Bill Van Auken: The Battle for Aleppo and the Hypocrisy of US War Propaganda

Another warning about WW3. 

James Corbett says that the ruling elite are not after money as they have unimaginable amounts it. What they lust is power, which they have a psychopathic urge for: To be the rulers of the World. I guess when you have loads of money and have done everything, there's no more thrills left anymore. 

I met an old friend recently who is a liberal, like me, and in a text to sent to him afterwards I told him some of what I write here. His reply was that I was cuckoo! 

I also recently met up with another old friend and told him the same thing but he didn't believe me. To him Putin was an evil oligarch, a gangster, and ex KGB agent as sinister as a Russian spy in a James Bond film, etc. So I told my friend that everything he reads in the Guardian and everything he sees on the BBC is propaganda. 'Don't you see how Putin is being demonized', I said to him. I then said that Nigel Farage (UKIP) was right about US foreign policy. But by agreeing with Nigel Farage - even if only on one point - my friend felt that I was traitor who had turned to the right. So to prove my left-wing credentials I said that I was a big admirer of George Galloway, and with that, our conversation nearly came to an end. 

My friends are well read liberals/ soft socialists, but they are so uniformed. Millions/ billions in the West are as well, and so our rulers can get away with it. But surely journalists in the Western press are scared too? I often read that many European politicians are worried like hell about Washington's dangerous foreign policies, but they still toe the line. What's going on?

We've got to hope the Greens get in. 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45275.htm

The War in Syria

Excerpt:

The Financial Times of London carried one of the frankest reports on the Aleppo “rebel” offensive, noting that it “may have had more foreign help than it appears: activists and rebels say opposition forces were replenished with new weapons, cash and other supplies before and during the fighting.” It cites reports of daily columns of trucks pouring across the Turkish border for weeks with arms and ammunition, including artillery and other heavy weapons.

The newspaper quotes one unnamed Western diplomat who said that US officials backed the Al Qaeda-led offensive “to put some pressure back on Russia and Iran,” which have both provided key military support to the Assad government.

The Financial Times also quotes an unnamed “military analyst” as stating that the character of the fighting indicated the Al Qaeda forces had received not only massive amounts of weapons, but also professional military training.

Significantly, even as the fighting in Aleppo was underway, photographs surfaced of heavily armed British commandos operating long-range patrol vehicles in northern Syria. Similar US units are also on the ground. These are among the most likely suspects in terms of who is training Al Qaeda’s Syrian forces.

They would only be reprising the essential features of the imperialist operation that gave rise to Al Qaeda 30 years ago, when the CIA—working in close alliance with Osama bin Laden—supplied similar support to the mujahedeen fighting to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan.

While the blowback from that episode ultimately gave us September 11, the present operation in Syria holds far greater dangers. In what is now openly described by the corporate media as a “proxy war” in which Al Qaeda serves as US imperialism’s ground force, Washington is attempting to overthrow Russia’s key Middle East ally as part of the preparations for a war aimed at dismembering and subjugating Russia itself.

The frontrunner in the US presidential contest, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has repeatedly signaled that she intends to pursue a far more aggressive policy in Syria and against Russia, making neo-McCarthyite charges of Vladimir Putin’s supposed subversion of the US election process a central part of her campaign.

Whether Washington can wait till inauguration day next January to escalate its aggression is far from clear. The “rebel” gains in Aleppo may be quickly reversed and the fighting could end with the US-backed Al Qaeda militias deprived of their last urban stronghold.

US imperialism is not about to accept the re-consolidation of a Syrian government aligned with Moscow. Pressure will inevitably mount for a more direct and more massive US intervention, threatening a direct clash between American and Russian forces.

Fifteen years after launching its “war on terror,” Washington is not only directly allied with the supposed target of that war—Al Qaeda—but is preparing to unleash upon humanity the greatest act of terror imaginable, a third world war.