Syria or Southeast Asia: The West Lied, Lies And Always Will

by Andre Vltchek

Photo: Andre Vltchek

 I’m sitting at the splendid building of the Singapore National Library, in a semi-dark room, microfilm inserted into a high-tech machine. I’m watching and then filming and photographing several old Malaysian newspapers dating back from October 1965.

These reports were published right after the horrible 1965 military coup in Indonesia, which basically overthrew the progressive President Sukarno and liquidated then the third largest Communist party on Earth, PKI (PartaiKomunis Indonesia). Between one and three million Indonesian people lost their lives in some of the most horrifying massacres of the 20th century. From a socialist (and soon to be Communist) country, Indonesia descended into the present pits of turbo-capitalist, as well as religious and extreme right-wing gaga.

The United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Holland and several other Western nations, directly sponsored the coup, while directing both the pro-Western treasonous factions in the military, as well as the religious leaders who stood, from the start, at the forefront of the genocide.

All this information is, of course, widely available in the de-classified archives of both the CIA and U.S. State Department. It can be accessed, analyzed and reproduced. I personally made a film about the events, and so have several other directors.

But it isn’t part of the memory of humanity. In Southeast Asia, it is known only to a handful of intellectuals.

In Malaysia, Singapore or Thailand, the Indonesian post-1965 fascism is a taboo topic. It is simply not discussed. “Progressive” intellectuals here are, like in all other ‘client’ states of the West, paid to be preoccupied with their sex orientation, with gender issues and personal ‘freedoms’, but definitely not with the essential matters (Western imperialism, neo-colonialism, the savage and grotesque forms of capitalism, the plunder of local natural resources and environment, as well as disinformation, plus the forcefully injected ignorance that is accompanied by mass amnesia) that have been shaping so extremely and so negatively this part of the world.

In Indonesia itself, the Communist Party is banned and the general public sees it as a culprit, not as a victim.

The West is laughing behind the back of its brainwashed victims. It is laughing all the way to the bank.

Lies are obviously paying off.

No other part of the world has suffered from Western imperialism as much after WWII, as Southeast Asia did, perhaps with two exceptions, those of Africa and the Middle East.

In so-called Indochina, the West murdered close to ten million people, during the indiscriminate bombing campaigns and other forms of terror – in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The above mentioned Indonesian coup took at least 1 million human lives. 30% of the population of East Timor was exterminated by the Indonesian occupation, which was fully supported by the West. The Thai regime, fully subservient to the West, killed indiscriminately its leftists in the north and in the capital.The entire region has been suffering from extreme religious implants, sponsored by the West itself, and by its allies from the Gulf.

But the West is admired here, with an almost religious zeal.

The U.S., British and French press agencies and ‘cultural centers’ are spreading disinformation through local media outlets owned by subservient ‘elites’. Local ‘education’ has been devotedly shaped by Western didactic concepts. In places like Malaysia, Indonesia, but also Thailand, the greatest achievement is to graduate from university in one of the countries that used to colonize this part of the world.

Victim countries, instead of seeking compensation in courts, are actually admiring and plagiarizing the West, while pursuing, even begging for funding from their past and present tormentors.

Southeast Asia, now obedient, submissive, phlegmatic and stripped off the former revolutionary left-wing ideologies, is where the Western indoctrination and propaganda scored unquestionable victory.

*

The same day, I turned on the television set in my hotel room, and watched the Western coverage of the situation in Idlib, the last stronghold of the Western-sponsored terrorists on Syrian territory.

Russia has called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting warning that the terrorists might stage a chemical attack, and then blame it, together with the West, on the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

NATO battleships have been deployed to the region. There can be no doubt – it has been a ‘good old’ European/North American scenario at work, once again: ‘We hit you, kill your people, and then bomb you as a punishment’.

Imperialist gangsters then point accusative fingers at the victims (in this case Syria) and at those who are trying to protect them (Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, China). Just like in a kindergarten, or a primary school; remember? A boy hits someone from behind and then screams, pointing at someone else: “It was him, it was him!” Miraculously, until now, the West has always gotten away with this ‘strategy’, of course, at the cost of billions of victims, on all continents.

That is how it used to be for centuries, and that is how it still works. That is how it will continue to be, until such terror and gangsterism is stopped.

*

For years and decades, we were told that the world is now increasingly inter-connected, that nothing of great importance could happen, without it being immediately spotted and reported by vigilant media lenses, and ‘civil society’.

Yet, thousands of things are happening and no one is noticing.

Just in the last two decades, entire countries have been singled-out by North America and Europe, then half-starved to death through embargos and sanctions, before being finally attacked and broken to pieces: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya to mention just a few. Governments of several left-wing nations have been overthrown either from outside, or through their own, local, servile elites and media; among them Brazil, Honduras and Paraguay. Countless Western companies and their local cohorts are committing the unbridled plunder of natural resources in such places as Borneo/Kalimantan or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), totally ruining tropical forests while murdering hundreds of species.

Are we, as a planet, really inter-connected? How much do people know about each other, or about what is done to their brothers and sisters on different continents?

I have worked in some 160 countries, and I can testify without the slightest hesitation: ‘Almost nothing’. And: ‘Less and much less!’

The Western empire and its lies,has managed to fragment the world to previously unknown extremes. It is all done ‘in the open’, in full view of the world, which is somehow unable to see and identify the most urgent threats to its survival. Mass media propaganda outlets are serving as vehicles of indoctrination, so do cultural and ‘educational’ institutions of the West or those local ones shaped by the Western concepts. That includes such diverse ‘tools’ as universities, Internet traffic manipulators, censors and self-censored individuals, social media, advertisement agencies and pop culture ‘artists’.

*

There is a clear pattern to Western colonialist and neo-colonialist barbarity and lies:

‘Indonesian President Sukarno and his closest ally the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were trying to build a progressive and self-sufficient country. Therefore, they had to be stopped, government overthrown, party members massacred, PKI itself banned and the entire country privatized; sold to foreign interests. The overwhelming majority of Indonesians are so brainwashed by the local and Western propaganda that they still blame the Communists for the 1965 coup, no matter what the CIA archives say.’

Mossadegh of Iran was on the same, progressive course. And he ended up the same way as Sukarno. And the whole world was then charmed by the butcher, who was put to power by the West – the Shah and his lavish wife.

Chile in 1973, and thereafter, the same deadly pattern occurred, more evidence of how freedom-loving and democratic the West is.

Patrice Lumumba of Congo nationalized natural resources and tried to feed and educate his great nation. Result? Overthrown, killed. The price: some 8 million people massacred in the last two decades, or maybe many more than that (see my film: Rwanda Gambit). Nobody knows, or everyone pretends that they don’t know.

Syria! The biggest ‘crime’ of this country, at least in the eyes of the West, consisted of trying to provide its citizens with high quality of life, while promoting Pan-Arabism. The results we all know (or do we, really?): hundreds of thousands killed by West-sponsored murderous extremists, millions exiled and millions internally displaced. And the West, naturally, is blaming Syrian President, and is ready to ‘punish him’ if he wins the war.

Irrational? But can global-scale fascism ever be rational?

The lies that are being spread by the West are piling up. They overlap, often contradict one another. But the world public is not trained to search for the truth, anymore. Subconsciously it senses that it is being lied to, but the truth is so horrifying, that the great majority of people prefer to simply take selfies, analyze and parade its sexual orientation, stick earphones into its ears and listen to empty pop music, instead of fighting for the survival of humanity.

I wrote entire books on this topic, including the near 1,000-page: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”.

This essay is just a series of thoughts that came to my mind, while I was sitting at a projector in a dark room of the Singapore National Library.

A rhetorical question kept materializing: “Can all this be happening?” “Can the West get away with all these crimes it has been committing for centuries, all over the world?”

The answer was clear: ‘But of course,as long as it is not stopped!”

And so, A luta continua!

*Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. 

Is a ‘Suez’ Event Being Prepared for Syria?

ALASTAIR CROOKE 

So, the metamorphosis is done. President Trump has finally, fully, shed his 2016 Campaign ‘skin’ of loosely imagining a grand foreign policy bargain that could be the foundation for “WORLD PEACE, nothing less!” as Trump tweeted when imposing sanctions on Iran.  We wrote, on 3 August, quoting Prof Russell-Mead, that Trump’s ‘8 May metamorphosis’ (the US exit from JCPOA), constituted a step-change of direction: one that reflected “[Trump’s] instincts, telling him that most Americans are anything but eager, for a “post-American” world. Trump’s supporters don’t want long wars, “but neither are they amenable to a stoic acceptance of national decline”.

It all began, very precisely, with Trump’s ‘8 May metamorphosis’ - which is to say, to the moment when the US president definitively took the Israeli ‘line’: exiting from the Iranian nuclear accord, deciding to sanction and to lay siege to Iran’s economy, and when he endorsed the (old, never materialized) idea of a Sunni ‘Arab NATO’, led by Riyadh, that would confront Shi’a Iran. 

In practical terms, Trump’s Art of the Deal geo-strategy, as we now see, became thus transformed into the search for radical US leverage (through weaponising a strong dollar and tariffs) -- looking always to the means to force the capitulation of the counter-party.  This cannot be rightly termed negotiation: It is rather, more as if the script has been lifted from The Godfather.

But, when Trump unreservedly took the Israeli (or, more properly the Netanyahu) ‘line’, he assumed to himself all ‘the baggage’ that comes with it, too. The 1996 Clean Break document, prepared by a study group led by Richard Perle for Binjamin Netanyahu, meshed the Israeli and US neocon camps into one.  And they are still umbilically linked.  ‘Team Trump’ now is filled with neocons who are unreserved Iran-haters.  And Sheldon Adelson (a major Trump donor, a patron of Netanyahu, and the instigator for the US embassy move to Jerusalem), consequently has been able to implant his ally, John Bolton (a neocon), as Trump’s chief foreign policy advisor.

The Art of the Deal has effectively been neocon-ised into a tool for enlarging American power – and there is nothing of earlier ‘mutual advantage’ to be heard of, or to be seen, these days.

And now, this week, the metamorphosis has been cemented. After the Helsinki summit between Trump and President Putin, there seemed to have opened a small window of opportunity – for co-operation between the two states - to return stability to Syria.  Many hoped that from this small terrain of tentative Syria co-ordination, some lessening of tensions between the US and Russia, might have found fertile soil. 

Trump said some positive things; the area around Dera’a, in south Syria, was smoothly cleared of insurgents, and was retaken by the Syrian army.  Israel did not demur in having the Syrian army as their near neighbours.  But then co-operation rather obviously stalled.  It is not clear why, but perhaps this was the first sign of power fracturing apart in Washington. The Helsinki ‘understandings’ somehow were melting away (though military-to-military co-ordination continued). 

Putin dispatched the head of the Russian Security Council to a meeting with Bolton in Geneva on 23 August, to explore whether there was still any possibility for joint co-operation; and, if so, was such activity politically ‘viable’. But before even that bilateral meeting with a Russian envoy could be held, Bolton - speaking from Jerusalem (from what was billed as a ‘roll-back Iran’ brainstorming with PM Netanyahu) - warned that the United States would respond "very strongly" if forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were to use chemical weapons in the offensive to retake Idlib province (expected to commence early September), claiming that the US had intelligence of the intent to use such weapons in Idlib.

The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, however, said on August 25 "Militants of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), [trained by a named British company], are preparing to stage a chemical attack in northern Syria that will be used as a pretext for a new missile strike by the U.S., the UK and France - on facilities of the Damascus government". Russian officials said they had full intelligence on this false flag operation.

What is clear is that since early August the US has been moving a task force (including the USS The Sullivans and USS Ross) into position that would be able to strike Syria, as well as positioning air assets into the US airbase in Qatar.   French President Emmanuel Macron too has declared that France was also ready to launch new strikes against Syria, in case of a chemical weapons attack there.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet says that the US military is laying the groundwork to close the airspace over northern Syria. US military freighters are reported to have transported radar systems to the city of Kobanî, controlled by the Kurdish militia, and to the US military base in Al-Shaddadah in southern al-Hasakah. Hurriyet claims that the US plans to use these complexes to establish a no-fly zone over the territory between Manbij in Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor. (This claim however, is unconfirmed)

Evidently, Russia takes this US threat seriously (it has deployed 20 naval vessels into the E. Mediterranean, off Syria).  And Iran evidently takes the threat seriously, too. The Iranian Defence Minister on Sunday made a rapid unscheduled visit to Damascus in order to agree a tri-partite (Russia, Syria Iran) response to any US attack on Syria.

Then, in the wake of Bolton’s chemical weapons claims, and the pre-positioning of US guided-missile vessels close to Syria, Petrushev and Bolton met.  The meeting was a disaster.  Bolton insisted that Petrushev admit to Russian interference in the US elections.  Petrushev refused.  Trump said we have ‘secret’ evidence.  Petrushev retorted if that were so, what was the purpose of demanding admission.  Bolton said effectively: We sanction you anyway. 

Well… not surprisingly, the two were unable to agree on Iranian withdrawal from Syria (which Petrushev put on the table).  Bolton not only said flatly ‘no’, but afterwards went public with the Russian initiative to talk possible Iran withdrawal – thus killing it, and killing the initiative as a gambit to leverage further diplomacy.  Even the customary, bland, uninformative, final communiqué that is usual in such circumstances, could not be agreed.

The message seems clear: any Helsinki understandings on Syria are dead.  And the US is prepared it seems (they have actually moved assets into position) to strike Syria.  Why?  What is going on?

One obvious element is, that until now, Trump's hand in all this is not visible. Now, power appears to have fractured in Washington with regard to Middle East policy.  The neocons are in the lead. This is very significant, since the slender pillar on which Trump's rapport with President Putin had been built, was the prospect of US-Russian co-operation over Syria.  And that hat seems, now, to be a dead letter. 

Lawrence Wilkerson, now a professor, but formerly the Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the infamous Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ episode says it ‘cold’:

“It has to do… with the return of the Neoconservatives (Neocons)… what is happening today, as Trump is preoccupied increasingly with the considerable, ever-growing challenges to him personally and to his presidency institutionally, is the re-entry into critical positions in the government of these people, the people who gave America the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Even those many of them who declared “Never Trump”—as arch-Neocon Eliot Cohen summed it up—are salivating at the prospect of carrying out their foreign and security policy - while Trump essentially boils in his own corrupt juices.

“A vanguard, of course, is already in our government to beckon, comfort, and re-establish others of their type.  John Bolton as national security advisor to the president leads this pack though he’s not, strictly speaking, a card-carrying Neocon …

“Presently, their first and most identifiable target is the unfinished business—which they largely commenced—with Syria and Iran, Israel’s two most serious potential threats. If the Neocons got their way—and they are remarkably astute at getting their way—it would mean a reignited war in Syria and a new war with Iran, as well as increased support for the greatest state sponsor of terrorism on earth, Saudi Arabia”.

Bolton, Pompeo and the neocons have made it abundantly clear that they – at least –have not abandoned 'regime change' in Syria, as their objective - and they remain set on delivering somehow a strategic setback to Iran (Bolton has said that sanctions alone, on their own, and without Iran suffering some extra strategic blow, would be insufficient to alter Iranian ‘malign behaviour’).

Whether or not Mattis and Votel are fully on board with Bolton’s “very strong” military reprisal on Syria threat (for alleged chemical weapons use) is not clear.  (Mattis succeeded in mitigating the last missile strike by Trump on Syria, and to co-ordinating with Moscow a ‘nil response’ to Trump’s Tomahawk salvo). Will it be the same this time if the US again makes an unsubstantiated (and later unproven) claim of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government?

Will Israel join in any attack – using the pre-text of its self-awarded ‘right’ to attack Iranian forces anywhere in Syria?  Given the new strategic ‘fact’ of the Iranian Defence minister’s ‘surprise’ Sunday visit to Damascus to sign a common resolve on countering any such attack on Syria. Will Netayahu ‘bet’ on the Russians not responding to hostile Israeli aircraft entering Syrian airspace?

Who will blink first?  Netanyahu? Or will Trump surface from his domestic tribulations sufficiently, to take notice and to say ‘no’?

Whatever happens, Presidents Putin and Xi can ‘read the runes’ of this affair – which is to say that President Trump’s highest officials remain committed, openly, or through ‘false flags’, to defend the American ‘global order’. These officials share a disdain for the Obama administration’s retrenchment and retreat. They want to arrest, and even truncate the rise of America’s rivals, whilst restoring to their former position, those former pillars to U.S. world power: i.e. America’s military, financial, technological and energy, dominance.

Russia is trying to defuse the critical situation by sharing their intelligence with Washington that Tahrir al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra), was plotting a chemical attack that would then be misrepresented as another ‘atrocity’ committed by the ‘Syrian regime’. Eight canisters of chlorine have been delivered to a village near Jisr al-Shughur city, and a specially trained group of militants, prepped by a British security company, have also arrived in the area, to imitate a rescue operation to save the civilian ‘victims’.  Militants plan to use child hostages in the staged incident, Russian officials say.

But will Washington listen?  From the moment that the Syrian or the Iranian ‘regime’ is subjected to a judgement of moral delinquency (irrespective of evidence) – in the context of America’s claim to its own Manifest (moral) Destiny – these ‘regimes’ become transformed from being a temporary, relative adversaries, into an absolute enemy.  For, when one is upholding humanity’s ‘destiny’ and seeking “WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”, how can one wage war - unless it is in the name of a self-evident good. What is afoot is not attacking an adversary, but punishing and killing the guilty.

Faced with the radical moral devaluation of the ‘Other’ across western media; and - on the other hand - with the virtue signaling of western good consciousness, can Russia’s rational presentations hope to carry weight?  The only fact that might just weigh in the balance is the threat that Russia will use its missile arsenal assembling in the East Mediterranean.  But what then?

ALASTAIR CROOKE

Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.

Saudis Violating Spirit of the Hajj Pilgrimage

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

In the holy Qur’an, God Almighty refers to holy Mecca as "Balad al-Amin”, which means the Secure Land or the "Inviolable Place”, where in the state of Ehram or Pilgrim Garb, even the killing of an insect is forbidden – let alone the shedding of human blood.

Unfortunately, ever since Hijaz the Land of Divine Revelation was occupied by brigands of the Wahhabi cult of Najd who massacred pilgrims inside the holiest of the holies – the Masjid al-Haraam – in 1925, the peace, tranquility and spiritual aura of the Hajj pilgrimage has been eclipsed by hypocrisy and violence unleashed by the Saudi clan, which is totally subservient to the archenemies of Islam, that is, the Americans and the Zionists.

This year, over two million pilgrims have converged upon Mecca to perform the Hajj rituals, which ironically the seditious Saudis have organized a day earlier in violation of the laws of Islam by declaring Monday and Tuesday as Zil-Hijjah 9 and 10, without bothering to confirm the sighting of the crescent.

At the same time, as usual, an elaborate propaganda apparatus of the Riyadh regime is at work to mislead pilgrims from all over the world into believing that the ruler of the British created entity, Saudi Arabia, is the ‘Custodian of Islam’s Two Holiest Shrines’.

Such propaganda is intended to conceal the intermittent Saudi crimes of murdering the Guests of God, such as the stampede in Mena that killed some 7,000 men and women in 2016.

While the Hajj is in progress, Saudi Arabia continues to bomb and kill the Muslims of Yemen, including innocent children, and the other day King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz felt no inhibitions in granting the US a hundred million dollars to keep Syria in turmoil.

Of course, he didn’t say this openly and pretended that the grant was for development of northeastern Syria.

A big lie indeed, in view of the fact that the money was not given to the legal government of war-ravaged Syria but to the Americans who in violation of the UN charter are maintaining an illegal presence in that Muslim Arab country so as to fan the flames of terrorism.

It is now crystal clear that the hundred million dollar grant is for training and arming of more Takfiri terrorists to destabilize Syria.

The question is: How long the Ummah will allow itself to be fooled by the seditious Saudis, who have no authority to rule the holy cities, let alone conduct the Hajj pilgrimage?
How can a regime that massacres the people of Yemen and uses Takfiri proxies to indulge in bloodshed in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Afghanistan, be allowed to govern Hijaz and manage (actually mismanage) the Hajj pilgrimage?

Mecca, Medina and the entire land of Hijaz, including Ta’ef , Jeddah and other regions, belong to world Muslims and should be managed by an international body of Islamic scholars and intellectuals.

Unfortunately the Saudis, who are openly dallying with the despicable Zionists today, have continued to violate the security and sanctity of the Land of Revelation. They have even entrusted security arrangements in the holy cities to Western and Jewish agencies.
Does this make Mecca a secure and inviolable place?

No certainly not. The Hajj is a wonderful opportunity for world Muslims to foster unity and solidarity by exchanging views among the differing ethnicities from all over the world, which could be useful to resolving many of the problems of the Ummah. But one of the important conditions for the Hajj pilgrimage is security, which means pilgrims to the House of God should have peace of mind, tranquility of heart, and an atmosphere of safety in the places to which they journey and stay.

It is time for the Ummah to wake up before it is too late. If Bayt al-Moqaddas in Palestine is under occupation of the Zionists, the fate of Mecca and Medina is no less disastrous, since without military presence, Israel and the US, are already in control of holy Hijaz, through their loyal servants, the Saudis.