Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Aggression: "America’s quadrupling of its troops and weapons on and near Russia’s northwestern borders"

America’s Biggest of All Big Lies (I)
ERIC ZUESSE | 05.05.2016 | WORLD

America’s Biggest of All Big Lies (I)

On April 26thReuters headlined from Romania, «‘We’re Not Here to Provoke,’ Say US Pilots on Putin’s Doorstep», and gave as an example: «‘We're not here to provoke anybody, we're here to work with our allies,’ says Dan Barina, a 26-year-old pilot on his first trip to a region where tensions have risen markedly since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Romania's neighbor Ukraine two years ago».
How can it not be ‘provoking’, when Russia now faces a threat from Obama and America's NATO alliance, that’s vastly worse than what America had faced from the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev and the USSR’s Warsaw Pact alliance in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis? That was just one missile-base, 90 miles from the US – not dozens of them, some right on Russia’s border. Are those American pilots idiots to believe their superiors’ absurd statements about what their mission is, or is insanity the explanation here – or, is there even some third explanation possible for this oblivious statement from the American pilot? Perhaps those soldiers and airmen are simply drowning in (or drunk with) US propaganda? They really believe that Russia is moving too close to NATO, not that NATO has already moved too close to Russia? Really? The Reuters report said that NATO countries were doing this to protect themselves from «an increasingly aggressive Russia». Wow. But that’s the line promoted by US President Barack Obama. And he’s accepted as a decent person not only by the millions of voters in his own Democratic Party (though not in the Republican Party, which blames him for everything except the truth: that he is governing so far to the right that they have to concoct false ‘leftist’ reasons to criticize him); but, he’s also respected even by the publics in Europe, where they suffer the flood of refugees from the invasions he leads. After all: one must never underestimate the power of propaganda, to warp the public’s minds.
On February 2nd, the US ‘Defense’ Secretary, Russia-hater Ashton Carter, announced – and the equally Russia-hating NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed and endorsed – America’s quadrupling of its troops and weapons on and near Russia’s northwestern borders; and America’s pilot Dan Barina is part of this extremely hostile action, by the US and NATO, against the people in Russia.
Russia is now surrounded, on and near its borders, by numerous US nuclear weapons – weapons and troops that are as close to St. Petersburg and Moscow as they can possibly get without actually invading Russia.
In 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the USSR and ended its Warsaw Pact, upon a promise from the regime of US President George Herbert Walker Bush to the then-Soviet (soon-to-become merely Russian) leader, that NATO would move «not one inch to the east» – a promise which the American President told his people in private was actually a lie, but which they, and all subsequent US Presidents, have accepted as Western policy founded on that lie, by expanding NATO not merely «one inch to the east», but right up to Russia’s very borders. That’s what this February 2nd policy by US President Barack Obama and his NATO stooges is bringing substantially closer to culmination.
How can this not be «provocative»? What type of idiot can believe his superiors when they say «We’re not here to provoke anybody»? Of course, it’s not to «provoke» Russians: it’s to downright terrify them. They’d have to be crazy not to be terrified, at being increasingly surrounded by these WMD, from what is increasingly clearly their enemy.
This big lie, that what America is doing there is ‘defensive’, is stanched up by other, lesser, lies, such as Obama’s lie that the reason why he’s expanding America’s Strategic Defense Initiative (anti-ballistic missile, or ‘star wars’) system, in Europe, has been to protect Europe from Iranian nuclear missiles. Iran never had nuclear weapons, and Obama reached an agreement with Iran that will for decades prevent Iran from having them, but he still expands the SDI system right up to Russia’s borders, as ‘protection against Iran’. The people who protest against Obama’s lies are then marginalized as mere kooks, which is the way to get idiots to ignore even the most barefaced facts (such as Western terrorization of the Russian population), because only idiots can continue to believe such liars as the Obama regime, when their lies are as obvious as this. These protests against Obama and NATO and all of Western aggression, aren’t coming from America’s Republicans or other right-wingers: the smearing of these protesters with that broad-brush taint can be believed only by idiots – people who are willingly suckers, suckers notwithstanding the blatancy with which the facts run against the lies they swallow.
From the very get-go, in 1983 – when the Republican US President, Ronald Reagan (with the active support of Ashton Carter at MIT), started the SDI project, under the lie that disabling a combatant’s retaliatory ability isn’t profoundly aggressive against that opponent (basically checkmating him) – the SDI concept was aimed at achieving an invasion of the Soviet Union which couldn’t be effectively countered; it was aimed ultimately at replacing the balance-of-power system of «Mutually Assured Destruction» (MAD), by a gross imbalance of power that would enable conquest of the opponent; it would enable a blitz-attack against the Soviet Union, an attack to which it would be impossible to respond via a counter-attack; it would enable an attack which would pre-emptively disable that response. In other words: it’s all a con, a lie, to say that SDI is ‘purely a defensive measure’. It can be the most decisive aggressive measure, the only way that’s even conceivable to ‘win’ a nuclear war (as some of the West’s aristocrats think can be done).
Wikipedia notes about Ashton Carter: «Carter was a supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as well as an advocate of preventive wars against North Korea and Iran. In response to increase in tension in Ukraine, Carter considered proposing deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles in Europe that could pre-emptively destroy Russian weapons». That’s a «hawkish» background just as Hillary Clinton’s is, virtually indistinguishable from that of George W Bush and Dick Cheney; and yet, when he was starting his political career in a region where the opposition to invading Iraq was strong, Obama claimed that he opposed invading Iraq. Yet, somehow, once he was finally inside the White House, suddenly the people he was surrounding himself with were Wall-Street-backed individuals who had supported invading Iraq (and any other country whose leader was friendly toward Russia). He did to Libya, Ukraine, and Syria, what George W Bush did to Iraq. If that’s not fraudulent ‘democracy’, then what is? The public had been given no indication they would be getting, with Barack Obama, merely a more-articulate version of George W Bush.
America has been lying not only regarding its aggressive designs against the Soviet Union, but (and this is far more heinous) – afterward, when the supposed ‘ideological’ reason for the Cold War had ended – it is lying even more blatantly in its ‘justifications’ for its (and NATO’s) anti-Russia policies despite communism having ended and the Soviet Union (and its Warsaw Pact) disbanded.
How much longer will the aristocracy that control the US Government be able to get away with such obvious lies, such continuation and even escalation of the «Cold War» after its very raison d’etre (anti-communism) is long-since gone? If it turns out to be too long, then only a matter of time will pass before those buttons get pushed and those nuclear weapons are released, to destroy the world. Horrific as those weapons are, they are built, and manned, to be used. If this seems unimaginable, then the question has to be this: Is it as unimaginable as is the manifested-existing evilness of America’s aristocracy (such as Barack Obama, Ashton Carter, George W Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, George Soros, the Koch brothers, etc.) and of the aristocracies (in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere) that are allied with it?http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/05/05/america-biggest-of-all-big-lies-i.html

The Unspoken Truth: America Supporting Al Qaeda:

Propaganda Rages in the Battle for Aleppo. The Terrorists are Portrayed as “Freedom Fighters”

Global Research, May 01, 2016


syria-nato

Heavy propaganda accompanies the strategic battle in Aleppo between the Syrian Army and its allies (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and other militia) and the Saudi-Turkey-NATO backed terrorist groups (Jabhat al Nusra, Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar as Sham and ISIS).
Fighting escalated in late April when the armed groups sent hundreds of mortars into Syria’s second city, and the Syrian Army responded with its long awaited offensive.
Western media now claim that Aleppo’s citizens are under threat from the Syrian Army, while Syrian sources show civilians, reeling from constant mortar attacks, demanding that the Army roots out all terrorist groups.
al-Nusra-Front supported by US-NATO-Israel
In an attempt to claim the moral high ground, Washington uses proxy NGOs alongside proxy militia, to maintain the fiction that the Syrian Army does nothing but attack Syrian civilians.
Prominent among these NGOs is ‘The White Helmets’ aka ‘Syrian Civil Defence’, which has become a principal source of claims that Syrian and Russian planes are targeting hospitals.
In fact ‘The White Helmets’, which claims to be independent, is a Wall Street creation, led by former British soldier James le Mesurier, co-funded by the US Government and embedded with the terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra, banned by the UN Security Council.
Every attack on al Nusra is thus portrayed as an attack on ‘civilians’ and clinics, or on emergency health workers. Much the same applies to Medicin Sans Frontiers (MSF), which funds al Nusra clinics (mostly without foreign volunteers) in several terrorist held areas.
These links, including participation in sectarian executions, are well spelt out in a recent short documentary ‘The White Helmets – al Qaeda with a Facelift’, by Steve Ezzeddine:
Background on The White Helmets has also been exposed in a series of articles by investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley, including ‘’White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists’ (Sept 2015) at 21st Century Wire:
The contradiction in US policy and practice was recently highlighted when the Syrian head of TWH, Raed Saleh, travelled to receive a humanitarian award, but was refused permission to enter the US and was sent back to Istanbul. The likely reason was Saleh’s notorious association with Jabhat al Nusra.
Head of the US military General Martin Dempsey and Vice President Joe Biden admitted in 2014 that close US allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar were financing ISIS, along with all the other armed groups, in an attempt to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
ANNEX
Professor Tim Anderson has provided us with an analysis of the propaganda campaign of the Western military alliance which is led by the Western media as well as so-called NGOs supported by corporate foundations.   
Below is the Communique Issued by the Fake Syria Civil Society Network. The latter fails to acknowledge that the opposition militants are largely made up of Al Qaeda affiliated entitities supported by US-NATO-Israel. 
Syria government forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are involved in a massive counter-terrorism operation against US-NATO supported terrorists.  
Below is the text of their Appeal to the International Community. 
Who is the self proclaimed international community? 
The US, UK,  France, Germany, not to mention Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have been involved for almost two years in the routine bombing of Syria under a fake humanitarian mandate. 
These NGOs echo US foreign policy, They blame Bashar al Assad for the killings.  They do not represent Syrian civil society. 
    For your info, Global Research is not a Syrian agent. It is a non-profit independent 
    Organisation......
    Pls open the link to see the videos. These were put today on one of the local 
    Independent ( non-partisan) TV station here. 
    
The Unspoken Truth is that America is Supporting Al Qaeda: Heavy 


Amply documented, those killings are attributable to: 
1) US-led bombings allegedly against the ISIS, which largely strike civilians and civilian infrastructure, including residential areas; 
2) the atrocities committed by the ISIS and al Qaeda affiliates which are supported, financed and protected by the US-NATO coalition.  Coalition mercenaries operate within the ranks of these terrorist entitiies. More recently, the US has sent special forces to provide “training” for al Qaeda freedom fighters.
SPREAD THE WORD, COUNTER-PROPAGANDA IS A POWERFUL INSTRUMENT TO REVERSE THE TIDE OF WAR 
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research Editor, May 1, 2016
*      *      *
Text of the fake NGO Civil Society Group

“We are being left to die as the world watches.”

The people of Aleppo need the international community’s protection.  In the past week, the Assad regime and its allies have escalated their bombings of civilian homes and hospitals across Aleppo, killing more than 200 civilians in the process.  We, as representatives of Syrian civil society and humanitarian groups, strongly condemn the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Syria and demand civilian protection. Without the international community’s protection and concrete action to stop the bombs across Aleppo, where 250,000 people still remain, there is a very real chance that Aleppo will be entirely destroyed and more will die.  
The international community’s failure to prioritize our protection amounts to a death sentence.  We are being left to die as the world watches.  

In spite of the Syrian Cessation of Hostilities, one Syrian is being killed every 25 minutes. In Aleppo on Wednesday 27 April, at least 50 patients, medics and doctors were killed, including the last remaining Pediatrician of Aleppo, Dr. Wassim, after the Syrian regime bombed Al Quds hospital.  Just two days earlier, on April 25, five rescue workers from the White Helmets were killed during regime airstrikes on Atareb, western Aleppo province.  The attack came shortly after Russian airstrikes that killed ten civilians in Aleppo. A week earlier, the Syrian regime launched attacks in a marketplace in Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province that left dozens dead, including many women and children. 

The Syrian regime is deliberately targeting civilians and hospitals.  It is intentionally destroying medical facilities, schools, and marketplaces in an effort to bomb civilians into submission.  People the Syrian regime cannot kill by air, it starves on land.  Assad’s troops continue to besiege civilian towns across the country, where they impose deliberate starvation methods and confiscate medical relief items from aid convoys.  As a result of these sieges, more than 18 cities and towns across Syria are under siege.  But just one area—Dier Ezzor—receives airdrops.  For months, we have appealed to the international community to airdrop aid to all besieged areas, including to Homs and Hama.  Our calls have gone unanswered.    

We do not understand why we are being condemned to death when there are concrete steps that the international community could take to protect us. We appeal to the international community to prioritize our protection and do what it takes to stop the bombs across Syria. Help us save our Syria. More lives need not be lost.

Signatories
· Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression · Independent Doctors Association ·
· Baytna Syria · Union of Syrian Civil Society Organizations · Zaytoon · Peace and Justice for Syria · 
· Dr Amer Masri · Alaa Basatneh · SAY · Zaad · Syrian Welsh Society · Rethink Rebuild Society · 
· Syria Solidarity UK · Scotland4Syria · Help4Syria · Syrian Society in Nottinghamshire · 
· Syrian Platform for Peace · Kurds House ·

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof. Tim Anderson, Global Research, 2016