See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

Shortly before Christmas, the British Defense Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, admitted that British-made cluster bombs had been used in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. The statement came seven months after his ministry repeated Saudi Arabian claims that no such weapons had been used, denying the evidence provided by Amnesty International. The 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs called BL755 had been proven to have killed and injured civilians including children, yet the Right Honorable Gentleman could not resist to mention that they had been used against “legitimate military targets.” One could think that the revelation of such facts, followed by an unwieldy statement from one of the highest government officials would spark media outrage, or at least provoke a nationwide discussion which could then lead to some constructive conclusions, but Sir Fallon’s declaration attracted very little media attention. The same can be said about the war in Yemen which has taken lives of thousands of civilians, displaced over 2.5 million of its citizens and left over 2/3 of the whole population in need of humanitarian aid.  The scarce media coverage should no longer surprise anyone, as the main news outlets tend to bombard the public with topics of a greater significance, like Prime Minister’s footwear or the price of some other parts of her garment.

Shopping Spree for Kings

BL755 is designed to explode mid-air, releasing 147 bomblets with a reach of 97 thousand square feet (9 thousand square meters). It’s most effective against mobile targets like soft-skinned vehicles and it’s extremely harmful to humans. Cluster bombs’ wide area stretch that cannot rule out killing and injuring civilians, as well as the dangers it poses for years after the drop when unexploded were the main reasons why over 100 nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008 (forbidding the use, development or stockpiling of these weapons), the UK being one of them.

The abovementioned BL755s had been sold to the Saudis during the rule of Margaret Thatcher and were dropped from the British-manufactured Tornado jets which have been since upgraded. What’s most significant, the UK government drastically increased its military export licences to the Persian Gulf’s absolute monarchy when the conflict in Yemen began. Just in the first year of fighting, the sales were worth over $4 billion – that included the Eurofighter Typhoon jets, which have been bombing residential areas of Yemen. It’s worth mentioning that the Prime Minister herself has defended these weapon deals and has not condemned the coalition’s actions in Yemen.

Nevertheless, the UK’s $8 billion worth of arms deals with the KSA during the current government’s term may seem peanuts in comparison to $115bn (sic) of weapon sales to the Saudis offered by the USA since Barack Obama took power (though Americans halted some of the transfers last December, unlike the British). That’s one of the fields where the outgoing president managed to surpass his predecessors. Among scores of military equipment purchased by the Gulf Kingdom were the 2,000 lb (over 900 kg) Mark 84 bombs, also dropped on noncombatant targets.

The Righteous Double Standards

The United Nations expert panel has confirmed that the Saudi-led coalition has targeted civilian population, bombing schools, hospitals, buses, mosques and markets, therefore, it has continuously violated international humanitarian law. How is it possible then, that the USA and the United Kingdom have not proposed any major sanctions against Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and other nations taking part in the devastation of Yemen? Why are they doing exactly the opposite, providing aid to the aggressors?

We have been told for years that both the American and the British governments represent the highest values of humanity, cherish human life and freedom, revere democracy and despise tyranny. We have been told that they are “the good ones,” fighting injustice, helping the oppressed, saving the world from evil, so the people of all nations can live in peace and prosperity. That is the image we (the Westerners) get in our history books, films, newspapers and TV programs. Our general impression of the only superpower in the world, i.e., the United States is that of Captain America (the others – our Western governments, with the United Kingdom furthest ahead –duly adhere to their master). That would explain why we frantically follow what we are told by its officials, rarely finding courage to question their sincerity. But that perception is very dangerous as it leads to the conclusion that what we do is right because we do it, and laws apply to us only if we say so. Therefore, it’s wrong for them, our adversaries, to commit crimes and engage in unlawful acts, yet it’s perfectly fine for us to wreak havoc and bring about destruction upon others.

Our hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness have no limits. Our schizophrenia is inconceivable. There are multiple examples of West’s criminality in foreign nations, like mass slayings of their populations in Vietnam or Iraq, assassinations or assassination attempts of their leaders, like Patrice Lumumba of the Congo or Fidel Castro of Cuba, cases of providing safe haven for certified terrorists, like Luis Posada Carriles or Orlando Bosch, and numerous instances of meddling in other countries’ elections, very often installing bloodthirsty sociopaths as their rulers, like Pinochet in Chile or Suharto in Indonesia. But, for us, they were the good guys, “our sons of bitches.”

Then, who are those tyrants we fought righteous wars against? Who are the people we vigorously demonized, the ones we described as merciless thugs, and, in most notable cases, did not hesitate to ceremonially end their lives? Let’s take a look at some of their résumés.

Devil Incarnate

December 30 of 2016 marked a decade of the reality-show style execution of a long-time dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. We all know what kind of despot he was. Brutal towards the citizens of his own nation, merciless to his opponents, he was our epitome of evil. What was he hanged for? The main crime he was convicted for was the July 1982 Dujail Massacre, where 148 Shiite residents were killed in a retaliation for a failed assassination attempt on Hussein.

It would be quite useful to add that 5 months before the carnage the US removed Iraq from the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” What was the story behind it? During that time, Iraq was deeply involved in a war with its neighbor, Iran, which, by 1982, started gaining advantage over Saddam’s army. It wasn’t something the World’s Policeman was looking forward to, therefore, after removing Iraq from the above list, the US could freely supply Hussein with military equipment and other kinds of aid.

Remember the story which Tony Blair and George W. Bush based their invasion of Iraq on? It was a fable that Saddam Hussein had active weapons of mass destruction, and that he would be able to use them within 45 minutes. They also scared the public with claims that he was developing nuclear arsenal he was ready to use against the Western countries. All of that was obviously a hoax based on fraudulent intelligence reports (some of those had even been inspired by Hollywood movie plots). What was carefully avoided by major news reports, though, was the fact that there were WMDs found in Iraq during the 2^nd Gulf War. However, they had nothing to do with the active arsenal as portrayed by the Western coalition’s propaganda, they were the remnants of Saddam’s weapon program from the 1980s. What’s most interesting, as the investigation by the New York Times concluded: “the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.”

The coalition bombings together with the outrageous mismanagement of the country in the most crucial time after the invasion by a corporate consultant, Paul Bremer, let the country with an incredibly rich history descent into chaos. The sectarian conflicts and any terrorist organizations originating or evolving in Iraq (including our main scare these days – the Islamic State) are a direct result of those actions. The US planned for deposing Saddam after deciding that he wasn’t good for business. If the abuse of human rights, lack of democracy or even ties to 9/11 attacks (the American officials unsuccessfully tried to link Hussein to al-Qaeda) had ever been an issue, the first country to invade would have been Saudi Arabia, which would have met all the above criteria.

“We Came, We Saw, He Died”

These were the words then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gleefully cried out during the interview in 2011, straight after the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi had been killed.

The MQ-1 Predator drone operated from Las Vegas, accompanied by the French Air Force Dassault Rafale bombers fired missiles at the convoy while the Libyan colonel was trying to flee the city of Sirte during the Libyan Civil War. Found in a drainage pipe and raped with a bayonet by the rebels, then, killed at the spot, reportedly, by a French intelligence agent, Gaddafi’s 42-year rule officially came to an end.

The Brotherly Leader of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, as he called himself since 1979, had a truly love-hate relationship with the West, most importantly the United States. Shortly after he had taken power in 1969, the US hindered several conspiracies to overthrow him, due to his initial anti-communist stance. Then, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he was accused of supporting numerous separatist and terrorist organizations, plane hijackings, assassination attempts on prominent figures and various terrorist acts all across the world, most notably, the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 which killed 270 people (most of them American).

After imposing sundry sanctions on Libya, and even bombing Gaddafi’s house in 1986, during which his adopted daughter was killed, the magical year of 2003 saw West’s warmer approach towards the colonel. The sanctions were lifted by both the US and the UN (US rescinded its trade embargo in 2004). What happened? Gaddafi officially took the blame for the Pan Am flight bombing, agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims, and most importantly, eliminated his WMD program (the US government claimed it was due to their invasion of Iraq). Then, we could see him shaking hands with Tony Blair and getting praise from the American and other Western officials.

What’s interesting about those facts is that it had been proven years earlier that Gaddafi had nothing to do with the explosion of Pan Am airplane, and it had been known that Libyan intelligence officials had offered removal of its WMDs before the invasion of Iraq. Again, the geopolitical intricacies prevailed over truth and justice – the West simply tried to convince the people of the world that its policies actually work. It is enough to take a look at the situations in Iraq and Libya today to realize how they work.

The Forgotten Companions

The above examples are by no means exhaustive. Just to name a few more: the Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, was convicted by the US for drug dealing he had done while on CIA’s payroll; the notorious Romanian ruler, Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Spanish fascist leader, Francisco Franco, were America’s good friends – the US president, Richard Nixon, even toasted the latter in Madrid. These autocrats may appear pretty benign compared to Cambodia’s genocidal lunatic Pol Pot, whose organization, Khmer Rouge, had been responsible for deaths of 2 million people. After Uncle Secretary had converted to the righteous ideals of the West, Uncle Sam injected him with some cash, decided that his mass murders weren’t really a genocide and gave him a seat at the UN. If one finds these examples a little outdated, we may always look at our new most hated villain, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who, at our request, happily tortured our prisoners, and the recently ousted Egyptian head of state, Hosni Mubarak, who ensured we would never see them again.

Consciousness Is Key

The ubiquitous bunk emanating from our TV screens, computers and phones has given our politicians celebrity status and has made us accustomed to their impunity. These days, we don’t even know if we are lied to, because the mainstream media have abandoned their role of holding authorities accountable for their wrongdoings. Little do we know about facts, as editors select only those ones which suit their agenda. We see evil, hear evil, and speak evil only if it’s against our governments’ supreme values which come down to two words: big business. And for those of us who haven’t yet realized – we’re only included in paying up, not getting profits. Therefore, it’s up to us to breathe down our governments’ necks, not acquiesce to their “truths” and trust their superior knowledge. We need to be more conscious and daring to call things what they are. If change is about to come, it’s up to us to make it happen. No one else will do it for us.

The Star Spangled Circus

So it happened. Katy Perry officially endorsed Hillary Clinton. Not only did she endorse her, she “roared” for her on stage. Just the day before, the superstar couple Beyoncé and Jay-Z performed for the audience of her supporters on another campaign rally, and a week earlier the Bronx-born Hispanic singer and actress Jennifer Lopez – or rather her agents who must have received a pretty decent commission for making it happen in such a flashy manner – invited her to the concert she held in Miami. The gleeful bunch of multi-platinum selling artists joined the immense ranks of Team – or rather – Band Hillary alongside other singers, like Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Jon Bon Jovi and Adele, or actors, namely, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Biel, Richard Gere, Salma Hayek and George Clooney. If that is not enough, I couldn’t possibly forget to mention the most glamorous family of the United States – the Kardashians.

Trump’s constellation, on the other hand, wasn’t as impressive with Tila Tequila, Kid Rock, Jon Voight, Stephen Baldwin, Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman, Hulk Hogan, the forgotten former teenage star Aaron Carter or Clint Eastwood in the line-up. The latter squad seemed somehow bleak if you compared the number of their Instagram followers with the former, so it’s pretty obvious that Trump’s campaign organizers did not exert themselves in celebrity hunting.

Toothpaste Commercial

A pioneer of modern linguistics and one of the most renowned American dissidents, Noam Chomsky, once compared the elections to selling toothpaste. In both election campaigns and toothpaste commercials the information is irrelevant, what matters is to lure you into buying the product by using deceptive techniques. The 2016 US presidential campaign is no different, one may even say it’s one the worst adverts they’ve seen in years.

Product A

Mrs. Clinton’s maneuver to surround herself with famous faces, especially just days before the election, was, in my view, the most honest and circumspect move of her whole campaign. Cuddling celebs at concerts will always make positive headlines, raising funds at their banquets will never be controversial, and exchanging favorable Tweets can only be seen as “cute.” Therefore, one may ask, why didn’t Hillary and her campaign stick to the positive side of publicity, why didn’t she just show America and the world how virtuous and – quoting Adele – “amazing” she is? At the same time, it rather wouldn’t hurt if she presented her ideas on how to fix the problems the US is experiencing and gave concrete examples of policies she would introduce.

Instead, she chose the path of anti-Trumpism and anti-Putinism – nay, she even merged those two into one, serving the American public, and actually the whole world with one of the most absurd geopolitical statements a serious politician can make: Russia with its leader Vladimir Putin used methods of cyber warfare to affect the US election, in order to ensure Donald Trump, and not Hillary Clinton becomes the next POTUS.

In a normal world where the media would actually provide citizens with information, some highly regarded reporter would brand such a revelation as a lunacy and completely discredit the author. But, because we live in a parallel Matrix-like world where the media provide the populace with a particular agenda, major news outlets raced among themselves to publish the most inventive tale of Trump-Russia connection. They quoted “intelligence experts” who were convinced that Russia was meddling in the US election, though couldn’t provide any proof for it. We had Clinton’s national spokesman Josh Schwerin tweeting that Kremlin-sponsored RT announced via Twitter the newest release of Hillary’s campaign chair John Podesta’s leaked e-mails before WikiLeaks themselves – in his eyes, clear proof that Assange was just another Russian spy – which was simply idiotic, as WikiLeaks had published it on their website earlier, RT was simply quicker to tweet the news. It would seem that the biggest proof of Trump’s association with Russian state was his interview with the CNN veteran Larry King, which aired on RT. Following that logic, Larry King should have already been convicted of espionage.

Ironically, very few journalists dared to bring up the case of Uranium One deal – a very opaque contract that resulted in Russia gaining control of about 20 percent of US uranium, all through a series of transactions done via the Clinton Foundation while Mrs. Clinton was the US Secretary of State. But why dig into that, we’ve got Trump on RT – that’s a lot easier to cover!

Product B

Mr. Trump, on the contrary, selected a slightly different, I would say, less sophisticated course.  He just talked. Pretty much about everything. It didn’t matter if he made sense or not, whether he got the facts right, the speeches that could be seen on the news looked like genuine - self-written, or even not written at all - opinions on a variety of hot topics, obviously including his rival and her ignoble deeds. At first, this tactic may have seemed chaotic, but it definitely achieved its goal. Trump defeated all the other Republican candidates before the game even started, and just hours before the November Election Day, no one can expect what’s going to happen.

Trump is probably everything he is called by his opponents. I say “probably,” because we don’t really have the indication of what he is actually up to, mostly because – unlike his competitor – he’s never held a government function. Not being gullible to believe everything he says, we can only scrutinize his future cabinet appointments and see who backs his campaign in order to find the true direction of his prospective policies. By the looks of it, it’s highly unlikely that he will turn out to be a revolutionary fighting the establishment, as some of his supporters wish to portray him. Unless fighting the establishment equals having dinners with Rupert Murdoch.

As to his major manifestos, they’re rather unimpressive. Let’s just take a look at a few of them:

·         Deporting immigrants back to their home countries: that would only mean that he would continue the policy of Barack Obama who so far has deported a record number of immigrants, larger than any other president in history, even George W. Bush.

·         Building the wall with Mexico: George W. Bush had a similar idea and started to build a “virtual wall” back in 2006 – no one actually knows about it, because the SBInet program was a massive failure, putting $1 billion of taxpayers’ money in the pockets of Boeing and its 10 subcontractors. There’s already a new, quite similar project in place, so it’s unlikely that it will be scrapped in favor of an old-school brick wall.

·         Renegotiating international trade agreements: all of those deals were signed in order to make the American corporate elite even richer and more powerful – seeing something like this from a billionaire would certainly be something memorable. But Trump says he’s “fighting for the working people,” you may take his word for it.

·         Fighting “terrorism:” quoting one of the points of his policy from his official website, “Defeat the ideology of radical Islamic terrorism just as we won the Cold War” – this point is so senseless that the commentary is unnecessary, however, it does not suggest that Mr. Trump knows too much either about history or geopolitics.

Generally, the policy points on his official website are hugely vague and barely precise, therefore, it is not easy to predict Trump’s future policies. On a positive note, he announced his willingness to cooperate and find common ground with Russia, which – instead of being a fear inducing factor as Clinton’s campaign would want it to be – should be what every American would welcome, as better relations between two nuclear powers mean lesser risk of a military/nuclear conflict.

Finally, we had Donald Trump’s secretly recorded confessions about groping women. It was hard to believe that Bill Clinton’s wife could actually go that route, but you need some red herrings when you get questioned by the FBI during your presidential campaign. Nothing new there either.

Democracy Prevails

I owe an apology to the world of circus for the title of the post. A few weeks ago, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus launched the campaign #TakeBackTheCircus aiming to defend the good name of the circus by halting its comparisons to the US election. I wholeheartedly apologize, I could have used a different word, yet “circus” seemed so right.

Although some of us do not realize it to the full extent, the US presidential election affects most of the nations across the globe. That’s why it’s so depressing that the American people are ahead of such an appalling choice. Only if someone could tell them that there are more than two candidates starting in the election… And that one of them is a woman… And that she didn’t destroy any countries and wreak havoc across the Middle East… And that she didn’t support the presidential coup in Honduras and block the minimum wage increase in Haiti… And that she didn’t vote in favor of the biggest crime against humanity of the 21^st century…

But it’s too late. The third party candidates can take part in presidential debates if they poll at 15%. That’s the threshold set by the Commission on Presidential Debates. It used to be lower in the 90s but the major candidates didn’t really like anyone interfering with their ultra-democratic two-party system. One could as well qualify for the debate after the election. That’s astonishingly democratic.

Whoever the Americans choose today, one must admit that this campaign was unique. We had two major candidates with rock bottom trust ratings battling each other, insulting each other during debates and trying to scare the public with one another. Show must go on though, let’s just hope we are all alive and well when it’s over.

Terrified Europe

Europe is terrified. No one can feel secure now. People commute to work every day using overcrowded public transport and pray this is not their last journey. But sleep safe, the leaders of the Western World are coming to your rescue. They are already writing “From Paris, with Love” on their bombs which they will drop on those ruthless savages who hurt you.

Me? I am restless, outraged and baffled at the same time. Firstly, let me tell you why I am baffled. A few days after the attack, one of my colleagues, who had planned to go to Paris for a weekend in February, said: “There’s no way I’m going there now, it may get even worse.” I think that sentence was a fair reflection of how most of us felt and, probably, still feel about Paris. Yet, hundreds of people are not discouraged from traveling to Egypt where a passenger plane with 217 tourists and 7 crew members was blown up, or Tunisia where 24 people died in Bardo National Museum attack in the country’s capital in March, and then, 38 people were killed in a beach resort at the end of June. A middle-aged couple going on holiday to Egypt shortly after the Russian plane crash is asked at the airport if they are not scared, they answer: “No, they say it is safe now, nothing should happen. We’ve been waiting the whole year to go on that holiday.” I am checking TripAdvisor to find some reviews of hotels located in Sousse, Tunisian city where 30 Britons were slain on June 26. I easily find multiple opinions from their pleased compatriots posted after the time of the massacre, quite a few from July 2015. Should I be surprised? No, I am just baffled. Humans are a constant riddle to me.

What is it that outrages me then? What brings unrest to my always-positively-set joyful mind? That, I am afraid, is a subject I will need to elaborate on more profoundly.

Your safety is priceless

I will focus on the UK at first, not only because this is the country of my residence, but most importantly, it is a large part of this whole puzzle, and it is the United States’ biggest ally in Europe. Also, its reaction to the carnage in Paris seems to be the most vocal.

Tuesday morning after the attacks. I prepare breakfast and turn on the TV to see my favorite morning news program. I find out that British Prime Minister David Cameron will increase spending on Special Forces by an additional £2 billion, with 30 percent rise in funds for fighting terrorism. A week later, Mr Cameron informs me through the same TV channel that an additional £12 billion will be spent on military purposes. He carries on saying that the UK needs to engage in bombings over Syria as this is the most crucial matter at the moment. He is speaking, or rather reading, confidently – days of training on how to manipulate the public. I am quite disappointed, though, because he does not mention the cuts in spending on police force that would lead to bringing police officer numbers down to levels last seen four decades ago. That idea was unexpectedly withdrawn by the government the next day, I guess that was supposed to make everyone feel better and forget about the whole proposal that will most likely come into place at some point in the near future. As a matter of fact, the police force have shrunk by 16,000 officers since 2010. So there are no funds to support people who are actually protecting your citizens on the ground, but the lavish amounts of money can be spent to bomb a foreign nation?

Ultimate farce

I am writing this text exactly at the time when British Parliament is voting over airstrikes in Syria. The MPs are trying to convince one another and, most importantly, the public to the righteousness of their arguments. Completely useless debate. Utter nonsense. Pure gibberish. The opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, scratches the surface, calls out a few significant points, but is completely unsupported, even by his associates. I am listening to the final speeches of representatives of both – you would think – opposing parties, and I am hearing absolute ignorance, nothing that reaches deeper than the headlines of tabloid newspapers (I could not wait to check the front page of the next-day Metro, and it said: “War On Daesh” – what a surprise). No explanation of the whole purpose of airstrikes, no recollection of similar cases and their aftermath, and the conclusion from both sides is: “if we want to defeat terrorists, we need to bomb Syria.” I cannot believe this, is this actually Matrix I am in right now?

How are they fighting terrorism?

A day earlier – the day that Londoners could feel the fear of terrorism by being evacuated from two central locations because of a suspicious package and a suspicious vehicle (what a coincidence that it happened just a day before the vote) – Cameron called the opponents of the airstrikes terrorist sympathizers. Whenever he uses such phrases, I cannot fail to recall the case of Bherlin Gildo.

The Filipino with a Swedish passport was arrested at the Heathrow Airport while traveling from Copenhagen to Manila in October 2014. Although Gildo was neither a UK citizen, nor committed any illegal acts in this country, he was charged by British prosecutors with “attending a terrorist training camp, receiving weapons training between 31 August 2012 and 1 March 2013” and also “possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.” The prosecutor, Riel Karmy-Jones, said that “on the face of the evidence, the defendant has committed grave crimes.”

What led to his arrest? Apart from the fact that Gildo was freely traveling to Syria during the time of the civil war, he had posted several pictures on Facebook where he was posing over dead body of a man who he called "Bashar Assad's dog." There were also pictures of him holding a Thompson submachine gun and a jihadi flag, him standing on tanks brandishing weapons, posing with children holding AKs as well as a photo of a captured Syrian Army soldier wearing a crucifix, captioned "Assad's Christian soldier now in the hands of the Mujahideen."

If you are thinking that the guy is a complete idiot, posting obviously incriminating pictures of himself boasting about being a jihadist, with all those counter-terrorism safety measures that our allied governments have, you cannot be more wrong. Why? Because for the US and its biggest allies, there is something more important than overcoming terrorism at the moment, and that is fighting the secular Syrian government and its ruler, Bashar al-Assad.

So what eventually happened to Gildo? All charges were dropped as his lawyers proved that the British government was supporting the same rebel groups the naturalized Swede was fighting for. It was not a secret that the United Kingdom along with the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia had been providing arms and logistic support to Assad’s opponents. The British and American governments claim they support “moderate opposition,” mainly the Free Syrian Army, but Gildo’s lawyers were able to prove that his group was indistinguishable from “legitimate opposition.”

Who did he fight for? A group called Kataib al-Muhajireen, a part of al-Nusra Front. You do not have to read a hundred books or be an expert on Middle East to find out what ideals they stand for. A quick Wikipedia search and we find out that:

The al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra (Arabic: جبهة النصرة لأهل الشام‎ Jabhat al-Nuṣrah li-Ahli ash-Shām, "The Support Front for the People of Al-Sham", often abbreviated to JN or JaN), sometimes called al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, is a Sunni Islamist militia fighting against Syrian Government forces in the Syrian Civil War, with the aim of establishing an Islamist state in the country. It is the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, and also operates in neighbouring Lebanon;

Hold on, did it say al-Qaeda? Remember the guy by the name of Osama bin Laden?

Officially, the Western-backed Free Syrian Army claims that it distances itself from jihadist factions, but in reality, they already cooperated with each other, even this year. It is obvious that what unifies different groups in a war is one enemy, and that enemy, in this case, is the Syrian president. Also, FSA commanders admitted that thousands of its fighters ran away to join al-Nusra as they found Syrian al-Qaeda’s ideology very appealing, and, at a certain point, they saw Jabhat al-Nusra as stronger and better equipped. Many others – already better trained and armed by the West – became fighters for ISIS. Concluding that point, both American and British intelligence had known from the beginning that it would be impossible to overthrow Assad without the inclusion of extremist Muslim insurgents.

All of what I have just mentioned is only the official side of the story, the one that could serve as an excuse if someone actually had the gall to ask questions. In the lavishness of trivialism of what we see on our TVs and read in our newspapers, it is nothing unusual that we will buy any fable the Western leaders want to sell us. If we ask: “why would you want to topple a government that has nothing to do with Islamist extremism,” we will hear: “because we want to liberate its people and give them Democracy.” Bottom line. That is all we need to hear, right?

In order to get to the bottom of things, we will need to dig deeper. Thankfully, we now have access to recently declassified intelligence reports of the American Defense Intelligence Agency, we also have top class investigative reporters, who are not satisfied by shallowness of media coverage and are brave enough to uncover lies we are fed with every day.

As this is just a blog, I realize that it would be neater to put everything I want to talk about in more than one post. Therefore, I decided to pause at this point.

What is yet to come? Paris attacks, and as a consequence, our willingness to have our rights limited, the migration crisis, which is one of the most important issues that affects all EU nations at the moment. In the section “Who are we afraid of?” I will focus on the creation and rise of the Islamic State and the role of the US in the development of Islamist extremism. I will not forget about the role of Turkey and Saudi Arabia as well as Russia in the Syrian conflict, and also NATO’s actions in North Africa. I will also try to scrutinize how media affect our opinions and political choices and the role they play in keeping us petrified.

I would like to conclude this post with a section that will show the matter of recent Western airstrikes in Syria from a bit different perspective than our favorite newspaper articles. I hope you are not discouraged yet, and I will see you here again very soon. Thanks for reading.

Ultimate farce – continued

I have not heard it on the news lately, but this is not Cameron’s first attempt to join American forces in bombing Syria. 2 years ago, he lost the vote in the House of Commons when he urged for military action against the Syrian government. What also has not caught too much media attention was the fact, that British pilots were already involved in military action is Syria, and British jets were conducting surveillance missions over Syria over a year ago.

I have a weird impression that now, after the Paris massacre, the PM just could not wait to get to Westminster to give a completely meaningless speech, and convince his fellow policy makers and the public to start sending bombers immediately. This time, he succeeded. He even managed to divide the opposition and made them turn their back on their leader. The Prime Minister hit the jackpot! Now, he had the most valid reason a politician can have. And that is fighting ISIS, the ruthless terrorists who behead innocent people and spread horror on our soil.

It is quite peculiar, though, that at the same time, Mr. Cameron rules out sending ground troops to Syria or Iraq, because “it would be used by ISIS as anti-Western propaganda.” Unbelievable. They could illegally invade Iraq where there were no terrorists in 2003, but now they are scared of unfavorable hype? That is a complete farce.

The CIA says there are around 30,000 ISIS fighters in Syria and Iraq. Jihadists claim their number has risen to 100,000. Saddam Hussein’s army before the time of invasion consisted of 375,000 soldiers with around 75,000 elite troops known as the Republican Guard. That was a strong well-organized army. Do you really think that the US, with all its resources and influence, would not be able to contain a stateless militia?

I will end the post with a quote from Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA who, when asked why the US did not hit ISIS oil stocks before Paris events, said: “We didn’t want to destroy these oil tankers because that’s infrastructure that’s gonna be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore, and it’s gonna create the environmental damage.”

So who is the terrorist sympathizer, Mr. Cameron?

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I am sorry, or actually happy to inform you that you will not find too much entertainment here. I think you are already being entertained to the fullest. Somehow, I get the impression that most of the things that keep us pleasantly occupied and draw our attention can be euphemistically described as garbage (or, as my British friends would call it, rubbish). However, going forward, I think that more precisely, it is actually feces (OK, faeces, you invented the language). Thinking about it a bit longer, the most accurate and understandable word that would reflect the true meaning of my point is shit.

We are surrounded by shit every single day, in quite substantial quantities. We eat shit, we drink shit, we watch shit, we read shit, we listen to shit, we share utter shit on social networks. Just a few examples: 8 sec video of a little girl patting a dog that’s taking a dump saying: “Great job pooping!” – over 18 million views on Facebook – OK, I get that, we all love videos with little kids, they are so innocent and always funny; obviously staged prank where a famous Welsh prankster puts Super Glue in his best friend’s hair gel – 41 million views; and finally, an East Asian girl trying the “Mentos in Coke” experiment, screaming “yoki noki, neki yeki,” (apologies for my ignorance, I could not be bothered to check what that means) hitting 274,920,729 views on YouTube. I come home from work, I turn on the TV, and before I manage to switch to HDMI, I am served a record-breaking TV reality show where a group of celebrities is sent to a jungle. I am staring at the TV screen, hypnotized, for around 25 seconds, then I wake up and, for some unknown reason, feel like playing “Another Brick In The Wall” by Pink Floyd. All of a sudden, my brain starts to function properly again, synapses are communicating with each other as before. I am saved. The next day, I find out that the abovementioned show is the most hotly debated topic among office employees in the City of London… I feel bad. I am such an ignorant.

In the intervals between our favorite TV programs that are always accompanied by ingenious commercials, we are bestowed a portion of freshest news. This is a moment of elevation. The anchors are dressed in finest suits, their language and accent are impeccable. The way they control their emotions, the manner they read the text from the TelePrompTer makes us envious. We feel chosen. We feel informed. Information is a treasure that came to us by pressing a button on the remote. We are complete. We do not need to investigate. We do not need to ask questions. Do not ask questions. There is no need for it.

Dear readers, this blog gives me the opportunity to express my thoughts on many issues I cannot stay indifferent to. As I am not your usual daily news broadcaster, my opinions will always be verifiable. I am only interested in speaking the facts and asking questions. I do not expect you to take everything I say for granted. The moment I make you Google a fact I wrote about, a smile will appear on my face. Stay tuned, I have got some good stuff for you to read. Next post coming soon.