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Neil Clark

Syria: It Would All be Over by Now Without the ‘Regime-Changers’

Saturday March 17, 2018

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It was seven years ago this week that the conflict in Syria began. How might it have developed without the negative role played by Western powers and their regional allies?

Beware the Ides of March, the old saying goes. The 15th of March down the ages has seen not only the assassination of Julius Caesar and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia; it was also the day, in 2011, that the conflict in Syria began.

According to the standard narrative, it was the intransigence and brutality of the Assad government (always referred to as a ‘regime’) that plunged Syria into chaos. But while it’s true that there was genuine discontent with the government for a number of valid reasons seven years ago, the divisions within Syria could have been overcome without much bloodshed, had certain countries not worked to sabotage any peaceful solutions to the crisis.

Faced with a direct threat to its rule, the Assad government showed it was willing to make compromises. As early as March 26, 2011, the BBC was reporting that the government had released more than 200 political prisoners. There were also amnesties announced in May and June.

Not only that but important political changes were introduced as Assad acknowledged in a televised address that demands for reform were legitimate.
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Slave Markets in ‘Liberated’ Libya and the Silence of the Humanitarian Hawks

Saturday December 2, 2017

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The reports that black Africans are being sold at slave markets in "liberated" Libya for as little as $400 is a terrible indictment of the so-called "humanitarian intervention" carried out by NATO to topple the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In March 2011 virtue-signaling Western "liberal" hipsters teamed up with hardcore neocon warmongers to demand action to "save" the Libyan people from the "despotic" leader who had ruled the country since the late 1960s. “Something has to be done!” they cried in unison.

Something was done. Libya was transformed by NATO from the country with the highest Human Development Index in the whole of Africa in 2009 into a lawless hell-hole, with rival governments, warlords and terror groups fighting for control of the country.

Under Gaddafi, Libyans enjoyed free health care and education. Literacy rates went up from around 25 percent to almost 90 percent. A UN Human Rights Council report on Libya from January 2011, in which member states praised welfare provision, can be read here.

It was clear that while there were still areas of concern the country was continuing to make progress on a number of fronts.

In the Daily Telegraph - hardly a paper which could be accused of being an ideological supporter of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya - Libya was hailed as one of the top six exotic cruise ship destinations in June 2010.
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Last Eight Months Prove United States a Bonafide 'Regime'

Friday September 1, 2017

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Elected to the Oval Office as a harsh critic of US involvement in costly Middle Eastern conflicts by a war-weary public, The Donald has turned out be just as much of a war president as those who went before. He’s ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian government airfield and dropped the "Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan. That’s in addition to threatening North Korea and Venezuela and escalating US involvement in the bombing of cholera-stricken Yemen.

The millions of Americans who voted for Trump, hoping he’d be the president to bring the troops back home, have been cruelly disappointed and are certainly feeling betrayed. They shouldn’t be at all shocked, however, as American political history shows us a clear pattern.

The sad, inescapable truth is that it doesn’t matter who gets elected as president and what they say on the election trail; the policies on the issues that matter remain the same after the inauguration. What the last eight months have proven, to anyone who still had any doubts, is that the US is not a "democracy" that changes course according to the public will, but a full-blown regime, governed by the Wall Street/CIA/Endless War Party which never loses power regardless of how people vote.
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Aleppo and Mosul: A Tale of Two Liberated Cities

Friday July 14, 2017

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The Iraqi city of Mosul. The Syrian city of Aleppo. Both "liberated" in recent months from radical jihadist terror groups. But while one anti-terrorist operation has been lauded in the West, the other was fiercely denounced.

The very different ways in which the respective 'liberations' were portrayed tells us much about the way war propaganda works in the so-called free world.

For the last few days we've been fed triumphant reports on western news media about the 'liberation" of Mosul from ISIS. US President Donald Trump issued a White House Statement congratulating the Iraqi authorities in which the words "liberation" or "liberated" appeared three times.

Everyone, it seems, wants to get credit for the successful military operation. The Independent newspaper reported how a Pentagon official said that ISIS had been defeated because of Barack Obama's "training strategies." The liberation of Mosul has been sold to us as a great victory. Which, at face value, it undoubtedly is. Who, after all, would like to see the brutal terrorizing butchers of the Islamic State retain territory? But what’s noticeable is how the cost of ‘liberation’ has been glossed over, even though it has been very high indeed.

Airwars researchers, for instance, estimate that between 900 and 1,200 civilians have been killed by US-led coalition and artillery strikes during the eight-month operation, and that "many hundreds of even thousands more may have died in coalition actions."
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World in Flames - the Deadly Legacy of Cold War Warrior Brzezinski

Tuesday May 30, 2017

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How ironic that a major upsurge in violence in Afghanistan has coincided with the death of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the viscerally anti-Russian Cold War warrior and architect of the US policy of backing jihadists in the country to "bleed" the Soviet Union.

On Saturday, the first day of Ramadan, 18 people were killed in a suicide blast close to a military base in Khost Province. Meanwhile, attacks by militants on the security forces in Badghis Province reportedly left 36 dead and many more wounded. On Friday, another blast killed ten civilians in Herat Province.

2017 has been a very bloody year for Afghanistan, with the UN Assistance Mission reporting more than 2,100 civilians were killed or injured between January and March.

None of this was mentioned when the establishment eulogies to Brzezinski started pouring in.

“I was one of several presidents who benefited from his wisdom and counsel,” said Barack Obama.
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Saddam Hussein at 80: Iraq Without its ‘Liberation’

Saturday April 29, 2017

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What would have happened had there been no Iraq War in 2003 and Saddam Hussein had stayed in power? Where would we be today? It’s the 28th of April 2017. Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, now a member state of the newly reconstituted United Arab Republic (with Syria and Egypt), is celebrating his 80th birthday. There are big processions on a gloriously sunny and very hot day in Baghdad. Among visiting foreign heads of state was Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe, who joked that if Saddam gave up smoking Cohibas and started drinking herbal teas he might even live to be as old as him...
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Peace in Syria - It's the Last Thing the US Wants

Monday December 12, 2016

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Last week US President Obama waived military aid restrictions for “foreign forces” and others in Syria. When hopes were raised for an end to the Syrian conflict following the recapture of most of eastern Aleppo, the US is pouring more petrol on the fire.

Now, we can question as to whether this will make a massive difference on the ground as we know the US and its allies have already been backing “foreign forces” in Syria. However, at least it shows people who may have had their doubts, as to what Washington’s game is. Namely, to prolong the agony for the people of Syria for as long as it can. The attitude is: “If we cannot topple Assad, then we’ll damn well make sure we’ll keep his country burning.” And all this - lest we forget- brought to us by an American President who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The truth is that every time there’s been a real chance of an end to the conflict in Syria, Uncle Sam has stepped in to sabotage it.

Members of the Syrian opposition who wanted to participate in democratic politics under Syria’s new constitution were deliberately sidelined. Instead, the US and their pro-regime-change allies backed radical militants who wanted the violent overthrow of the country’s government. In March 2012, a six-point peace plan to end the conflict (then just over a year old) was put forward by the Arab League and the UN.
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Top 10 Western Lies About Syrian Conflict

Thursday September 8, 2016

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Here are 10 of the worst lies that have been peddled by the West regarding Syria, with the aim of giving people living in Western countries an entirely false view of the conflict that has been raging in the Middle East country since 2011.

As in the case of previous US-led wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya the lies told in relation to the ongoing conflict in Syria have been quite outrageous.

1. The West has failed to intervene in Syria - and that's been the problem

This oft-repeated claim (only last week the Washington Post was lamenting "the disastrous non-intervention in Syria") is a complete inversion of the truth.
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Follow the Money Trail for Source of 'Russian Threat' Paranoia

Monday August 22, 2016

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You’d have to have been locked in a wardrobe if you live in the West not to have heard ominous phrases like “The Russian threat”, “Russian aggression in Europe” and “Russia set to invade Poland/Estonia/ Ukraine/Finland.”

Certain people are trying to scare us witless about Russia and the “threat” the country apparently poses. The hysteria reminds one to the build up to the Iraq war, when we were warned every day about the “threat” of Saddam’s deadly WMDs, which - surprise, surprise - turned out not to exist.

Now, we can talk for hours about grand, highfalutin theories in the field of geopolitics and international relations in attempts to explain why this is happening.

But “follow the money” trail is all we really have to do. Ask yourself who benefits financially from all this scaremongering and then you’ll understand it.

This week, The Intercept revealed how US defense contractors have been telling investors that the so-called “Russian threat” was good for business.
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