oil, Israel, ideology, etc. Assad of Syria, like Gaddafi of Libya, has shown little promise as a reliable client state so vital to the American Empire.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Readers ask me from time to time to recommend a book from which they can learn about economics.

The problem with reading a book to learn economics that is taught in the universities and practiced in Washington is that economics is now a highly formalized subject based on abstract models and assumptions and has been mathematized. It is not that the subject is totally useless and without any applicability to real world problems. Rather, the problem is that the discipline both lags an ever-changing world and got some things wrong at the beginning. Consequently, learning economics places one inside a box where some of the tools and understanding provided are outdated and incorrect.

For example, every textbook will draw a picture of agriculture as the perfect example of competitive markets in which “no producer’s output is large enough to affect price.” This made sense when one-third of the US work force was on family farms. Today, American agriculture is dominated by corporations and agribusiness. Additionally, part of the disastrous financial deregulation pushed by no-think economists and special interests was the removal of position limits on speculators. Formerly, speculators smoothed agricultural and commodity markets by buying and selling in order to stabilize price over periods when supply and demand were out of balance. Now speculators can dominate markets and rig prices to the benefit of their profits. There are many such examples where economics no longer speaks to the real world.

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Nile Bowie

For sixteen months, the people of Syria have undergone economic hardship, tremendous human suffering and the unparalleled horrors of war. As the Syrian opposition officially abandons the ceasefire and calls for foreign intervention and the imposition of a no-fly zone [1], US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced a new transition plan that would topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, signaling the increasing possibility of intervention outside the mandate of the United Nations [2]. Following clashes between militant rebel groups and government forces that claimed the lives of 80 Syrian troops [3], rebels in Aleppo have reportedly taken 11 hostages and vowed to release them only when a new state is established [4]. While Bashar al-Assad attributes the perpetuation of Syria’s crisis to outside forces [5], Iran has expressed its readiness to mount an armed resistance against foreign military forces in Syria [6]. Regardless of who perpetrated the recent killings in Qubayr and Houla, the profoundly disturbing images of lifeless children begs the question, has the Syrian crisis reached a point of incorrigibility?

Western media has largely relied on unconfirmed opposition accounts crediting the Shabiha, pro-government Alawite militias with carrying out massacres across Syria as a result of the Assad government “brainwashing the militia into believing the Sunni majority was their enemy,” as reported by The Telegraph [7]. Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has recently reported that anti-Assad Sunni militants carried out the massacre in Houla, targeting pro-government Alawi and Shia minorities, “Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population is Sunni. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet” [8].

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Stephen Lendman

Already embroiled in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and numerous proxy wars in Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, central Africa, and elsewhere, evidence suggests Obama's preparing for more.

Washington-generated Syrian violence rages out of control. Efforts for nonviolent resolution are systematically subverted. Saturday's Damascus terrorist attacks and a Sunday Aleppo one reveal America's true intentions.

At least 27 Damascus lives were lost. Around 140 others were wounded, many seriously. Two deaths and about 30 injuries occurred in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and largest city.

On Saturday, cars packed with explosives detonated outside Syria's air security intelligence center and police headquarters. Heavy damage was caused besides the human toll.

The attacks came two, then three days after millions around the country rallied supportively for Assad on the uprising's one-year anniversary. It showed Washington won't tolerate peaceful resolution. Regime change is planned by any means, including war. Expect it.

Outrageously, major media scoundrels spuriously accused Assad of targeting his own facilities. Al Jazeera quoted opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) member Bassma Kodmani saying:

"I don't think any of the opposition forces or the Free Syrian Army has the capacity to do such an operation to target these buildings because they are fortresses. They are very well guarded. There is no way anyone can penetrate them without having strong support and complicity from inside the security apparatus."

Al Jazeera shamelessly lost all credibility. Run by Qatar's pro-western regime, propaganda replaced truth and full disclosure. It's legitimacy no longer exists. It's no different from BBC and other Western media scoundrels.

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Stephen Lendman
February 06, 2012

Lendman's "Russia and China Veto Syria Resolution" and "Security Council Showdown on Syria" have been included in this post. - Editor

Washington's longstanding policy is regime change in Iran and Syria. At issue is replacing independent regimes with client ones and securing unchallenged control of valued Middle East resources.

On February 4, Russia and China vetoed a largely one-sided anti-Assad resolution. A previous article called him more victim than villain. Yet he's falsely blamed for months of externally generated violence.

In fact, he confronted a Western-backed armed insurgency replicating the Libya model. By so doing he acted responsibly against a heavily armed insurrection.

Imagine a similar scenario in America. Local police, National Guard forces, and Pentagon troops would confront it violently. Combined, they'd way exceed Assad's response.

Mass killing would follow. Western media scoundrels would approve. In contrast, the New York Times calls Syria's self-defense state-sponsored "butchery."

Its position substitutes disinformation for truth and full disclosure. They're scrupulously avoided to misinform, misrepresent and betray readers. It's longstanding major media policy. The Times featured it longer than others.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.”

Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in the other US puppet states in the Middle East. Washington has beefed up Saudi Arabia’s jet fighter force. Most recently, Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.

Another signal that Washington has a new war on its agenda is the raised level of Washington’s rhetoric and demonization of Iran. Judging by polls Washington’s propaganda that Iran is threatening the US by developing a nuclear weapon has met with success. Half of the American public support a military attack on Iran in order to
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Those of us who are trying to awaken our fellow citizens start from a deficit that the minds of half of the US population are under Big Brother’s control.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports from its inspectors on the ground in Iran have made clear for years, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted any enriched uranium from its nuclear energy program. The shrill hype coming from Washington and from the neoconservative media is groundless. it is the same level of lie as Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Every US soldier who died in that war died in behalf of a lie.

It could not be more obvious that Washington’s war preparations against Iran have nothing to do with deterring Iran from a nuclear weapon. So, what are the war preparations about?

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Stephen Lendman

America's business isn't just war and grand theft. It's also regime change by whatever means.

A previous article mentioned General Wesley Clark, from his book, "Winning Modern Wars," saying that Pentagon sources told him two months after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. Months earlier, they were finalized against Afghanistan.

Clark added:

"And what about the real sources of terrorists - US allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn't it repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia?"

"It seemed that we were being taken into a strategy more likely to make us the enemy - encouraging what could look like a 'clash of civilizations' - not a good strategy for winning the war on terror."

On September 5, Nil Nikandrov's Global Research.ca article asked if "After Libya: Is Venezuela Next?" saying:

NATO insurgents attack on Venezuela's Tripoli embassy and compound narrowly missed claiming casualties as "ambassador Afif Tajeldine and the embassy staff moved to a safer location at the last moment and left Libya shortly thereafter."

Nikandrov added that Venezuela's embassy was the only one looted, suggesting perhaps a message threatening Chavez as America's next target.

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Stephen Lendman

In his new article headlined, "9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?" Paul Craig Roberts said:

"Today Americans are unsafe, not because of terrorists and domestic extremists, but because they have lost their civil liberties and no protection from unaccountable government power."

So have millions under occupation and/or attack by US/NATO forces, terrorizing them in the name of "democracy" to "set them free."

America is a global terror state. For decades, it's menaced humanity's survival by imperial wars for wealth and power, not liberation or democratic values. All US administrations reviled them, notably Obama's, including at home. Under him, "unaccountable government power" terrorizes globally.

It's a truism that where large energy reserves exist, America has imperial plans to control them. Libya is now ground zero. US-led NATO assassins invaded to menace, intimidate, kill, plunder, and cause out-of-control chaos, notably in Tripoli, the struggle's current epicenter.

On August 16, Michel Chossudovsky's article headlined, "The Pentagon's 'Salvador Option:' The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria," saying:

Reports suggest the use of "thousands of Islamist 'freedom fighters,' reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA's jihad (holy war)" against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan.

Chossudovsky wrote about possible plans

"to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. [The Turkish army would] "house, train, and send them to Syria. Thousands of similar elements are in Libya.

On August 20, independent journalist Thierry Meyssan said NATO debarked large numbers of jihadi forces with heavy weapons on Tripoli's coast. Special forces led them. Violence and mass killing followed. It still rages, slaughtering hundreds, perhaps thousands, and wounding many more.

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Stephen Lendman

The US/UK/French-led war on Libya will be remembered as one of history's greatest crimes. It violates the letter and spirit of international law and America's Constitution.

The Nuremberg Tribunal's Chief Justice Robert Jackson (a US Supreme Court Justice) called Nazi war crimes "the supreme international crime against peace."

His November 21, 1945 opening remarks said:

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."

He called aggressive war "the greatest menace of our times."

International law defines crimes against peace as "planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing." All US post-WW II wars fall under this definition.

Since then, America waged direct and proxy premeditated, aggressive wars worldwide, killing millions in East and Central Asia, North and other parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, as well as Central and South America.

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