Thursday, January 28, 2016

Britain had more motivation to kill Aleksandr Litvinenko than Russia, brother claims 

The grave of murdered ex-KGB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko is seen at Highgate Cemetery in London, Britain, January 21, 2016. © Toby Melville / Reuters 
The brother of Aleksandr Litvinenko says the UK government had more motivation to kill him than Russia did, despite a British public inquiry which concluded that President Putin “probably” approved the assassination. 
Maksim Litvinenko, Aleksandr's younger brother who lives in Rimini, Italy, responded to the Thursday report by saying it was “ridiculous” to blame the Kremlin for the murder of his brother, stating that he believes British security services had more of a motive to carry out the assassination.
"My father and I are sure that the Russian authorities are not involved. It's all a set-up to put pressure on the Russian government,” Litvinenko told the Mirror, adding that such reasoning is the only explanation as to why the inquiry was launched 10 years after his brother's death.
He called the British report “smear” on Putin, and stressed that rumors claiming his brother was an enemy of the state are falseHe added that Aleksandr had planned to return to Russia, and had even told friends about the move.
Litvinenko went on to downplay his brother’s alleged role as a spy, working for either Russia or MI6, adding that the Western media is to blame for such characterization.
"The Russians had no reason to want Alexander dead,” he said. “My brother was not a spy, he was more like a policeman...he was in the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] but he worked against organized crime, murders, arms trafficking, stuff like that.”
Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006, when assassins allegedly slipped radioactive polonium 21 into his cup of tea at a hotel. But his brother Maksim cast doubt on whether that was actually the poison used, saying he believes it could have been planted to frame the Russians.
"I believe he could have been killed by another poison, maybe thallium, which killed him slowly, and the polonium was planted afterwards,” he said. He added that requests to have his brother's body exhumed, in order to verify the presence of polonium, have been ignored by Britain.
"Now after 10 years any trace [of polonium] would have disappeared anyway, so we will never know,” he said, adding that British authorities had not collaborated with Russian investigators on the case.
“This case became a big PR campaign against the Russian government and its president in particular,” Maksim Litvinenko told RT in an interview in 2014. “The West is pressuring Russia very hard now. The MH-17 crash, Crimea, the war in Ukraine, sanctions against Moscow and now this inquiry – I'm not buying that this is a coincidence.”
When asked why Aleksandr Litvinenko's widow Marina continues to maintain that the Kremlin is responsible for the murder, he said: “She lives in London, to survive she has to play the game and take this point of view. She can't say anything else."
Back in 2012, Litvinenko’s father backtracked on his claims that Vladimir Putin was responsible for his son's death, and asked the Russian president for forgiveness. Walter Litvinenko told RT that his anger had made him say what the Western media wanted to hear.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry has also dismissed the British report, blaming London for politicizing the “purely criminal” case of Litvinenko's death.
Russia’s UK ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, told RT that the inquiry's conclusion was “not justified,” and that the investigation was “very politicized” and “biased.”
“In order to prove something, you have to present the facts. As soon as the British side proves…their conclusions, we will be ready to consider [them],” the ambassador said, adding that the Russian side “did not even have a chance to study the documents [of the investigation].”

Kurz vor dem Beginn der Verhandlungen in Genf trafen sich Gruppen der syrischen Opposition im "Hotel de la Paix" (Hotel des Friedens) in Lausanne, Schweiz, 27.  Januar 2016.
Kurz vor dem Beginn der Verhandlungen in Genf trafen sich Gruppen der syrischen Opposition im "Hotel de la Paix" (Hotel des Friedens) in Lausanne, Schweiz, 27. Januar 2016.
In Genf sollen am Freitag die Friedensgespräche zwischen den Konfliktparteien im syrischen Bürgerkrieg beginnen. Unmittelbar davor drohen die Parteien aus dem in Saudi-Arabien gegründeten „Hohen Verhandlungskomitee“ das Treffen abzusagen. Neben der Regierung und den unterschiedlichen Milizen sitzen auch deren ausländischen Schutzmächte am Tisch. Bis zum letzten Moment bleibt die Teilnehmerliste umkämpft. RT stellt die wichtigsten Akteure und ihre Ziele vor.
Unmittelbar vor den Friedensverhandlungen für Syrien drohen Oppositionsparteien aus dem in Saudi-Arabien gegründeten „Hohen Verhandlungskomitee“ erneut das Treffen abzusagen. Der Sprecher der Organisation, Salim al-Muslat, führte als öffentliche Begründung an, dass die reguläre syrische Armee ihre Kampfhandlungen nicht einstellt. Allerdings soll ein Waffenstillstand erst das Ziel der Gespräche sein, die die von Saudi-Arabien unterstützten Syrer nun erneut verzögern könnten.
Am Donnerstag erinnerte der Außenminister der USA, John Kerry, die syrischen Oppositionellen daran, dass es sich um eine "historische Möglichkeit" für Gespräche handelt, und dass sie ohne Vorbedingungen in die Verhandlungen gehen sollten. Die „Internationale Unterstützungsgruppe für Syrien“ verständigte sich Ende 2015 auf einen verbindlichen Fahrplan für das zerstörte Land. Der Gruppe gehören neben der Europäischen Union, der Russischen Föderation und den USA auch zahlreiche Staaten der Region an. Neben Saudi-Arabien, das seinen Einfluss in der arabischen Welt in den letzten Jahren aggressiv ausgeweitet hat, sind dies die etwa Türkei und Katar. Außerdem schicken der Iran und der Irak Vertreter in die Verhandlungen.
Für die UNO, deren Sicherheitsrat den Prozess mit der Resolution 2254 gebilligt hat, leitet der Sondergesandte Staffan de Mastura die Verhandlungen. Er orientierte am Montag darauf, kurzfristig einen umfassenden Waffenstillstand zu erreichen, der es ermöglicht, humanitäre Hilfe in das Land zu schicken und gemeinsam die Terrormiliz Daesh (IS) zu bekämpfen. Das sich diesem Ziel der Irak, Iran und die Russische Föderation anschließen, kann als gesichert gelten.
Die anderen Teilnehmer verfolgen jedoch Ziele, die teilweise weit über das UNO-Mandat hinausgehen. Um die Mehrheitsverhältnisse während der Verhandlungen von vornherein zu beeinflussen, versuchte insbesondere Saudi-Arabien zahlreiche terroristische Gruppen an den Tisch zu bringen. So bestehen die saudischen Herrscher darauf, dass mit Jaish al-Islam (Armee des Islam) und Ahrar al-Sham (Islamische Bewegung der freien Männer der Levante) zwei sunnitische Extremistenvereine am Tisch sitzen.
Der Türkei ist es besonders wichtig, die Nationale Syrische Koalition in den Verhandlungen zu haben, die seit Beginn der Unruhen vom türkischen Territorium aus Politik in Syrien macht. Andererseits will der türkische Regierungschef Rejib Erdogan unter allen Umständen verhindern, dass die kurdische PYD-Milizen anwesend sind. Sie betrachtet die bewaffneten kurdischen Verbände als Terroristen. Für Russland und die USA sind die PYD-Verbände hingegen der verlässlichste Partner gegen Daesh.
Die Resolution 2254 legt fest, dass „allein das syrische Volk über die Zukunft des Landes entscheidet“. Angesichts der Tatsache, die das gesamte aufständische Spektrum seit Jahren von ausländischen Mächten subventioniert wird, von Saudi-Arabien und anderen Golfstaaten, aus der Türkei, den USA und den ehemaligen Kolonialmächten Frankreich und Großbritannien, ist diese natürlich eine unrealistische Vorstellung.
Hinter der diplomatischen Formulierung versteckt sich jedoch der Umstand, dass die aktuelle Regierung und Präsident Bashar al-Assad bestenfalls nach Neuwahlen abtreten. Wenn sie nicht sogar im Amt bestätigt werden. Einen von außen erzwungenen Regierungswechsel wird es nicht geben. Auf diesen Punkt bestanden insbesondere die Russische Föderation, der Iran und der Irak.
Die Türkei, Saudi-Arabien und die Golfstaaten, aber auch die USA und die Europäer halten die islamistischen Extremistenverbände hingegen für das kleinere Übel. Sie wollen die Regierung Assad unter allen Umständen loswerden. Zwar besteht inzwischen Konsens, dass die Al-Qaida-Truppe al-Nusra und Daesh (IS) nicht an den Verhandlungen teilnehmen werden. All die Terrororganisationen haben jedoch seit 2011 vom umfangreichen Geldsegen aus den USA und den Golf-Staaten profitiert.
Insofern werden die Verhandlungen stark davon abhängen, ob sich deren internationale Paten mit den anderen Mächten ins Verhältnis setzen. Die Voraussetzungen dafür stehen nicht besonders gut. Saudi-Arabien, dass sich mit einem 34-köpfigen „Hohen Verhandlungskomitee“ inzwischen die Schirmherrschaft über die Opposition gesichert hat, brach vor kurzem die diplomatischen Beziehungen zum Iran ab.


Das „Koordinierungskomitee“ vertritt die syrischen oppositionellen Gruppen, die in Damaskus aktiv sind. Sein Sprecher ist der alte Oppositionelle Hassan Abdel Azim. Es besteht aus etwa zehn zumeist linken Parteien, kurdischen und aramäischen Gruppen. Außerdem unterstützen zahlreiche unabhängige Aktivisten das „Koordinierungskomitee“. Es handelt sich um den Teil der syrischen Opposition, der sich im Jahr 2011 nicht in den gewalttätigen Widerstand hat verwickeln lassen.
Seine Mitglieder plädieren für eine Verhandlungslösung mit der Baath-Regierung und lehnen jede militärische Einmischung von außen ab. Außerdem treten sie entschieden gegen religiöses Sektierertum auf. Das Bündnis, dessen Sitz sich in Damaskus befindet, wird von der Regierung zwar toleriert. Einzelne Mitglieder werden allerdings immer wieder schikaniert oder sogar verhaftet.


Die wichtigste syrisch-kurdische Gruppe ist die „Demokratische Unionspartei“ (Partiya Yekitîya Demokrat, PYD). Sie ist Teil des „Koordinierungskomitee“, spielt aber wegen ihrer Präsenz im Nordosten Syriens eine besondere Rolle. Sie gilt als Ableger der kurdischen Arbeiterpartei PKK aus der Türkei, die in den USA und Europa als Terrororganisation eingestuft ist. Ihr bewaffneter Arm, die Volksverteidigungseinheiten (YPG) sind der mit Abstand stärkste Gegner von Daesh (IS).
Mit dem Beginn des Volksaufstands im Jahr 2011 organisierte die PYD in Rojava lokale Räte und Selbstverteidigungseinheiten. Zum Schutz der kurdischen Gebiete gründete die PYD im Oktober 2011 die Volksverteidigungseinheiten (YPG). Nach dem Abzug großer Teile des syrischen Militärs aus den kurdischen Gebieten konnte die PYD mithilfe der YPG zahlreiche kurdische Städte in Nordsyrien unter ihre Kontrolle bringen. Ihre Kämpfer errangen im Jahr 2015 im syrisch-kurdischen Bezirk Rojava wichtige militärische Erfolge gegen Daesh (IS). Auf russischen Druck wird nun auch der PYD-Vorsitzende Saleh Muslim in Genf dabei sein.


Der vollständige Name des Bündnisses lautet: Nationale Koalition der syrischen Revolutions- und Oppositionskräfte. Sie wurde im November 2012 in der katarischen Hauptstadt Doha gegründet. Es gründete eine „Übergangsregierung“, die von den Staaten des Golf-Kooperationsrates als „legitime Vertretung des syrischen Volkes“ anerkannt wurde. Das sahen allerdings nicht alle gegen die Regierung engagierten Gruppen so. Die meisten der in Syrien aktiven Gruppen lehnen einen Führungsanspruch der Nationale Syrische Koalition ab.
Die Nationale Syrische Koalition besteht vor allem aus Exil-Syrern und hat ihren Sitz schon seit längerem in Istanbul. An ihrer Spitze steht der 50-jährige Khaled Khoja. Die stärkste Gruppe ist die von der Türkei unterstützte Muslimbruderschaft. Mit dabei sind auch einige kleinere Kurdengruppen, wie der „Kurdische Nationalkongress“, die der Barzani-Partei KDP im Nordirak nahestehen. Die Nationale Syrische Koalition fordert den Rücktritt von Präsident Bashar al-Assad. Von dieser Position rückte sie erst im Dezember auf Druck ihrer internationalen Geldgeber ab.


Zu Beginn des bewaffneten Aufstands gegen die Regierung stellte die Freie Syrische Armee einen der stärksten militärischen Verbände. Teilweise handelte es sich um Deserteure aus der regulären Armee, wie die Bewegung Freier Offiziere. Zwischenzeitlich soll sie bis zu 75.000 Militante organisiert haben. Auch in der FSA kämpften zahlreiche Söldner aus dem Ausland, insbesondere aus dem Libanon und Libyen. Seit spätestens Mai 2012 wurden Kämpfer der Freien Syrischen Armee und andere Einheiten der syrischen Opposition vom türkischen Geheimdienst trainiert und bewaffnet.
Im Jahr 2013 verlor die FSA den größten Teil des von ihr kontrollierten Territoriums an Daesh (IS). Zwischenzeitlich galt die Gruppe als vollständig aufgelöst. Seit der Offensive der Volksverteidigungseinheiten (YPG) und mit dem Kampf gegen Daesh wurde die Organisation wieder stärker, auch weil der Westen sie als Gegengewicht zu den Islamisten versteht.


Die Islamische Front ist ein Bündnis aus islamistischen Milizen. Sie wurde im November 2013 gegründet. Zusammen sollen die verschiedenen Gruppen damals bis zu 45.000 Kämpfer kontrolliert haben, darunter unzählige ausländische Söldner. Ihre Kämpfer sind salafistisch geprägt, zu Al-Qaida gibt es fließende Übergänge. Gründungsmitglieder sind die islamistische Ahrar asch-Scham, die Syrische Islamische Befreiungsfront, die At-Tauhid-Brigade aus Aleppo und die in Damaskus operierende Dschaisch al-Islam.
Ihr erklärtes Ziel ist der Sturz der Assad-Regierung und die Errichtung eines islamischen Staates. Als wichtigster Unterstützer der Gruppen in der Islamischen Front gelten das Königreich Saudi-Arabien und die Golf-Staaten. Ihr Anführer ist Ahmed Issa al-Scheich. Zwar ist das Bündnis inzwischen nicht mehr so stark, aber die Islamische Armee (Dschaisch al-Islam) und die Islamische Bewegung der Levante (Ahrar al-Sham) verfügen zusammen immer noch über 27.500 Bewaffnete und gehören damit zu den stärksten Milizen in Syrien
Trends: # Syrien

Excluding Kurds From Syria Peace Talks Recipe for ‘Permanent War’

News | 28.01.2016 | 07:49
 
Sputnik - The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) has not been invited by the United Nations to the talks between the Syrian government and the opposition that are scheduled to begin in Geneva, Switzerland on Friday. The Kurdish party accused Ankara of throwing its weight behind the UN decision.
"Unless you are for a permanent war, you would want to accommodate the Kurds and invite them to the [Syrian] peace talks," Xulam said on Wednesday. "As to the party that doesn’t want them in Geneva, namely Turkey, they cannot maintain a state of war with the Kurds the way they did with the Armenians 100 years ago."
Xulam added that the Kurds want peace, but peace requires the participation of the group’s respective interlocutor in negotiations.
"As things stand, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and his cronies insist on the course of war directly as well as through the proxies," Xulam explained. "Like all wars, their war too will come to an end."
Xulam added that the Kurds are way too many, 30 to 40 million, and better connected if Ankara tries to apply the Armenian solution to the Kurdish question.
The love Kurds feel for their emancipation struggle is stronger than the hate some Turks feel toward it, Xulam claimed.
On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon accused Turkey of sponsoring terrorism by buying oil from Daesh terrorist group. Moreover, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said that Turkey was a major conduit for terrorist oil and money flows to and from Syria hampering international efforts to fight effectively Daesh threat.
The Islamic State, also known as Daesh, is a designated terrorist group outlawed in the United States and Russia as well as in numerous other countries.
On Wednesday, a PYD representative said the Syrian Kurds will not recognize the outcome of the upcoming intra-Syrian negotiations in Geneva as the talks will be held without their participation.

Bernie Sanders or "Democracy in the US an illusion" by David KERANS

"More and more of the US-population understands that democracy in the US is an illusion – as are equality before the law, equal opportunity, etc"


US Election 2016: Six Levels of Charade, and Three Rs (Rich, Racist, Retarded)


David KERANS | 28.01.2016 | 00:00

«For the first time in a very long time, a candidate who represents the average citizen appears to have an outside shot at winning the Presidency. Will we have the good sense to elect him?»
– John Atcheson, July 4th, 2015
A System in Disrepute
It would not be a stretch to argue that the most consequential development in the world over the last third of the twentieth century was the asphyxiation of the public interest in the United States. The largest and most advanced economy in history effectively neutered its own political system, thanks primarily to sustained pressure from wealthy interests (who promoted the dogma of free market beneficence, maligned and stigmatized government, systematically suborned politicians and regulators to do their bidding, narrowed the range of political discussion in the mass media, etc.). Momentous consequences ensued, both domestically and internationally.
On the home front, the economy now served owners. Where wages had kept pace with productivity in FDR's New Deal society, the two now separated decisively: wages stagnated while productivity maintained its impressive climb, as this startling graphic illustrates:
Further, in a story that is now so familiar to everyone, the swelling financial sector co-opted the US government to free it from a wide variety of regulations that had stabilized the economy since the 1930s. The resulting bacchanalia brought the world the financial crisis of 2008, second only to the Great Depression of the 1930s in the annals of purely economic disasters. (We may add here that the decoupling of government from the public interest – combined with the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a deterring influence – facilitated the pursuit of momentous military adventures, like the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But that is a discussion for another time.)
Alert observers of the American scene warned throughout these decades that the political system was going bankrupt, and word got out to some. Towards the close of the big economic boom of the 1990s Ralph Nader's presidential campaign on behalf of the nascent Green Party harped on both the Democratic and Republican parties' wholesale surrender to corporate sponsors, and highlighted how the two parties made it almost impossible for competitors to arise. Nader got nearly three percent of the national vote; more important, his campaign did more than anything else to awaken the nation to the stranglehold of big business over both parties and the economic system.
The catharsis of Barack Obama replacing George W. Bush and co. via the election of 2008 propelled hopes for effective government to great heights. But once Obama took office his myriad capitulations to capital (if we may phrase it so) greatly outweighed his periodic commitments to democratic principles, as we (among others) have detailed in many previous publications in this forum. Ralph Nader made the call himself. In one little noticed gem, when asked on PBS at the moment major networks were declaring Obama the winner of the 2008 election, «Ralph, your reaction?»: «Prepare yourself to be disappointed».
Disappointment in Obama intensified rapidly as he both failed to hold the rich and powerful to the rule of law and refused to push progressive economic and fiscal policies the mass of the population supported. And public perception of the legitimacy of the whole political system sank to alarming lows. The summary we offered in this forum in 2011 bears repeating here:
«...an all-time record 69 percent now say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, up sharply (by 6 percentage points) from 2010; a record 57 percent have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems (topping 2010's record reading of 53 percent); on average, Americans now believe the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar (up from 46 cents a decade ago, and 43 cents in the 1980s). Finally, 82 percent now express dissatisfaction with the way the nation is governed. This reading is more than double the level obtaining throughout the period 1984-2003. It has risen at an unprecedented rate since then...»
This, we argue, is the grand narrative that has been on hold ever since: the mass of the population has largely written off both the legislative and executive branches, and is emotionally dead to anything closely associated with the political establishment. More than 40 percent of registered voters now decline to identify with either party, and many (or even most) of those who remain are ready to give up: one survey last summer found 66 percent of Republican primary voters and 40 percent of Democratic primary voters felt betrayed by their party. One can hardly blame them for that, nor for the anger and trepidation which now color their outlook. A recent study determined that a full half of Americans are angrier than they were a year ago, and another found just 48% of baby boomers being satisfied with their overall economic situation, down from 76% as recently as 2011. That is a very sharp dive, amid what the Obama administration is touting as a sustained economic recovery.
Six Levels of Charade
The huge reservoir of political despair would seem to be ripe for harvesting by any politician with the sense to advocate for the public interest. After all, on myriad issues, mild to enormous majorities of the American population support common-sense policies to the left of what Washington has provided. Alas, the Democratic Party's fealty to corporate donors is more deeply entrenched now than ever, such that the party can hardly produce any leader to challenge the status quo. It is no accident that iconoclast Senator Bernie Sanders is the only one who has emerged to expose the bankruptcy of US politics. Sanders built his career outside the Democratic Party, joining it only a year ago, so as to campaign for its presidential nomination. His decision to pursue the campaign without any corporate donations has guaranteed him the high ground, both morally and as regards issues. Along the way, his rise has exposed at least six separate mountains standing in the way of any challenge to the establishment. Each of them is a major impediment to the «democracy» America prides itself on.
The fund-raising imperative is the first hurdle, of course, which Sanders has solved by harvesting millions of small contributions – enough to compete on nearly even terms with a fund-raising behemoth like Hillary Clinton (we need hardly add that prior to the internet age this could never happen). The second is the endorsement game, wherein authority figures weigh in on the candidates and shape public opinion. The scorecard here (from Fivethirtyeight.com, as cited by «All in with Chris Hayes» on MSNBC, January 14, final segment) could not be more damning to the credibility of the Democratic Party:
Clinton 457
Sanders 2
O'Malley 1
This tally is no reflection of party elites' conscience on policy. MSNBC host Chris Matthews laid the logic bare while musing about what underlay Vice President Biden's tacit endorsement of Sanders over Clinton in an interview he gave on January 11: «If you and someone else are aiming at the same spot, you offer him something, that's the way it usually works, something like Secretary of State for Biden. But that didn't happen here, apparently». (that is, Clinton chose not to buy Biden off, or he refused her offer).
The third hurdle is the presence of the Democratic National Committee as a guardian of the status quo. Being a central player in Washington's political patronage industry, the DNC decided very early to do what it could to silence the Sanders campaign, in which it surely saw a threat to the political officials-for-sale system that enriches the establishment (and deprives the public of real leadership). First, the DNC blatantly buried the party's debates for this election, so as to minimize the public's exposure to Sanders or anyone else who might be tempted to speak truth to power. More important, the DNC set aside almost 30 percent of the national nominating convention delegate pool for appointees (so-called «super delegates»), and pressured these appointees to declare their allegiance to Clinton well before the primary elections begin (in Iowa, on February 1st). These appointees duly did so, declaring for Clinton by a 45-1 margin. The Democratic Party is not long on democracy, obviously.
The fourth hurdle is the cooptation of labor union leaders with the political establishment, to the detriment of union rank-and-file. The 2015-16 election cycle is not breaking new ground in this respect, of course. But the current campaign has revealed the perverse degree to which labor union leaderships in the US have surrendered conscience to expediency. It is difficult to find any exception to the trend: whenever union executives endorse a candidate independently, they choose Clinton; whenever union memberships are asked, they choose Sanders. Most union executive committees are bypassing their memberships and cozying up to Clinton, the establishment flagship, thereby depriving Sanders of concerted support from labor in getting out the vote in the primaries.
Hurdle five is the establishment's capture of public interest organizations that shape public opinion, including the media (obviously) and issue-specific organizations that channel popular pressure from below. A prime example here is the League of Conservation Voters, an important environmental issues watchdog. The LCV board publicly endorsed Clinton, despite Sanders dwarfing Hillary on environmental issues according to their own rating system. The real issues for the LCV, apparently, are the fact that its Board Chair is close to the Clintons, and the organization receives lots of funding from Wall Street banks and finance sector luminaries.
The upshot is that the entire system of communication to the public is fraudulent as regards any serious challenge to the status quo. As John Atcheson summed it up:
«We used to think that the civil institutions functioned as a third arm of society distinct from government and business, and capable of holding both accountable. The press, unions, NGO’s, religious organizations – in theory, at least – worked to hold both business and government accountable… So, not only has our government and political process been bought, but the senior members of the NGO and Union community have become enmeshed in the game of money and power that is destroying our Democracy».
As if all of these obstacles to an honest reform effort were not enough, the current campaign is exposing one more especially insidious one, sketched out most famously by Chris Hedges, in The Death of the Liberal Class (2010): the tendency of liberals in high places to turn against the most courageous members of their own movement, if serious change appears on the horizon. As we summarized Hedges in this forum in 2011:
«During the First World War, the liberal class gradually purged and marginalized its radicals, populists, and iconoclasts. Gradually, the liberal class merged with the establishment, endorsing and legitimizing it, all the while securing universities' and churches' recognition, support, and protection from the political and economic establishment. In the process, the liberal class lost its ability to defend the interests of the population, and has stood by, blind or helpless, over the last few decades as American society changed its shape».
The pathological proclivity of the liberal elite to stigmatize and silence a potent reform movement came glaringly into view in mid-January, just as soon as polling showed the Sanders campaign within striking distance of Hillary Clinton. A raft of liberal luminaries who have long purported to stand for the public interest put out articles belittling, trivializing, and mocking Sanders as misguided, naïve, unrealistic, etc. The highest-profile case is economist Paul Krugman, but the list is long.
The backlash against the wave of articles attempting to suppress Sanders has been sharp and penetrating (see here and here, e.g., for insightful examples). And Senator Sanders has defended himself ably from the liberal elite's assaults. But his campaign will surely face more of the same at every step. In fact, they will have to clear all six of the hurdles we have detailed here over and over again if the reform candidate is to secure the Democratic nomination for this November's election.
Thankfully, a good portion of the public is hearing Bernie Sanders. More and more of the population understands that democracy in the US is an illusion – as are equality before the law, equal opportunity, etc. They understand that it will remain so unless a sustained mass movement reinvigorates the political system, and that the Sanders campaign is the only hope for the foreseeable future. Further, they understand that the meaning of the Presidency can extend very far beyond the territory of specific policy achievements. Having been prepared in part by the euphoria-turned-disappointment of the Obama experience, they are coming to sense what Franklin Roosevelt explained in 1932:
«The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That is the least of it. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All of our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified».
As political observer Conor Lynch put it recently:
«Sanders believes in moral leadership, which starts with refusing to play by the current set of rules, where special interests hold politicians hostage. If that is not a sign of a transformative leadership, I don’t know what is».
In addition to proposing a full slate of common-sense policies that majorities of Americans already support, Senator Sanders is poised to change the trajectory of political discourse. His administration would adamantly discard rapacious neoliberal economic doctrine and arrogant neoconservative foreign policy, and elevate in their place a full slate of progressive values to guide the nation's public life.
This prospect might awaken enough Democratic primary voters to put Sanders on the ballot in November. And who could stop him then? No one. Not even that enduring GOP coalition, the Republicans' three Rs: the rich, the racist, and the retarded.

West Creates Terrorism to “Look Superior”

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manufactured terrorism
Terrorism has many forms and many faces, but the most terrible of them is cold cruelty.
We are asked to believe that terrorists consist of dirty lunatics, running around with bombs, machine guns and explosive belts. That’s how we are told to imagine them.
Many of them are bearded; almost all are “foreign looking”, non-white, non-Western. In summary they are wife beaters, child rapists and Greek and Roman statue destroyers.
Actually, during the Cold War, there were some white looking “terrorists” – the left-wingers belonging to several revolutionary cells, in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. But only now we are learning that the terrorist acts attributed to them were actually committed by the Empire, by several European right-wing governments and intelligence services. You remember, the NATO countries were blowing up those trains inside the tunnels, or bombing entire train stations…
shutterstock_70632367
It “had to be done”, in order to discredit the Left, just to make sure that people would not become so irresponsible as to vote for the Communists or true Socialists.
There were also several Latin American ‘terror’ groups – the revolutionary movements fighting for freedom and against oppression, mainly against Western colonialism. They had to be contained, liquidated, and if they held power, overthrown.
But terrorists became really popular in the West only after the Soviet Union and the Communist Block were destroyed through thousands of economic, military and propaganda means, and the West suddenly felt too exposed, so alone without anyone to fight. Somehow it felt that it needed to justify its monstrous oppressive acts in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
It needed a new “mighty”, really mighty, enemy to rationalize its astronomical military and intelligence budgets. It was not good enough to face a few hundred ‘freaks’ somewhere inside the Colombian jungle or in Northern Ireland or Corsica. There had to be something really huge, something matching that ‘evil’ Soviet “threat”.
Oh how missed that threat was, suddenly! Just a threat of course; not the danger of egalitarian and internationalist ideals…
And so the West linked terrorism with Islam, which is one of the greatest cultures on earth, with 1.6 billion followers. Islam is big and mighty enough, to scare the shit out of the middle class housewives in some Western suburb! And on top of that, it had to be contained anyway, as it was essentially too socialist and too peaceful.
At that time in history, all great secular and socialist leaders of Muslim countries, (like in Iran, Indonesia and Egypt), were overthrown by the West, their legacy spat on, or they were simply banned.
But that was not enough for the West!
In order to make Islam a worthy enemy, the Empire had to first radicalize and pervert countless Muslim movements and organizations, then create the new ones, consequently training, arming and financing them, so they could really look frightening enough.
There is of course one more important reason why “terrorism”, particularly Muslim “terrorism”, is so essential for the survival of Western doctrines, exceptionalism and global dictatorship: it justifies the West’s notion of absolute cultural and moral superiority.
This is how it works:
For centuries, the West has been behaving like a mad bloodthirsty monster. Despite the self-glorifying propaganda being spread by Western media outlets all over the world, it was becoming common knowledge that the Empire was raping, murdering and plundering in virtually all corners of the Globe. A few more decades and the world would see the West exclusively as a sinister and toxic disease. Such a scenario had to be prevented by all means!
And so the ideologues and propagandists of the Empire came up with a new and brilliant formula: Let’s create something that looks and behaves even worse than we do, and then we could trumpet that we are still actually the most reasonable and tolerant culture on earth!
And let’s make a real pirouette: let’s fight our own creation – let’s fight it in the name of freedom and democracy!”
This is how the new generation; the new breed of “terrorist” was born. And it lives! It is alive and well! It is multiplying like Capek’s Salamanders.
***
Western terrorism is not really discussed, although its most extreme and violent forms are battering the world relentlessly and have for a long time, with hundreds of millions of victims piling up everywhere.
Even the legionnaires and gladiators of the Empire, like the Mujaheddin, Al-Qaida, or ISIS, can never come close to the savagery that has been demonstrated time and again by their British, French, Belgian, German or US masters. Of course they are trying very hard to match their gurus and bread-givers, but they are just not capable of their violence and brutality.
It takes “Western culture” to butcher some 10 million people in just one single geographic area, in almost one go!
***
So what is real terrorism, and how could ISIS and others follow its lead? They say that ISIS is decapitating their victims. Bad enough. But who is their teacher?
For centuries, the empires of Europe were murdering, torturing, raping and mutilating people on all continents of the world. Those who were not doing so directly, were “investing” into colonialist expeditions, or sending its people to join genocidal battalions.
King Leopold II and his cohorts managed to exterminate around 10 million people of Western and Central Africa, in what is now known as the Congo. He was hunting people down like animals, forcing them to work on his rubber plantations. If he thought that they were not filling up his coffers fast enough, he did not hesitate to chop off their hands, or burn entire village populations inside their huts, alive.
10 million victims vanished. 10 million! And it did not take place in some distant past, in the “dark ages”, but in the 20th century, under the rule of so-called constitutional monarchy, and self-proclaimed democracy. How does it compare with the terrorism that is ruling over the territories occupied by ISIS? Let’s compare numbers and brutality level!
And the Democratic Republic of Congo has, since 1995, lost again close to 10 million people in a horrid orgy of terror, unleashed by the West’s proxies, Rwanda and Uganda (see the trailer to my film“Rwanda Gambit”).
Germans performed holocausts in South-Western Africa, in what is now Namibia. The Herero tribe was exterminated, or at least close to 90% of it was. People were first kicked out from their land and from their homes, and driven into the desert. If they survived, the German pre-Nazi expeditions followed, using bullets and other forms of mass killing. Medical experiments on humans were performed, to prove the superiority of the Germanic nation and the white race.
These were just innocent civilians; people whose only crime was that they were not white, and were sitting on land occupied and violated by the Europeans.
The Taliban never came close to this, or even ISIS!
To this day, the Namibian government is demanding the return of countless heads severed from its people: heads that were cut off and then sent to the University of Freiburg and several hospitals in Berlin, for medical experiments.
Just imagine, ISIS chopping thousands of European heads, in order to perform medical experiments aiming to demonstrate the superiority of the Arab race. It would be absolutely unthinkable!
Local people were terrorized in virtually all colonies grabbed by Europe, something that I have described in detail in my latest 840-page book “Exposing Lies of the Empire”.
What about the Brits and their famines, which they were using as population control and intimidation tactics in India! In Bengal at least 5 million died in 1943 alone, 5.5 million in 1876-78, 5 million in 1896-97, to name just a few terrorist acts committed by the British Empire against a defenseless population forced to live under its horrid and oppressive terrorist regime!
What I have mentioned above are just 3 short chapters from the long history of Western terrorism. An entire encyclopedia could be compiled on the topic.
But all this sits far from Western consciousness. European and North American masses prefer not to know anything about the past and the present. As far as they are concerned, they rule the world because they are free, bright and hard working. Not because for centuries their countries have plundered and murdered, and above all terrorized the world forcing it into submission.
The elites know everything, of course. And the more they know, the more they put that knowledge to work.
Terrorist trade and experience are passed on from Western masters to their new Muslim recruits.
The Mujahideen, Al-Qaida, ISIS – on closer examination, their tactics of intimidation and terrorization are not original at all. They are built on imperialist and colonialist practices of the West.
News about this, or even about the terror that has been inflicted on the Planet by the West, is meticulously censored. You would never see them on the programs broadcast by the BBC, or read about them in mainstream newspapers and magazines.
On the other hand, the violence and ruthlessness of the client terrorist organizations are constantly highlighted. They are covered in their tiniest detail, repeated, and “analyzed”.
Everybody is furious, horrified! The UN is “deeply concerned”, Western governments are “outraged”, and the Western public “has had enough – it does not want immigrants from those terrible countries that are breeding terrorism and violence”.
The West “simply has to get involved”. And here comes the War on Terror.
It is a war against the West’s own Frankenstein. It is a war that is never meant to be won. Because if it is won, god forbid, there would have to be peace, and peace means cutting defense budgets and also dealing with the real problems of our Planet.
Peace would mean the West looking at its own past. It would mean thinking about justice and rearranging the entire power structures of the Planet. And that can never be allowed.
And so the West is “playing” war games; it is “fighting” its own recruits (or pretending to fight them), while innocent people are dying.
No part of the world, except the West, would be able to invent and unleash something so vile and barbaric as ISIS or Al-Nusra!
Look closer at the strategy of these group-implants: it has no roots in Muslim culture whatsoever. But it is fully inspired by the Western philosophy of colonialist terrorism: “If you don’t fully embrace our dogmas and religion, then we will cut off your head, slash your throat, rape your entire family or burn your village or city to the ground. We will destroy your grand cultural heritage as we did in South America 500 years ago, and in so many other places.”
And so on and so on! It would really require great discipline not to see the connections!
***
In 2006 I was visiting my friend, a former President of Indonesia, and a great progressive Muslim leader, Abdurrahman Wahid, (known in Indonesia as “Gus Dur”). Our meeting was held at the headquarters of his massive Muslim body Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). At that time the NU was the biggest Muslim organization in the world.
We were discussing capitalism and how it was destroying and corrupting Indonesia. Gus Dur was a “closet socialist”, and that was one of the main reasons why the servile pro-Western Indonesian “elites” and the military deposed him out of the Presidency in 2001.
When we touched on the topic of “terrorism”, he suddenly declared in his typically soft, hardly audible voice: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was done by our own intelligence services, in order to justify the increase in their budget, as well as aid that they have been receiving from abroad.”
Of course, the Indonesian army, intelligence services and police consist of a special breed of humans. For several decades, since 1965, they have been brutally terrorizing their own population, when the pro-Western coup toppled the progressive President Sukarno and brought to power a fascist military clique, backed by the predominantly Christian business gang. This terror took between 2-3 million lives in Indonesia itself, as well as in East Timor and (until now) in occupied and thoroughly plundered Papua.
3 genocides in only 5 decades!
The Indonesian coup was one of the greatest terrorist acts in the history of mankind. The rivers were clogged with corpses and changed their color to red.
Why? So that capitalism would survive and Western mining companies could have their booty, at the expense of a completely ruined Indonesian nation. So the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) would not be able to win elections, democratically.
But in the West, those 1965 intensive massacres planned by the Empire were never described as “terrorism”. Blowing up a hotel or a pub always is however, especially if they are frequented by Western clientele.
Now Indonesia has its own groups of “terrorists”. They returned from Afghanistan where they fought on behalf of the West against the Soviet Union. They are returning from the Middle East now. The recent attacks in Jakarta could be just a foreplay, a well-planned beginning of something much bigger, maybe an opening of the new “front” of toy soldiers of the Empire in Southeast Asia.
For the West and its planners – the more chaos the better.
Had Abdurrahman Wahid been allowed to stay as the President of Indonesia, there would, most likely, have been no terrorism. His country would have undergone socialist reforms, instituted social justice, rehabilitated Communists and embraced secularism.
In socially balanced societies, terrorism does not thrive.
That would be unacceptable to the Empire. That would mean – back to Sukarno’s day! The most populous Muslim nation on earth cannot be allowed to go its own way, to aim for socialism, and to annihilate terrorist cells.
It has to be at the edge. It has to be ready to be used as a pawn. It has to be scared and scary! And so it is.
***
The games the West is playing are complex and elaborate. They are murky and nihilist. They are so destructive and brutal that even the sharpest analysts are often questioning their own eyes and judgments: “Could all this be really happening?”
The brief answer is: “Yes it can. Yes it is, for many long decades and centuries.”
Historically, terrorism is a native Western weapon. It was utilized freely by people like Lloyd George, a British PM, who refused to sign the agreement banning aerial bombardment of civilians, using unshakeable British logic: “We reserve the right to bomb those niggers.” Or Winston Churchill who was in favor of gassing the ‘lower grade’ of races, like Kurds and Arabs.
That is why, when some outsider, a country like Russia, gets involved, launching its genuine war against terrorist groups, the entire West is consumed by panic. Russia is spoiling their entire game! It is ruining a beautifully crafted neo-colonialist equilibrium.
Just look how lovely everything is: after killing hundreds of millions all over the Globe, the West is now standing as the self-proclaimed champion of human rights and freedom. It is still terrorizing the world, plundering it, fully controlling it – but it is being accepted as the supreme leader, a benevolent advisor, and the only trustworthy part of the world.
And almost nobody is laughing.
Because everyone is scared!
Its brutal legions in the Middle East and Africa are destabilizing entire countries, their origins are easily traceable, but almost no one is daring to do such tracing. Some of those who have tried – died.
The more frightening these invented, manufactured and implanted terrorist monsters, the more beautiful the West looks. It is all gimmicks. It has roots in advertisement, and in hundreds of years of propaganda apparatus.
The West then pretends to fight those deep forces of darkness. It uses powerful, “righteous” language, which has clear bases in Christian fundamentalist dogma.
An entire mythology is unleashed; it feels like Wagner’s “Ring”.
The terrorists represent evil, not the enormous expenditure from the coffers of the US State Department, the European Union and NATO. They are more evil than the Devil himself!
And the West, riding on the white horse, slightly pissed on wine but always in good humor, is portrayed as both a victim and the main adversary of those satanic terrorist groups.
It is one incredible show. It is one terrible farce. Look underneath the horseman’s mask: look at those exposed teeth; that deadly grin! Look at his red eyes, full of greed, lust and cruelty.
And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and Fighting Against Western Imperialism.Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western TerrorismPoint of No Return is his critically acclaimed political novel. Oceania – a book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. His provocative book about Indonesia: “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear”. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Press TV. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and the Middle East. He can be reached through his website or his Twitter.

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