Shatter denies US illegalities at Shannon:

MINISTER DENIES US
ILLEGALITIES AT
SHANNON AIRPORT:

 

In response to opposition questions in Dáil Éireann today, Defence and Justice Minister, Alan Shatter, denied any illegal activities by US Military using Shannon Airport and used his time to attack Michael Wallace TD who was asking the questions

and Finian McGrath TD and Clare Daly TD, who intervened from the opposition benches, in his usual pro-imperialist way evading all criticism of the misuse of the Airport by the US Military with the connivance and collaboration of Shatter and his government contrary to Irish and International law:

 

Shannon Airport Facilities

 8. Deputy Mick Wallace asked the Minister for Defence the cost to the Defence Forces of providing security for US military planes at Shannon airport.  [46647/13]

 30. Deputy Mick Wallace asked the Minister for Defence  the reason at least one Irish soldier was on the ground at Shannon on 7 September when a US Air Force Hercules C130 was present.  [46646/13]

Deputy Mick Wallace:  Section 317 of the Defence Act 1954 states: "No person shall, save with the consent in writing of a Minister of State, enter or land in the State while wearing any foreign uniform." Only a few years ago, our current President, Mr. Michael D. Higgins, described statements by the then Government in respect of Shannon as one untruth followed by another. What is the cost relating to the provision at security at Shannon Airport and why is taxpayers' money being used to protect US forces at Shannon, particularly when the latter are in breach of Irish neutrality and are very often en route to countries further afield in order to breach international law?

Deputy Alan Shatter:  It is extraordinary that the Deputy's only international bête noire is the United States. He obviously is not concerned that 100,000 people have been killed in Syria or that there are difficulties in the other parts of the world for which no one can hold the United States responsible.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  What about the 100,000 civilians killed in Iraq?

Deputy Alan Shatter: In relation to the Deputy's question, An Garda Síochána has primary responsibility for law and order, including the protection of the internal security of the State. Among the roles assigned to the Defence Forces is the provision of aid to the civil power, ATCP, which in practice means assisting an Garda Síochána when requested to do so. These ATCP security duties include the protection and guarding of vital installations and the provision of armed security escorts. From time to time, the Garda also requests support from the Defence Forces at Shannon Airport. Such assistance has been provided by the Defence Forces since 5 February 2003. I can confirm that on the 7 September last, members of the Defence Forces were requested by the Garda to assist with security duties at Shannon Airport.

The following items are taken into consideration when calculating the costs involved in providing ATCP at Shannon Airport - security duty allowance, rations and fuel. The costs incurred for the period 2010 to 2012 inclusive were as follows:

2010:   €203,366

2011:    €259,739

2012:    €275,008

 

The costs for 2013 are expected to be broadly in line with 2012.

An Ceann Comhairle:  Am I correct in stating that the Minister is dealing with questions Nos. 8 and 30?

Deputy Alan Shatter:  Apparently so.

An Ceann Comhairle:  Both questions are in the name of Deputy Wallace.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Will other Members be able to contribute?

An Ceann Comhairle:  If we have time.

Deputy Mick Wallace:  I have as much respect for the likes of Vladimir Putin and what he does to disturb world peace as I have for Barack Obama, Islamic militants, Israel or whomever. I am opposed to all forms of terrorism, be they perpetrated by an individual or a state.

In March 2011, the Labour Party - Fine Gael's partner in government - stated that it would be enforcing The Hague convention on neutrality. According to the convention, which defines the rights and duties of international law, neutral countries are forbidden to move troops or convoys of munitions of war or supplies across their territory. We have seen pictures of soldiers with guns, and not just in uniforms, on the ground at Shannon. I do not believe that this is appropriate if the country is to have any semblance of neutrality. We like to think that we are neutral in some way.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  As the Deputy knows, US planes transporting members of that country's military have landed at Shannon for many years. There is no reason, in the context of the use of Shannon, that we should impede such transportation in any way. Indeed, there is no suggestion of which I am aware of any difficulties arising at Shannon Airport. I draw to the Deputy's attention that the business generated as a result of this use of Shannon is very important in the context of maintaining the viability of the airport, which plays a crucial role in the context of facilitating access from the United States through to other locations. I really do not understand what is the Deputy's difficulty. There is no suggestion that American soldiers landing in Shannon have ever behaved inappropriately or have done anything other than contribute to the local economy.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  They are just on their way to kill people elsewhere.

Deputy Mick Wallace:  A few years ago, the current Tánaiste wondered why the then Government had not complied with a request from the Human Rights Commission to inspect aircraft travelling through Shannon. The Minister states that this use of the airport is good for business. I accept that it is good for business but at what price? Let us not forget that plenty of civilians pass through Shannon. If we are going to allow military personnel who are often armed to pass through our airport in order that they can fly on to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or Yemen and destroy the lives of others, then I am of the view that the price for facilitating business is too high.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Hear, hear.

Deputy Clare Daly:  Absolutely.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  The Deputy has obviously failed to notice that there is a group in Afghanistan called the Taliban-----

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Do its members travel through Shannon?

Deputy Alan Shatter:  -----which generally believes that it should enforce the most extreme form-----

Deputy Finian McGrath:  The Minister's pal-----

An Ceann Comhairle:  Deputy Finian McGrath should allow the Minister to conclude.

Deputy Alan Shatter: -----of Islamic law whereby no woman should be educated or appear in public without being completely covered-----

Deputy Mick Wallace: This has nothing to do with the questions I tabled.

Deputy Finian McGrath: What has this got to do with Shannon? So the Minister supports the American war.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  ----- and that girls going to school are seen as reasonable targets and can be shot. Also operating out of Afghanistan is al-Qaeda, which planned and carried out the destruction of the twin towers in New York. The Deputy seems to be of the view that the sole focus of evil in the world is the United States and that there are no other trouble spots on the face of the planet-----

Deputy Clare Daly:  Is the Taliban using Shannon?

Deputy Alan Shatter:  -----where individuals violate fundamental rights, seek to prevent normal communal activities and discriminate against women in a very foul way, treat them as second-class citizens and attempt to prevent them from accessing any form of education.

Deputy Mick Wallace:  The Minister might be interested to discover that 19 of the 20 people who were involved in the 9/11 attacks in America came from autocratic states protected by America.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Hear, hear. Those are the facts.

Deputy Mick Wallace:  The Minister should get his facts right.

An Ceann Comhairle:  Members are supposed to pose questions.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Yes, but the Minister is misinforming the House.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  I do not believe Deputy Wallace asked a question.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  Will the Minister stop coming before the House and acting as the USA's poodle in respect of international issues? The reality is that many people who operate in the human rights arena are genuinely concerned about the use of Shannon Airport by people on their way to bomb and kill others. Those of us on the Opposition benches have always opposed all forms of violence but the Minister is blatantly supporting US policy, end of story.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  When one must use abuse, one is losing the argument.

Deputy Finian McGrath:  There was no abuse.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  I would not describe myself as a poodle or any other type of dog. I like dogs and am of the view that we should encourage people to keep pets because the latter brighten their lives and give them other interests.
The only country Deputy Finian McGrath and some of his colleagues ever pillory for its conduct is the United States.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  I would love to see him, Deputy Mick Wallace and perhaps Deputy Clare Daly jumping up in a similar manner to address issues involving the violation of fundamental rights by Russia or in Iran, Iraq and a whole range of other countries.

Deputy Mick Wallace:  Saudi Arabia.

Deputy Alan Shatter:  There are violations of rights, particularly of women, in Saudi Arabia.

Deputy Mick Wallace: What about the Americans?

Deputy Alan Shatter:  The United States does not get everything right or do everything right. We are, however, dealing with a simple issue, namely, the transport of troops and the use of Shannon Airport. The airport has been used for many years in that context and there is no reason it should not continue to be so used. It is of particular benefit to the airport and the local economy that it is so used".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Fn-09lb4w&feature=youtu.be


What we are actually dealing with is the use of a civilian Airport by one belligerent in several areas of conflict in the Middle East and Asia and no other parties in such conflicts. The only country using our territory to tranship its military and their equipment to these conflicts is the United States. So, the Minister's attempts to drag in other parties to these conflicts or extraneous matters is typical of his evasion tactics which he employs on every occasion when these questions are raised in our parliament, Dáil Éireann. The Minister wants to excise from the discussion any comments on the ultimate purpose of these military transports which is to bomb, maim and kill human beings in other countries so that Shannon airport can show a profit at the end of the year. So, we ought, according to this immorality, move out of the recession by assisting the US to wade through the blood of innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia,Yemen, and latterly Syria and wherever else the US Military wants to trample its jackboots on?

If he wants a debate on human rights issues in other countries, he can put it on the order paper himself anytime he wants and no doubt the Opposition will facilitate him; Israel, for example? 

In December, 2008 and January 2009, Israel launched a large-scale assault on the Gaza Strip using white phosphorous as a weapon against civilian areas which is a violation of International Law. Some of this deadly material was shipped from the US to Israel through Shannon Airport, as there were no stocks of this material available in Europe. Hundreds of men,women and children in the close-packed populated areas of Gaza suffered horrendous injuries from the illegal use of this substance by the Israeli forces.

          White phosphorous bombs rain down on GAZA during Israel's vengeance attack in 2008/9

                     Israeli military handling White Phosphorous shells at the Gaza border, 2008/9

The London "Times" newspaper reported:

 

January 8, 2009

Photographic evidence has emerged that proves that Israel has been using controversial white phosphorus shells during its offensive in Gaza, despite official denials by the Israel Defence Forces.
There is also evidence that the rounds have injured Palestinian civilians, causing severe burns. The use of white phosphorus against civilians is prohibited under international law.

The Times has identified stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells from high-resolution images taken of Israel Defence Forces (IDF) artillery units on the Israeli-Gaza border this week. The pale blue 155mm rounds are clearly marked with the designation M825A1, an American-made WP munition. The shell is an improved version with a more limited dispersion of the phosphorus, which ignites on contact with oxygen, and is being used by the Israeli gunners to create a smoke screen on the ground.

The rounds, which explode into a shower of burning white streaks, were first identified by The Times at the weekend when they were fired over Gaza at the start of Israel's ground offensive. Artillery experts said that the Israeli troops would be in trouble if they were banned from using WP because it is the simplest way of creating smoke to protect them from enemy fire.

Confronted with the latest evidence, an IDF spokeswoman insisted that the M825A1 shell was not a WP type. “This is what we call a quiet shell - it is empty, it has no explosives and no white phosphorus. There is nothing inside it,” she said.

Human Rights Watch reported:

“Human Rights Watch’s investigation into the fighting in Gaza concluded that Israeli forces were responsible for serious violations of the laws of war, including the use of heavy artillery and white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas, the apparent targeting of people trying to convey their civilian status, and the destruction of civilian objects in excess of military need. Some of the cases of white-phosphorus use demonstrate evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said last month in a 71-page report.

“The military’s finding that ‘no phosphorus munitions were used on built-up areas’ is blatantly wrong, Human Rights Watch said. Immediately after major fighting stopped, Human Rights Watch researchers in Gaza found spent white phosphorous artillery shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets and apartment roofs, in residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school. Artillery shells containing white phosphorus also struck a hospital and the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), both in central Gaza City”. 

"All of the white phosphorus shells Human Rights Watch found in Gaza are from the same lot, manufactured in the United States and marked: THS89D112-003 155MM M825E1. THS89D is the manufacturer identification code denoting that the shells and contents were produced in April 1989 by Thiokol Aerospace, which operated the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant at the time; 112-003 are the interfix and sequence numbers, which denote that several lots of the same ammunition were being produced simultaneously; 155mm stands for the caliber of the artillery shell. M825E1 is the US military designation for an older remanufactured M825 white phosphorus shell that has been brought up to the current M825A1 standard".

“Additionally, Reuters news agency photographed an IDF artillery unit in Israel near Gaza handling M825A1 projectiles on January 4, 2009 with the lot number PB-91J011-002A, indicating that these shells were produced in the United States at the Pine Bluff Arsenal in September 1991”.

Mr Shatter, then an opposition TD, made no complaints about this outrageous war crime. No surprise though, as he is a proclaimed Zionist and supporter of Israel.

 

He sheds crocodile tears for Syria, but, choses to ignore the financing and training of Syrian jihadis by the US at its Camp Bondsteel base in NATO-Occupied Kosovo, under the noses of Irish Army "peacekeepers" stationed there, as extensively reported by Zagreb newspapers earlier this year.. Never mind that this a blatant breach of the UN Security Council Mandate for  NATO and Irish troops in Kosovo which he and his government are complicit in. Some hypocrite.

 

He ought to be careful, though, in provoking the current Opposition to his government as he might get his wish and questions might be submitted on human rights in other countries, including Israel, although this would likely be unpalatable to such an ardent Zionist like himself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 
 

OBAMA-SPEAK A COVER FOR IMPERIAL AMBITION:

OBAMA-SPEAK A COVER
FOR IMPERIAL AMBITION:


"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military–Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together".

U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower on leaving office in January, 1960 to be succeeded by John F. Kennedy whose assassination in November, 1963, is still highly controversial with a large section of the American public believing that the murder of their President was part of a conspiracy by the same Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned about.

There are three techniques used by the U.S.,UK and the other warmongers to sell the idea of yet more bombing of other countries.

1. Create the impression that the aggressor is actually acting in self defence, or in the defence of the helpless people of another nation.

2. Build up a crusade mythology, one that presents the aggressors as fighting for a higher ideal or for the good of all humanity.

3. De-humanise the enemy by presenting them as evil, barbaric or subhuman.

These three methods are applied every time, in every case, of Western aggression. They are being used today by  "leaders" to tell us that Assad must be attacked. They did precisely the same with Saddam and Gaddafi. They will do the same with Iran when its time comes.

 

The most notorious exponent of these techniques in the previous century was Nazi propaganda minister Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

                                                         Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister.

 

President Obama’s September 10 speech on Syria  is being presented as a defence of his policies and his latest diplomatic moves. But, underneath all that, the basis on which everyone is supposed to think and act is as outrageous a collection of lies as has ever been assembled in one speech, starting with Mr. Obama’s assertion that “the world’s a better place” because for “nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security.”

As is Mr. Obama’s claim that the U.S. mission in Syria is driven by opposition to “the terrible nature of chemical weapons.”

As is his assertion that the motive of the U.S. is to “stop children from being gassed to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run.”

Libraries full of books, decades of documentaries, and the testimony of hundreds of millions of victims of what the U.S. has brought to the world would hardly begin to reveal the extent to which these are all LIES:

Obama: “The world’s a better place” because for “nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security.”

The detail of U.S. history from the beginning of the American colonization contradicts Mr. Obama’s false version of history. The genocide of Native Americans and the theft of their land, including the “Trail of Tears” where tens of thousands were driven off their lands in the southeastern U.S. and forced to march to Oklahoma—of 15,000 relocated Cherokees, 4,000 died on the march; including many children.  Slavery, where hundreds of thousands of people, kidnapped from Africa, were worked from “can’t see” in the morning to “can’t see” at night. And the legacy of children ripped from their parents, sold to other slave masters. All to build the foundation for much of what made America into the global empire it is today. A savage irony considering Mr. Obama’s own background.

What actually happened in the “nearly seven decades” Mr.Obama claims that the U.S. was making the world “a better place.”

Those decades were launched with, and in important ways defined—militarily, politically, and morally—by the most concentrated mass murder of civilians in human history. The U.S. atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945 killed 200,000 civilians, some burned to death on the spot, others dying torturous deaths from radiation poisoning, with survivors and humanity as a whole traumatised”

Eight years later, the U.S. was “making the world a better place” through the Korean War. Of the U.S. invasion of Korea in 1950, U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay boasted that U.S. planes “burned down every town in North Korea.” The U.S. used more bombs and artillery shells in Korea than in all of World War 2, and used napalm—a chemical weapon more terrifying and “effective” against military and civilian targets than the older sarin gas the U.S. accuses Syria’s Bashar al-Assad of using. An estimated five million people were killed in the Korean War, three million of them civilians.

In the U.S. war of aggression against Vietnam, from 1965-1975, the U.S. continued to make the world “a better place” and along the way demonstrated how much it cares about children by dropping more than seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam and the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos before being driven out in 1975, killing an estimated three million Vietnamese—again, many of them children. Typical of the logic and morality of the U.S. military was the infamous statement by one U.S. military commander who directed the burning down of a whole peasant village and then said, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” In massacres as at the village of My Lai, and in the “cluster bombs” they dropped, the U.S. specifically aimed to kill civilians—including children—at random.

And in response to the arguments of defenders of U.S. imperialism, including liberal “critics” who insist “that was then, this is now,” the U.S. still provides cluster bombs for use against civilians. In 2006, the U.S. Senate voted, 70-30, to defeat an amendment to a Pentagon budget bill which would have banned the use of cluster bombs near populated civilian areas. That enabled the U.S. to continue to supply cluster bombs to Israel to use in an invasion of Lebanon. In 2008-9 the U.S. delivered White Phosphorous to Israel, via Shannon Airport in Ireland, which was used on the civilian population of Gaza in Israel's latest attack on that imprisoned ghetto at the time. White Phosphorous is worse than poison gas, it burns human flesh right through to the bone with excruciating agony for the victims.

Mr.Obama rails against Assad as a “tyrant.” But over “nearly seven decades” the United States installed many of the most brutal tyrants who carried out some of the most massive crimes against their own people in history. In 1965, the U.S. orchestrated a reactionary coup in Indonesia and the slaughter of one million communists and others. The massacres were so wanton that in parts of the country, the rivers were choked with bodies and blood. The fascist gangs and Islamic fundamentalists enlisted along with regular military and police to carry out these massacres used and reveled in the most depraved and sadistic means of torturing and killing people to spread widespread terror, including among children. The deaths of communists were then reported to officials at the U.S. Embassy who crossed off the names of the dead from lists they had provided to the Indonesian butchers.

In 1953 the Iranians changed their Government and kicked out Pahlavi, the fake "Emperor" but the "democratic" U.S. and Britain conspired to change it back again to what became a ruthless dictatorship based on torture and secret police. In 1971 the Chileans changed their Government but were rewarded two years later with a brutal Washington organised military coup when brave President Salvador Allende was murdered in his Office  and  a U.S. sponsored Junta seized power which slaughtered thousands.

The US has conspired to change governments by coup or invasion in all 20 states of Latin America in the last 150 years.

The fact that this history is not taught in schools, or acknowledged in acceptable discourse, does not mean these things didn’t really happen. There is one bit of actual truth that nearly everyone does know: The Iraq war was based on LIES.

Mr.Obama claimed in his speech that he was determined not to repeat what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. As if simply avoiding U.S. “boots on the ground” should be the measuring stick for whether or not the U.S. is again carrying out the same kinds of crimes it carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan. Justified with THE SAME BASIC SET OF LIES!

Set aside, for a moment, the fact that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was justified by TOTAL LIES about Saddam Hussein’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction.” Set aside, for a moment, the fact that the media, including the liberal New York Times, chanelled these lies and gave them credibility.

Consider instead the self-righteous claims by the likes of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush that the U.S. was motivated by and driven to attack Iraq because “Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraq citizens.” (President Bush, March 22, 2002)

Saddam Hussein did gas Kurdish people in Iraq in 1988—something the U.S. facilitated, by the way, including through encouraging the Kurds to rebel and then stabbing them in the back, and through making it possible—including through allies—for Hussein to obtain poison gas. But the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and, importantly, the “diplomatic” moves the U.S. carried out against Hussein—namely sanctions, made things horribly worse for the ordinary people of Iraq.

Operation Desert Storm, 1991, the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, killed or injured hundreds of thousands—over 25,000 civilians and fleeing soldiers were killed in 48 hours on the “Highway of Death.” Then, after the war, the U.S. continued “making the world a better place” and demonstrating care for children through sanctions that killed some 500,000 children in Iraq—killed because of those U.S. sanctions that prevented them from getting needed medicine, clean water, and nutrition. And this crime was justified by a future U.S. Secretary of State as “a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.” (US Television 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996)

In 2003, the U.S. and its allies again invaded Iraq—once again making the world “a better place.” During and after the war, between 600,000 and one million Iraqis were killed, and over four million were driven from their homes. (See “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster survey” The Lancet, October 12, 2006 ). These deaths are almost never mentioned in the mainstream media.

And the U.S. turned Abu Ghraib prison into their hellish torture chamber, with U.S. military personnel bragging on social media and in emails of sadistic torture, murder, sexual abuse, water boarding, beatings, sleep deprivation, humiliation, and dog attacks. Today Iraq is wracked with terrible sectarian violence (different religious and ethnic factions killing each other). During the U.S. occupation much of that was directly orchestrated by the U.S. in the tradition of colonial “divide and conquer” strategies, but all of it greatly exacerbated in one way or another by the U.S. invasion and the legacy and present-day reality of imperialist domination.

The same can be said about Afghanistan. And one can literally spin a globe of the planet, point to a country, and find crimes carried out by the U.S.

All this misery is a product of how their imperialist system works. It is a system that, by its nature, is driven to exploit the people and resources of the world, to contend and compete with rivals big and small, global and regional, over their ability to do that, which is driven by its nature to enforce all this with the most brutal violence.

Think about what kind of a system is actually represented by a liar-in-chief who can look back on a record like this, look earnestly into the cameras, and talk about nearly seven decades of “enforcing” what he calls “international agreements” that he claims made the world “a better place.”

Far too many of those who Mr.Obama would refer to as “on the Left” are breathing a sigh of relief that Mr.Obama is turning to “diplomacy” instead of launching a military strike—at this moment. But thuggish threats and violent crimes on the one hand and diplomacy on the other are two sides of the same coin. Speaking to a world population that is much more aware than are people in the U.S. of the legacy of U.S. violent crimes around the world, and speaking to (and embracing) the “hawks” in the ruling class and good ole boys watching on TV, Mr.Obama put on his stern face, looked into the cameras, and made this ominous declaration and threat:

“Let me make something clear: The United States military doesn’t do pinpricks.”

Don’t the families of the millions slaughtered know it!

U.S. diplomacy rests on violence and threats of violence, and is aimed at the same ends as violence of enforcing exploitation and oppression, fending off rivals, and keeping people enslaved. And, again, in Iraq, where U.S. sanctions (“diplomacy”) killed hundreds of thousands of children, and softened up Iraq for the 2003 invasion and all the horrors that came with that. On the basis of a world of lies, Mr.Obama proclaimed: “Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake in Syria, along with our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used.”

First of all, given that Mr.Obama is speaking for a ruling class of imperialists who have carried out the greatest crimes against humanity in history, who in their right mind would want to identify with the so-called “principles” behind what Mr.Obama calls “our national security "?.They are the “ideals and principles” of a murderous, sadistic, depraved imperialist ruling class driven to subjugate, dominate, and terrorise the planet. So why would anyone want to “debate” what the United States should do in Syria based on those interests? Unless they identify with ensuring that the U.S. imperialist ruling class can continue to dominate the planet, violently enforcing a system of sweatshops and slums, environmental devastation, and a system whose culture and “traditions” have produced an epidemic of rape.

The American public is being trained to think in these terms through Mr.Obama’s speech, and through endless spinning and “debate” among media pundits who are allowed access to the Whore Press owned by media barons like Rupert Murdoch and his ilk. But, people who have the ability to think critically and have the moral sense to look at things from the standpoint of the interests of humanity have to loudly and clearly reject these terms in all kinds of ways, including connecting that outlook with, and encouraging political protests against, any U.S. moves against Syria.

The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for a different way of organising both economy and society in the interests of the majority of the people not the 1% corrupt and genocidal elite.


See also  U.S. Peace Activist ,Joseph Gerson's speech at Stockholm, Sweden, here:

http://blagaroon2.blogspot.ie/2013/09/truth-to-empire-joe-gerson.html