Patrick O’Connor

A leaked phone conversation between Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, has exposed the anti-democratic and colonialist character of the Obama administration’s intervention in the former Soviet republic.

The discussion between the two officials includes a detailed review of which right-wing opposition figures Washington is working to install in office, and how it is using the United Nations to rubber-stamp the operation. While Germany and other European powers have worked closely with the Obama administration in promoting the violent protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, the leaked phone call reveals tensions between the imperialist powers. At one point Nuland tells Pyatt, “F--k the EU.”

The discussion, posted anonymously on YouTube, underscores the thoroughly cynical character of Washington’s public diplomacy. The Obama administration’s rhetoric about “democracy” and the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own future is a charade, concocted for public consumption. Behind the scenes, government officials speak frankly with one another about the real agenda—advancing Washington’s geo-strategic and economic interests in Eastern Europe by installing pro-US and anti-Russian puppet figures in the Ukrainian capital.

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Patrick O’Connor

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop

Over the past fortnight the Australian government has joined the witch hunt being orchestrated by the Obama administration against National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden with the aim of charging and jailing him in the US, or silencing him permanently.

Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week branded Snowden a "traitor” who was guilty of “betraying his country.” Abbott’s comments followed those of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop who hysterically accused Snowden of “unprecedented treachery” and “shamefully betraying his nation while skulking in Russia.”

These denunciations feed directly into the campaign of lies and threats being whipped up in ruling circles in the US. Unnamed American intelligence and military officials are publicly airing proposals for Snowden’s assassination. Senior government officials such as National Intelligence Director James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder demand his return to the US to face a show trial on trumped-up espionage charges.

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Patrick O’Connor

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop delivered a speech in Washington, DC on Thursday night denouncing former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, who has exposed the illegal global surveillance regime developed by the US and its allies, including Canberra.

In June [she declared], a grave new challenge to our irreplaceable intelligence efforts arose from the actions of one Edward Snowden, who continues to shamefully betray his nation while skulking in Russia. This represents unprecedented treachery—he’s no hero. Snowden claims his actions were driven by a desire for transparency, but in fact they strike at the heart of the collaboration between those nations in world affairs that stand at the forefront of protecting human freedom.

This torrent of lies and slanders was in line with what Bishop had earlier declared the “core priority” of her visit to Washington: “strengthening the Australia-United States alliance.”

After President Barack Obama’s January 17 speech that pledged bogus intelligence “reforms”—while issuing an unabashed defence of the NSA and its activities against the people of the US and the world—various members of Congress denounced Snowden as a traitor and Russian spy who ought to be tried and executed.[*] Mike McCaul, Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, declared that Snowden “was cultivated by a foreign power to do what he did… he’s not a hero by any stretch. He’s a traitor.”

The Australian foreign minister is now the only representative of another government to echo such language and weigh into the coordinated campaign against the NSA whistleblower.

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Patrick O’Connor

Wednesday’s opening of talks on the Syrian crisis was dominated by the Obama administration’s insistence that the purpose of the “Geneva II” discussions was to remove President Bashar al-Assad and install a pro-US puppet government. In the manner of a colonial overlord, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared,

We see only one option, negotiating a transition government born by mutual consent.

Kerry made clear that “mutual consent” meant an outcome dictated by American imperialism. “That means that Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government,” he continued.

There is no way, no way possible, that a man who has led a brutal response to his own people can gain legitimacy to govern.

Such thuggish arrogance is the trademark of US policy in every region of the world. Any government that is viewed as a hindrance to the pursuit of the geopolitical interests of the American ruling class is targeted for destabilization or overthrow, through covert or overt means.

As Kerry spoke, extreme right-wing and fascistic forces in the Ukraine backed by the US and its allies in Western Europe escalated protests aimed at bringing down a government considered to be too closely tied to Russia.

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Patrick O’Connor

The release of a United Nations chemical weapons inspectors’ report pointing to multiple sarin gas attacks carried out by so-called “rebel” forces further exposes the Obama administration’s lies about Syrian government responsibility for an August 21 chemical shelling of the Ghouta area outside of Damascus.

Washington seized on the incident as the pretext for a planned bombing campaign and stepped-up drive for regime-change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The UN report’s appearance last Thursday follows the publication of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s detailed article in the London Review of Books revealing that the Obama administration deliberately manipulated intelligence to falsely assert it had proof of Syrian government and military responsibility for the Ghouta attack.

Hersh cited current and former US military and intelligence officials on the falsification of intelligence regarding the August 21 attack as well as the Obama administration’s concealment of the existence of intelligence reports warning that the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front militia had the capacity to manufacture and weaponise the nerve gas sarin used in the Ghouta attack.

The 82-page UN chemical weapons report is based on extensive on-the-ground investigations of multiple sites where allegations of chemical weapons use were raised by either the Syrian government or the American, British and French governments. The inspectors analysed soil and other environmental samples, examined hair, urine, tissue and blood samples for trace chemicals, interviewed survivors, witnesses and medical personnel, and documented munitions allegedly used to deliver the sarin in each incident.

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Patrick O’Connor

Long standing leader of the African National Congress (ANC) and the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela, died December 5 in Johannesburg at age 95, after suffering a protracted respiratory illness.

Mandela’s death has been accompanied by an outpouring of tributes from world leaders, each seeking to outdo the other in presenting the most mawkish depictions of Mandela as a secular saint. US President Barack Obama called the former ANC leader “one of the most influential, courageous, and profoundly good human beings that any of us will share time with on this Earth,” while his predecessor, George W. Bush, described Mandela as “one of the great forces for freedom and equality of our time.”

Underlying the cynical rhetoric of the current and former war criminals occupying the White House, and that of their allied heads of government around the world, is genuine gratitude for the invaluable service Mandela rendered to the South African ruling elite and world imperialism. Mandela utilised his indubitable political skills and personal courage to stave off the threat of a social revolution in South Africa, dismantling the Apartheid regime while defending capitalism and protecting the property and wealth of the country’s white rulers and of transnational corporate investors.

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Patrick O’Connor

Apache Helicopters take off to attack Libya

British and French assault helicopters began operations over key Libyan cities on Saturday, marking a significant escalation of NATO’s war of aggression in the North African state.

Four British Apache helicopters based on the aircraft carrier HMS Ocean, docked in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast, launched multiple attacks on targets in the eastern oil centre of Brega. Libyan government-controlled checkpoints between Brega and another oil port, Ras Lanuf, were also hit.

According to a NATO statement, the targets destroyed by the Apaches’ 30mm cannon fire and laser-guided Hellfire missiles included “military vehicles, military equipment and fielded forces.”

French Tigre and Gazelle helicopters also began operations. At the same time, warplanes continued to bomb infrastructure and other targets in the capital, Tripoli.

Apache helicopters have been widely deployed by American and British forces in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The “collateral murder” video released by WikiLeaks last year documented just one bloody incident involving the Apaches. The attack helicopters now in use over Libya are reportedly all manned by British veterans of the war in Afghanistan.

NATO’s use of attack helicopters again demonstrates the fraud of the war’s “humanitarian” pretext. Apache operations have nothing to do with enforcing a no-fly zone or defending civilians. They are being used to boost the regime-change campaign targeting Muammar Gaddafi. President Barack Obama and his European allies are attempting to install a new client regime in Tripoli in order to advance their strategic and economic interests in the oil-rich country and across the North African region.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

The mounting death toll exposes NATO claims about “protecting the people of Libya.”

NATO announced yesterday it is continuing its military intervention into Libya for another 90 days, extending the initial 90-day period that would have expired on June 27. The criminal bombardment of the oil-rich North African country has now been formally authorised until the end of September. Washington and its European allies are clearly readying an intensified campaign aimed at ousting the government led by Muammar Gaddafi and installing a client administration in Tripoli.

The 90-day extension was unanimously agreed to in a meeting held in Brussels involving ambassadors from all 28 NATO states as well as diplomats from Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sweden. The US and its allies afterwards stressed that the extended authorisation did not constitute a deadline. Pentagon Spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan declared that ending the campaign “depends on conditions on the ground”, and that Washington will remain part of the mission “until the objectives are complete.”

NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued a statement on the 90-day extension: “This decision sends a clear message to the Gaddafi regime—we are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya. We will sustain our efforts to fulfill the United Nations mandate.”

These pretexts for NATO’s war have been utterly discredited. The US, Britain, and France have spearheaded the drive for regime change in Libya in order to reassert their regional geo-strategic interests following the uprisings in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt and to install a regime more compliant with the demands of the transnational oil companies seeking to exploit the country’s lucrative oil reserves.

NATO leaders now make little effort to conceal the reality that military operations are centrally aimed at removing Gaddafi from power—a goal that is not authorised under the “mandate” supposedly provided by UN. The military campaign has involved repeated assassination attempts against Gaddafi and his family. For the Obama administration and its partners, UN Security Council Resolution 1973 was never intended to do anything other than provide some diplomatic and pseudo-legal cover for imperialist intervention.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

The chief prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, yesterday demanded that arrest warrants be issued for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif Al Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi, on crimes against humanity charges.

Three ICC judges will now examine a 74-page dossier detailing the alleged crimes before making a decision on the requested warrants. These moves come after the UN Security Council issued a request in late February for a criminal investigation. Britain and France, backed by the US, instigated this as part of their drive for regime-change in Libya, aimed at installing a client regime in the strategically significant and oil-rich state.

The rank hypocrisy of the imperialist powers levelling accusations of crimes against humanity is transparent. The leaderships in Washington, London and Paris have no legal, political or moral authority to be issuing such charges against anyone. They are collectively guilty of war crimes being inflicted daily on the Libyan population.

Just hours after Moreno-Ocampo submitted his dossier to the ICC, NATO air strikes again hit Gaddafi’s residential compound in central Tripoli in yet another attempt to assassinate the Libyan strongman. The unlawful US-European efforts to liquidate senior regime members come as the bombing campaign is intensifying, with a wide range of civilian infrastructure now being targeted.

Many civilians and hundreds of Libyan troops have been killed. NATO now makes little pretence of limiting its intervention to protecting civilians from repression by the Gaddafi regime—the ostensible remit of the intervention as laid out in United Nations Resolution 1973. Western Special Forces and intelligence operatives are active on the ground, coordinating NATO air strikes and the moves of the so-called “rebel” fighters.

The neo-colonial war is but one theatre of the US military’s operations internationally. The Obama administration has intensified the war in Afghanistan, extended the conflict into Pakistan’s border regions, and carried out extra-legal targeted assassinations in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and other countries.

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Patrick O’Connor
WSWS

Palestinian protesters attempt to cross the Syrian border into Israel.
(Photograph: Jalaa Marey/Getty Images)

Israeli soldiers yesterday killed at least fifteen Palestinians and wounded many more as they suppressed protests held at border posts facing Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza to mark the 63rd anniversary of the founding of the Zionist state.

This latest massacre of Palestinian civilians inflicted by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) again demonstrates the Israeli government’s brazenly unlawful operations. The situation also exposes the Obama administration’s “humanitarian” pretext for the bombardment of Libya.

NATO’s war is supposedly necessary to protect unarmed civilians from the possibility of being killed by government forces—but Washington raises no objections to the murderous activities of its closest ally in the Middle East, which it arms and finances to the tune of billions of dollars each year.

The exact death toll from yesterday’s demonstrations remains unclear, with differing numbers provided by various media outlets. According to the Associated Press, Lebanese security officials reported that ten people were killed on the Lebanese side of the border fence. One person was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in Gaza. Others were killed in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights when a crowd of unarmed protestors broke through the demarcation fence with Syria and marched into the village of Majdal Shams.

May 15 marks the anniversary of Israel’s establishment in 1948, but for the Palestinian people it is commemorated as “the catastrophe,” or al-Nabka. The Zionist state was founded through a terror campaign triggering one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. An estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes, and their property was expropriated. Denied the right to return ever since, there are now about 4.5 million refugees and their descendents in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the occupied territories.

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