DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
7/6/2012
A Daily Telegraph report noting the upturn in the talks on the Syrian crisis said, "Diplomats were clearly pleased to have agreed a peace plan, confounding the pessimists…" Indeed, such an outcome could only have come about because of strong Russian support for the Kofi Annan peace mission. And while that Geneva meeting yielded a "transition plan" through a unity government that includes all stakeholders in Syria, including both government and opposition forces, any precondition for "regime change," i.e. the removal of an elected national leader, as a way of moving forward was naturally set aside.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed willingness to exit for the cause of peace if that is what his people want. Thus, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in backing the Russia plan, declared: "A plan of political settlement on the Syrian issue can only be Syrian-led … Outsiders cannot make decisions for the Syrian people."
On that score, Russian diplomacy has won the day by toughing it out on the principles of integrity of sovereign nations, in effect resisting the latest aggressive US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) destabilization and Balkanization of a sovereign state.
Incidentally, the Russian word for "peace" known as mir aptly describes the possible "mir-acle" of peace in Syria.
With that hopeful thought, perhaps Syria can still be saved from the fate that befell Libya, which went through the brutal "R2P" (Right to Protect) intervention of Western powers led by Italy and France (with US support and direction). Many should know that Libya, after the fall of Gaddafi and under the governance of the National Transition Council (NTC) composed of anti-Gaddafi forces, is now in a state of chaos and massive deterioration of political-economic conditions.
In a March article the Washington Post declared, "In Libya, despot is gone but chaos reigns;" and this, few geopolitical laymen realize, is precisely what the Western powers intended all along: Chaos in a country where the external power gains unlimited opportunity for exploitation.
London's Independent quoted NTC chief and Washington man Mustafa Abdul Jalil commenting on the factional (brigades) fighting: "We are now between two bitter options. We deal with these violations by brigades strictly and put the Libyans in a military confrontation which we don't accept, or we split and there will be civil war. If there's no security, there will be no law, no development and no elections."
Nine years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country is still in shambles and continues to deteriorate under factional conflict, with bombings between Shi'ite and Sunni factions (and maybe US and British covert operations disguised as either) continuing to kill and maim innocent men, women, children, and religious pilgrims indiscriminately.
On the Afghanistan-Pakistan front, Sumaira Nasir Durrani reports on Centre for Research on Globalization: "The United Nations reported that in the year of 2011 the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was 3,021 and 4,507 Afghans were wounded. According to other sources the actual number of civilian casualties was probably five times as large as the number that the UN mentioned. In Feb. 2012 the annual report on 'Protection of civilians in armed conflict' prepared by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), acknowledged that 3,021 civilian deaths last year is an increase of eight percent than the previous year's total of 2,790."
From the Voices Web site comes this: "According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there were 111 US/Nato Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan during 2010 resulting in 957 civilian deaths. The United Nations reports that from 2006 to 2011, an estimated 1,245 civilians have died in US airstrikes in Afghanistan … Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, whose cousin was killed in a US night raid in March, has repeatedly condemned US and Nato drone and other airstrikes that have resulted in the deaths of civilians."
These are just some samples of the violence that US and Nato have inflicted on the countries they have intervened in to allegedly "save the people" and "establish democracy."
The real intention of the West--with the US and Britain leading the rest of Europe by the nose--comprehensively described by geopolitical analyst Webster Tarpley runs like this: "The current US policy under the Obama administration with Hillary Clinton in the State Department aims at the destruction of all sovereign states on this planet. It's really rolling the world situation back to the time before the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which established the regime of modern independent sovereign states. The desperation of the US and the British comes from their financial bankruptcy, and what they've got to do is increase the rate of exploitation and looting and sacking of the entire world economy… (And) In the course of this, they find that any national government is an intolerable obstacle… (as) It gets in their way."
In the same way that Western powers have looted Iraq and Libya, they have done the same, if not worse, to the Philippines, by turning it into a model for their "peaceful" subversion of a nation, starting with the 1986 elite counter-revolution of Cory Aquino's Yellow horde. Today, the Philippine state has effectively been destroyed with the US-Britain's looting in Malampaya, as well as of through our privatized electricity and other public utilities.
Worse, BS Aquino III is now even into calling US spy planes to hover above what should be an Asean Sea patrolled only by Asean forces. Evidently, with such people at the helm, no "mir-acle" is yet in store for the Philippines… that is, unless drastic revolutionary change occurs.
(Watch Destiny Cable GNN's HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., this week with senatorial candidate Joey de Venecia; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed willingness to exit for the cause of peace if that is what his people want. Thus, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in backing the Russia plan, declared: "A plan of political settlement on the Syrian issue can only be Syrian-led … Outsiders cannot make decisions for the Syrian people."
On that score, Russian diplomacy has won the day by toughing it out on the principles of integrity of sovereign nations, in effect resisting the latest aggressive US-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) destabilization and Balkanization of a sovereign state.
Incidentally, the Russian word for "peace" known as mir aptly describes the possible "mir-acle" of peace in Syria.
With that hopeful thought, perhaps Syria can still be saved from the fate that befell Libya, which went through the brutal "R2P" (Right to Protect) intervention of Western powers led by Italy and France (with US support and direction). Many should know that Libya, after the fall of Gaddafi and under the governance of the National Transition Council (NTC) composed of anti-Gaddafi forces, is now in a state of chaos and massive deterioration of political-economic conditions.
In a March article the Washington Post declared, "In Libya, despot is gone but chaos reigns;" and this, few geopolitical laymen realize, is precisely what the Western powers intended all along: Chaos in a country where the external power gains unlimited opportunity for exploitation.
London's Independent quoted NTC chief and Washington man Mustafa Abdul Jalil commenting on the factional (brigades) fighting: "We are now between two bitter options. We deal with these violations by brigades strictly and put the Libyans in a military confrontation which we don't accept, or we split and there will be civil war. If there's no security, there will be no law, no development and no elections."
Nine years after the US invasion of Iraq, the country is still in shambles and continues to deteriorate under factional conflict, with bombings between Shi'ite and Sunni factions (and maybe US and British covert operations disguised as either) continuing to kill and maim innocent men, women, children, and religious pilgrims indiscriminately.
On the Afghanistan-Pakistan front, Sumaira Nasir Durrani reports on Centre for Research on Globalization: "The United Nations reported that in the year of 2011 the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was 3,021 and 4,507 Afghans were wounded. According to other sources the actual number of civilian casualties was probably five times as large as the number that the UN mentioned. In Feb. 2012 the annual report on 'Protection of civilians in armed conflict' prepared by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), acknowledged that 3,021 civilian deaths last year is an increase of eight percent than the previous year's total of 2,790."
From the Voices Web site comes this: "According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there were 111 US/Nato Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan during 2010 resulting in 957 civilian deaths. The United Nations reports that from 2006 to 2011, an estimated 1,245 civilians have died in US airstrikes in Afghanistan … Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, whose cousin was killed in a US night raid in March, has repeatedly condemned US and Nato drone and other airstrikes that have resulted in the deaths of civilians."
These are just some samples of the violence that US and Nato have inflicted on the countries they have intervened in to allegedly "save the people" and "establish democracy."
The real intention of the West--with the US and Britain leading the rest of Europe by the nose--comprehensively described by geopolitical analyst Webster Tarpley runs like this: "The current US policy under the Obama administration with Hillary Clinton in the State Department aims at the destruction of all sovereign states on this planet. It's really rolling the world situation back to the time before the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which established the regime of modern independent sovereign states. The desperation of the US and the British comes from their financial bankruptcy, and what they've got to do is increase the rate of exploitation and looting and sacking of the entire world economy… (And) In the course of this, they find that any national government is an intolerable obstacle… (as) It gets in their way."
In the same way that Western powers have looted Iraq and Libya, they have done the same, if not worse, to the Philippines, by turning it into a model for their "peaceful" subversion of a nation, starting with the 1986 elite counter-revolution of Cory Aquino's Yellow horde. Today, the Philippine state has effectively been destroyed with the US-Britain's looting in Malampaya, as well as of through our privatized electricity and other public utilities.
Worse, BS Aquino III is now even into calling US spy planes to hover above what should be an Asean Sea patrolled only by Asean forces. Evidently, with such people at the helm, no "mir-acle" is yet in store for the Philippines… that is, unless drastic revolutionary change occurs.
(Watch Destiny Cable GNN's HTL edition of Talk News TV, Saturdays, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11:15 p.m., this week with senatorial candidate Joey de Venecia; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com)
