Syria

One of the things that has most dismayed and disgusted me over the last decade or so has been the inability of intelligent and educated people to see beyond the rhetoric and propaganda that Western Nations put out, when pursuing an obvious (to me) imperialist agenda.

It's as if these people actually don't want to know or see the truth, they seem to want to believe the (deeply racist) Western propaganda. We export democracy by dropping bombs, increasing our GDP and slipping into detroyed Countries to steal their resources on the cheap. NATO is a terrorist organisation.

The Syrian situation is a case in point, but this goes back years, from oil and mineral-rich Countries in Africa, to other imperial adventures going back a couple of hundred years. In Libya we wanted the oil, the gas and the gold, in Iraq we wanted the oil, in Congo we want the minerals, in Sudan we want the oil, in Nigeria we want their oil, in Mali we want the gold, and on and on and on and on....In Syria it's about gas pipelines, coming from Iran and Russia.

Thank goodness for the few remaining investigative journalists who continue to operate on the internet, despite harassement, ridicule and sometimes worse. Webster Tarpley is a historian of great note, with a broad and deep historical perspective, which allows him to see through the smoke and mirrors.

This week (25.1.14) he starts his weekly two-hour geopolitical round-up by talking about Syria, and the truth rings out clearly. He recommends us to read in full the speech of the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Moallem, at the Geneva 2 talks this week (the complete speech is also on his website). As he says, the speech is dignified and full of accusations of support from the West for the so-called 'Syrian Rebels' (paid mercenaries, in fact) who have brought this once beautiful Country to its knees. For this reason Ban Ki-Moon tried to stop him speaking, but it will go down in history as a great anti-imperialist speech:

http://tarpley.net/

What we are looking at, and have been looking for some time, is quite clearly Colonial Democracy, the excellent title of the  Palestinian academic's book, Nassar Ibrahim. I was lucky enough to get to ask him a question when he gave us a lecture in Bethlehem, in November last year.