David Macilwain

University of Sydney suspended professor Dr. Tim Anderson from his position as a senior lecturer after he had worked for this university for more than 20 years because of his criticisms of war propaganda against Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Dr.Tim Anderson is the author of the excellent book, "The Dirty War on Syria". This action by Provost Garton is an infringement on academic freedom and on Dr Anderson's human right and freedom of speech. His offence to the establishment is to inform, educate and organise for the end of wars, in which Australia is complicit.

While the ostensible reason for this extreme and totally illegitimate expulsion is because of Tim’s advocacy for Palestinian equality, it’s hard not to see it as motivated mainly by his advocacy for Syria, and as an attempt to suppress the “pro-Assad” point of view.

Perhaps I’m drawing a long bow, but it also seems no coincidence that this week, after barely a mention of Syria since mid-October, suddenly we heard the tired old story of the Caesar photos and the need to somehow get Assad to trial – or rather to be prosecuted for war crimes, as there is no-one suggesting that he didn’t commit them.
Which just means we need to redouble our efforts in support of both Palestine and Syria, as Israel ramps up its military aggression and propaganda on both fronts.

The current atmosphere in Australia is highly anti-Russian and anti-Syrian, while at the same time absolutely nothing is discussed that would offer any perspective; there is only one setting – Assad brutal dictator killing his own people, and Putin the calculating and misleading leader of a pariah state that “carelessly” poisons people it doesn’t like. If a news story doesn’t fit this pattern it’s either forgotten or adjusted to suit.

Incidentally I find it interesting that the graphic under dispute refers to Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, rather than the most recent attack, or the six months of target practice on the Gaza border by the IOF. I should also say that the point being made is one I always find the most disingenuous claim of Israel and its allies – that Hamas’ rockets are “indiscriminate” – as if it is that which makes them criminal. By comparison the IDF’s precision strikes that intentionally target and obliterate families, TV stations, water pumping stations, schools and ambulances, are “legitimate responses”.

This article comments on the Australian war propaganda that was used in a recent episode, involving Jaqui Lambi, of "Go back to where you came from" on SBS. It responds to a recent article (republished here) by Vanessa Beeley about very recent massacres conducted by IS, close to a US Army base, which has allowed IS convoys to pass through open desert, unhindered. On 2 October 2018, Mrs Thoraya Um Ammaar was executed on video by IS over two months after she and about 25 other women and children were kidnapped from the Sweida countryside, south of Damascus on July 25th 2018. US Coalition forces remain camped in Al Tanf, 330km to the East. It is simply intolerable that IS can occupy that part of Syrian territory while aggressively threatening anyone who comes near it.
Report by Vanessa Beeley

What makes me particularly angry about this, and the killing of the hostage on October 2nd, is that this week in Australia there has been a huge fuss about a live TV program called “Go Back to Where you Came From” – where numbers of celebrities have gone to “some of the most dangerous places in the world” to see what it feels like for refugees (those ones who try to escape to Australia) https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/jacqui-lambie-and-sbs-crew-caught-in-isis-attack-in-syria-20181002-p5079s.html

So where in Syria do you think that two women, one a former anti-Muslim immigration independent Senator, – would be taken? Raqqa. And in an event which I begin to think was staged, two days before the program started, an “IS sleeper cell” started shooting in the area near to where the TV crew was, so they had to be evacuated to Kobane - in Syria!(just under the Turkish border).

This sleeper cell purportedly raised the IS flag from a building not far from the centre of Raqqa, in mid afternoon. How likely is that, or even possible? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/raqqas_dirty_secret

At no point in the introduction – where we saw the identities being rushed under cover, was the fact that US soldiers were assisting them even thought worthy of mention!

And of course Lambie and Marina would have no idea that they are just as much victims in this god-awful propaganda war as the rest of us. It may make you a bit sick to read that Lambie ( who has a better side as down to earth, and once in the army) found it thrilling to be “on the front line” and “to feel how our troops must have felt”. Never mind that Australia doesn’t admit to having any troops in Syria, only Afghanistan.

I’ve long thought that Jackie Lambie would be moved to know that upwards of 85,000 regular Syrian soldiers have been killed by the terrorist invaders, defending their countrymen.

This program began as a series about five years ago, as apparently a genuine attempt to make prejudiced Australians aware of just what refugees were going through. But now it seems that this message is not so important, while it is used to put the case for the US coalition staying in Syria because otherwise “IS could come back”. The threat of Islamist terrorism is constantly beaten up here in OZ, to suit the agenda of the powers that be; the threat that they present, along with their US and UK allies, is infinitely greater.

And of course this week we’ve also had the Nobel Peace Prize to the Yazidi woman – with some blurb about “fighting the use of rape as a weapon of war”. What about the use of the threat of rape as a weapon of war, for which the US would instantly qualify?

The hypocrisy is enough to make you go mad I think.

I will look at the pink hollyhocks that grow in front of our house with Syrians in mind now...

Great advances this week by the Syrian army and Russian air force have broken the rebel siege of two towns, and broken their umbilical link with Turkey. But they have also revealed the truth about Western media 'journalism'...

Something really significant happened this week. It wasn’t the last-ditch attempts to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict in Geneva, or their failure. Neither was it the game-changing developments on the ground in Syria and the tightening of the noose around the foreign-backed terrorist armies – though this was certainly ‘significant’.

What happened was that the mask of ‘humanitarian relief’ fell off the Western interventionists and their media cheer squads like so much dirty linen, exposing the naked self-interest behind the whole rotten Syrian conspiracy.
While the ridiculous deliberations over what style of terrorist was an acceptable participant in the Geneva talks may have been a vexing spectacle for Syrians, and the attention paid by the Western media to the ‘High Negotiations Committee’ an affront to their senses, it didn’t really surprise anyone.

Perhaps Syrians weren’t surprised either by the rapid gains of the Russian-Syrian offensive and moves to cut the last convenient border crossing west of Aleppo – something which so many had been hanging out for for so long and specially in rebel-besieged Aleppo. Unlike all those ignorant souls unable to see out of the Western media bubble, they had been watching it all unfold for weeks, as well as being conscious of the strategic significance and urgency of cutting Turkey out of the Syrian war – thanks in no small part to the Russian military’s free supply of information.

But as a collective cheer echoed around Syria when it was announced that the border had been cut, a collective spasm engulfed Western media commentators and government spokesmen, rapidly spreading to UN representatives and Aid agencies, Foreign Ministers and leaders.

“Rebel supply lines have been cut!” they cried indignantly, as if Russia had cut them by accident, not realising the rebels depended on these ‘supplies’ that came in from Turkey just to survive.

It may be a struggle to understand how it can be that all these people ‘just don’t get it’- don’t understand that the Syrian army and the Russian air force, Hezbollah and Iran are targeting their ‘rebels’ intentionally; that they are trying to kill them or drive them out, or trap them so they are forced to surrender. This is after all what military campaigns do, and it is abundantly clear that only a military solution is now possible against these murderous militants.

But perhaps they do understand it, and this is just ‘wilful ignorance’ – an attempt to maintain the sham reality of the ‘revolution’ and the ‘Free Syrian Army’ so they can go on using it to conceal their unrelenting campaign to seize power from Damascus.

What the falling of the ‘humanitarian mask’ has revealed is that all these drivers and accomplices to the armed insurgency have lied and obfuscated and spun their dirty conspiracy from the start. But now that Russia has ripped off their cover they are shameless about what they’ve done.

What is more, the admissions of complicity in this illegal armed insurrection against Syria’s elected government have come first from Western reporters and commentators, such as the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Matt Brown, who framed the news on the breaking of ‘rebel supply lines’ like this:

MATT BROWN: "It's substantial because of that supply line. It demonstrates the power of Russian air strikes because the UN says that they were unprecedented in this operation.

It's also cut the rebels off from supplies of food, fuel, ammunition, weapons and fighters that they were getting down that supply route from Turkey."

That’s right – the ‘rebels’, who we have been told for years need our ‘aid’ because they are being massacred and starved by the Syrian government have not been doing so badly after all.

Every time there was a new ‘massacre’ we have listened to earnest discussions on supplying ‘non-lethal aid’, and humanitarian aid, and demands that ‘humanitarian corridors’ must be opened.

And when the Syrian government has opposed these plans on the grounds that arms and ammunition might be smuggled in with the humanitarian aid, it has then been blamed for the failure and the ongoing war.

How astounding it is then to hear this admission from someone like Brown – who despite his record of advocacy for the rebel cause, has never revealed his knowledge of its umbilical connection to Turkey. In fact this reality has been concealed from his Australian audience at all costs, even though it’s been plain as daylight to the rest of us.

Back in 2013 Matt Brown made a documentary called ‘Ibrahim’s war’, which told the story of a 11 year old boy living in the rebel-occupied part of Aleppo, whose father had abandoned his job and went out every day to fight ‘on the front’. That this was actually with the Front – the Al Nusra Front – was never admitted by Brown, even less what this terrorist group was actually doing – targeting neighbouring residential areas with snipers and indiscriminate rocket and mortar fire.

Brown related his experience at the time he made his ‘UN award-winning’ documentary in the report above:

"In 2013, I drove down to Aleppo from the north, a little further to the east than where this has happened in what is now territory controlled by the Islamic State group; and earlier I had hiked in further to the west across the border into the towns west of Aleppo.

We slept in the same houses as foreign fighters actually, who were also crossing in, and the government is now pushing in that direction.

So, it just gives you some idea of how cut off the rebels in Aleppo are becoming. That's underlined the power also of Iranian advisors, the pro-government militias and those Russian air strikes and the rebels say it proves that the government isn't serious about those peace talks."

It might sometimes be a narrow line between journalism and political advocacy, but for Brown and his media colleagues this line has evidently now become invisible. But whether they identify themselves as political actors has almost ceased to matter, because as far as their audience is concerned they are only journalists, award-winning ones. When they report what 'the rebels say' - how would this audience know they are hearing dangerous nonsense?

As is was, proof that the rebels aren't serious about peace talks was just provided by the ABC's sister state TV channel, SBS in its evening news bulletin about the latest developments around Aleppo. Opinion was sought from the Syrian Opposition's 'Chief Negotiator', who turned out to be none other than Mohammed Alloush, the new leader of one of the Saudi's most favoured terrorist groups in Syria.

Do they really believe that the Syrian government could 'negotiate' with this man?

Article first published in Russian Insider. Check the comments out there too.

This article has since been republished on the Syrian Free Press Network.

Following a meeting in Melbourne Australia of “Australians for Reconciliation in Syria” (AMRIS) today, 3 September 2015, spokesperson David Macilwain said that AMRIS unequivocally condemns atrocities committed by ‘Islamic State’ in Syria.

AMRIS deplores, however, the decision by the Australian Government to follow the lead of the United States in taking military action against IS within the borders of Syria, one of the founding members of the United Nations, without the consent of the Syrian Government.

Mr Macilwain said, "Such action will do little to ‘degrade and destroy’ the terrorist group, whose control over territory has only continued to increase despite a year of US Coalition airstrikes. Furthermore there have been significant civilian casualties and damage as a result of those airstrikes, leading to further refugee flows."

"While Australian involvement in the campaign in Syria will do little to change this situation, culpability for ‘collateral damage’ sustained within Syrian sovereign territory could bring us before the ICC," added Mr Macilwain.

"Rather than looking for an alternative pretext that might be legal, such as the ‘responsibility to protect’ Iraqis, AMRIS proposes a clear alternative - cooperation with the Syrian Army in its fight against IS and other terrorist groups."

"AMRIS also considers that if the Australian government is genuine in its desire and commitment to defeat IS, Al Qaeda and allied terrorist groups in Syria, and seeks to restore peace and security such that refugees can return, then it must be prepared to work in cooperation with the Syrian government and security forces. Such a commitment also entails the recognition of that government as legally constituted and representing the majority of the Syrian population, as mandated in the election of June 2014." ₁ 

Mr Macilwain further stated, "In the absence of such cooperation with the Syrian authorities, Australian military intervention in the Syrian conflict will be neither legal nor moral, regardless of the stated target and pretext. The consequences of such an illegal intervention, which under international law constitutes the ‘supreme crime’ of launching a war of aggression, would be both inconceivable and uncontrollable."

"AMRIS demands that there must be a full disclosure of the objectives, conditions and limitations of this intervention, subject to a parliamentary debate and public scrutiny before this apparent decision to take us to war is finalised."

http://australiansforreconciliationinsyria.org/about/

David Macilwain.

Footnote[s]

1. ↑  At the Presidential election of 4 June 2014, 10,319,723 Syrians, or 88.7% of the 73.42% of eligible Syrian voters who voted, voted for President Bashar al-Assad in spite of the obstruction of expatriate voters by some countries, including Australia and France.

The fair conduct of those elections was attested to by five international observers at a press conference held at the headquarters of the United Nations on 19 June 2014. See Syria's press conference the United Nations doesn't want you to see (21/6/15) with an embedded 53 minute YouTube broadcast. This article was previously published on Global Research.

I don't know of one of the leaders any one of the formal democracies opposed to Syria – the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Turkey, Israel, Australia, ... let alone the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar – who can claim to have even close to President al-Assad's popular endoresement.

At the conference not one of the 'reporters' who, before and since, have peddled the narrative that Bashar al-Assad is a corrupt, brutal dictator, attempted to challenge their testimony.

Although planned invited economic immigrants are far more numerous in Australia, the fuss about accepting or rejecting asylum seekers is so ridiculous when nothing is said about how the wars we support generate nearly all the refugees NATO shudders at the idea of.

I hadn’t been watching SBS latest 3 day Go Back To Where You Came From series, being put off by the obnoxious nationalism of people in the trailers. But I thought to just look at the final part on July 31, 2015. In fact I recorded it and watched a little the next day. I only saw the first 8 minutes, but that was enough to get the gist.

I don’t know who is responsible for SBS bias – unlike the ABC it pretends to be have no editorial control, so maybe this is just the default position.

So where were they going in the Middle East to see the place refugees came from? A refugee camp on the Turkish border, which looked to be in the zone that Turkey has infested with IS terrorists! And who was the refugee sample?

There was a flash back to their meeting in Melbourne with this refugee, who was a Palestinian! She wasn’t a Palestinian fleeing Israel’s ethnic cleansing though. As she related, "I went to buy groceries and there was a helicopter bombing our house."

So she fled to another place, where she was then hit by ISIS, and came to Australia.

But the party didn’t go to Yarmouk and Damascus – they went to the north west to meet the Kurds, who are battling against ‘the worst terrorist organisation in the world’.

This was yet another puff piece for the freedom and music loving Kurds, made before it looked like the Kurds may soon be joining the Syrian army to fight against Turkey and its proxies. And one of our good Aussies said that ‘I’d love to see 14,000 Kurds coming to take refuge in Australia’!

The voice-over, not by the guy who did the last series but by one who sounded like propaganda central, talked about the dangers from the ‘brutal Assad regime’ and from ISIS terrorists, and how this was the worst humanitarian crisis since WW2.

Syrians don't want to come here as refugees; they want Australia to stop supporting the war against their government

All this got me to thinking about the rift between refugee support and the Syrian crisis, and how it is that the people who are really suffering in Syria have no desire to come to Australia as refugees – all they want is for us to stop attacking their homes so they can live there in peace.

So it seems to me that if we actually want to help refugees – at least the ones from our battlefields, we should be putting the pressure on leaders to start working with the Syrian government and to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Israel and the US to go back to where they came from...!

But of course before ‘we’ do that ‘we’ are going to have to understand who are the bad guys in this conflict. (I’ve noticed incidentally that if ABC reporters find a ‘refugee’ in Europe or elsewhere, most of the time they will be ‘Syrian’. On the day I watched my recording of GBTWYCF, I noticed that when Cameron in Britain had said the ‘swarm’ of migrants should go back to West Africa, the ABC interviewed a random migrant in Calais who was.... Syrian!

Of course there is yet another devious agenda here – that Cameron wouldn’t be saying the migrants were mostly from Syria even if they were, because then it would be impossible to turn them away!

There’s a third problem – that migrants across Europe now all say they are from Syria, even when you can see they are Roma, or North African, or just homeless. It’s the best way to get sympathy and money. It was the same last year when we were in Greece, Lebanon, and France.

Australian mainstream media, including the public media, continue to report some critical world events in a dangerously one-sided manner, while the world increasingly risks a third world war. In this letter of complaint to the ABC, David Macilwain appeals to presenters Barbara Miller and Michael Brissenden to consider the multiple reports and perspective in all Russian media, and in many alternative internet fora, to better understand the nature of the powerplay in Ukraine, instead of uncritically reporting the slant on these matters given by western governments.

To Barbara Miller and Michael Brissenden, ABC

Re "The Debaltsevo 'cauldron'": "Battle rages for key Ukrainian town despite ceasefire agreement"

Dear Barbara and Michael,

As a well informed observer of current events in East Ukraine, and of the distorted picture of them presented in the Western media, I was very concerned about this morning’s report on the crisis in Debaltsevo, or what the Novorussians call the ‘Debaltsevo cauldron’.

They call it this, because a few weeks ago, some 8000 Ukrainian troops with heavy armour went deep into territory east of the current ceasefire line, with the intent to separate Luhansk and Donetsk and launch attacks against both centres of the ‘new republic’.

Not long before Angela Merkel’s rush visit to Moscow, the ‘separatist’ forces had succeeded in cutting off the access to this ‘cauldron’ by taking control of the main route in west of Debaltsevo.

The Ukrainian troops were surrounded and faced with a choice – fight to their deaths with no support from Kiev, or surrender to the Separatists. As we saw from news tonight, some small number of Ukrainian troops did surrender, but many thousands remain.

The leader of the Kiev Junta, President Poroshenko, refuses to admit that these troops are trapped, and refuses to let them surrender, while making wild and ridiculous assertions about Russian involvement. President Putin by contrast has asked Kiev to allow their surrender, so that the crisis can be solved peacefully, and the terms of the ceasefire respected.

As long as Western media organisations, including the ABC, continue to parrot the rubbish and lies being told by their governments, if merely by simply reporting them without ever revealing the truth, then we will see a further deterioration towards a major conflict over Ukraine.

I am appealing to you to consider the multiple reports and perspective in all Russian media, and in many alternative internet fora, to better understand the nature of the powerplay here, and start telling us what has really happened. A good place to start is with this blog by a ‘Russian’ living in the US, with many contacts in Russia and superb analysis:

http://www.vineyardsaker.blogspot.mx/ ["The Vineyard of the Saker"]

I would like to start hearing news on the ABC which presents even a moderate view of the Russian perspective, rather than none at all.

with regards,

David Macilwain,

Sandy Creek, Victoria.

"7.30 has acknowledged your concern and agrees it was inaccurate for the program to state as fact that flight MH17 was shot down by “Pro-Russian militia” and “Russian backed rebels”. The program understands the cause of that incident remains unresolved and is the subject of ongoing investigation." (ABC Corporate Affairs). After David Macilwain, candobetter.net author and 7.30 Report viewer, complained, the ABC has made editorial changes to a report entitled, "Tony Abbott promises to ‘shirtfront’ Putin at G20 Summit." Mr MacIlwain's complaint appears under this ABC response. This is a positive response from the ABC since the kind of unfounded bellicose reporting that MacIlwain complained about is helping to move the world rapidly towards another world war. The ABC can help the world by reporting truthfully and respectfully. (Also published by AMRIS at https://susandirgham.wordpress.com/abc730-editorial-correction-mr-bill-shorten-president-putin-and-mh17/

From: ABC Corporate_Affairs5
Sent: Monday, November 17, 2014 4:30 PM
To: (Mr David MacIlwain)
Subject: 7.30

Dear Mr Macilwain

Thank you for your email regarding the 7.30 story Tony Abbott promises to “shirtfront” Putin at G20 Summit.

Your concerns have been considered by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC. We have considered your concerns, reviewed the report and assessed it against the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy.

7.30 has acknowledged your concern and agrees it was inaccurate for the program to state as fact that flight MH17 was shot down by “Pro-Russian militia” and “Russian backed rebels”. The program understands the cause of that incident remains unresolved and is the subject of ongoing investigation.

The program has amended the online transcript of the report and posted an editor’s note alerting its audience to the error. The error has also been acknowledged on the Corporation’s online corrections and clarifications page.

The ABC Code of Practice is available online at the attached link;

http://about.abc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/CodeofPractice2013.pdf

Should you be dissatisfied with this response to your complaint, you may be able to pursue the matter with the Australian Communications and Media Authority http://www.acma.gov.au

Below is the original complaint as published on candobetter.net at http://candobetter.net/node/4119.

Complaint re ABC handling of Tony Abbott's insults and unsubstantiated allegations against Vladimir Putin

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