Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi

Full Text: http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/00361.pdf

Kana’anOnline, Volume IV, Issue 361, 16 January 2004

[1]  Their main businesses are in service sector and they establish point ventures with Zionist companies and invest in the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime – (Israel) ZAR.

[2] A Muslim Brotherhood leader on [...]]]>

Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi

Full Text: http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/00361.pdf

Kana’anOnline, Volume IV, Issue 361, 16 January 2004

A Syrian’s Perspective: Bashar al-Assad’s Democratic Movement

By Arabi Souri

Bashar al-Assad has been systematically demonized by the mainstream and so-called alternative media who claim that he is a brutal dictator.

Actually Bashar is a reformer who has done much to further [...]]]> Who is Bashar Al Assad?

A Syrian’s Perspective: Bashar al-Assad’s Democratic Movement

By Arabi Souri

Bashar al-Assad has been systematically demonized by the mainstream and so-called alternative media who claim that he is a brutal dictator.

Actually Bashar is a reformer who has done much to further the causes of democracy and freedom. It is the “opposition” and their foreign supporters which represent the most repressive elements of the former ruling party in Syria.

To fully understand this its is helpful to look at the historical context of the current crisis. The so-called “spontaneous popular uprising” started in Daraa on March 15th, 2011. The court house, police stations, governor’s house, and other public buildings were looted and torched by the “peaceful protestors” in the first week of the crisis. The people in Homs then began to protest in solidarity with Daraa, but this was uncharacteristic of peaceful Homs and many Syrians knew that it was a fake revolution.

About 110 unarmed police officers were murdered in Daraa and Homs, sparking anger against the “revolutionaries.” There was an incident in the city Baniyas where an Alawite truck driver was attacked by an armed mob, skinned, and paraded through the city. This was strongly resented by almost all Syrians and since then not a single major city actually rebelled against the government.

The foreign backed “revolutionaries” would attack a neighborhood, police station, or army base, from across the borders of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. Then they would claim that the city was in rebellion.

But the Syrians, seeing the same lies in all the western and Arab news stations, and the exiled rotten officials adopting the ‘revolution’, mostly took an anti-revolution stance. That is why whenever the rebels would infest a town or city you would immediately hear of a massacre to punish the residents for not supporting them. Of course the mainstream media would claim that it was Assad forces punishing the town that dared to oppose him!

Assad took advantage of the revolution to introduce his packages of reforms, putting aside those in the old guards who opposed them. Many of the old guard then joined the opposition abroad.

The opposition demanded the removal of article 8 from the Syrian constitution making the Baath Party head of the government. Instead of just deleting it Bashar Assad had the constitution re-written buy a specialized committee of Syrian experts from all parties in Syria and with input from all Syrians.

A referendum was held and the new constitution was approved with almost 90% of a voter turnout of 60%.

Assad then enacted a Media Law that would allow more freedom of expression and the establishment of new independent media outlets. Assad eased requirements on the formation of political parties, excluding sectarian based parties. We now have at least nine new political parties.

Municipal elections were held in December 2011. Many of those who won seats were assassinated or threatened throughout the country by the same revolutionaries who claimed to want democracy. Parliamentary elections were held in May 2012 with no eligibility restraints on the candidates.

Many new members of parliament have also been assassinated by the FSA including the wife and three daughters of parliament elect trustee Abdulla Mishleb in the infamous Houla massacre.

Historical Context: Syria in the 1980s

Recent events can be better understood in the context of Syrian history. Bashar al-Assad is the son of late president Hafez al-Assad. Hafez was described by western mainstream media as a tyrant and oppressor but he was not nearly as bad as any other leader in his time like Thatcher, Reagan, or any of the region’s rulers including Turkey’s military rule.The current anti-Assad opposition often refer to the 1982 Hama ‘massacre’.

They claim that Hafez besieged the city and then bombed it killing up to 40,000 civilians. I lived in Damascus at that time and you must understand the conditions in the country at the time to know what really happened.

1) The Muslim Brotherhood was engaged in a war of terror at that time, nothing less than what the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is doing now. The Muslim Brotherhood’s forces were called the ‘Fighting Vanguard’ (Arabic “Al Taleea Al Muqatleh”). Many of the present leaders of the FSA are the same men who led the Fighting Vanguard in the 80s; and they were as savage as their sons now. One of the Fighting Vanguard’s bombings included the Azbakiyeh Bombing in Damascus which took the lives of over 175 civilians and injured hundreds more, and there were many other terror attacks.

2) The entire Hama episode was led by Hafez al-Assad’s younger brother (Bashar al-Assad’s uncle) Rifaat Assad. Rifaat was heading the Saraya Difaa (later to become the Republican Guard). At that time the Syrian minister of defense was Mustapha Tlass, and the Syrian minister of foreign affairs was Abdul Halim Khaddam. All three of them: Riffaat al-Assad, Mustapha, and Abdul Khaddam are leading and financing the political opposition against Bashar from abroad right now.In the current conflict Mustapha’s son Manaf Tlass was sent to negotiate a settlement with his cousins who were rebelling in Rastan.

3) But instead of negotiating he gave them weapons from the Republican Guards caches and leaked secrets causing the deaths of many Republican Guard soldiers at the hands of the FSA.Thirty years after the fighting in Hama a report by US intelligence was declassified revealing that the death toll didn’t even reach 2,000. That number included 400 Muslim Brotherhood Fighting Vanguard militants; many Syrian Army soldiers and officers; Baath Party and other state officials; and a number of civilians who were caught in the fire.

4) Syria was under harder sanctions than it is now. Syria has been under increasingly severe western sanctions since 1956, 15 years before Hafez Assad took power.

Late Hafez Assad followed a more complex policy regarding foes and foreign agents in his government than Bashar does. Hafez would keep his foes in their posts but under his watchful eyes.

When Bashar was selected by the Syrian Parliament to succeed his father in 2000 he removed all of the treasonous foes and foreign agents that Hafez had maintained in office.Bashar’s first reform was to ease some political restrictions, allowing politicians to move more freely. In June 2000 the Damascus Spring was started. It lasted until Autumn 2001 by which time most of the treasonous opposition’s foreign funding, and relations with the US Department of State and corporate think tanks had been exposed. The corrupt officials and their families were expelled from Syria and settled in foreign countries.

They used their massive accumulations of wealth to mount political opposition to Bashar from abroad. In 2003 the US was occupying Iraq.

US Secretary of State Collin Powell visited Bashar and handed him a list of demands including:

1. Cutting all ties with the five main Palestinian factions in Syria,

2. Severing Syria’s relations with Iran in exchange for a promise of better relations with some Arab states.

3. Signing a peace treaty with Israel similar to one Syria had already refused.

4. Removing books from schools with any enmity towards Israel.

5. Allowing western banks and companies unhindered access to Syrian markets and resources along with other neo-liberal reforms.

Bashar refused these demands in the face of the nearly 200,000 coalition troops across the Syrian border in Iraq. Instead Bashar sought to hinder the occupation of Iraq and demanded that the occupying forces withdraw. Because of the proximity of Damascus to the western boarder with Lebanon Syria has the strategic need to secure this border. None the less in 2000 Bashar started withdrawing Syrian troops from Lebanon where they had battled Israeli forces.

The troops were reduced from 35,000 in the year 2000 to 14,000 in early 2004.In 2005 Lebanese Prime Minster Rafic Hariri was assassinated with the help of members of the Lebanese Future Movement party and likely the help of the US and France. This was a political blow to Assad within Lebanon, and he was also blamed for the assassination using media manipulation and prepared activists.

Tens of thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to condemn the killing of Hariri including members of Syria’s closest allies Hizbullah and Amal.The media claimed that the crowds were against the Syrian Army presence in Lebanon. US and France tried to pressure Assad into reinforcing the Syrian Army in Lebanon to stabilize the country but Bashar withdrew all Syrian troops from Lebanon.

This background gives the context accompanying president Assad’s reform attempts in Syria, where he had to face foreign powers from abroad and their agents from within.

The current crisis is not a civil war or rebellion, but a foreign aggression against a sovereign nation.

About the author: The author was born and lived in Damascus, Syria. He moved to Germany ten years ago and runs a company that organizes tourist groups to Syria. Before the conflict he went to Syria often to stay for days and months. He has been an outspoken defender of the Syrian government and has been targeted by the Free Syrian Army who destroyed his property and threatened his life, and so writes under the name Arabi Souri. This article was edited by Seth Rutledge.

:::::

Source: Global Research, March 31, 2013

URL: http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-democracy-vs-the-foreign-invasion-who-is-bashar-al-assad/5329181

And

Poor Analysis of Nationalists/Communists

Adel Samara

Abbreviations:

ANC, Nationalist and Communist Current

FPR, Forces of Politicizing Religion

CT, Conspiracy Theory

ZAR, Zionist Ashkenazi Regime – (Israel)

The deterioration of Arab Nationalist and Communist (ANC) currents between 1970s 2010 provide valuable chance for the counter-revolution that led to the most dangerous [...]]]> Between Islamists, Imperialists and Zionists

And

Poor Analysis of Nationalists/Communists

Adel Samara

Abbreviations:

ANC, Nationalist and Communist Current

FPR, Forces of Politicizing Religion

CT, Conspiracy Theory

ZAR, Zionist Ashkenazi Regime – (Israel)

The deterioration of Arab Nationalist and Communist (ANC) currents between 1970s 2010 provide valuable chance for the counter-revolution that led to the most dangerous and catastrophic developments in Arab recent history crystallized into two main phenomena:

 Arab politics became subjugated and dominated by rulers of oil rental colonized countries

 In addition to their role as client states, those rulers use the rent surplus to support three reactionary currents in Arab Homeland:

1) The so-called businessmen class which became an Islamist and “liberal” bourgeois especially in Egypt. Most of their investments were far from production.[1]

2) Many of the unemployed semi-literate youths were recruited, financed and trained to become preachers and terrorist fighters for the sake of Wahhabi and Salafi Islam.

3) The Moslem Brotherhood which was either allies of the ruling Arab regimes or semi-oppressed in comparison to the secular currents.

The final result of these classes, organizations and terrorists is the strengthening of the domination of the core capitalist and Zionist regime over Arab Homeland.

The defeat of ANC currents following 1967 war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union during 1980s did strengthen and facilitate the rise of new Forces of Politicizing Religion (FPR) on the one hand, and failed to educate/agitate the masses against those currents on the other. In other words, the ANC, in fact, lost the masses.

Actually, the reality was more bitter since many of the ANC organizations fell into alliance and dialogue with the forces of FPR which, in turn, cleverly exploited such positive circumstances, and acted as if they are against imperialism, but under the table they were building a secret compromise and strong alliance with counter-revolution. The secular forces failed to realize that, until it became obvious in the last two years of the so-called Arab Spring.

One can define the era from 1970s-2010 in the Arab Homeland as an era that started by compradorization of power and economy in its beginning and adopting neo-liberalism later and until today. It is important to refer to these developments to explain the industrial and agricultural decline (de-development and even de-reformism) of the economies of the progressive/nationalist /secular Arab regimes (Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Algeria). These developments made it easy for the regimes of oil rent supported by their surplus to dominate Arab politics as it is mentioned above.

In this era of compradorization, de-development and political domination by rulers of oil rent countries (especially the Saudi monarchy); Arab Homeland was subjugated to two tiers which deepened and prolonging oppression, dependency and normalization with the ZAR. The two tiers are: Tajweef al-Waa’I, which is a designed policy of repression of political organizations by ruling regimes aiming at liquidating and terminating any opposition especially ones which demand democracy, liberties, development women emancipation, Arab unity…etc. This Tajweef  for its final goal of Tajreef al-Tharwah which is the continuous process of the ruling corrupted, crony and parasitic capitalist classes who control people’s wealth, but did not devote any of that wealth for development.

Moreover, the oil regimes spent trillions of dollars importing weapons from the US and another imperialist countries and still unable to protect themselves from the false threat by Iran, and at the same time leading a reactionary war against Syria following their wars against Bahrain and Libya.

A Conspiracy that we Fails to Grasp

Based on direct experience, Arabs in general are most believers in Conspiracy Theory (CT). Others, especially in the west ignore that and accuse us of exaggeration and phobia. I believe that there is always a western capitalist white plan(s) against Arab nation. Conspiracy is only the moment of executing that plan(s).

Part of the capitalist west’s plan against Arab nation is the secret relationship with Moslem Brothers, this in addition to their alliance with the so-called moderate Arab regimes and their enmity against the nationalist regimes.

In 1978, three long interviews were published in MERIP Reports, the US leftist magazine at the time, with Rashid Ghanoushi (Tunis), Hasan al-Turabi (Sudan) and Mahmoud al-Zahar (a Palestine). All three of them confirmed that they did not consider the US as an enemy, and that their problem is only with Israel.

From an ideological and economic point view, one can’t ask Islamists to be anti-capitalist or to believe in development in the interest of popular classes or to deal with class issues and women emancipation. But, what is interesting is that they ignore the fact that the relationship between the US imperialism and the ZAR is tied by umbilical cord. Bothe, US and ZAR are one front.

ANC forces thought that those Islamists were politically backward and unable to grasp the deep relationship between US and ZAR, and that rulers of the Gulf are mere and simply “Beduins” and uneducated. In fact many of them are well educated and all of these regimes are led by secret white colonialists who are not consultants but leaders and commanders.

Developments that follow Arab “Spring ” uncover an astonishing fact that FPR were part of a pact with both imperialism and Zionism and that their rejection of Zionism was a mere manipulation of the masses. These developments show that the FPR deeply believe in the “right” of the ZAR to exist on Palestinian Homeland. They declared that either directly or indirectly.

While, the FRP regime in Tunis escaped the popular demand of adding to the constitution an amendment to oppose normalization with ZAR, the same FRP regime in Egypt declared that Camp David Agreement with ZAR is valid and must be respected by their government.

After the collapse of Mubarak regime in Egypt, the FRP leaders stated that to cancel Camp David we must go to the people. But after they got majority of parliament seats, they changed and argued now that, the agreement was first accepted by the parliament and to cancel it we must go to the parliament again. This was the answer of Mahmoud Amer a leader of Egyptian ruling party in an interview on al-Manar TV (7 March 2013)

This means that they either believe that they will be re-elected for ever or that they will make a coup de tat if they were to lose elections.

Amer said that it is the right of Jews, Moslems and Christians to live in Palestine as they did in the past. He completely ignored the occupation of Palestine by Zionist settlers and the eviction of its people! While another leader, from the first staff in the same ruling party Sa’ad al-Katatni (see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsixgQ7KynA)

during Mubarak rule, led a demonstration asking Mubarak to let them go to fight Israel. In the same YouTube, Mubarak said: Go, why do you want my permission! Al-Katatni and his party are NOW seeking peace with the ZAR!

Why did this party move from consulting the people to consult the parliament?

It is because they guarantee that its majority will confirm maintaining Camp David Agreement on the one hand, and they might believe that they will influence the masses during their rule to accept that agreement for the long run on the other. But their obvious manipulation is that they knew that the Egyptian parliament during the Sadat and Mubarak administration were not democratically elected and representing the people.

The Washington Post[2] interviewed Issam al-Arian, another leader in Hizb al-Hurriah wal-Adalah, the ruling party in Egypt. To the question: “What about Israel, Will Egypt keep the treaty? He answered: “The state would keep the treaty”. And about their position towards the United States he said: “No. We never talk about America as an enemy”, and about “Israel” he said: “My dream is that we are not going to destroy Israel. If it doesn’t revise its policy against Arabs and Jews, it can destroy itself. My dream is tolive together as we did before the state of Israel”. It is clear that what they are saying is not a personal opinion; it is the political line of the party and the regime.

A Marxist Critique to the Coming “Anti-imperialism Camp’s” Conference in Stuttgart Spring 2013: One Democratic State

By Adel Samara - Occupied Ramallah

Unfortunately, we, the Arab and Third world Marxists and nationalists, have no choice but to resist and challenge liberal, capitalist and many of leftist western colonialism in its [...]]]>

A Marxist Critique to the Coming “Anti-imperialism Camp’s” Conference in Stuttgart Spring 2013: One Democratic State

By Adel Samara - Occupied Ramallah

Unfortunately, we, the Arab and Third world Marxists and nationalists, have no choice but to resist and challenge liberal, capitalist and many of leftist western colonialism in its old and renewed forms and versions. Western Colonial left is the most dangerous as long as it supports capitalism and imperialism under pretense of leftism. This support was manifested in the wars against Iraq 1991, 2003, against Afghanistan, 2001, Libya 2011 and currently against Syria.

These facts prove that slogans like anti-imperialism or anti-capitalism are mere cover to a racist white content unless this left declares and practices its commitment to socialism and struggle against capitalism and imperialism which is never crystallized in the case of many western leftism. The “Anti-imperialist Camp” which currently supports the counter-revolution war against Syria and/or the new French leftist party “The New Left Anti-Capitalism” which changed its previous name the Communist League and failed to condemn the French imperialist occupation of Libya, invasion of Mali and its leading role in supporting the counter-revolution war against Syria, are clear evidences that this form of left is a left of capitalist imperialist regimes.

Before going to the colonial/imperialist roots of many western left as part and component of Euro-centrism, I like to refer to the difference between this “Anti-imperialism Camp” and the revolutionary pioneering initiative by the Communist Party India (Marxist Leninist) Janashakti – Nexalites which initiated the Anti-imperialism convention and Forum 1995 for all International Marxist Leninist Parties and Organizations aiming at building a broad camp against both imperialism and capitalism. The labor party of Belgium welcomed many of the activities of this camp especially before the right wingers of the party change his Secretary General Ludo Martens.

It is important to note here that Naxalite conducts a peasantry guerrilla struggle in India, and Philippines’ Marxists are conducting the same struggle while the same Maoist current defeated the old feudal client regime in Nepal and rule the country as a result of revolutionary democratic elections, without getting into the debate about the current complex situation in Nepal.

I mention this point to shed light on the fact that the so-called “Anti-imperialism camp” distances itself from the honor of military struggle especially when it comes to Palestine because their radicalism applies everywhere except on the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime – Israel (ZAR)! Moreover, this Anti-imperialist Camp supports the imperialist and Wahabi/Salafi aggression against the Arab Republic of Syria! This “camp” calls for a democratic state in Palestine under the same settler Zionist regime, i.e. they want to democratize a capitalist settler colonial white Zionist Ashkenazi Regime (ZAR) and to de-link Palestine and Palestinian people from its national Arab depth.[1] Thus, with this arbitrary separation of Palestine, they aim at minimizing the conflict form its reality as Zionist-Arab conflict to a mere Palestinian demand for citizenship under the ZAR. If they succeed in that, their final goal is to integrate the ZAR into the Arab nation as a dominant power, Integration through Domination. In this case, the ZAR will play an imperialist role in the Arab Homeland in the levels of military might on the one hand, and on technology and know-how on the other. In this scenario, the Palestinians will be used to play the role of marketing the ZAR products and services which will deepen Arab dependency and backwardness. As long as the ZAR is a direct part of world capitalist system, especially that of the Triad, its integration into Arab Homeland will guarantee a new role which facilitates capital’s expansion in the region.

Nazism against Jews but Germany against Palestinians!

One wonders if the culture of racism in Germany only started by the Nazis! Two centuries ago, Gorge Wilhelm Fredric Hegel argued in a racist manner against what he called people without history. Why shouldn’t we understand aggressive politics of all German governments against Palestinian people as a modern adoption of Hegel’s racist ideas? Donating tens of billions of dollars to the ZAR as compensation/substitution for the lives of exterminated Jews under Nazi Germany is a policy which strengthens the settler colonial ZAR in Palestine. From a moral point of view, human beings shouldn’t accept money for human lives. But, in case it happens, Germany should pay the victim’s families not the settler colonial ZAR. This support is an open formal German racist war against Palestinians. What Germany should do is to boycott this regime and all civilized German citizens shouldn’t even visit it.

Unfortunately, what is happening is just the opposite. Some German leftists are cheating their Palestinian and Arab dependent fellows on the one side, and on the other, German governments are continuously donating to ZAR monetary liquidity and weapons. One of the recent donations was in the form of a three nuclear sub-marines (this confirm that the ZAR is a nuclear state) and lately Germany decided to plant a forest in the occupied part of Palestine al-Naqab “Negev”.

On the social level, and despite the shameful reputation of most of NGOs on world scale, German leftist party, the new left (de-Link) “export” a “Marxist” NGO to occupied Palestine using the name of the “poor” Marxist Rosa Luxemburg. What a cheap exploitation of her revolutionary legacy! De-Linka NGO paid $40 thousand for a conference in occupied Ramallah aiming at uniting Palestinian left![2]

The same de-Linka will participate in the above mentioned Stuttgart conference named “One Democratic State” for the settlers and the native Palestinians jointly with participants from liberal and westernized Palestinians and Arabs who are against military struggle. Other participants are progressive Jewish ”leftists” from ZAR as well.

But, one democratic state with the ZAR is not a priority for Palestinian people who wants from Germany to stop its terrorist war against them, to stop feeding the ZAR with money liquidity and the most sophisticated weapons, and to allow Jews who were expelled or left Bavaria go back to their homeland, i.e. like Russian Federation which facilitates the return of Russian Jews to their homeland.

German Ancestors of the Current German Colonialist Left

 What follows is not a theoretical piece in political economy. But to call historical events and positions to help understand the current positions of some German leftist groups through their support of ZAR.  “…During the 1907 elections in Germany when, after twenty years of steady growth in their election results, the SPD lost almost half its votes due to an upsurge of patriots brought about by Germany’s genocidal colonial conquest of Namibia and the massacre of more than 65,000 herero people”.

I leave the answer to de-Linka to tell us why the voters voted in favor of their capitalist colonial brutal regime?

What is worse is the fact that the right wing of SPD and some of the center argue: “…that the SPD must become a pro colonial party in order to win votes in parliamentary elections …Bernstein stated, the SPD must “develop a positive, socialist colonial policy”.

What form of a left which use the souls of the poor Namibians for parliamentary seats? Are the Zionist leftists different in using the souls of Palestinians for the same purpose or even worse?

The Zionist left led the ZAR, and in 1967 occupied the rest of Palestine and started building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Capitalism and Imperialism

Neither I will deal with Luxemburg’s argument that capitalism can’t last without colonialism, nor I will discuss the fact that capital, by nature is expansionist and, accordingly, must launch colonial wars.  But, I will deal with the false differentiation and separation between capitalism and imperialism as an inherited pathology in some of German left.

Bernstein, like Kautsky, hoped to unite the Second International with supposedly peace-loving sections of capital to temper the system’s brutality. De-Linka is trying to do the same by building a peace camp from liberal Arab /Palestinian and Jewish Zionists under the umbrella of peace. In fact, what is encouraging de-Linka to do so is the PLO signing of the Oslo Accords with the ZAR, an agreement that I call peace for capital between the bourgeois of the two partners. But de-Linka goes that far to unite Palestinians in historic Palestine under the Zionist regime in the so-called One Democratic State.

What is the difference between this democratic joint state and Netanyahu’s Economic Peace?

In fact, the participants in this conference who are marketing the one democratic state are:

• Totally ignoring the Palestinian resistance for over a century and declaring the defeatism of Palestinian people;
• Trying to avoid the new historical development in the Arab Homeland and the region which is the rising up of Resistance camp;
• The development of the new poles on the world scale.

Neglecting resistance, the Anti-imperialism camp is, in fact, following Kautsky’s racist and Eurocentric argument that“a lasting resistance from the native population… is not to be expected..”.

Am I right to deduce that Kautsky is influenced by Hegel on “Peoples without History”?

What is important is to remind de-Linka that Rosa Luxemburg was against Kautsky’s racist, reformist and renegade argument.

I think that the Anti-imperialist camp is influenced by Kautsky’s simplistic/reformist argument that “imperialism is just a question of power, not an economic necessity.”

By calling for One Democratic State solution in Palestine, they neglect the economic interests of the core capitalist countries behind the mere creation of the ZAR, i.e. capitalism itself and the ZAR harsh economic exploitation of Palestinians in 1948 areas which are a “reserve” for cheap labor and a market for the products of the Zionist capitalists.  That is why, they dream that Zionist and imperialist capitalists will go for democracy on the one hand, and that we the Arabs and Palestinians will go down on our knees as long as the white settlers “donate” to us “democracy”.

According to Kautsky, “Imperialism is simply a beastly ‘method…’ [to achieve] what is legitimate and necessary in itself but can be achieved ‘much better’ through other methods, namely, ‘democracy.’”  While the ZAR is a settler colonial state, we can’t call it imperialism or even sub-imperialism because it is not on its own land. It is not a normal society since it gathers its settlers from 100 nations and cultures on the one hand, and occupies the homeland of other people: the Palestinians. That is why a hundred years ago; Lenin told the Bond that Jews are not a nation as long as they don’t have their own land.

Following Kautsky’s appreciation of bourgeois democracy as a solution for its beastly method, the Anti-imperialism Camp are curing the ZAR with the same false medicine bourgeois democracy which even Samuel Huntington considers false .

Anti Imperialism or Anti Arab Nation?

What form of democracy might a capitalist regime of settlers and racists offer to native Palestinians after they were evicted from their homeland and subjugated to an extended Holocaust?

The “Anti-imperialism Camp’s” calls for a “Democratic” state an adaptation with the refusal of ZAR to “donate” the colluded Palestinians a tiny state in less than one quarter of Palestine. This means that the internal argument inside this camp is: as long as the Zionists are against any form of Palestinian state, why shouldn’t we support a one “democratic” state under the domination of the Zionist Jews? The big joke is that any suggested false western capitalist or leftist solution for Arab Zionist conflict, will always find Arab and Palestinian collaborators. In fact, the deterioration of PLO from the liberation of Palestine to accept Oslo-Stan did encourage liberals and renegade Marxists to suggest one democratic state dominated by Zionists. The irony is that all Jews in Palestine, with the exception of less than a dozen individuals, reject this one state democratic solution and are going for a pure Jewish state. Any continuous marketing of this solution will only expand and deepen the internalization of defeat among Palestinians.

Liberation and Socialist Arab State/s

It is certain that the two-state solution was a conspiracy against Palestinian people’s Right of Return to their homes and land. It is rejected based on that principle and not only because it has failed.

The one-state solution will never come through “democracy” or democratization of a white settler colonial ZAR, not to mention its bloody and brutal policies. Democracy will never cure settlers.

The current situation opens no window for any solution. Those who are against two-state solution must struggle for a socialist state which must:

• Be achieved through liberation of Palestine;
• Be a socialist one and Palestine will be part of an Arab socialist state/s;
• And according to the present conditions, this remains a vision for the future.

When the socialist state takes place, which will be after the liberation of Palestine and must accomplish the following:

• Allow all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land and have compensation;
• Dismantle the military apparatus of the Zionist regime;
• Liberate Palestinian land from the settlers;
• Nationalize land and advanced technological and industrial complex.
• In an Arab socialist state/s the natives, i.e., Arabs, and their non-Arab partners in the Homeland and the Jews will be equal citizens.

Diplomatic Note was issued to Vatican just prior to his resignation

New Pope and Catholic clergy face indictment and arrest as “Easter Reclamation” plan continues.

A Global Media Release and Statement from The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State

Brussels:

Il y a quelques jours de cela, on m’a demandé ce que je pense de Gilad Atzmon et des juifs non sionistes en ctivis. Bien que la question de juifs non-sionistes soit complexe, on doit pouvoir distinguer les sionistes des non-sionistes. Les critères suivants peuvent s’appliquer à tous et non [...]]]>  un article d’ADEL SAMARA

Il y a quelques jours de cela, on m’a demandé ce que je pense de Gilad Atzmon et des juifs non sionistes en ctivis. Bien que la question de juifs non-sionistes soit complexe, on doit pouvoir distinguer les sionistes des non-sionistes. Les critères suivants peuvent s’appliquer à tous et non exclusivement aux juifs :

-toute personne, parti ou régime qui reconnaît l’Etat d’Israël, qu’il soit juif, palestinien, arabe, ou de quelque nationalité, est sioniste.

-les non-sionistes, au contraire, sont des gens qui pensent que toutes les formes de lutte, y compris la lutte armée, sont légitimes pour la ctivists de la Palestine et le Droit au Retour des Réfugiés .

-les non-sionistes considèrent que la Nakba de 1948 constitue l’Holocaust toujours en cours de ctivistsn, du ctivi palestinien.

- Mais les révolutionnaires, eux, sont ceux qui croient en l’avenir du socialisme comme solution pour la Palestine, socialisme dans le cadre d’un socialisme arabe, dans lequel les juifs –don’t l’écrasante majorité a colonisé la Palestine dans le cadre du projet colonial sioniste- seront ctivi comme tout autre groupe culturel ou religieux. Il est vrai que la perspective du socialisme n’est pas ctivists, mais cela demeure la seule solution.

Bien que j’aie suivi certains des travaux et activités d’Atzmon, je ne suis pas parfaitement au courant de ses positions sur la question israélo-palestinienne. J’ai eu l’occasion de suivre une interview qu’il donnait à la ctivists et j’ai lu une ctivistsn antérieure à cette interview, ctivistsn faite par des écrivains et ctivists palestiniens intitulée « Granting no quarter », un appel au désaveu du racisme et de l’anti-sémitisme par Gilad Atzmon.

Cette ctivistsn aurait pu être considérée raisonnable si elle avait été publiée avant que l’Etat sioniste n’appelle à créer un Etat juif , purement juif .

Si « juifs » désigne une nation, alors, rien de tel n’existe : les colonisateurs sionistes sont venus d’environ 100 pays et nations différents. Si « l’Etat juif » signifie l’Etat de ceux qui croient au judaïsme, cela signifie que nous parlons d’une politisation du judaïsme, la ctivis. Alors, Gilad a raison de qualifier la ctivis d’idéologie et de la critiquer. Il établit une ctivi ctivists entre le Judaïsme et la Judéité. La question est alors, pourquoi les Palestiniens s’opposeraient-ils à cela ?

La Judéité est le Judaïsme politique. De cti que je désigne comme FPIR ou forces politiques de l’islam religieux, ce que certains ctivists « islam politique », mais qui en fait est ctivis dans toutes les religions : le néo-conservatisme religieux est aussi bien

Chrétien que Juif.

Même si nous sommes en ctivists avec Gilad pour apprécier si le sionisme s’applique à la diaspora ou s’il n’est plus applicable de nos jours, s’il s’agit d’un post-sionisme ou non, tout ceci est après tout son opinion, son ctivistsnsn, ou encore ce que nous appelons en arabe » Ijtihad ».

En quoi donc critiquer Atzmon ? Pourquoi toutes ces ctivists ?

Laisser les sionistes le combattre ? Pourquoi les Palestiniens se porteraient-ils volontaires ?

Si l’ Etat d’Israël est un Etat d’apartheid, cela est vrai de la partie occupée de la Palestine de 1948 ; en Afrique du Sud, il n’y a pas eu d’expulsion, pas de question de Réfugiés.

Je me demande pourquoi ces écrivains et ctivists palestiniens ne s’opposeraient pas à Noam Chomsky lorsqu’il refuse clairement toute solution par Un seul Etat, au motif que cela ferait du mal aux Juifs !

L’Holocauste a été ctivis sur une brève période, intensive, mais notre Holocauste s’étend sur une période longue, qui se prolonge.

Enfin un dernier commentaire sur les ctivistsns des écrivains et ctivists palestiniens : que peut-on trouver de faux lorsque Atzmon qualifie le sionisme comme la version juive du nazisme ?

ADEL SAMARA dans le Kana’an Bulletin, 4 février 13

Bradford West MP George Galloway responded to Prime Minister David Cameron’s refusal to answer a parliamentary question, by resorting to a cheap insult, by detailing the Arab tyrannies and puppet [...]]]>

What is the difference between the jihadists in Mali we oppose and the jihadists in Syria we back?

Response to David Cameron

Bradford West MP George Galloway responded to Prime Minister David Cameron’s refusal to answer a parliamentary question, by resorting to a cheap insult, by detailing the Arab tyrannies and puppet presidents Britain backs.

‘I asked a reasonable question, to detail the difference between the jihadists in Mali we oppose and the jihadists in Syria we back and in response to a legitimate inquiry I received a sneering insult more fitted to the gutters of Eton than the Mother of all Parliaments,’ Galloway said. ‘Britain is guilty to backing the worst, most bloodthirsty dictators in the world, bar none. This country backs and arms the foul Saudi Arabian sheikhdom which has the least democracy and probably the worst human rights record on the planet.

Then there’s Bahrain. And what about Egypt where this government backed Mubarak until almost the end? And it is less than a week ago, isn’t it, that the Foreign Office was warning British citizens to get out of Benghazi immediately for fear of their lives – at risk from the same jihadis we supplied, armed and fought for.’

Galloway added: ‘I have written to the Prime Minister today about his response to me and I will be interested how he responds.’

Below is the text of the letter:

Wednesday 30th January 2012
Dear Prime Minister,

I’m sure on reflection you will realise that your answer to me today was beneath you and unbecoming for a British Prime Minister. I will deal with the complete absence of a substantive reply in a moment. But let me deal first with the vulgar abuse.

I do not support any Arab dictatorship, unlike you. It is you who is selling weapons to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and providing military training there. It is you who is supporting the Bahraini dictatorship. It is you who supported the Mubarak dictatorship until its last hours. Ditto the late dictatorship in Tunisia, Yemen etc. It is you who has the warmest possible relations with the dictatorships in the Gulf. I could go on, believe me. I, on the other hand, have spoken, written and broadcast against all Arab dictatorships. Perhaps your staff, in preparing your reply, will provide you with the evidence of this. I also read Frankenstein until the end.

I told one of your predecessors, Lady Thatcher, on the eve of the triumph of those whom your party routinely described as ‘Afghan freedom fighters’ that she “had opened the gates to the barbarians…. And that a long dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan”. I warned repeatedly against the folly of the creation of the Arab-Afghan force which became Al Qaida. Immediately after 9/11 I said in the House that “I despise Osama Bin Laden, the medieval obscurantist savage. The difference is that I have always despised him. I despised him when you (pointing at the Tory benches) were giving him guns and money”.

I find it genuinely inexplicable that you are doing it all over again. This is a tragedy which begins to look farcical when one considers the issue which I raised today with you. We are now killing Al Qaida in Mali and helping Al Qaida kill in Syria – killing Christians, killing Shiites, killing Kurds, killing Druze, killing Sunnis who won’t join their jihad, and soon, trust me, they will be killing each other.

There may be “key differences” between Al Qaida in Mali and their counterparts in Syria. I asked you to explain these to the House today. You refused. But it is a question which will not go away before a puff of vulgar abuse.

I look forward to your reply. I am seeking to publish this letter.

Yours sincerely,

George Galloway MP

Wednesday, 30 January 2013

Source: http://www.votegeorgegalloway.com/2013/01/response-to-david-cameron.html#more

A few days ago someone asked me about Gilad Atzmon and non-Zionist Jews in general. Although the question of non-Zionist Jews is a complicated one, however, one might offer some points to differentiate a Zionist from a non-Zionist.  These points do not apply to Jews only, rather to all.

Collusion of Palestinians, Arabs and Others

By Adel Samara
It is interesting that any event in the Ashkenazi Zionist Regime (ZAR) attracts the global attention and transcends the size of this entity in terms of its population size, scientific and economic role. I did not mention its geography/space because it is [...]]]> Israeli Elections: Victory for Zionism

Collusion of Palestinians, Arabs and Others

By Adel Samara
It is interesting that any event in the Ashkenazi Zionist Regime (ZAR) attracts the global attention and transcends the size of this entity in terms of its population size, scientific and economic role. I did not mention its geography/space because it is built on a land that belongs to others. This interest is due to the domination of the Zionist media lobby, especially in the last few years, over the global media in a strange historical era where the role of the media as the armies in the destruction of several nations of periphery – the case of Libya – where media went hand in hand with NATO terrorism.

The world will be different if it pays attention to ZAR in a manner of condemning its rape of the land of the Palestinian people and the expulsion of this people during 1948 war. When this condemnation takes place, it will be a great change matching Marx’s contribution when turned Hegel’s dialectic from standing upside down.

Because this entity is a settler/colonial, Arab analyses of its elections must concentrate on and agitate Palestinians inside the ZAR to boycott these elections, not to fall into superfluous analysis like: who will gain more? and who will make the new government?

I will only mention three reasons for the necessity of this boycott:
First, nature of the state itself: because the Zionist state itself is an illegal entity that was created artificially by the Centre of the global capitalist system whose political forces, arms, money, media, religion and ideology is centered on shifting to Palestine waves of white settlers (attract after 1948 waves of other colors of settlers) began since sixties of the nineteenth century did not stop until the moment. Those well armed settlers, backed by the capitalist West occupied 1948 about 78 percent of Palestinians homeland and completed their occupation and settlement in the rest of Palestine in 1967. All this in a continuous process of mass destruction to the Palestinian presence geographically, demographically, class and economically, revealing that the thesis of Ilan Pappe that what happened in Palestine is ethnic cleansing, is less than the truth.

So, this entity is not legitimate, a fact which recalls what Vladimir Ilich Lenin wrote to the Jewish wing “Bund” of the Russian Socialist Democratic Workers Party in the early twentieth century: “No Jews are allowed to establish a state in Palestine because the state requires to be the people’s land and this is not the land of the Jews”. So, the Palestinian boycott of the Israeli elections is to confirm Palestinian people’s Right of Return (RoR) to their homes and property, while participation in voting is an implicit surrender of this right.

Even in case of a real state, i.e. a state on land of its own people, the national minorities cannot achieve national decisions or laws that contradict the consensus of the majority of parliament despite its political differences between the left and right and center … etc, where all parliament members of the large nationality is entrenched behind their national loyalty.

From here, boycott is the right way. And this way, of course, has its price because it ultimately leads to struggle for the right to self-determination, including secession[1] as Lenin confirmed and defeated Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis during their debate on that issue.
So, the situation of Palestinians in the occupied 1948 must evolve to reject the elections and stand up to the right of self-determination. This rejection does not mean the inability of the 48 Palestinians on the struggle in all areas of life: social, cultural, economic, trade unions, women emancipation and even self determination. Indeed, members of parliament have risks even in normal conditions where often takes a person to seat positions so far from the positions of his party, after carrying him to that success.

It is not rare that a million and a half Palestinians under Zionist settler colonialism claim to secede and this does not harm the RoR of the evicted Palestinian majority to its homeland. Given that the United Nations had bowed to the center of imperialism achieving independents for many minorities that have pledged to turn around its orbit within the (third  nationalism wave[2]) and United Nations recognized much of these ethnicities and converted them to independent countries such as those of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, Sudan and underway attempt in Iraq … etc., why Palestinians of 48 would not demand to secede from the ZAR in a move to dismantle the entity and weaken it in order to return to unite Palestine after its liberation from the entity and the RoR and the establishment of socialist Palestine as part of the Arab Homeland. While this socialist solution still a vision for the time being, it faces other false slogans of bi-national state, secular democratic state, state for all its citizens and cultural autonomy … etc.

The second is the betrayed commitment by Arab Regimes: it should be the official and popular Arab position to urge Palestinians in the occupied 1948 not to participate in these elections, as based on the first reason mentioned above. But Arab regimes are mainly dependent, client states and ruled by comprador capitalism revolve in the orbit of the capitalist center, accordingly, they never stand against the elections, or even take a neutral stance. Unfortunately, the Arab League encourages the Palestinians of 1948 to participate in the ZAR elections.

This brings an important issue, which is that these systems are either recognize ZAR openly or secretly or are still reluctant. Thus, the maximum demand of Arab regimes is a state for part of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That is, they dropped the RoR and encouraged Palestinian people to drop this right too. Thus, these constraints in demanding a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while ignoring the RoR of Palestinian refugees have left the Palestinian people in great trouble to re-explain to solidarity groups all over the world that the problem is not in the 1967 borders, but in the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinian of his homeland.

The genuine or at least the supposed position of Arab League must be to exploit the rise of the forces of resistance and evolution of regional powers in the region, Iran, and the emerge of new poles (Russia, China and the rest of BRICS) for strengthening the Palestinians of 1948 to fully boycotting these elections.

Third:  the social and political forces of 1948 Palestinians
It is clear that most of the Palestinian political forces in the occupied part in 1948 had fallen into the recognition of  ZAR and is involved in what was done by traditional and Hamula’s patriarchal figures since 1948 especially the participation into the Knesset elections. They support false slogans like equality, state for all its citizens … etc. And with the exception of the movement of the Abna’a El-Balad and part of the Islamic Movement, the various political forces have been colluded implicated in these elections. Of course, the promotion of the Zionist establishment of Palestinian participation in the elections is based on two factors:

First: To guarantee that every Palestinian accepts the Jewish state and surrenders the RoR,

Second: to take advantage of the Palestinian voice in the internal competition between the Zionist parliamentary blocs.
Perhaps the declaration of the  general secretary of the al-Tajamu’a’ al-Watani al-Democrati, Wasel Taha (the heir of Dr. Azmi Bishara, who ended as an adviser to the Emir of Qatar for Zionism Affairs) is the best expression of the actual involvement of Palestinians who participated in the elections as colludes with the Zionist enterprise, when asked about the position of boycotting the elections, he said: “In the past boycotting was right because the choice was between Netanyahu and Sharon, but now we must participate (Quds  TV Channel 1/15/2013), as if, as one could imagine, competition is now is between Netanyahu and Fidel Castro!

Zionism still is the winner

After the lesson of principal, we move to the political lesson from these elections? Does the closeness in number of seats between classic right and the so-called (center and left) is a cause for the “joy” of Arabs who are committed to two states solution and hardly strives to rescue that solution?

Here we must remind those Arabs, Palestinians and others in many countries are friends of ZAR, camouflaged by loving peace, of  several basic things:

First: what has been happening since the 1991 Madrid Conference and the Oslo Agreement in 1993 is the peace of capital, where the PLO essentially gave up the Palestinian people’s RoR. Peace of capital is the first edition of Netanyahu’s final project/solution which is “economic peace.”

Second: The so-called Israeli left is the political block and leadership which led ZAR from 1948-1977, occupied the territory of 1967, invented the Jordanian option and the functional division, established settlements in the occupied territory of 1967, deeply supported the pure Jewish State, and finally opposed RoR of the Palestinian people. What is done today by different groups of Jewish right wing parties is a mere repetition of what the so-called left has been doing for decades.

Third: the “left” is on the one hand pure Ashkenazi, who are the founders of the white settler Zionist colonial state, ZAR, and this left today, is less radical even socially than it was two decades ago, it stands for privatization, neo-liberalism and is deeply supportive and is a partner in capitalist degradation from imperialism to globalism.

This brings us to the conclusion that there is a consensus among all these blocs and powers to reject the RoR. As some talk about a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is for political consumption evidenced by the fact that these forces have not applied this project when they were in power.

It is important to note, that the so-called peace forces in ZAR, which pretend to support the Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, aim to seduce and lure forces and currents in the capitalist West which are still pro-Zionist state and even pro a Jewish state and believe that the solution is to “bribe” the Palestinians with a state in the West Bank and Gaza, and therefore, these forces and parties and intellectuals fall in the case of Zionization consciously or maliciously as long as they ignore the RoR.

There is no more racism than to recognize a racist entity which is the Jewish edition of Nazism, armed by nuclear weapons, and insist on denying the RoR of the people to return to their homes and properties. This reveals that under the skin of these people an orientalist and anthropological understanding of Arabs and Palestinians. This is what encourages various political forces in ZAR towards racism in addition to other factors such as:

First: that Ashkenazi control and lead most political forces in the ZAR entity and of course the parliamentary blocs are Ashkenazi Jews: especially Likud, Israel Beiteinu (both right), and Labor and Merits (left Ashkenazi), and movement and Ataid (central Ashkenazi). This confirms my argument that it is a state of Ashkenazi who dominate the left, center and the right as well. Isn’t it a fact that Ashkenazi represent both power and wealth in the ZAR? So why not be “politically right” and racist!

Second: the weakness of Arab position especially after the success of counter-revolutions in containing “mobility – Spring” of Arab masses and maintaining most characteristic of previous regimes, especially in Egypt and Tunisia including the recognition of the Zionist entity. This, in addition to the role of oil rents rulers in destroying Arab nationalist secular regimes in cooperation and on behalf of imperialism and Zionism under the cover of democratizing non-democratic secular nationalist regimes. But the irony is that democratization of these non-democratic regimes has been adopted and injected by imperialism and absolute monarchies.

Third: Zionist leaders grasped the new fact following the steadfastness of Lebanese and Palestinian resistance which is there is no chance for ZAR to occupy more Arab land. Accordingly, the ZAR leadership will concentrate in strengthening its internal social front and will exploit the fragmentation of Arab positions towards Palestine to annex as much as possible of the land in the West Bank and finally avoid as much as possible any negotiations for a Palestinian state.

While neglecting negotiations with Palestinians, ZAR will continue its ambition of Integration through Domination (ItD) into Arab Homeland through economic, technological and military aspects. GCC might depend on the ZAR protection from the false threat from Iran a development, if it happens, will open a new paid job for ZAR which will substitute the eagerness of ZAR to attack Iran.

As is the case – the discussion and analysis of these elections on the ground of number of seats for this block or that, the share of Palestinian lists, and the nature of the coming government, and its position towards “peace” – is meaningless.

It is a tragedy to conclude that the possibility of large Israeli government is highly predictable more than reconciliation between Fath and Hamas.

[1] See Adel Samara, Epidemic of Globalization, Chapter four p.p. 86-111, published by: Palestine Research and Publishing Foundation, 2001.

[2] Nineteenth century is falsely called the century of nationalism in a Euro-centricist inclination to generalize Europe’s history all over the world. This was the first wave of nationalism, the second was in mid Twentieth Century by national liberation movements in countries of the periphery, and the third wave is the new wave during era of globalism.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 04, 2013

 Image: El Salvador Death squads

The recruitment of death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda. There [...]]]>  

Death Squads in Iraq and Syria. The Historical Roots of US-NATO’s Covert War on Syria

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, January 04, 2013

 Image: El Salvador Death squads

The recruitment of death squads is part of a well established US military-intelligence agenda. There is a long and gruesome US history of covert funding and support of  terror brigades and targeted assassinations going back to the Vietnam war. 

As government forces continue to confront the self-proclaimed “Free Syrian Army” (FSA),  the historical roots of  the West’s covert war on Syria –which has resulted in countless atrocities– must be fully revealed.

From the outset in March 2011, the US and its allies have supported the formation of death squads and the incursion of  terrorist brigades in a carefully planned undertaking.

The recruitment and training of terror brigades in both Iraq and Syria was modeled on the “Salvador Option”,  a “terrorist model” of mass killings by US sponsored death squads in Central America. It was first applied in  El Salvador, in the heyday of resistance against the military dictatorship, resulting in an estimated 75,000 deaths.

The formation of death squads in Syria builds upon the history and experience of US  sponsored terror brigades in Iraq, under the Pentagon’s “counterinsurgency” program.

The Establishment of Death Squads in Iraq

US sponsored death squads were recruited in Iraq starting in 2004-2005 in an initiative launched under the helm of the US Ambassador John Negroponte, [image: right] who was dispatched to Baghdad by the US State Department in June 2004.

Negroponte was the “man for the job”. As US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. Negroponte played a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras as well as overseeing the activities of the Honduran military death squads.

“Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Honduras’s military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was “disappearing” dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion.”

In January 2005, the Pentagon, confirmed that it was considering:

” forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency [Resistance] in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago”.

Under the so-called “El Salvador option”, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders, even in Syria, where some are thought to shelter. …

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret.

The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

Then, the Reagan Administration funded and trained teams of nationalist forces to neutralise Salvadorean rebel leaders and sympathisers. …

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. …

In the early 1980s President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr Reagan.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, … is to follow that model …

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces.

Nor is it clear who would take responsibility for such a programme — the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the ability to deny knowledge of it.  (El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants – Times Online, January 10, 2005, emphasis added)

While the stated objective of the “Iraq Salvador Option” was to “take out the insurgency”, in practice the US sponsored terror brigades were involved in routine killings of civilians with a view to fomenting sectarian violence. In turn, the CIA and MI6 were overseeing “Al Qaeda in Iraq”  units involved in targeted assassinations directed against the Shiite population. Of significance, the death squads were integrated and advised by undercover US Special Forces.

Robert Stephen Ford –subsequently appointed US Ambassador to Syria– was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. In January 2004, he was dispatched as U.S. representative to the Shiite city of Najaf which was the stronghold of the Mahdi army, with which he made preliminary contacts.

In January 2005, Robert S. Ford’s was appointed Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the US Embassy under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte. He was not only part of the inner team, he was Negroponte’s partner in setting up the Salvador Option.  Some of the groundwork had been established in Najaf prior to Ford’s transfer to Baghdad.

John Negroponte and Robert Stephen Ford were put in charge of recruiting the Iraqi death squads. While Negroponte  coordinated the operation from his office at the US Embassy, Robert S. Ford, who was fluent in both Arabic and Turkish, was entrusted with the task of establishing strategic contacts with Shiite and Kurdish militia groups outside the “Green Zone”.

Two other embassy officials, namely Henry Ensher (Ford’s Deputy) and a younger official in the political section,Jeffrey Beals, played an important role in the team “talking to a range of Iraqis, including extremists”. (See The New Yorker, March 26, 2007).  Another key individual in Negroponte’s team was James Franklin Jeffrey, America’s ambassador to Albania (2002-2004). In 2010, Jeffrey was appointed US Ambassador to Iraq (2010-2012).

Negroponte also brought into the team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele (ret) from his Honduras heyday:

Under the “Salvador Option,” “Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980′s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiralled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq.

Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day aregenerated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush’s New Iraq Team,. Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007)

“Colonel Steele was responsible, according to Rep. Dennis Kucinich for implementing  “a plan in El Salvador under which tens of thousands Salvadorans “disappeared” or were murdered, including Archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns.”

Upon his appointment to Baghdad, Colonel Steele was assigned to a counter-insurgency unit known as the “Special Police Commando” under the Iraqi Interior Ministry” (See ACN, Havana,  June 14, 2006) 

Reports confirm that “the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry’s special commandos” which so happened to be under supervision of  Colonel Steele:

“US soldiers, US advisers, were standing aside and doing nothing,” while members of the Wolf Brigade beat and tortured prisoners. The interior ministry commandos took over the public library in Samarra, and turned it into a detention centre, he said.  An interview conducted by Maass [of the New York Times] in 2005 at the improvised prison, accompanied by the Wolf Brigade’s US military adviser, Col James Steele, had been interrupted by the terrified screams of a prisoner outside, he said. Steele was reportedly previously employed as an adviser to help crush an insurgency in El Salvador.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

Another notorious figure who played a role in Iraq’s counter-insurgency program was Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik  [image: Bernie Kerik  in Baghdad Police Academy with body guards] who in 2007 was indicted in federal court on 16 felony charges.

Kerik had been appointed by the Bush administration at the outset of the occupation in 2003 to assist in the organization and training  of the Iraqi Police force. During his short stint in 2003, Bernie Kerik –who took on the position of interim Minister of the Interior– worked towards organizing terror units within the Iraqi Police force: “Dispatched to Iraq to whip Iraqi security forces into shape, Kerik dubbed himself the “interim interior minister of Iraq.” British police advisors called him the “Baghdad terminator,” (Salon, December 9, 2004, emphasis added)

Under Negroponte’s helm at the US Embassy in Baghdad, a  wave of covert civilian killings and targeted assassinations had been unleashed. Engineers, medical  doctors, scientists and intellectuals were also targeted.

Author and geopolitical analyst Max Fuller has documented in detail the atrocities committed under the US sponsored counterinsurgency program.

The appearance of death squads was first highlighted in May this year [2005], …dozens of bodies were found casually disposed … in vacant areas around Baghdad. All of the victims had been handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head and many of them also showed signs of having been brutally tortured.  …

The evidence was sufficiently compelling for the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), a leading Sunni organisation, to issue public statements in which they accused the security forces attached to the Ministry of the Interior as well as the Badr Brigade, the former armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), of being behind the killings. They also accused the Ministry of the Interior of conducting state terrorism (Financial Times).

The Police Commandos as well as the Wolf  Brigade were overseen by the US counterinsurgency program in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior:

The Police Commandos were formed under the experienced tutelage and oversight of veteran US counterinsurgency fighters, and from the outset conducted joint-force operations with elite and highly secretive US special-forces units(Reuters, National Review Online).

…A key figure in the development of the Special Police Commandos was James Steele, a former US Army special forces operative who cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the US military mission in El Salvador at the height of that country’s civil war. …

Another US contributor was the same Steven Casteel who as the most senior US advisor within the Interior Ministry brushed off serious and well-substantiated accusations of appalling human right violations as ‘rumor and innuendo’. Like Steele, Casteel gained considerable experience in Latin America, in his case participating in the hunt for the cocaine baron Pablo Escobar in Colombia’s Drugs Wars of the 1990s …

Casteel’s background is significant because this kind of intelligence-gathering support role and the production of death lists are characteristic of US involvement in counterinsurgency programs and constitute the underlying thread in what can appear to be random, disjointed killing sprees.

Such centrally planned genocides are entirely consistent with what is taking place in Iraq today [2005] …It is also consistent with what little we know about the Special Police Commandos, which was tailored to provide the Interior Ministry with a special-forces strike capability (US Department of Defense). In keeping with such a role, the Police Commando headquarters has become the hub of a nationwide command, control, communications, computer and intelligence operations centre, courtesy of the US. (Max Fuller, op cit)

This initial groundwork established under Negroponte in 2005 was implemented under his successor Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad.  Robert Stephen Ford ensured the continuity of the project prior to his appointment as US Ambassador to Algeria in 2006,  as well as upon his return to Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission in 2008.

Operation “Syrian Contras”: Learning from the Iraqi Experience

The gruesome Iraqi version of the “Salvador Option” under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte has served as a “role model” for setting up the “Free Syrian Army” Contras. Robert Stephen Ford was, no doubt, involved in the implementation of the Syrian Contras project, following his reassignment to Baghdad as Deputy Head of Mission in 2008.

The objective in Syria was to create factional divisions between Sunni, Alawite, Shiite, Kurds, Druze and Christians. While the Syrian context is entirely different to that of Iraq, there are striking similarities with regard to the procedures whereby the killings and atrocities were conducted.

A report published by Der Spiegel pertaining to atrocities committed in the Syrian city of Homs confirms an organized sectarian process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings comparable to that conducted by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.

People in Homs were routinely categorized as   “prisoners” (Shia, Alawite) and “traitors”.  The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the rebel occupied urban area, who express their disagreement or opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

“Since last summer [2011], we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 30, 2012)

The project required an initial program of recruitment and training of mercenaries. Death squads including Lebanese and Jordanian Salafist units entered Syria’s southern border with Jordan in mid-March 2011.  Much of the groundwork was already in place prior to Robert Stephen Ford’s arrival in Damascus in January 2011.

Ambassador Ford in Hama in early July 2011

Ford’s appointment as Ambassador to Syria was announced in early 2010. Diplomatic relations had been cut in 2005 following the Rafick Hariri assassination, which Washington blamed on Syria. Ford arrived in Damascus barely two months before the onset of the insurgency.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA)

Washington and its allies replicated in Syria the essential features of the “Iraq Salvador Option”, leading to the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various terrorist factions including the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra brigades.

While the creation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was announced in June 2011, the recruitment and training of foreign mercenaries was initiated at a much an earlier period.

In many regards, the Free Syrian Army is a smokescreen. It is upheld by the Western media as a bona fide military entity established as a result of mass defections from government forces.  The number of defectors, however, was neither significant nor sufficient to establish a coherent military structure  with command and control functions.

The FSA  is not a professional  military entity, rather it is a loose network of separate terrorist brigades, which in turn are made up of numerous paramilitary cells operating in different parts of the country.

Each of these terrorist organizations operates independently. The FSA does not effectively exercise command and control functions including liaison with these diverse paramilitary entities. The latter are controlled by US-NATO sponsored special forces and intelligence operatives which are embedded within the ranks of selected terrorist formations.

These (highly trained) Special forces on the ground (many of whom are employees of private security companies) are routinely in contact with US-NATO and allied military/intelligence command units (including Turkey). These embedded Special Forces are, no doubt, also involved in the carefully planned bomb attacks directed against government buildings, military compounds, etc.

The death squads are mercenaries trained and recruited by the US, NATO, its Persian Gulf GCC allies as well as Turkey.  They are overseen by allied special forces (including British SAS and French Parachutistes), and private security companies on contract to NATO and the Pentagon. In this regard, reports confirm the arrest by the Syrian government of some 200-300 private security company employees who had integrated rebel ranks.

The Jabhat Al Nusra Front

The Al Nusra Front –which is said to be affiliated to Al Qaeda– is described as the most effective “opposition” rebel fighting group, responsible for several of the high profile bomb attacks. Portrayed as an enemy of America (on the State Department list of terrorist organizations), Al Nusra operations, nonetheless, bear the fingerprints of US paramilitary training, terror tactics and weapons systems. The atrocities committed against civilians by Al Nusra (funded covertly by US-NATO) are similar to those undertaken by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.

In the words of Al Nusra leader Abu Adnan in Aleppo: “Jabhat al-Nusra does count Syrian veterans of the Iraq war among its numbers, men who bring expertise — especially the manufacture of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — to the front in Syria.”

As in Iraq, factional violence and ethnic cleansing were actively promoted. In Syria, the Alawite, Shiite and Christian communities have been the target of the US-NATO sponsored death squads.  The Alawite and the Christian community are the main targets of the assassination program. Confirmed by the Vatican News Service:

Christians in Aleppo are victims of death and destruction due to the fighting which for months, has been affecting the city. The Christian neighborhoods, in recent times, have been hit by rebel forces fighting against the regular army and this has caused an exodus of civilians.

Some groups in the rugged opposition, where there are also jiahadist groups, “fire on Christian houses and buildings, to force occupants to escape and then take possession [ethnic cleansing] (Agenzia Fides. Vatican News, October 19, 2012)

“The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.”  (Agenzia Fides 04/06/2012)

Reports confirm the influx of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated death squads as well as brigades under the auspices of the Muslim Brotherhood into Syria from the inception of the insurgency in March 2011.

Moreover, reminiscent of  the enlistment of  the Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war, NATO and the Turkish High command, according to Israeli intelligence sources, had initiated”

“a campaign 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 these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011).

Private Security Companies and the Recruitment of Mercenaries

According to reports, private security companies operating out of Gulf States are involved in the recruiting and training of mercenaries.

Although not specifically earmarked for the recruitment of mercenaries directed against Syria, reports point to the creation of  training camps in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In Zayed Military City (UAE), “a secret army is in the making”  operated by Xe Services, formerly Blackwater.  The UAE deal to establish a military camp for the training of mercenaries was signed in July 2010, nine months before the onslaught of the wars in Libya and Syria.

In recent developments, security companies on contract to NATO and the Pentagon are involved in training “opposition” death squads in the use of chemical weapons:

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

The names of the companies involved were not revealed.

Behind Closed Doors at the US State Department

Robert Stephen Ford was part of a small team at the US State Department team which oversaw the recruitment and training of  terrorist brigades,  together with Derek Chollet  and Frederic C. Hof, a former business partner of Richard Armitage, who served as Washington’s “special coordinator on Syria”. Derek Chollet has recently been appointed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (ISA).

This team operated under the helm of  (former) Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.

Feltman’s team was in close liaison with the process of recruitment and training of mercenaries out of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya (courtesy of the post-Gaddafi regime, which dispatched six hundred Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) troops to Syria, via Turkey in the months following the September 2011 collapse of the Gaddafi government).

Assistant Secretary of State Feltman was in contact with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, and Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim. He was also in charge of a  Doha-based office for “special security coordination” pertaining to  Syria, which included representatives from Western and GCC intelligence agencies well as a representative from Libya. Prince Bandar bin Sultan. a prominent and controversial member of Saudi intelligence was part of this group. (See Press Tv, May 12, 2012).

In June 2012, Jeffrey Feltman (image: Left) was appointed UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, a strategic position  which, in practice, consists in setting  the UN agenda (on behalf of Washington) on issues pertaining to “Conflict Resolution” in various “political hot spots” around the world (including Somalia, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Mali). In a bitter irony, the countries for UN “conflict resolution” are those which are the target of  US covert operations.

In liaison with the US State Department, NATO and his GCC handlers in Doha and Riyadh, Feltman is Washington’s man behind UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahmi’s “Peace Proposal”.

Meanwhile, while paying lip service to the UN Peace initiative, the US and NATO have speeded up the process of recruitment and training of  mercenaries in response to the heavy casualties incurred by “opposition” rebel forces.

The US proposed “end game” in Syria is not regime change, but the destruction of Syria as a Nation State.

The deployment of “opposition” death squads with a mandate to kill civilians is part of this criminal undertaking.

“Terrorism with a Human Face” is upheld by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which constitutes a mouthpiece for NATO “Humanitarian Interventions” under the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

The atrocities committed by the US-NATO death squads are casually blamed on the government of Bashar Al Assad. According to UN Human Rights Council High Commissioner Navi Pillay:

“This massive loss of life could have been avoided if the Syrian Government had chosen to take a different path than one of ruthless suppression of what were initially peaceful and legitimate protests by unarmed civilians,” (quoted in Stephen Lendman, UN Human Rights Report on Syria: Camouflage of US-NATO Sponsored Massacres, Global Research, January 3, 2012)

Washington’s “unspeakable objective” consists in breaking up Syria as a sovereign nation –along ethnic and religious lines– into several separate and “independent” political entities.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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Source: Global Research

http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-with-a-human-face-the-history-of-americas-death-squads/5317564