anti-US-NATO warmongering

Australia's decision to add weapons [1] to the Ukraine pyre shows our government is unable to critically formulate foreign policy.

“[If the] root cause of the current crisis was post-Soviet Western triumphalism that resulted in the rapid and inexorable growth of NATO and the EU, then current NATO deployments all over eastern Europe will confirm for even previously sceptical Russians that the 20-year old complaint about NATO expansion was a prescient one.

"It is incredibly rare that the BBC ever admits that one of their reports on Douma in Syria failed to meet the Corporation's editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims… Blink and you’d have missed this admission, but we didn’t, and it adds to a volley of misreporting that has dogged journalism and peace in the Middle East for decades." (Ross Ashcroft, Renegade Inc.) Ross Ashcroft skilfully reviews mainstream western media attacks on journalists who tried in 2018 to properly investigate false claims that the Syrian Government launched chemical attacks on its people. He reinterviews those journalists, as he analyses the recent BBC admission of defending lies that support the western media conspiracy to justify US-NATO attempts to overthrow Assad Government. He is joined by political scientist Dr. Piers Robinson and journalist Vanessa Beeley to discuss the crumbling narrative around the alleged Douma chemical attack.

On this episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi speaks to Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger about the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Pilger demonstrates a really solid grip on history here, rendering almost irrelevant most other discussions of recent events in Afghanistan. He describes the US military as a killing machine and discusses why the Afghanistan war must be viewed through the lens of Western imperialism, the scale of civilian casualties, and destruction of Afghanistan by NATO countries, how the US created today’s situation by supporting Afghan jihadist forces against the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, the social progress and progressive reform lost to history with the fall of the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, and much more! Pilger also discusses the anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile and the trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

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...

Let's avoid World War Three and bring justice, light and humanity to reporting on Syria and stop the lying deeds of US-NATO.

Time: 6:30pm
Place: State Library of Victoria
Date: 30th April 2018
Organisers: Hands Off Syria (Sydney) is coordinating with a group of activists and Syrians to organise a rally in Melbourne.