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Thursday, February 6, 2014

Human relief means stopping the bombs from falling

There was talk during Geneva II about possibly a "breakthrough" on "humanitarian relief" for besieged Homs. Some refugees might be allowed out, provided they were passed by the regime fire wall. It never happened. Now there is talk about it again; some refugees might be allowed out and some food might be allowed in. Never mind, this is just the sort of thing torturers do. It isn't effective to just let your victims die, so occasional, controlled, relief is necessary to continue the siege.

You see, Assad's real purpose in withholding food is not to starve them to death, its to starve them into submission, and this is taking a little longer than he expected. As we may conclude from the newly released pictures of the corpses of his prisoners, many would sooner starve to death than submit to his rule. So a little UN relief works for him; plus it burnishes his reputation as a "reasonable man." But nevermind all that. The International "community" is all abuzz and the media is again running this "top story" about a possible breakthrough in "humanitarian relief."

Meanwhile, Assad's bombs keep raining down on the people, as they did before, during, and after the bogus "peace conference" and in the final analysis, none can escape the fact that if humanitarian relief means anything at all, it means stopping the bombs from falling. Anything less is "feel good" for our benefit.

Regime attack on the Aleppo suburb of Miskan Hanano today | 6 Feb 2014

Heavy bombing on Zabadani in mountainous Qalamoun | 31 Jan 2014

Assad’s Barrel-Bombs Continue to Rain Down on Civilians

2 of the 22 Barrel bombs dropped on Daraya yesyerday| 6 Feb 2013

People fleeing bombing in Aleppo to become refugees in rural Idlib province | 5 Feb 2014

16 killed in Qadi A’askar neighborhood of Aleppo | 30 Jan 2014

The Amazing Little Girl Who Survived Total Burial

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

While Assad's CW is 95.9% intact, Qaddafi's is 100% destroyed

This blog post should be subtitled:

A Tale of Two Chemical Weapon Stockpiles

And I think the moral of this story is clear: If you want to get rid of a fascist dictator's stock of chemical weapons, you need to get rid of the dictator first.

Bashar al-Assad had agreed to have sent all his chemical weapons abroad for destruction by this week; instead Reuters reported:

Syria has shipped out less than 5 percent of chemical weapons
29 January 2014
By Anthony Deutsch
(Reuters) - Syria has given up less than 5 percent of its chemical weapons arsenal and will miss next week's deadline to send all toxic agents abroad for destruction, sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The deliveries, in two shipments this month to the northern Syrian port of Latakia, totaled 4.1 percent of the roughly 1,300 tonnes of toxic agents reported by Damascus to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's not enough and there is no sign of more," one source briefed on the situation said.
More...

Meanwhile, the effort in post-Qaffadi Libya is over and done with as of last week. The New York Times reports:

Libya’s Cache of Toxic Arms All Destroyed
2 February 2014
By Eric Schmitt
WASHINGTON — Even as the international effort to destroy Syria’s vast chemical weapons stockpile lags behind schedule, a similar American-backed campaign carried out under a cloak of secrecy ended successfully last week in another strife-torn country, Libya.

The United States and Libya in the past three months have discreetly destroyed what both sides say were the last remnants of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s lethal arsenal of chemical arms. They used a transportable oven technology to destroy hundreds of bombs and artillery rounds filled with deadly mustard agent, which American officials had feared could fall into the hands of terrorists. The effort also helped inspire the use of the technology in the much bigger disposal plan in Syria.

Since November, Libyan contractors trained in Germany and Sweden have worked in bulky hazmat suits at a tightly guarded site in a remote corner of the Libyan desert, 400 miles southeast of Tripoli, racing to destroy the weapons in a region where extremists linked to Al Qaeda are gaining greater influence. The last artillery shell was destroyed on Jan. 26, officials said. More...

I am also wondering if the very plan to transport the dangerous chemicals out of the country for destruction is not in itself a delaying tactic? I'm no expert on chemical weapons or their destruction, I hope Dan Kaszeta will weight in here, but I thing it might be easier and safer to destroy them where they are, or close by, rather than incur all the dangers and delays involved in arranging transport through a war zone.

Libya's efforts to destroy its chemical weapons began in 2004 under Qaddafi, but progress was hindered until he was overthrown, and in a cautionary tale for those who put their faith in an agreement with Assad, it must be noted that after Qaddafi was overthrown, chemical weapons stores that he never declared were found and destroyed.

My blogs on Assad's use of CW in Syria:

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria Click here for a list of my other blogs on Libya

Syria's Bashar al-Assad Knows: Napalm Sticks to Kids

The title of this blog post references a little ditty that was popular with some US pilots during the Vietnam War. At the end of this piece I've included a YouTube video in which the full version is sang. It begins like this:

We shoot the sick, the young, the lame,
We do our best to maim,
Because the kills all count the same,
Napalm sticks to kids.

The writing of this post has been prompted by the news that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad is again using napalm bombs in Homs province. Napalm is jellied gasoline; a horrific weapon that was widely used by the United States on Vietnamese. It was declared a war crime to use it against civilians by the United Nations in 1980, although it took almost three decades for the US to agreed to that protocol. President Barack Obama signed it on his first full day in office, 21 January 2009. Now it is making a comeback, like poison gas, thanks to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This is one of the most iconic photographs of the Vietnam War. It shows a group of South Vietnamese children running from a napalm attack being carried out by the South Vietnamese government in 1972. There was a time when Veterans for Peace opposed this sort of thing, but that was when the government dropping napalm on its own people was a client of the United States. Today they officially oppose any international intervention to stop Assad from dropping napalm on his people and they oppose providing the Syrians being napalmed with weapons they could use to shoot down the planes themselves, which means, as a practical matter, they support the napalming of civilians by the fascist Assad regime.They aren't alone. Democracy Now had no time for napalm today, in fact, she didn't say word one about what is being done to Syrians by Assad. Amy's focus was a two-year-old story about kids being jailed for profit in Pennsylvania.

Radio Free Syria is reporting today:

Regime uses napalm bombs again in Homs province

Qalat al Hosn, Homs province, 04-02-2014: People in Qalat al Hosn (a.k.a. Krak des Chevaliers) and the neighbouring village of Al Zahra are receiving instructions from activists on how to treat napalm burns and other injuries after regime warplanes again dropped incendiary bombs containing a napalm-like substance believed to be either napalm or white phosphorous in the area.

Napalm, a mixture of petroleum or similar fuel and a thickening/gelling agent, is highly combustible and adheres to any surfaces it comes into contact with, including human skin, with the temperature of the flames, whch reaches up to 1,000 degrees, causing horrific and often lethal burns. During combustion, it rapidly deoxygenates the available air and generates large amounts of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

Apart from severe burns, other effects of exposure to napalm include asphyxiation, hyperthermia/heat stroke, radiant heat, dehydration, suffocation, smoke exposure, and/or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Those exposed to napalm, which is used regularly by the regime, are advised to avoid inhaling any smoke from the explosions and to immediately remove any clothes which the napalm has come into contact with before immediately seeking medical aid for burns, which can go down to the bone.

In the event of fires ignited by the napalm bombs, people in the vicinity are advised to stay as far away as possible from the flames which will similarly deoxygenate the surrounding air, and to use large amounts of earth rather than water when attempting to extinguish the blaze - water is ineffective unless massive quantities are used.

Although the use of napalm, like white phosphorous, in civilian areas is a war crime according to the United Nations, the regular documented deployment of both in incendiary bomb form against civilian areas by Assad's warplanes and helicopter gunships has never been criticised by the UN, the 'Friends of Syria' (sic) or any other bodies among the so-called international community.

From: Khaled al Hosni in Qalat al Hosn

Thursday, January 30, 2014

The Tet Offensive: a turning point in the Vietnam War

Today is 46th Anniversary of the start of Tet Offensive, one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. Beginning on 30 January 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched country wide attacks on United States and South Vietnamese forces that completely exposed the lie being told to the American people by President Lyndon Johnson and his military leadership that the Vietnam War was winding down and the US was winning. Instead we awoke to the news that the national liberation forces had people everywhere and were carrying out what they called the "General Offensive and Uprising" (Cuộc Tổng tiến công và nổi dậy).

The offensive was the largest mobilization carried out by either side in the war to that point, it involved more than 80,000 Vietnamese troops fighting to reunited Vietnam and free it from foreign military domination for the first time since the French began their military conquest in 1859. The offensive took place in more than 100 towns and cities, including 36 of the 44 provincial capitals, five of the six autonomous cities, 72 of 245 district towns, and the southern capital Saigon where they lay siege to the headquarters of the ARVN General Staff at Tan Son Nhut Air Base; the Independence Palace, the Long Binh Naval Headquarters, the National Radio Station and, most dramatically, the huge US embassy in Saigon. The BBC would report, on the second day of the offensive, which would last to 28 March 1968:

The American command in Vietnam has reported over 5,000 people dead after two days intensive fighting.

South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has been forced to declare martial law as communist forces, under General Vo Nguyen Giap, have kept up sustained assaults on several fronts - from Saigon in the south to Hue in the north.

Authorities in the North Vietnamese capital Hanoi, described it as, "a more powerful and more continuous offensive" than ever before.

White House intelligence in Washington anticipated attacks over the Tet holiday to celebrate the lunar new year, but they were surprised by their intensity.
...
Vietcong forces have also attacked the Vietnam general staff headquarters, Navy headquarters, two police stations and the Philippine Ambassador's residence as well as blowing up the radio station in Saigon.

Communications are in chaos and commercial flights from the airport have been cancelled.

North Vietnamese - Vietminh - troops have reinforced their siege of Khe Sanh, near the demilitarised zone.

Some commentators expect the so-called Tet Offensive will shatter the American resolve and have a similar effect on the US to that on the French after the North Vietnamese victory at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 - which contributed to the Geneva Agreements later that year.

Note that even as late as '68, the BBC hadn't got the memo from US military PsyOps that the Viet Minh were being rebranded as the "Viet Cong."

General Vo Nguyen Giap who led the Viet Minh forces against the French and then the United States, and was the architect of their victories both at Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive, died in 2013 at the ripe old age of 102.

The reason the Tet Offensive caused such a dramatic shift in American public opinion is that it so completely exposed the lie we had been told about how the war was going. Kevin Murphy, UC Berkley, wrote about the Tet Offensive:

One reason Tet proved such a shock to Americans was that all reports before the offensive seemed to indicate that the US, unlike the French before them, was winning the war in Southeast Asia. “It is significant that the enemy has not won a major battle in more than a year,” General William Westmoreland had told the press in November of 1967. “His guerrilla force is declining at a steady rate...We have reached an important point when the end begins to come into view.” Vice- President Hubert Humphrey echoed the sentiments on Meet the Press that same month. “We are beginning to win this struggle,” Humphrey declared. “We are on the offensive. Territory is being gained. We are making steady progress.” And President Lyndon Johnson had said much the same about the war earlier that year: “We are very sure that we are on the right track.”

With the success of the Tet Offensive and the consequential exposure of the real weakness of the US position in Vietnam, the end did indeed come into view, serious Peace Talks began in Paris in May of that year. Although this first round of talks were sabotaged through the combined efforts of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and it would take another four years of killing and dying before US ground troops finally left Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, which began 46 years ago today, told everybody just how things were going to turn out.

To learn more about the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam War. See my documentary film Vietnam: American Holocaust. It is available both from VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com and Amazon.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Ex-journalist Robert Fisk: One is reminded of Goebbels

As it is only a few days after the third anniversary of the 25 January uprising in Egypt that ousted Hosni Mubarak from power, this would be a good time to remember one of the important contributions that Robert Fisk made to the Arab Revolt while he was still a journalist. On the night of 30 January 2011 Mubarak ordered the Egyptian army to open fire on protesters. Reporting from Tahrir Square, Robert Fisk told us:

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

I concluded from Fisk's report that if senior Egyptian army officers had refused Mubarak's order, it never would have been heard over those headsets, and posted Senior Egyptian Army Officers Ordered Massacre! to WL Central and my then DailyKos blog. My prophetic news of the treachery of the Egyptian Supreme Military Council made its way back to Tahrir Square where it was greeted by this response from Mona Knoieif one of the revolution's leaders:

Could this be true? This is contrary to what I heard from people who assured me that the army was initially refusing to even deploy on the streets let alone fire at demonstrators...

However, I do not trust the military one bit and this report is very, very worrying. The revolution still has a long way to go. We must all be very alert, very aware and not drop our guard for one minute. Please post this on April 6th, We are all Khalid Said, etc. as I do not have access to facebook right now, and distribute as widely as possible.

That was three years ago when Robert Fisk was still a journalist, not a mouthpiece for a dictator, and still did work that was useful to the people. Now things as different, as his latest defence of Bashar al-Assad upon the release of the Syrian death camp pictures clearly shows:

Syria report: One is reminded of Nazi Germany
Robert Fisk
21 January 2014
The pictures are horrific, the torture details revolting, the numbers terrifying. And the integrity of the three former prosecutors who have effectively accused the Syrian government of war crimes, are without blemish. Shrivelled, blood-spattered corpses provide unstoppable evidence of regime cruelty – just as the videotapes of Syrian rebel executions tell us what kind of Syria may soon exist if the insurrection against Bashar al-Assad succeeds.

Unlike some in the "anti-imperialist" Left, Fisk doesn't claim the photos are fake. He accepts their authenticity but then he ignores the growing body of evidence that the jihadist ISIS and al Nusra are closely linked to the Assad regime so that he can blame their crimes on the whole insurgency and argue that it is better if the Assad regime wins. He continues:

Besides, everyone knows that the Assad regime – from father Hafez onwards – has employed torture and executions to preserve the doubtful purity of the Baath party. So why not, indeed, talk of war crimes? Well, let’s just remember that the 11,000 prisoners reportedly done to death by the Syrian regime is only just over half the total number of Syrians – 20,000 – reportedly killed by Hafez’s brother’s troops in the besieged Syrian city of Hama in 1982.

He tries to minimize the import of those 11,000 deaths in detention by ignoring the fact that they represent the work of one photographer and only a fraction of those murdered in detention, not to mention the 130,000 other Syrians killed in Bashar al-Assad's bloody suppression, so that he can compare those 11,000 in a favorable light to the 20,000 killed by his father. Is this what passes for progress in the mind of Robert Fisk?

He goes on to suggest that we should be more interested in prosecuting Assad's defectors for 30-year-old crimes he alleges they've committed while part of the regime than stopping the murders which are taking place now:

So how come we are not demanding war crimes trials for those responsible for that even greater massacre, whose perpetrators – reported at the time and recounted in numerous books afterwards — came from the ranks of the special units commanded by Rifaat al-Assad. Could it be that we have just forgotten this even more terrible massacre? Or could it be – since Rifaat, who has denied any role in the Hama operations, now lives in safety in Paris and sometimes in London, protected by our own European security services – that we don’t have the inclination to pursue that particular bloodbath?

Similar to his methods used to accuse Obama of siding with Al Qaeda, or defending Assad against charges that he murdered with sarin gas, Fisk seems to be throwing up everything he can to create confusion and muddy the waters, so he questions the timing of the report:

How long, for example, have the Qatari authorities been in possession of this terrible eye-witness material? A couple of weeks, just enough time to rustle up the lawyers for the prosecution? Or a couple of months? Or six months? And, more to the point, why now? For it would be difficult to imagine a better way for Qatar – whose royal family viscerally hates Bashar al-Assad – to destroy his hopes of a future role in Syria, even in a ‘transitional’ Syrian government, than by releasing these snapshots of terror just before the Swiss talks.

Photo from one of Assad's death camps c. 2013

Of course this report was timed to come out just before the Swiss talks. Would Fisk prefer that it come out after... or, perhaps, not at all? We know that Amnesty International issued a report on the Assad Regime's "systemic and widespread torture and ill-treatment in detention" in March 2012, Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive report on Assad's death camps some six months ago, that various eye witness reports have come out over the years, and the Obama administration was shown some of these photos in November but choose to remain silent. I would think these photos are enough to cause the Qatar royal family or anyone else to viscerally hate Bashar al-Assad. The question this paragraph raises is, having admitted that these photos represent a true picture of how Assad treats his fellow Syrians, why is Robert Fisk still concerned about "his hopes of a future role in Syria, even in a ‘transitional’ Syrian government?"

Finally, Fisk gets to the point he promised in the title:

Indeed, one is reminded – in terms of political purpose rather than historical parallel, of course — of Nazi Germany’s disclosure of the mass graves of 22,000 Polish officers and civilians murdered by the Soviet secret police in 1940 at Katyn, in that part of Russia newly occupied by German troops. The Nazis claimed the Soviets were responsible – in the hope that this would divide Stalin’s alliance with America and Britain. The Allies denounced the Nazis for the massacre – although it was indeed committed by the Soviets. Does Qatar now hope to divide Syria’s alliance with Russia and Iran with similar evidence of Syrian government mass murder?

Photo from one of Hitler's death camps c. 1945

So photos of emaciated and tortured bodies emerge, photos that remind anyone with a knowledge of history of those we saw when Buchenwald and Auschwitz were liberated, and with this sleight-of-hand, Fisk compares, not Assad, but Qatar, with the Nazis, because he finds the timing inappropriate. This is the work of a propagandist trying to spin a damaging revelation, not a journalist looking for the truth.

The next few paragraphs are a bunch of trite. Why was the defecting photographer code-named "Caesar"? The real Caesar's death led to the execution of Cicero. Cicero was the name of a top Nazi spy. Are we being invited to fashion some sort of conspiracy theory out of this? Why didn't Al Jazeera get the story first. What about HRW and Amnesty International? Never mentioning their own reporting on Assad's detention centers. Pure trite! Then he ends with:

The regime’s enemies can parade those terrifying pictures which Qatar has made available. But war and peace in Syria will not be decided by this horror show.

Certainly not, if propagandist Robert Fisk has anything to say about it!

PostScript: Joseph Goebbels was Adolph Hitler's chief propagandist, and while Assad is no Hitler and Fisk is no Goebbels, it should be remembered that Goebbels was a journalist who fashioned himself a left-winger before he started shilling for a fascist dictator. From Wikipedia:

Goebbels, with his journalistic skills, thus soon became a key ally of Strasser in his struggle with the Bavarians over the party program.... In 1925, Goebbels published an open letter to "my friends of the left," urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. "You and I," he wrote, "we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies."