Faking Atrocities in Libya

Timisoara 2: Faking the mass grave at Abu Salim (Libya)

2 October 2011

A hole in the ground with some animal bones in it is transformed into a mass grave containing more than 1200 (or maybe even 1700) bodies. The TNC [Transitional National Council] had finally to admit, “the bones were too big to be human bones. This is undoubtedly something else.” But most of the media said nothing at all about this statement. . . .

The virtual mass graves around Tripoli were already up and running by last February: with a video and some photos, the American website, One Day on Earth, passed them off as brand new body dumps in August 2011.

Everybody believed it, and even when the trick was exposed a few days later, who said anything? Still lingering in the mind, “the graves hastily dug by Kadhafi’s militias” held a portion of the “ten thousand dead and fifty thousand wounded demonstrators.” The figures came from a 22 February Tweet by the Saudi broadcaster, Al Arabiya, supposedly originating from a self-proclaimed Libyan member of the International Criminal Court, which disavowed this allegation the very next day. But a feckless disavowal, as always.

This is how the Nazis taught propaganda[1]: Tell a Big Lie and repeat it as if on a broken record; and all denials disappear.

Today, the NATO belligerents remain totally silent about their renewal of Operation Unified Protector, on-going for the last three months of this year. It was surely useful to get back to the “demonization of the enemy as a way to justify the International Humanitarian Presence and further legitimize the new Libyan regime.”

So on Sunday, September 25, 2011, Salem Fergani, a member of Abdel Jalil’s TNC (designated since February as the sole representative of the Libyan people, and subsequently recognized as such by many different countries), yanked from his magician’s hat (a prop issued to all TNC members, it seems) another horror: a mass grave of murdered prisoners.

The first joyous report of this new find was most likely from Al Jazeera, which, without casting the least doubt on the facts, headlined its English-language version: “Mass Grave of Libyan Prisoners Found.” The article went on to say: “A mass grave was discovered with the remains of 1700 murdered prisoners. The news broke on Sunday, while hundreds of TNC troops were entering Syrte, a town that NATO planes had bombarded twice already that day.”

Obviously, Al Jazeera was not concerned about the besieged town of Syrte, showered with Grad missiles (when Kadhafi loyalists use them, NATO bombards the whole regime. These are, in effect, ‘blind weapons’ and, thus, pose a serious “threat to civilians”), or for the other towns full of civilians bombed by NATO.

And as to the mass grave, this was the report: “Khalid Sharif, spokesperson for the military council of the TNC, told us, ‘We found the spot where all these martyrs are buried’,” adding that this is “proof of the criminal acts of the Kadhafi regime.” Necessary proof. And Salim Al Ferjani, a member of the TNC Committee assigned to identify the remains, stated: “They doused the bodies with acid to eliminate any traces of identification.” This is like the killers adding an extra taste of cruelty.

Then the TNC decided it would be cool to send journalists right to the scene. And here is what the anything-but-pro-Kadhafi CNN found there: rather than the bones of thousands of human victims, there were some animal bones and no signs of any excavation.

The first version of the CNN story, visible until Monday morning, was a statement by the TNC, but later the cable news network added: “It has not been clearly established that the site was a mass grave, because there is no evidence of any digging having taken place. They showed some bones to the media, but doctors present at the scene with the CNN crew verified that these were not human bones.”

Then that sentence was taken out of a subsequent article, removing any reference to the presence of doctors, but keeping the expressions of doubt, and became: “The TNC suspects the existence of a mass grave, though there are no signs of digging and no human remains were found. A crew from CNN was sent to the scene, a muddy field, with other representatives of the media, and found only bones that were apparently from animals.”

But it did not stop there: CNN went on to specify that, according to Abdel Jalil’s “revolutionaries,” the site was identified earlier on 20 August. If that is the case, why is the media making all this noise now?

And the best is yet to come. After a few hours, CNN pulled the link and in its place was: “The TNC explained to reporters that some of the bones found were too big to be from humans.” Speaking for the TNC, Jamal Ben Noor made this painful admission: “The site may have been something else. We are investigating.”

We are waiting on the next development.

However, a few hours after this half-hearted retraction, the Italian daily, La Repubblica, on its internet site, continued clinging to the line put out the night before by Al Jazeera, considered an almost divine source: “A mass grave containing 1200 bodies was found in the vicinity of the Abu Salim prison. The TV station, Al Jazeera (which considers itself ‘Pan-Arab’), confirmed the news story but did not furnish any additional details.” (Our emphasis). Then Repubblica.it added that among the bodies, there were not only prisoners from 1996, but also some of today’s insurgents.

The 26 September La Repubblica newspaper dedicated all of its page 17 to an article by Renato Caprile, from Tripoli, about this sad discovery: “1700 bodies (as if each corpse were right there, as evidence, under the reporter’s gaze), “one of the most terrifying mass graves ever uncovered.”

The journalist was sent to the scene to witness for himself this “cemetery without tombstones” that the TNC ‘activists’ (a more polite term than ‘mercenaries’ or ‘militia’) had up-dated “yesterday.” “Evidence of a massacre”: another allegation necessary to this war.

And Caprile writes: “Some shreds of cloth were found, bloodstained and faded by the weather.” (One TNC soldier found the uniform, with its name-tag fast on its breast like a religious medallion, identifying his old friend, Abdul Salem. The name was still legible, as was the hole from the projectile that killed him 15 years ago; he was found as if “by a miracle”—yeah, that’s for sure.): “evidence of a massacre.” Among the “skulls, femurs, tibias, ribs piled randomly here and there.”

For the rest, a few weeks ago, Repubblica.it spoke of the denunciations of Kadhafi’s women warriors (“He, all his sons and ministers raped us”: another classic from the war in Libya), without checking the sources from which they originated, a source strongly discredited by the UN, itself.

As for the Benghazi psychologist, Sergewa, who started the entire campaign of defamation about “Kadhafi’s mercenaries being mass rapists,” a campaign that has been shown to be false: La Repubblica does not recall that this psychologist had already lied to the UN and Amnesty International. And AI is certainly not pro-Kadhafi.

For example, Amnesty, which long ago denounced loudly and clearly the siege of Misrata by Kadhafi loyalists—see the report, Misrata Under Siege—has remained silent for weeks about the siege of loyalist towns, towns that NATO bombed and that the TNC has openly attacked with Grad missiles. These Grads, the missiles the UN, itself, has described as “blind weapons.” A threat to civilians . . .

Originally in Italian, the article was translated into French by Cécile Lienhard for Investig’Action. The English translation from the French is by CM/P.

Souce: michelcollon.info

---

[1] Though Reich Minister for Propaganda Josef Goebbels claimed he learned everything he knew about selling The Big Lie from the Americans.

A Change of Address Post: FULL TEXT of President Ahmadinejad's Address to the UN General Assemble, 22 September 2011.

[As of 3 October 2011, CM/P will no longer exist at its Blog.collective address--but continue, as usual, here on Blogspot. The server (Blog Collective) will cease to exist. We found out about this six weeks ago, after we were already in the US.

In March 2011, our life in France suffered a core explosion. Very quickly we were informed that we would no longer be able to live and work in the country (ou la ville), and a slow and agonizing process of evacuating all evidence of our 16 1/2 years living in Paris began. Most of it, that which was not sold out from under us or given away without our consent, or what little was shipped to the US, was schlepped, by yours grimly, out through the front gate to the curb where it was picked over by scavengers and eventually trucked off as household waste—garbage. As is my melodramatic wont, I likened the process to being forced to dig my own grave.

Wow, huh?

The fate of the CM/P blog is similar: We were told that for a couple hundred bucks we could have all our stuff (around 300 posted articles) transferred to another host--WordPress. But disheartened as we already were with our forced flight from our home in Les Yvelines, I just decided to let it go, maybe just try and save a few of my faves. And I've started saving them to

The OLD/NEW CM/P at http://newcirqueminime.blogspot.com/

Our mirror site,

CirqueMinime/Paris at http://cirqueminimeparis.blogspot.com/

will become our new home, where future fresh articles are posted. Though, in fairness, now that we are blogging from the US, from New Jersey, we might think about changing 'Paris' to 'Patterson' or 'Paramus' or 'Passaic'.

And as much of a shock to the system as this adjustment to American life has been—for what we once saw as a sort of ‘Terrorized Amnesia’ afflicting the Public Consciousness has, in our absence, become more of Blue Crystal Tweeker’s Blackout: rather than the subtle suppression of the Truth through cynical media propaganda, disinformation and outright lies, Americans now face a Full-HD Sensory Tazering unto cerebral decortication (an ‘Altzhiemerization’) through constant bombardment by spectacular Waste, trivialization and nostalgia without memory—think Hooters on Game Day.

As the current US presidential campaign demonstrates, the national discourse has become about which evidence-free unReality gets the most traction from the forceful disinformation behind it—and the candidates, save for the incumbent chess-master President, seem not only unfit to lead, they seem unfit to be allowed out in the streets alone.

So the need to keep our eyes clear and hearts full has brought about this final CM/P at blogcollective post: Ahmadinejad's UN Speech on the eve of the vote on Palestinian statehood.

See if you can spot where this Western pariah gets into 'Denialism' or 'Revisionism'. We’ll give you a free round-trip on the Coney Island Cyclone for each one you can catch.

See you on Blogspot—and down at the Smash Burger! --mc]

************

The full text of the speech follows, courtesy of the United Nations:

Mr. President,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful to the Almighty Allah who granted me, once more, the opportunity to appear before this world assembly. I have the pleasure to express my sincere thanks to H.E. Joseph Deiss, president of the sixty-fifth session for his tremendous efforts during his tenure. I also would like to congratulate H.E Nassir Abdulaziz AI-Nasser on his election as the president of sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly and wish him all success.

Let me seize the moment to pay tribute to all those who lost their lives in the past year, particularly to the victims of the tragic famine in Somalia and the devastating flood in Pakistan and especially the earthquake and the ensuing explosions in the nuclear power plant in Japan. I urge everyone to intensify their assistance and aid to the affected populations in these countries.

Over the past years, I spoke about different global issues, and the need to introduce fundamental changes in the current international order.

Today, considering the international developments, I will try to analyze the present situation from a different angle. As you all know the dominance and superiority of human beings over other creatures, lie in the very nature and the truth of humankind which is a divine gift and a manifestation of the divine spirit including: faith in God, who is the ever-lasting creator and planner of the entire universe.

Showing compassion to others, generosity, justice-seeking, and having integrity both in words and in deeds.

The quest for dignity to reach the pinnacles of perfection, the aspiration to elevate one's material and spiritual status, and the longing to realize liberty; Defying oppression, corruption, and discrimination in trying to support the oppressed; Seeking happiness, and lasting prosperity and security for all.

These are some of the manifestations of common divine and human attributes which can clearly be seen in the historical aspirations of human beings as reflected in the heritage of our search for art and literary works both in prose and poetry, and in the socio-cultural and political movements of human beings in the course of history.

All divine prophets and social reformers invited human beings to tread on this righteous path. God has given dignity to humankind to elevate his status to assume his successor role on Earth.

It is vividly clear that despite all historical achievements, including creation of the United-Nations, which was a product of untiring struggles and efforts of free-minded and justice-seeking individuals as well as the international cooperation, human societies are yet far from fulfilling their noble desires and aspirations.

Most nations of the world are unhappy with the current international circumstances. And despite the general longing and aspiration to promote peace, progress, and fraternity, wars, mass-murder, widespread poverty, and socioeconomic and political crises continue to infringe upon the rights and sovereignty of nations, leaving behind irreparable damage worldwide.

Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5 dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one sufficient meal on a daily basis. Forty-percent of the poorest world populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total global income.

More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every day in the world because of poverty. In the United States, eighty percent of financial resources are controlled by ten percent of its population, while only twenty percent of these resources belong to the ninety percent of the population.

What are the causes and reasons behind these inequalities? How can bone remedy such injustice?

The rulers of the global management circles divide the social life from ethics and spirituality while claiming the situation is the outcome of the pursuit of the path of divine prophets or the vulnerability of nations or the ill performance of a few groups or individuals. They claim that only their views and approaches can save the human society.

Wouldn't you think that the root cause of the problems must be sought in the prevailing international order, or the way the world is governed? I would like to draw your kind attention to the following questions:

Who abducted forcefully tens of millions of people from their homes in Africa and other regions of the world during the dark period of slavery, making them a victim of their materialistic greed?

Who imposed colonialism for over four centuries upon this world?

Who occupied lands and massively plundered resources of other nations, destroyed talents, and alienated languages, cultures and identities of nations?

Who triggered the first and second world wars, that left seventy millions killed and hundreds of millions injured or homeless. Who created the wars in Korean peninsula and in Vietnam?

Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zionism and over sixty years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian people and on countries of the region?

Who imposed and supported for decades military dictatorship and totalitarian regimes on Asian, African, and Latin American nations?

Who used nuclear bomb against defenseless people, and stockpiled thousands of warheads in their arsenals?

Whose economies rely on waging wars and selling arms?

Who provoked and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade and impose an eight-year war on Iran, and who assisted and equipped him to deploy chemical weapons against our cities and our people?

Who used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq , killing, injuring, and displacing millions in two countries with the ultimate goal of bringing into its domination the Middle East and its oil resources?

{HERE the US delegation picks up its shit and starts to walk out}

Who nullified the Breton Woods system by printing trillions of dollars without the backing of gold reserves or equivalent currency? A move that triggered inflation worldwide and was intended to prey on the economic gains of other nations?

Which country's military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion dollars, more than the military budgets of all countries of the world combined?

Which governments are the most indebted ones in the world?

Who dominates the policy-making establishments of the world economy?

Who are responsible for the world economic recession, and are imposing the consequences on America, Europe and the world in general?

Which governments are always ready to drop thousands of bombs on other countries, but ponder and hesitate to provide aid to famine-stricken people in Somalia or in other places?

Who are the ones dominating the Security Council which is ostensibly responsible for safeguarding the international security?

There exist tens of other similar questions. Of course, the answers are clear.

The majority of nations and governments of the world have had no role in the creation of the current global crises, and as a matter of fact, they were themselves the victims of such policies.

It is as lucid as daylight that the same slave masters and colonial powers that once instigated the two world wars have caused widespread misery and disorder with far-reaching effects across the globe since then.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world. Is it acceptable that they call themselves the sole defender of freedom, democracy, and human rights, while they militarily attack and occupy other countries?

Can the flower of democracy blossom from NATO's missiles, bombs and guns?

Ladies and Gentlemen;

If some European countries still use the Holocaust, after six decades, as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists, should it not be an obligation upon the slave masters or colonial powers to pay reparations to the affected nations?

{HERE the rest of the IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH delegations begin their protracted walkout.}

If the damage and losses of the period of slavery and colonialism were indeed compensated, what would happen to the manipulators and behind-the-scene political powers in the United States and in Europe? Would there remain any gaps between the North and the South?

If only half of military expenditures of the United States and its allies in NATO was shifted to help solve the economic problems in their own countries, would they be witnessing any symptom of the economic crisis?

What would happen, if the same amount was allocated to poor nations?

What is the justification for the presence of hundreds of US military and intelligence bases in different parts of the world, including 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, 87 in South Korea, 83 in Italy, 45 in the United Kingdom, and 21 in Portugal? Does this mean anything other than military occupation?

Don't the bombs deployed in the said bases undermine the security of other nations?

The main question is the quest for the root cause of such attitudes. The prime reason should be sought in the beliefs and tendencies of the establishment. An assembly of people in contradiction with the inner human instincts and disposition who also have no faith in God and in the path of the divine prophets, replace their lust for power and materialistic ends with heavenly values.

To them, only power and wealth prevail, and every attempt must bring into focus these sinister goals.

Oppressed nations have no hope to restore or protect their legitimate rights against these powers. These powers seek their progress, prosperity and dignity through imposing poverty, humiliation and annihilation to others.

They consider themselves superior to others, enjoying special privileges and concessions. They have no respect for others and easily violate the rights of all nations and governments.

They proclaim themselves as the indisputable custodians of all governments and nations through intimidation, recourse to threat and force, and abuse the international mechanisms. They simply break all the internationally recognized regulations.

They insist on imposing their lifestyle and beliefs on others. They officially support racism. They weaken countries through military intervention, and destroy their infrastructures, in order to plunder their resources by making them all the more dependent.

They sow the seeds of hate and hostility among nations and people of different pursuits, in order to prevent them from fulfilling their goals of development and progress.

All cultures, identities, lives, values and wealth of nations, women, youth, families as well as the wealth of nations are sacrificed to their imperialistic tendencies and their inclination to enslave and captivate others.

Hypocrisy and deceit are allowed in order to secure their interests and imperialistic goals. Drug- trafficking and killing of innocent human beings are also allowed in pursuit of such diabolic goals. Despite NATO's presence in the occupied Afghanistan, there has been a dramatic increase in the production of illicit drugs there.

They tolerate no question or criticism, and instead of presenting a reason for their violations, they always put themselves in the position of a claimant. By using their imperialistic media network which is under the influence of colonialism they threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military action.

Last year, when the need to form a fact-finding team to undertake a thorough investigation concerning the hidden elements involved in September 11 incident was brought up; an idea also endorsed by all independent governments and nations as well as by the majority in the United States, my country and myself came under pressure and threat by the government of the United States.

Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea.

Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly bring to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to attack the twin world trade towers?

Why should it not have been allowed to bring him to trial to help recognize those who launched terrorist groups and brought wars and other miseries into the region?

Is there any classified information that must be kept secret?

They view Zionism as a sacred notion and ideology. Any question concerning its very foundation and history is condemned by them as an unforgivable sin.

However they endorse and allow sacrileges and insult against beliefs of other divine religions.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Real freedom, justice" dignity, well being, and lasting security are the rights of all nations. These values can neither be achieved by reliance on the current inefficient system of world governance, nor through the invasion of the world by arrogant powers and the gun barrels of NATO forces.

These values could only be realized through independence and recognition of others' rights and through harmony and cooperation.
Is there any way to address the problems and challenges besetting the world by using the prevailing international mechanisms and tools to help humanity achieve the long-standing aspiration of peace, security and equality?

All those who tried to introduce reforms whilst preserving the existing norms and tendencies have failed. The valuable efforts made by the Non-Aligned movement and Group 77 and GrouplS as well as by some prominent individuals have failed to bring fundamental changes.
Governance and management of the world require fundamental reforms.

What should be done now?

Dear Colleagnes and Friends;

Efforts must be made with a firm resolve and through collective cooperation to map out a new plan, on the basis of principles and the very foundation of universal human values such as Monotheism, justice, freedom, love and the quest for happiness.

The idea of creation of the United Nations remains a great and historical achievement of mankind. Its importance must be appreciated and its capacities must be used to the extent possible for our noble goals.

We should not allow this organization which is the reflection of the collective will and shared aspiration of the community of nations, to deviate from its main course and play into the hands of the world powers.

Conducive ground must be prepared to ensure collective participation and involvement of nations in an effort to promote lasting peace and security.

Shared and collective management of the world must be achieved in its true sense, and based on the underlying principles enshrined in the international law. Justice must serve as the criterion and the basis for all international decisions and actions.

All of us should acknowledge the fact that there is no other way than the shared and collective management of the world in order to put an end to the present disorders, tyranny, and discriminations worldwide.
This is indeed the sole way to prosperity and welfare of human society which is an established and vivid truth.

While acknowledging the above truth, one should note that acknowledgement alone is not enough. We must believe in it and spare no effort toward its realization.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Shared and collective management of the world is the legitimate right of all nations, and we as their representatives, have an obligation to defend their rights. Although some powers continuously try to frustrate all international efforts aimed at promoting collective cooperation, we must, however, strengthen our belief in achieving the perceived goal of establishing a shared and collective cooperation to run the world.

The United Nations was created to make effective participation of all nations in international decision-making processes, possible. We all know that this goal has not yet been fulfilled because of the absence of justice in the current management structures and mechanisms of the UN.

The composition of the Security Council is unjust and inequitable. Therefore, changes including the restructuring of the United Nations are considered the basic demands of the nations that must be addressed by the General Assembly.

During last year session, I emphasized the importance of this issue and called for the designation of the current decade as the decade of shared and collective Global Management.

I would like to reiterate again my proposal. I am sure that through international cooperation, diligence and efforts by committed world leaders and governments and through insisting on the realization of justice and the support of all other nations, we can expedite the building of a common bright future.

This movement is certainly on its rightful path of creation, ensuring a promising future for humanity. A future that will be built when humanity initiates to trend the path of the divine prophets and the righteous under the leadership of Imam al-Mahdi, the Ultimate Savior of mankind and the inheritor to all divine messengers and leaders and to the pure generation of our great Prophet.

The creation of a supreme and ideal society with the arrival of a perfect human being who is a true and sincere lover of all human beings, is the guaranteed promise of Allah.

He will come alongside with Jesus Christ to lead the freedom and justice lovers to eradicate tyranny and discrimination, and promote knowledge, peace, justice freedom and love across the world. He will present to every single individual all the beauties of the world and all good things which bring happiness for humankind.

Today nations have been awakened. With the increase in public awareness,they no longer succumb to oppressions and discriminations.

The world is now witnessing more than ever, the widespread awakening in Islamic lands, in Asia, Europe, and America. These movements are ever expanding their spirit everyday and influence the pursuit of the realization of justice, freedom and the creation of a better tomorrow.

Our great nation stands ready to join hands with other nations to march on this beautiful path in harmony and in line with the shared aspirations of mankind.

Let us salute love, freedom, justice, wisdom, and the bright future that awaits humankind.

Thank you.

CM/P Interview with Pierre Péan on 'Secret Wars' - 5 July 2011, Paris

CM/P Interviews Pierre Péan on 'Secret Wars' -- 5 July 2011, Paris

[In Chapter 6 of his latest book—and our latest translation project—“Carnages: Les guerres secrètes des grandes puissances en Afrique” or, as we would call it, “Carnage: The Secret Wars of the Great Powers in Africa,” Pierre Péan, one of France’s preeminent investigative journalists and a born Africa-hand, states that North Africa (the Maghreb) and the Middle East have, since the 1950s, been Israel’s “deep security zone.”* This is the sort of incontrovertible geopolitical detail (even [or especially] the most fervent military Zionist or IDF apologist would accept this as obvious), that makes Péan’s work so richly informative, while allowing him to avoid involvement in popular ‘conspiracy theories’, the best and most consistent of which always seem to be rendered scientifically and politically moot by the myriad holes in logic and the leaps of rhetorical (bad) faith that are needed to tie them together.

In this interview, which he granted CM/P on 5 July 2011, at the Publicis Drugstore café on the Champs Élysées at Étoile, Péan discusses in some detail his methodology and those spectacular forces that strive to present such a deformed picture of History as might occult, in the minds of the great general audience, the true level of moral misery and wasted human energy to which they have been descended. And though the idea is never bludgeoned into his reader’s mind or sky-rocketed across the vista of his work, the presence of Israel, however lightly touched, seems to be the key to understanding the real History of this long suffering part of the world.

It may seem like mere coincidence that the 2011 Arab Spring developed into a full-bloodied military campaign to destroy those regimes in North Africa and the Middle East that have been the staunchest and most out-spoken supporters of the Palestinians’ right to national sovereignty (e.g., Sudan, Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq); and that this all went down as the world prepared for the September UN vote on a Resolution recommending statehood for Palestine: but when viewed through the lens of Péan’s posited detail that the region is Israel’s “deep security zone,” and the desperate need of the Hebrew State and its Western allies for total domination of that vast repository of strategic natural resources (and, for Israel, the most important seems to be water) that these regions represent, one can more clearly see through racist notions that these conflicts stem from ‘Arab immaturity’ or ‘Tribalism’ or ‘ethnic primitivism’, and that all this ‘anti-Democracy’ has supposedly caused such violent reactions among certain African and Middle Eastern governments that they actually set about “murdering their own people” (and to such an extend that it became necessary for NATO, through the good offices of the UN, to exercise its R2P [Right to Protect] and, in so doing, to, itself, take the lives of thousands of these very same peoples with the West’s, by now routine, gangster subversion with close air support).

From what before had seemed like the sort of murderous irrationality with which it is impossible to negotiate, Péan reveals a sort of historical logic, a Reason that is solidly grounded and detailed with facts, that verifies the cynical degradation into which the world is being led by those whose avowed purpose is, at whatever the cost, to preserve, protect and defend the toxic existence of Advanced Waste Capital. What was once thought to be progress in the development of Human Imagination, Pierre Péan shows us is now only the purposeless descent into the airless world of torment and death. And one can only pity these fateful monsters, who, like so many Americans and Europeans, would sit by and with their silence endorse this malignant indecency.

At CM/P, we believe the work of Pierre Péan might be a remedy, however small and ineffectual, for this moribund condition. But until his work is widely available in English, this hope can only be false hope.—mc

* “From its inception, Israel has been keenly interested in Africa. The narrowness of its own territory within hostile surroundings has driven its leaders, since the early 1950s, to seek some compensation for this existential weakness by creating a military alliance with France, already an African power, while at the same time searching out political alliances within Africa, with an eye toward artificially creating a “strategic depth”, the absence of which had proven elsewhere to be such a cruel weakness, and to render aid in its struggles against the Arab enemy.”]

*****

Paris, 5 July 2011

CirqueMinime/Paris: When you speak of ‘Secret Wars’, as in the subtitle of your new book, ‘Carnage: the Secret Wars of the Great Powers in Africa’—or in your ‘African Manipulations: Who Was Really Behind the Attack on UTA flight 772?’[1]—you speak of a French and American ‘Secret War’ against Libya. But what is the ‘Secret’ that is hidden within these ‘Wars’?

Pierre Péan: First off, it is not presented to the public as a ‘War.’ So, they never talk about these actions in that way.

When Reagan decided to blow Ghaddafi away, he justified his actions—as was later done with Iraq—by creating false pretexts. So the US could play the Cop’s role.

But a cop never goes to war. A cop punishes violators of the local civil or criminal codes. He hands out tickets and fines. But he doesn’t wage war.

In the newspapers, they talked about certain plans that the Big Powers had, but they didn’t talk about ‘War.’ That’s really all I mean here.

But it’s obvious that in 50 or 100 years, it will be shown that, for Libya or for Congo, the exact plans found in the White House files will be all about—and the same is true with France—how the things that were planned all amounted to one thing: War—though it may take another 40 or 50 years for that precise word to be used.

So, in the case of these ‘Secret Wars’: they are always decided by the Great Powers; the word ‘War’ is never pronounced; and they are often small.

CM/P: I know you are familiar with the term ‘October Surprise’.

PP: Yes. I know it very well. . . . I wrote about the ‘October Surprise.’

CM/P: As far as you know, what is the nature of this stratagem, and who were the originators of the term?

PP: I knew very well, at the time . . . If I can’t think of it right now it’s just a lapse in memory. . . . I wrote about that phenomenon . . . even included it in a book of mine . . . it’s an attempt to use hostages to affect domestic politics in France. It occurred in France over the liberation of Lebanese hostages in 1985 or 1987—over those hostages, like (Jean Paul) Kaufman, (Michel) Seurat, etc.—over attempts to liberate them made by both the Right and Left in the hope that setting them free would give extra points to the liberating side in the elections. And I also used the term in describing events that transpired at the end of the 1970s in the US.

CM/P: William Safire, a NYTs columnist and Nixon speechwriter, attributed the term to—though like so many other phenomena, it may have a distinct French origin, as well—Safire credited it to CIA Chief and Reagan campaign manager, William Casey. The first time Casey, who started out as a financial lawyer, used it was in regard to the 1968 Humphrey/Nixon presidential race. He was then a young campaign adviser to Richard Nixon. He managed to get word to Le Duc Tho, the representative of the North Vietnamese/NLF in the Paris Peace Talks, that if they would hold off on signing any deal offered them by the Johnson administration until after the elections, a future President Nixon would give them a much better terms, conditions and compensation than the Democratic Party candidate, Hubert Horatio Humphrey.

PP: Yes, yes. There was the exact same situation in France. The Right told the Iranians that if they waited until after the 1988 elections, the Conservative government would give them a better deal than Mitterand’s putative Leftists.

CM/P: Right. In fact, Casey[2] did that same thing with the Iranians when he was Reagan’s campaign manager in the 1980 elections against the incumbent Jimmy Carter. And that’s why I was asking myself what you meant when you referred to the war the Iranians waged against France in the 1980s as a ‘Secret War’. Because you talked about France furnishing arms to Iraq in the war that country started against its neighbor, Iran—

PP: No, that’s just a facile linguistic shortcut, that use of ‘Secret War’. Coming up with a word where, before, there was none. But it’s true . . . when I wrote the book that addresses this issue most pointedly, La Menace (The Threat)[3], and, honestly, it’s difficult for a citizen to understand what actually happened. But what I tried to do in this book was to reestablish the logic of what went on. I believe it’s important to create a chronology of relations between the two sides. In the cooperation between the friends of Iran—Syria and Hezbollah—there’s a logic that is always on the verge of exploding. And I like to say that such explosions give off light to better arrange events according to this logic, to bring into reasonable relation certain events that otherwise made no sense. We give this the title ‘Secret War’. Without this kind of understanding, the Hostages made no sense. And the Hostage situation certainly did make sense. I’m not saying I’ve succeeded in making complete sense of all this, but these events, which are usually described as coming out of nowhere, really do have a logic hidden behind them. And this hidden logic is what I have called the ‘Secret War.’

CM/P: In Chapter 6 of ‘Carnage’, you talk about this region, North Africa and the Middle East, as being a ‘deep security zone’ for the nation of Israel. Yet nowhere in your discussion of the war against Libya—be it in the 80s or today—do you mention Israel. After all, Reagan’s bombing of Libya in 1986 was in retaliation for the terrorist attack on La Belle disco in Berlin, a false-flag action the Mossad (Israeli intelligence) still brags about—

PP: Now you’re getting into an essential theme. Today, there is almost an ‘omerta’ on the subject of Israel. And that poses, in my opinion, a great problem for describing certain situations—and I’m not talking here about any kind of ‘militant’ descriptions, but merely of seeking to understand a situation—if you take out one of the main players, it gives a feeling of chaos. I mean, when you introduce the players—and maybe not all the players—but when you introduce Israel to try and understand the events in Africa since, say, WWII, that allows you to clarify—maybe not everything—but it certainly clarifies a great deal.

So, why don’t we do that? Because in France there is such a big problem—I think it’s less so in the US—but in France there is such a great fear of being labeled an ‘Anti-Semite’—the term is a veritable ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’—that most people just won’t talk about anything that is closely—or remotely—related to Israel.

And for me, it is something so difficult—I talk of Israel in many of my books, but it still poses a great problem.

CM/P: The ‘logic of the situations’ that you just talked about—it’s impossible to get to that logic without discussing Israel.

PP: And I always try in my writing not to make judgments, and try to make my descriptions as ‘matter-of-fact’ as I can, so as not to find myself under attack from that terrible weapon, the charge of ‘Anti-Semitism.’

CM/P: But, as you said, this charge is truly a WMD (a ‘Weapon of Mass Deception’, as I like to call it). Yet all terrorist attacks—even those that took place before the disappearance of the Soviet Union—were blamed on little groups or on little countries—

PP: —But one never talks about ‘State Terrorism’.

CM/P: No. Absolutely not. But why are groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command]—groups that were formed in reaction to the Israeli occupation of certain countries, like Syria and Lebanon—why are these Resistance groups usually blamed? —In the US, many are familiar with an operation called COINTELPRO. Do you know this operation? Created by J. Edgar Hoover . . .

PP: Yes, yes, of course. Against . . .—

CM/P: —The Black Panther Party was infiltrated. The Nation of Islam. And SDS and the PLP.[4] The infiltrators moved into the leadership of these targeted organizations. And the organizations began to propose and carry out actions that more and more doomed them to self-destruction. . . . Now, with the Palestinians, many were dissatisfied with the leadership, and there was a growing movement—and this was not something that happened overnight, but it was over a long period—a movement against Yasser Arafat. These groups that were formed were always expressly against the Zionist State of Israel, but, more importantly, they were also against Arafat and his wing of the PLO, Fatah.

PP: Yes. And, objectively, the most important thing for them is to be against the PLO. And, so, they then find themselves, objectively, working as allies of Israel.

CM/P: Yes. I lost communications with several friends when I said that the 2006 Hamas election victory over Fatah in The Occupied Territories would prove to be more of an advantage for Israel than for the Palestinians, themselves.

PP: Often. . . . That’s what’s happened in the past.

CM/P: Yes, but when someone like the PFLP takes credit for carrying out a terrorist attack against . . . say, OPEC, or some target far from Israel’s vital domestic or military interests, I have to wonder if, maybe, this terrorism isn’t being directed by, say—well, ok, maybe it’s not the US or Israel managing this terrorism, outright!—but maybe it’s some kind of Third Force that lives—that depends for its very existence on the perpetuation of these wars, this destruction and waste. Because, if these wars weren’t taking place, certain rich people today would become very, very poor.

PP: It’s true that in my investigations—though I have not gotten to that point—it’s true that we have to ask certain questions. I’ve tried to reestablish the chronologies, reintroduce all that, but you have to have more sources, more information, to do the sort of intensive analysis that would lead to an understanding of these kinds of movements, this kind of overriding subject matter, because this is very, very sensitive stuff. I am not far from the analysis you described, but I have a certain number of questions, and, basically, what I’m trying to do is to take some very small steps. But I have neither the means nor the intellectual capacity to really get off into things like this.

And I am especially—and sometimes excessively—distrustful of ‘conspiracy theories’. You have to be careful with them. They can often throw you. They are very seductive, intellectually. And sometimes, when I read things, I find that often there are links—connections that are quite true, but, then, there connections that are often false. . . . Often.

So, I always distrust them. And with my limited means, I try to set small tasks for myself. And though sometimes I exceed my goals—if my goals and my achievements are small, then I never get it too wrong. It is always a small failure.

CM/P: Well, to you, your achievements may seem small, but to me they are huge.

PP: No, but if I set grand tasks for myself, and I get them just a little wrong: Then that’s a Grand Error!

CM/P: What really astonishes me, in this whole history, are the parallels between the US and France. For example:

The bombing of the US Marine barracks, on 23 October 1983, in Beirut[5], is always brought up as one of the costliest terrorist strikes against America. Yet, few in the US know about the truck-bombing of the French barracks, the eight-story 'Drakkar' building, just two minutes after the US Marines were hit.[6] Both attacks were claimed by Islamic Jihad.[7]

PP: But what seems hardest for people to understand—and what I talk about in La Menace—is how we supported Iraq in its war against Iran, and how, thus, we were at war with Iran. And the way that a smaller power responds to a greater one is always through terrorism.

And the little guy is at a disadvantage on two levels: First, he doesn’t have the means to fight against the big guy. Then, there are words, expressions, that put him at a further disadvantage: If the little guy reacts to an aggression, it’s always called ‘terrorism’; but the big guy never commits ‘terrorism.’ And to be called ‘a terrorist’ invalidates any cause: The word, itself—the title, itself—invalidates.

CM/P: Yes, ‘terrorism’ is certainly seen as the weapon-of-last-resort for the politically and militarily powerless. But often these terrorist acts don’t really seem to serve any of the interests of the little people who supposedly perpetrated them.

Do you reject the idea—often associated with the term ‘conspiracy theory’—of ‘false flag terrorism’? Terrorist acts that are carried out to look like—the blame for which—

PP: You mean the manipulation of the facts of a terrorist act to make it appear to be the work of someone other than the actual perpetrators? Yes. That exists.

CM/P: Yeah. Absolutely.

PP: But, when something like that happens, it is done by the greatest professionals, and with such professionalism that it is very complicated—very difficult to demonstrate who is really responsible—because, in the West, we believe that Truth only exists if it can be PROVED—but it is not because we have no PROOF of them that things don’t exist.

CM/P: Right. As Donald Rumsfeld famously said: ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’—or something like that.

But, for instance: The attack on La Belle Disco in Berlin[8], which was blamed on Libya, is often bragged about by the Mossad. This is plainly dealt with by Victor Ostrovski in his book ‘By Way of Deception . . .’ And then, later that year [1986], the Reagan administration bombs Libya in retaliation for the killing of its soldier in the La Belle attack.

So, Libya is singled out from the countries of the Maghreb for especially hostile treatment.—

And—before that: you know John Stockwell, the apostate CIA agent?

PP: Sure. John Stockwell. I read his book on Angola[9]. It’s that John Stockwell?

CM/P: Right. And Stockwell talks about how the US furnished explosives, and training on their use, to certain Libyans. In your books—which I find very cinematic; but that may be just because that’s where most of my experience lies: in films—but especially in your ‘African Manipulations’, you talk of two ‘Palestinians’ who travel with a Caucasian. But they might not really have been Palestinians; they may be Africans, and . . .—what I’m trying to say here is that there is always a great deal of secrecy as to the real origins—or affiliations of these characters: A lot of Secrecy. What or whom is all this Secrecy intended to hide?

Because with Terrorist acts: it’s always very important to ‘claim’ them for your side, for your group or nation. To say, “See? See what we can do? That was us!”

But these people, the ‘Real Terrorists’ always seem to remain in the shadows. Usually, two or three little nerdy groups weight-in with similarly vague claims of authorship; but they are seldom the perpetrators that would serve the Great Powers’ narrative.

Take September 11th: No one has stepped up to own that mega-masterpiece of Terrorism. The Americans want to believe it was engineered by their favorite Terrorist-and-chief, the now-late Osama bin Laden, but he never actually—or clearly or directly—claimed responsibility for 911!

PP: I’m always afraid of making generalizations. I’m careful not to let them lead me on—because I have this tendency—and generalizations are always very enticing. In a certain way, they satisfy your mind’s curiosity.

Let me go back to another attack that was never claimed and that I did some work on: the bombing of the UTA DC10[10]. And I’ll respond to something you said earlier.

François Mitterand[11] asked me to come see him to talk about this attack. He listened to me—and he was in no way antithetical to anything I said—but he just listened to me, that’s all. In the end, he said to me that he’d always been astonished by the fact that, for this attack, they had never found a motive. No motive at all.

And to get back to September 11th: I have always been very suspicious of conspiracy theories, and I have never worked on this question. I tend, in very complicated cases like this one, to trust only myself. And since I have not worked on it—on September 11th—I just don’t want to go there; I don’t talk about it. I think I understand that it is all very unclear—but that’s it.

I don’t want anyone to hang a ‘conspirationniste’ jacket on me!

CM/P: When you were speaking of the ‘Secret War’ between France and Iran earlier, I got the impression that France furnished arms only to Iraq. But we all know, thanks to ‘Iran-Contragate’, that the US supplied arms to both sides—to Iraq, admittedly and even openly; but also, by way of Israel, to Iran. But are you saying that France didn’t give any weaponry to Iran?

PP: Yes, there were arms exchanged—but I have to refresh my memory on the details of this old story. In reality, I conducted an investigation, but then I closed it out. I’ve always wanted to have a connection, to have a thread—not a huge one, but a thread, nonetheless—that runs through all my writing. The primary engagement for France was with Iraq in that war. And this was for very simple reasons—not at all ‘Secret’—because France had a problem with regard to the US about energy resources.

So to try and compensate for US control over oil—to create a French oil company and then find a source of oil that was outside the American supply system—when Iraq nationalized its oil reserves[12]—and France did not oppose this nationalization—it broke the old pact with the Western powers—particularly, with the US and UK, with Exxon and BP. In breaking this pact at this time, France took a position against the arrangement that had existed since the end of the First World War. And if you look at this situation, it was quite understandable for France to reposition itself, to make certain bi-lateral agreements, and to take over a few oil fields and make pacts on nuclear technology with Iraq. One can only tie these activities together until 1990, if one recognizes that Gaullist France wanted to take a position that was different from (if not totally opposed to) that of the US. This is clear.

And the first break with this Gaullist policy came when, in 1990, France joined the alliance against Saddam Hussien. The government’s divorce from Gaullism was extended by Jacques Chirac, who pursued a reconciliation between France and NATO, even though, in 2003, France did not want to join Bush in his invasion of Iraq.[13] Nicolas Sarkozy made this total separation from the old Gaullist policies official by reintegrating France into the Atlantic Alliance.

In other words, what I’m trying to show here—without doing too much reflecting on it—is that once we’ve put all our questions into a geopolitical and historical context, a general understanding of things does not require any particular knowledge. You can pretty much guess what is really happening at any given moment by looking at this historical context.

Today it’s a little more complicated, maybe, because France is totally assimilated into NATO. So, that specific French character within international politics is much weaker than it used to be. You can see this quite easily.

And what also interests me is to see—a little bit more each day in Africa—just how fundamentally France took advantage of the Cold War in Africa. Without the Cold War, it would have been—as Roosevelt had planned it well before—the US pitting France against Great Britain, the two great imperial powers in Africa. These empires had long ago come apart and left Africa as a huge marketplace open to everyone, with its many sources of wealth quickly coming under the domination and control of the US.

CM/P: What the US and most of the countries of the West refuse to accept is that WWII was not just an ideological or territorial war between the German and Italian Fascists and the rest of bourgeois Europe—with the Soviet Union a sort of silent partner to both sides and, in fact, as villainous as its sworn enemy, Nazi Germany. This revision stems from the US and its allies’ refusal to be the customers of certain countries, like Russia or many African states, which possess a quite natural monopoly of primary resources like oil and natural gas.

This denial of a natural reality has led to the West’s striving to be, at once, the consumer and the producer of these primary, especially energy, resources, or, at least, to dominate militarily the producing nations—or, at least, to impose itself as a broker in these energy transactions.

So, while WWII, and the so-called Cold War that issued from it, can be seen as wars for control of the natural resources of the USSR, Central and Southeast Asia, and Africa; about the time the Vietnam debacle began to wind down, around the turn of 60s-70s, war no longer was an issue of one side versus another, but more of an economic motive, in and of itself.

PP: What is today most difficult about the conflicts of the last 15 or 20 years is that these are wars that are complicated, difficult to explain. They are complicated because there are multiple actors and multiple motives. WWII is simple. Oh, you can get into it—but, essentially, it was Hitler against the rest of the world. It was a war of fronts. No great problems in explaining it.

Today, describing events in Central Africa is different. There are many different players. There are local players, who are driven simply by the desire for power. But when we try to explain why—as we have seen so often in the past—why, for instance, the Tutsis wanted to retake power in Rwanda, it’s really just a matter of local actors with local interests. But when we pull back, we see that there are people working behind them, working for their own, very different interests: people like the Secret Services of the Great Powers.

And that’s not all. There are also, in a parallel fashion—or an independent fashion—there are large companies that are simply working to increase their profits. So those powerful agents who work with the Africans can also aid the little players. These games become terribly complicated. And today we live in an age where communication is extremely important in all these conflicts over power, in these wars, in all of that. But to communicate about these wars is ultra-complicated. So complicated that it is very easy to manipulate the information the public receives.

One of the things that has fascinated me from the very beginning of my work on Africa—I started with Rwanda—and ‘Carnage’ is just an extension of that work to gain a better understanding of the subject—what fascinated me about Rwanda was that the people of the RPF[14]—should I say the people of the RPF? Or should I say the Ugandans of the RPF? Or the Secret Services, of this country or that, behind the RPF?—at any rate, what is certain is that, even before they started the war—that is, even before the RPF came across the border from Uganda into Rwanda on 1 October 1990—even before that, the war of communications had begun. And it was so well launched that it wound up creating the entire vision of what was happening there.

I mean, that’s really fascinating. Because, through the skillful manipulation of information, the aggressors were able to cast themselves in the role of the victims. That shows real power. Really, that’s very powerful.

And this was done with a deep understanding of the evolution of our social and political culture, where the state has become less and less important in relation to our civil society. And civil society is susceptible to being radically manipulated. This is done through the use of surveys and polls and the shaping of public opinion.

So to get back to the war in Rwanda: those who were responsible for transmitting information did not use traditional means of communications. They didn’t call press conferences for all the traditionally accredited newspapers. No. They addressed themselves to the community of NGOs, whose purpose was the defense of Victims in the drive and the struggle against the power of State Governments, and who had more and more influence over journalists. Quickly, especially for TV viewers, who had no time or means for reflection on the information they were receiving, and who were always on the side of the victims, it was enough just to present the aggressors as victims. So, what happened was that in a war—because what went on in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 was just that, a war, to seize state power—everything that the RPF did wound up feeding into the ‘Victims’ file. We saw only the victims of one side; we only saw the Tutsi victims. And this stratagem really won my admiration.

There was something else missing: These movements—especially in African countries—there are movements that are very complicated and hard to analyze. And there is always the problem of the West’s Guilty Conscience. So it was enough to play on that guilt—even with most of the people of good faith who saw the past in Africa and did not want to end up, once again, on the side of the villains—enough to get the public to stand with the Victims as a way to try and make up for the past.

It’s enough just to play on this one central motivation to completely deform a very complicated Reality—actually, very complicated Realities, because Reality is, by definition, multifarious—and to leave the choices—these choices that make situations understandable—very often, to leave these choices to the manipulators. So, during this period of African wars, a piece of History that has become more and more transparent, the manipulation of information became easier and easier—especially with all the advances in technology that have taken place over the last 25 years.

CM/P: But who benefits from this ‘Complicated Reality’? Because, when you spoke of ‘the State versus Civil Society’, . . .—For example, my ex-wife is a ‘Social Worker’. She takes care of the Poor, the Homeless, like that. But she works for a ‘Private Company’! In the past, her work was a function of the State. And I gave English courses to a private firm called S-----o. The employees of this firm go all over the world and develop projects—like a Social Security System for China, or Water System for Niger or a Sanitation System for Leningrad (now, again, St. Petersburg)—so, are we really looking at ‘The State v Civil Society’? Or is it ‘The State v Private Enterprise’?

PP: Yeah. . . . I think it’s both. And the State has not ceased its abandonment, especially under the influence of Ultra-Liberalism, of a number of its traditional domains. This is a tendency that began long ago, but there has recently been an acceleration in the take-over of State functions: whether they be Health Care or Security or whatever, they are Privatized, and that is a distinct characteristic of contemporary Society.

But the heavy tendency toward the ‘Privatization of all the former functions of the Crown’ is an important element today. On the other hand, Civil Society—or the Associative World (of NGOs), which is more and more important in the shaping of Public Opinion—these ‘Civil Organizations’ can work at times with the world of Private Enterprise. But ours is a world that is much more complicated and hard to explain, and which demands we get much more involved.

CM/P: Well, speaking of ‘Victims’: I’m sure you’re up on what is happening in New York City with DSK (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the IMF). What astonishes me is the speed with which this lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, stood out in front of the Courthouse and started talking about his client as ‘The Victim’—and that all ‘The Victims’ were out in the street. I thought, wait a minute: the criminal case hasn’t even been heard yet; what ‘Victim’ or what ‘Crime’ are we talking about here? . . . Do you remember the OJ case—?

PP: Hold on. Because I say something is just so does not mean that something else next to it is not so. Now, to go back to something I said. . . . I’m a bit older than you, right? . . .

CM/P: A little bit, yeah.

PP: I came up in a bi-polar world. A fundamentally simpler world. You were either in one camp or the other. When I was initiated into French Politics—when I was a student, there were only two possibilities: you were either for or against a French Algeria. As simple as that.

But today, it’s more and more complicated. So, at the heart of what I know—and as I said before: there is a growing complexity about things, a gradual diminution of the State as a major player, and, as applies to the war in Africa, the complexity of things makes History hard to decipher and poses the possibility that all this information will be manipulated to some foul end. I can’t go much further than that—but this, in no way, excludes other things from being true.

CM/P: But how, exactly, does money—you know, the profit motive—enter into these situations? For example: an organization like SOS-Racism—an organization, which you founded—

PP: —Of which I was ONE of several 'godparents'.

CM/P: —Right. But an organization which then turned against you, charging you with inciting racial hatred, on the basis of four pages from your extraordinary, massive work on Rwanda, Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs (Sad to say, I can only cite the title in French because this essential work has not as yet been translated.). Now, what was the motive for this arch betrayal?

I’ve had my own experience with an SOS organization. My landlord pretends to be the head of SOS-Papa, an NGO that specializes in mediating problems with bi-national couples and ‘rescuing’ the children involved. When I was having my own such bi-national family problems, this clown offered his mediation services and claimed a 90% success or satisfaction rate. At our second meeting, he said he would have to charge me 450 euros, and ‘suggested’ I pay him in ‘Black’ money, to cover the secret, paramilitary expenses incurred in these ‘rescues’—think of the Arc de Zoé.

What’s up with these SOS organizations?—like SOS Attentat, from your book on the bombing of UTA flight 772, which defends so-called ‘Victims Rights’ and pursues reparations for all victims of terrorist attacks—‘reparations’ here meaning money. So, what role does money play in these ‘Humanitarian’ actions?

PP: These are very good examples of the manipulation of Civil Society. SOS-Racism is a group that represents itself as having the last word on a number of subjects. In ‘Carnage’, I tried to show a little bit of what motivated it to bring these charges against me—something I found absolutely nightmarish. But my principal accusers, who were being protected by SOS-Racism, were the French National Union of Jewish Students.

What had I done (in Noires fureurs, etc.)—by talking about the power of the Tutsis in Rwandan history—what had I done against Israel or against the Jewish Community? What had I done?

CM/P: Well, yeah, that’s my question, too.

PP: But my book was considered like Mein Kampf. . . . This was extraordinary. Oh, now, I can talk calmly about it. But, at the time, it was something very violent.

CM/P: Yes, yes, absolutely, I remember.

PP: And I had only laid out some hypotheses in my book. What were some of these hypotheses? I was not speaking of the Tutsi movement in any fundamental sense. But what I said was that there were some people within the movement who functioned with other than honorable motives. In any case, what I was trying to say was that some of the things that had happened in this part of the world, over the past several years, had some relationship with the security of Israel—or with the vision that Israel had of its own security.

CM/P: There were those who even called the Tutsis the “Jews of Africa.”

PP: I didn’t go that far, but I had to lay out certain hypotheses. However, in my book (Noires fureurs,) I did not say one word against the Jews. But I did try to show that in order to understand what was going on in East Africa and in the African Great Lakes, you had to reintroduce Israel as one of the main players in these regions—the regions that Israel considered very important to its security.

CM/P: The words in your first book—the words being contested—were not your words at all. They were the words of Prince Nyere, the Tutsi Prince, who spoke of his own ‘Tutsi Culture of Lies’.

But, you know, what strikes me as a little sad is—because I get a great sense of security from reading your works, a strong sense of having built up my knowledge of a certain subject on clear and cogent details. Reading—and hopefully translating more of your work in the future have given me a very great, a very serious pleasure. Yet, I have to wonder, after you have done all this work, all this research and composition—and after talking to you this afternoon, I have to wonder if you, too, find pleasure in all this great work?

PP: Oh, yes, of course. There always has been—and still is—a good deal of Tin-Tin[15] in me.


***
End Notes:

[1] CM/P translation. These two important books by Péan have not as yet been translated into English—though we are currently in the process of translating ‘Carnage’, while we search for an English-language publisher for our translations of his other critical works.

[2] Some are now claiming Bill Casey was accompanied by Reagan’s running-mate, George H.W. Bush, on this cynical mission.

[3] Published by Fayard in January 1987, and still un-translated, ‘La Menace’ deals with the French hostages taken in Lebanon in retaliation for France’s support of Iraq in its decade-long war with Iran. Much of the same kind of corruption as took place in the US arms trade, also happened in France at that time, with a full-fledged ‘Irangate’-style investigation conducted into the Mitterand government and the French Defense industry.

[4] Students for a Democratic Society and the Progressive Labor Party.

[5] It resulted in 241 dead US service personnel (including 220 Marines, 16 Navy and three Army; and was considered the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, the deadliest single-day death toll for the United States military since the first day of the 1968 Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, and the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II.

[6] As a result of the second strike, 58 French paratroopers from the 1st Parachute Chasseur Regiment were killed and 15 were injured, in the single worst military loss for France since the end of the Algerian War.

[7] And the Mossad claimed advanced knowledge of these terrorist acts, yet refused to alert their targeted allies for fear of compromising their sources of intelligence. Sound familiar?

[8] On 5 April 1986, at West Berlin's La Belle Disco, people working for the Mossad and the CIA, planted explosives that killed two US servicemen, a Turkish woman, and maimed 229 others.
 Also in 1986, during the Reagan administration, the Mossad broadcast false-flag messages from a location inside Libya (termed Operation Trojan Horse) in order to unfairly blame Libya for the La Belle Disco terror attack. (Victor Ostrovsky: How Mossad got America to bomb Libya and fight Iraq)

[9] ‘In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story’ [Nov. 1997] John R. Stockwell is a former CIA officer who managed the U.S. involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations.

[10] This is the subject of Péan’s, yet un-translated, ‘Manipulations Africaines: Qui sont les vrais coupables de l’attentat du vol UTA 772?’ (Plon, 2001)—one day this great read might be found in the front racks of popular American bookstores under the title: “African Manipulations: Who Was Really Behind the Bombing of UTA Flight 772?”—or playing at a Cineplex near you.

[11] François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was the fourth President of France elected under the Fifth Republic, serving from 1981 to 1995. As leader of the Socialist Party, he is the only figure from the left, so far, to be elected President under the Fifth Republic.

[12] Called for by the Iraqi Ba’ath Party in 1968, nationalization proceeded incrementally with the Iraqi government’s assumption of control over certain national companies and their prospecting rights, and was not fully achieved until June 1, 1972, with law “69.” In recognition of its sympathetic stand on the Arab-Israeli issue since 1967, France and its national oil company, ELF-ERAP, were given special concessions.

[13] It has been said that rather than concerns for protecting its share of Iraqi oil being what discouraged France from taking part in the 2003 Bush-Blair/ WMD invasion of the already brutalized country, it was a multi-million dollar supply deal that France had cut with Russia and was to be executed exactly at that time—March 2003.

[14] Rwandan Patriotic Front, the force created by expatriated Tutsis in Uganda with the goal of reclaiming political power in Rwanda, and then in Eastern Congo.

[15] Tintin is a young reporter, and his creator, Hergé, uses this to present the character in a number of adventures which were contemporary with the period in which he was working, most notably, the Bolshevik uprising in Russia and World War II, and sometimes even prescient, as in the case of the moon landings. Hergé also created a world for Tintin which managed to reduce detail to a simplified but recognisable and realistic representation, an effect Hergé was able to achieve with reference to a well-maintained archive of images.

****

by Duci Simonovic

International Criminal Law - From Justice to Oppression - by Me Christopher Black

by Mick Collins on Wed 20 Jul 2011 10:12 AM EDT | Permanent Link

[Chris Black is the Defense lawyer who taught me about International Criminal Defense. Diana Johnstone introduced me to Chris back in the late 1990s; Chris, then, introduced me to Jacques Vergès and the whole Yugoslav dossier: Vlada Krsljanin, Tiphaine Dickson, Cathrin Schulz, Klaus Hartmann and the ICDSM (including the enraged Serbian philosopher/poster artist Duci Simonovic); and then, on a brief TGV trip from Paris to Brussels, to attend memorial services for his client’s 16 year-old son, Alain, an event in which, despite guarantees from all the major powers of his return to UN custody in Arusha, General Ndindiliyama was never allowed to take part, Chris introduced me to the Rwanda case and brought me onto The General’s Defense team as a sort of literary side-kick.

The truth about Rwanda, in particular, but, more generally, about all the Secret Wars of the Great Powers in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, has become a kind of, however Quixotic, mission from god for CM/P.

Now that The General has been, de facto, acquitted of the mega-charges against him at the ICTR—as in the Military I case in 2009, where all charges of conspiracy or plotting to commit genocide went unproven, but due to an order from the Appeals Chamber instructing the Trial Chamber to ‘take judicial notice’ of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide (of 800,000 or so Tutsis by the 1994 Hutu {read: majority} governments of that tortured nation), an order whereby the various charges of genocide are allowed to stick despite their being TOTALLY UNPROVEABLE, the Tribunal found it necessary to ‘convict’ all the Defendants of the worst sort of humbuggery, and hand down arbitrary sentences, ranging from 30 years to ‘time served’, as a way to justify its remaining on the UN’s juicy teat: so General Ndindiliyimana got cut loose for ‘time served’.

Ok, despite its grotesquely capricious practices, this was one ICTR call that both Chris and I accepted with happy satisfaction. The General was free! At last!!

But then something came up, and he was again denied permission to return to his home and family—again for 'political reasons.' And The General is not the only ICTR Defendant to be acquitted or have his conviction overturned on Appeal, only to be made by the world media, and the 'Public Opinion' it (de)forms, to pack around his original charges as a kind of 'Silent beef', from which there is no redress or relief. These Defendants, though legally innocent, are condemned to lead the non-lives of Society's outcasts.

So much for the NATO Terrorists’ version of International Justice: A putrescent piece of road-kill on the highway to militarized Global Wastage.

But here’s Me Black’s take on just what NATO Justice smells like. –mc]


*****************

International Criminal Law - From Justice to Oppression
by Christopher Black

The Nuremberg Trials of 1946 advanced international law in a fundamental way. For the first time in history the victims of aggressive war brought their attackers to justice, and aggression was defined as the ultimate war crime from which all others flow. Today, international war crimes trials are used by the aggressor to persecute the victims of their aggression. International law has turned full circle from justice to oppression, from justice to revenge.

What can better illustrate this than the one-sided justice at the ad hoc tribunals, the ICTY and ICTR{1}, where the victims of western aggression are grossly slandered and accused of the most heinous crimes in order to obscure the real facts of those aggressions under a cloud of darkness and confusion. What can better illustrate this than the statement by the judges of the ICTR in the case of General Ndindiliyimana{2}, from its just-released judgment in the Military II case {3}, coming at paragraph 2191:

“The Defence submits that the indictment and arrest ‘were motivated by political
reasons’. The Chamber recalls that before this Chamber, the Defense stated that the
prosecution made every effort to encourage Ndindiliyimana to testify against Colonel
Bagasora, but Ndindiliyimana refused. The Prosecution did not deny this. Following his
initial refusal, the Prosecution produced a far-reaching indictment charging
Ndindiliyimana with a number of crimes… Most of those charges were eventually
dropped.”


—Political Reasons—

As the judges at the ICTR revealed that the court’s prosecutor indicted people for political reasons, the ICTY demanded that Serbia hand over General Mladic{4} for allegedly engaging in a “joint criminal enterprise” to kill Croats and Bosnian Muslims. General Mladic maintains that he defended Serbs from the criminal actions of the Croat and Bosnian Muslim forces attacking his people, for which there is abundant evidence. Yet, once again, the victim is the accused and the witnesses brought against him are partisans of the aggressor.

Now, we have the absurdity of the International Criminal Court issuing criminal indictments against various Africans whose common connection is to obstruct Western interests in Africa. The latest indictment against Colonel Ghaddafi, made because his country resists the aggression and war crimes of the USA and its satellites in Europe and Canada, shows, even to the blind, that control of the ICC has been seized by the USA, even as that country refuses to be subject to its jurisdiction.


—Shocking aspect—

Never in history has “criminal justice” been perverted to such criminal ends. The most shocking aspect is the complete acquiescence of the nations of the world in this charade. Members of the Security Council, apart from the United States, have the power to nullify the ad hoc tribunals but they do not. They have the power to refuse to bring clearly political accusations to the ICC. But they do not. It is they who are in charge and who are responsible, just as much as the USA.

General Mladic would have good reason to tell the ICTY judges that since they are a proxy for the Security Council, he wants to be tried by the Security Council, itself, and then he could see whom he is really up against and why. Colonel Gaddafi would have the same right to demand to be brought face to face with his real accusers in the Security Council, so he could reveal their true interests to the world. But this right to face one’s accuser, this right to honesty, is not allowed. Instead the Defendants are faced with a theatre troop acting out a macabre play, a show for the public.


—So corrupted—

Indeed, the entire structure of “international justice” since 1946 has become so corrupted that it is difficult to see how it can be transformed into a vehicle to stop aggression, as it was intended, instead of a propaganda tool justifying it. The rot has spread everywhere.

The nations of the world must once again stand up and demand that the principles of the United Nations Charter be adhered to. They were thought important once. They are important now. The United Nations must demand that this architecture be dismantled, that international justice be restored, in the true sense of the phrase, and that national sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples be inviolate once again. But this architecture cannot be dismantled until the Security Council is abolished and the United Nations General Assembly represents the true interests of the peoples of the world in complete equality.

***********
Notes:

{1} The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (some say 'the former-Yugoslavia') in The Hague, the Netherlands, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. --Both Tribunals share a single Appeals Chamber in The Hague.

{2} Major-General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie at the time of the troubles.

{3} The Prosecutor v Bizimungu, Nzuwonemeye, Sagahutu and Ndindiliyimana.

{4} Ratko Mladić came to international prominence in the Yugoslav Wars, initially, as a high-ranking officer in the Yugoslav People's Army and, subsequently, as the Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska (the Bosnian Serb Army) in the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. On 24 July 1995, Mladić was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide, crimes against humanity, and numerous war crimes (including crimes relating to the alleged sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo). On 16 November 1995, the charges were expanded to include charges of war crimes for the attack on the UN-declared safe area of Srebrenica in July 1995.


Christopher Black, International Criminal Lawyer Toronto, Canada. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Vergès Interview: on Syria & Libya - from Michel Collon's webzine: Investig'action. (translated from the French by CM/P)

[CM/P is being run out of France--but, believe thee me, it's just temporary, and it'll change nothing about us.

I'd like to think we were under the guns of those French Fascist collaborators who are currently so exercised over Sarkozy's killing of innocents in North Africa and the Middle-East. Those little Pépés who are always trying to slarv the biggest dode in the room—then, as they wipe their petulant lips, claim they’re working undercover for the morals squad.

And here we're not talking about the National Front or their ilk. No, these are the polite cosmopolitans (as my friend Péan referred to Doc Kouchner), pretending to erudition and deep feelings for the Defense of Human Rights, Victims Rights—they’re frequently gathered into SOS Associations (like SOS Racisme: went after Péan for four pages of his monumental book on Rwanda, “Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs”; or SOS Attentat: went after those reparation bucks for the victims of Terrorist Attacks in 1980s France [almost always bogusly blamed on Libya: e,g,, La Belle disco, or UTA flt. 772, or Pan Am flt. 103 {La Belle is, to this day, bragged about as a false flag by the Mossad--see: Victor Ostrovski's "By Way of Deception . . .} or, my pants-down favorite, SOS-Papa: sets up mediations for bi-national couples, then [according to its leader, my asshole landlord, one of the principal reasons for CM/P's relocation to Jersey, and a Shoah-survivor who proudly supports the US/NATO aggressions against Libya and Syria], then sends mercenaries, 'paid black ops commandos' [like all short guys, the lord of my manor's a bit of a fantasist], in after the kids being fought over [think: Zoés Ark]).

–But, hey, this post is not about us, it’s about Maitre Jacques Vergès, one of the world’s greatest, most principled defense attorneys ever.

Yet these same organizations I was complaining about just now are the ones Me Vergès finds himself pitted against time after time in the media. My great pal, Jack (though, when he sees me, Vergès can never seem to remember who I am, where he’s seen me before—and I would never call him ‘Jack’ to his face!) has also been a formidable teacher and ethical model to me. His defenses of Carlos, Klaus Barbie, Omar the gardener (great film just out about this case: “Omar m’a tué”), Milosevic, Saddam and several African leaders, have been based on the ‘underdog principle’ (No one is more deserving of the best possible defense than an individual who is matched against the monstrous capital powers of a militarist State). Famous for clients that the Public assumed to be guilty as charged, MeV was the subject of my old Hollywood cronie, French director Barbet Schroeder's not entirely sympathetic documentary movie about the counselor, “Terror’s Advocate." In it the narrator asks the Maitre if he would even defend Bush. JV replied, gripping his stogie firmly in his steady at 83 year-old hand, “Yes, of course. But only if he first pleaded guilt.”

Of all that has happened to CM/P in these last 16 years in Paris (and some interesting shit has gone down), I don’t think anything can match the honor of being included with Maitres Vergès and Ramsey Clark as a ‘Fascist on the Milosevic Defense Committee’. Of course the bestower of this magnum accolade was the fat-headed and chronically amnesiac Jared (the greater) Israel, and it was as he was giving up on trying to subvert yet another progressive organization.

No, I can leave France a happy man, and never come back, knowing, for a column-inch or two, my CM/P and I were at the same table, smoking Cohebas and sipping Cognac with the likes of Ramsey Clark (Interational Action Center) and Jacques Vergès (the lawyer you want if you absolutely, positively don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting off).

Now, let’s give the ‘parole’ to Maitre Vergès. –mc]

************************

Maitre Vergès Interview on Syria and Libya
from Michel Collon’s webzine: Investig'Action
(translated from the French by CM/P)


Jacques Vergès: “In Syria, the current government must be defended!”

An indefatigable Defense Lawyer, on juridical and political issues, to those who resist the New World Order, Jacques Vergès, who was recently seen alongside Roland Dumas in a Tripoli under NATO bombardment, shares his feelings on what is happening and what could happen in Syria. His is an uncompromising analysis of the moral and geopolitical adventurism of an Americo-Centric West, and a rational optimism about the developments in Syria and elsewhere.


—First off, what is your analysis of the situation in Syria?—

Jacques Vergès: There is a very clear attempt to destabilize the government coming from outside Syria. Saudi Arabia is on the move inside the country using the Salafist Group it inspires and finances. And, of course, the US is in charge of this would-be civil war. Israel, a bordering state and an avowed enemy of Syria, and which has intelligence services and state-of-the-art military capabilities, is, I believe, directly involved here, as well. And I would not like to forget the motivational role played by France in the destabilization of the Syrian government.

I don’t deny that there are social problems in Syria. France, too, has serious social problems, and, one could even say, French society is facing a certain number of obstacles. Its enemies, inside and outside Baathist Syria, are doing all they can to add fuel to the fire. As for me, I am very openly a friend of Syria as it exists today.


—What, in your view, will be brought about by the attitude taken by Nicholas Sarkozy in this affair?—

JV: On a strictly ideological level, there are unarguably pro-Zionist and pro-American dispositions to this President, who dreams of being at the head of his class in Europe, or the peer of Britain’s David Cameron in their “NATO-studies” course. And here we touch on something more personal, more psychological, about the man: his pathetic need to see himself hoisted to the status of Statesman and to be able to play on the “Big kids’ yard” of this world, a status that a vast majority of French public opinion seems to be denying him these days. And then there are all these internal failures—in the areas of economics and security—that they try and make the electorate forget about by rolling out all the war hardware; this is a procedure as old as the political world itself.

Finally, there is the heavy responsibility born by French diplomacy for this Arab, Tunisian and Egyptian “Spring”: From (French Prime Minister François) Fillon’s putting his vacations on (Egyptian President Hosni) Mubarak’s tab to “M.A.M.” offering to work with (former-Tunisian President Zine el Abidine) Ben Ali on matters of police repression, there is no shortage of Things-to-be-Forgotten as soon as possible. And most notable among these is the undeclared war against (Libyan leader Moamar) Kadhafi, ordered up precipitously and without clear political objective by a simple injunction from Bernard-Henri Levy, delivered over the shoulders of (Foreign Minister) Alain Juppé and Gerard Longuet. Such a political escapade can only lead to chaos and the wasting of human lives and riches. And as with what is already a failure, like the War in Afghanistan: Kadhafi stands firm, less because of his military superiority than the support he continues to receive from a great majority of the Libyan population, and also because his opponents, who are given carte blanche by the West, demonstrate each day how lame and unprincipled they are, not only militarily, but politically, too. Faced with this Resistance, the media break out the old double-talk of psychological war: Have you heard this picturesque “information” coming out of our TV sets? Kadhafi has issued Viagra to his soldiers to get them up for raping the female rebels! When you have to resort to this kind of propaganda you know things are going badly.


—To you, the West’s action, in Libya as in Syria, is, in some way, improvised, badly thought out and meant to fail. Yet, shouldn’t we expect a less amateurish campaign from the US administration and NATO . . .—

JV: But you can see the waste that American bungling perpetrated in Iraq over the last nearly ten years: They started the war on the phony pretext of getting rid of Saddam Hussien, a “hard case” against Israel in the Arab camp. And after innumerable victims and vast destruction, they give power over to the Shiite majority, that is, to Iran, their Public Enemy #1. Is this the Great Geopolitical Game, here? Any analyst or expert on the region could have predicted this outcome for Bush and his Neo-Con clique! This Ubu-esque situation brought a frank quip from the great American intellectual Noam Chomsky, a man with few illusions: “I thought we were going to Iraq to fight Islamic Extremists, and then we put them in power!” Well, it’s the same thing in Libya. We gave the big guns to Kadhafi—who had mended fences with the West—and whom Sarkozy, as we all remember, recently honored—and now we have no one to turn to other than the broken down, impotent and foreign-infiltrated Islamic Radicals—who, at best, represent the Province of Cyrenaïque—and even there, their representation seems very weak, indeed. And will the French—or the British—stay on after their first helicopter or their first ground soldier is shot down?

And as for Syria, if the Americans and their Saudi friends happen to topple the Bachar al-Assad government, they will merely hand this country over, ipso facto, to Sunni sectarians, who will return a modern Syria to the age Ryad—which will bring some heavy consequences for Israel and its American protectors. That said, I remain an optimist about Syria, and even Libya. The Syrian people know that it is civil war and the destruction of their country that is being forced onto them by these opposition officials acting more or less as puppets of the Americans and the armed groups that have infiltrated their land. The Syrians do not want their country to become the new Iraq.


—And if the war being waged by the Americans and their European and Arab allies were just, why, instead of trying to take over Syria, would they want to destroy the country or return it to a stage of development 50 years or more in the past, as certain trans-Atlantic strategists have bragged about having done with Iraq?—

JV: But it is precisely the example of Iraq that shows this is a politics of the short view, and dangerous for Washington’s geostrategic interests: today’s Iraq is closer than it ever has been to Iran. And the de facto creation of an autonomous Kurdish state in the north of the country has pushed Turkey further from the US. We gain nothing from creating these uncontrollable situations, and the chaos you have created will come back to you like a geopolitical boomerang! And what would Miss Clinton [sic] have achieved when the jihadists start parading in the streets of Tripoli, or after that in Benghazi? As for Syria, I think, the support that the Bachar al-Assad government continues to receive remains the most effective obstacle to Americano-Israelo-Saudian strategies.


—So, in Syria and elsewhere, the West is practicing a relentless, counterintuitive pursuit of war, a sort of gunboat diplomacy from one day to the next?—

JV: Precisely. Because the West is sick. Economically. Politically. And, above all, morally. To me, these costly military gesticulations, from Kabul to Tripoli by way of Baghdad or even Damascus, are like the involuntary throes of someone in grave suffering. America is, especially, very sick, with its ruined economy, its colossal debt, its dollar turning into a piece of Monopoly money and its giant scams à la Madoff. And, also, with the arrival into the geopolitical marketplace of emerging powers, or re-emerging powers, like Russia, China, India, and Brazil. To maintain a semblance of moral and political legitimacy, and, with that, world leadership, we have to create an enemy, a “Great Satan,” as the Iranians would say, which makes domestic opinion forget about our imminent failure. But what kind of moral credibility is accorded to those powers that practice a double-standard? So, to hold on to the Near-East, we bomb Tripoli and threaten Damascus, as we let Israel continue, against repeated UN Resolutions, its colonization and bloody repression, just as we let the Saudi troops, more American pawns in the Gulf, put down a popular protest movement in Bahrain. We stigmatize Iranian fanaticism, while we support a Saudi Arabian theocracy that practices the most sectarian and obscurantist form of Islam. I could also go on at length about Côte d’Ivoire, where France, again carrying out American orders, proclaimed that Alassane Ouattara was the mild-mannered Democratic in that movie, and Laurent Gbagbo the villain, even while the UN found evidence of numerous crimes against the civilian population carried out by Ouattara’s troops in the reign of terror they established in their northern fiefdom during the now-famous presidential elections. And if we explain this as Ouattara’s not being in control of his troops, then he is simply inept!

I repeat: these colonial expeditions into Africa and the Near-East—after all, the two former colonial powers, France and Great Britain, are in the front ranks militarily and diplomatically, just as they were at the time of the Levant—are proof of the ill-health of their instigators. Is America sick? And France, too? The DSK affair (Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the IMF, charged in NYC with raping his hotel chamber maid) shows me the moral and political failings of the Liberal-Socialist elites, corrupt and exhausted; and this moral failing compounds the failure of institutions and the economy, without forgetting domestic insecurity: each of these shows the French state, the state which is currently bombing Tripoli, is incapable of making the gang-leaders in its banlieues (comparable to the Projects) listen to reason! Why are we surprised when a president like Sarkozy, the last avatar of this governmental cast, tries to redraw his image on the backs of Libyans and Syrians! A fraud! A fraud in its death throes! The West runs the risk of dying from its cynicism and moral weakness!


—To finish up, you said you were rather optimistic about the evolution of the situation in these countries on the “front line”?—

JV: Yes. The Americans and their goons can do quite a bit of damage—just look at Libya, and Afghanistan, or still in Sudan, you can see it in Iraq and in the ex-Yugoslavia. But I don’t think they will be able to prevail over these people, these nations: We are seeing it, or we will see it, in Syria, in Libya, in Egypt, in Lebanon and in Palestine. In Syria, we must be vigilant against the destabilizing tactics and the campaigns of disinformation.


—Maitre Vergès, thank you very much.—

This interview was recorded on 9 June 2011 by Louis Denghien.

Source: http://www.infosyrie.fr/2011/06/jacques-verges-en-syrie-il-faut-defendre-letat-actuel/