The Western media has launched a volley of sycophantic praise of Trump’s victory in the great American raid on a Syrian airport, which produced new dead, though fewer than what is now routinely accepted as a lugubrious normal.
Nevertheless, it seems that the US has dropped the pretense and decided to intervene directly in the Syrian conflict. A conflict it wanted and prepared, while hiding behind the mask of a civil war.
The astonished world now asks, is Trump a Coca-Cola cow-boy, is Trump the prisoner of a cabal that forces him to obey or be impeached, is Trump a supreme Machiavel, waging war and sacrificing a few dozens Syrians (military and civilians, who cares?) to consolidate his apparently waning power? Considering that war is the only factor bonding the will of the American “people,” or at least of those claiming to represent it.
For sure, the litany of imbecilic praise of Trump by the Western media, celebrates the conversion of a Trump into a Hillary and the consequent victory of Trillary.
Sometimes what history teaches us can be a curse, for it increases the anger at the hypocrisy dominant in the tragedies, now almost routine, caused by the geopolitical rogue. Including indignation on command for massacres of civilians attributed to others, while remaining dumb and silent at those of its own making.
The warped Western narrative on Syria matches the totally missing narrative on Yemen, for there the holocaust makers are the Saudis, supplied by the British and the Americans. And all this to establish an assumed preeminence of morality by the US and its “coalition of the puppets.”
Their barbaric invasions may kill millions, but when some particularly sub-human act is exposed, it is always a mistake, a fatality – though those who expose it can be severely punished (e.g. Bradley Manning).
The opponents, instead, always act intentionally, even when what they are alleged to have done goes against their interest – as clearly is the case with the event in question.
During the new US Secretary of State Tillerson’s visit to Moscow, Lavrov politely reminded him of some, quite recent US-invented narratives to justify wars. Tillerson answered sincerely, “Let’s not look at the past.” Translation, if we lied in the past it does not matter because we shouldn’t remember, and if we do not remember it follows that we didn’t lie. It’s pure Orwell, though I surmise that Tillerson does not know (or remember…).
As for the missile attack on Syria, it seems that, militarily, apart from the killings, it could hardly be considered a success. Apparently the airport was quickly back in operation and, allegedly, of the 59 missiles launched, only 23 reached the target.
But the following very short video is meaningful. It shows an MSNBC puppet presenter ecstatic at the view of the US missiles being launched. He defines them as “something beautiful,” in utter disregard of the deaths the missiles caused. https://youtu.be/wcbYM_Rdm0o
“Beauty” that, by extension, would also apply to the crashing towers of 9/11 – if the goon in question had had the decency to think about it.
Yet, we must seek in this mode of thought the root of the collective evil. It is an evil too diffused to be accidental and too deep to be individual.
Is there concern about the death of civilians? No, it is despotism in the name of freedom, and fanaticism in the name of reason. A will to believe the unbelievable, an upside-down revolution, where the enemies are those guilty of existing outside the scheme of worldwide dominance by the exceptional nation.
It’s XXI century Jacobinism, and the parallel with the French Revolution is not superficial. Between 1793 and 1794 the Jacobins delivered terror to France in the name of freedom and acted with great un-reason in the name of reason.
Today the terror is unleashed on foreign unbelievers – so far. Though the “National Security” machine has more than a superficial resemblance to the Jacobins’ “Committees of Public Safety.” Like them, the American Jacobins claim to have evidence of the enemy’s crimes but cannot disclose it for “public safety.”
Even the recent “Fake News” phenomenon follows a similar Jacobin script. Americans are told that information delivered by proscribed media channels is false. It is a small but remarkable step towards banning those who question the orthodoxy of the thought-unique, and the value of that great system of counter-truth, referred to as neo-liberal ideology.
Hopefully, we are still far from Erdogan’s mode of government, but the trail has been officially inaugurated. Though some feel that time is running out, and that the irreparable and the unimaginable lay around the corner.
Still, let’s for a moment forget (following Tillerson’s advice), the colossal US lies of recent yesterdays, and only consider the claims that “Assad did it” versus the claims that “Assad did not.”
Lacking factual proof, I rely on physiognomy and follow the theory (and the practice) of the Swiss Abbot Johann Kaspar Lavater. Who, in the 18th century and working at it for a lifetime, produced an enormous 5-volume manual, containing the drawings of 6,800 facial expressions. He concluded that they accurately describe all the possible character and character traits of any living man.
Applying Lavater’s method, Assad is more credible than Trump and, for that matter, than the last 6 US presidents. Even compounding their total credibility, and excluding macroscopic dishonorable episodes, such as Clinton’s “I never had sex with that woman” declaration, made without a blush of shame, in front of a public of millions, mesmerized by sex, scandals and sordidness.
Even the pleasantly plump president of North Korea appears inherently more credible than, for example, the sorry figure of the so-called US representative at the UN. A despicable woman with the soul of an excrement and who “is not worth the dust that the rude wind blows in her face.”
I watched several interviews given by Assad to the press. As readers will know, he is a physician, specialized in ophthalmology. He speaks to the journalist and answers his/her questions as a physician would respond to the questions of a patient. There isn’t the slightest pretense or affectation of authority. It is his demeanor that conveys authority. He meets the eye of the interviewer, while instinctively avoiding any gesture or expression that suggests an assertion of authority, and consequent intimidation. At the end of the interview, he thanks the journalist and wishes him well, in the same way a physician would end a visit with a patient.
From what we know of his life, Assad does not need to be president to have a job. I would surmise that Syria needs him more than he needs Syria. And in more than one interview, he stated that if the next elections produce another president, he will dutifully resign.
While…. on the other side of the pond, the few weeks of Trumps in office have been sufficient to shatter the fantasy, or the fancy, of those who believed that a billionaire of questionable background would fracture the fetish of the exceptional nation, and become the Che Guevara of a reformed country.
The fetish is alive and well – as is the prospect of billions in profits deriving from bombs, missiles, bullets, guns, tanks, planes, drones and sundry other tools of veritable mass destruction.
It does not matter that logic and common sense contradict the official narrative of the attack on Syria, as a rock falling on an instrument of precision and crushing it. The magnitude of the lie is sufficient, by itself, to show the magnitude of the interests that the lie is meant to protect.
The event is an occasion to remember the prophetic words of the despicable, diabolic and dishonored Karl Rove, second in command to Bush Jr., when attempting to pass for true an uncontestable lie, “We create our own reality.”
Now, though indignation is the natural response to the latest example of American exceptionalism, indignation is the enemy of curiosity. For the ordinary history of specific events produces explanations, but only curiosity about the complete history of a nation produces a verdict.
In the instance, we may start with the declaration of independence, whereby all men are created equal, less the slaves because they were not human, the Indians because they were not Europeans, and the poor because they were not rich.
Then, in our curious search, we can add as reminders,
— The Shay rebellion that drowned in blood those who had actually fought the battles of the revolution and were made paupers after the continental dollar was declared worthless.
–The War of 1812, unsuccessful but intended to bring democracy to Canada by invading and annexing it.
— The extermination of the Indian nation.
— The Mexican war to annex the West (and Mexico, were it not that Mexico had abolished slavery and re-introducing it was deemed too difficult).
— The civil war begun to prevent a secession, but in the middle of which it was discovered that the war was fought to abolish slavery.
— The war against Spain to annex Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, justified by the false-flag attack on the steamship Maine.
— The bankers’ war, that is the US participation in WW1 against Germany, a nation that had absolutely no claim against the US, nor ever even hinted at antagonistic postures.
— Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden**
— Korea and Vietnam
— Guatemala, Nicaragua, Granada, Panama, Afghanistan.
— Since the 80s, the “fourth generation” warfare, launched in Yugoslavia, but whose formal baptism was 9/11, the mother of all false-flags.
— The destruction of Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and (for all intents and purposes) of Syria
— The creation of ISIS, the first and best Orwellian enemy in human history
— etc.
History’s verdict declares itself. Even so, we may recover our cool when we will succeed in understanding the automatism with which the laws of the social machine operate.
When we will understand which selection and force-training the actors of the current crimes were subjected to. For the Bushes, the Clintons, the Obamas and the Trumps are the mechanical product of a collective operation begun long ago.
We may then, perhaps, cease to weigh the social product (American actions and policies) with the same scale with which we measure individual beings.
Then we will realize that we must understand more than we know already or think necessary to know. To understand in order to deplore, though maybe not to curse. A tall order when witnessing the events as they unfold.
For there is an unruly part of the soul, which refuses to heed all counsels and considerations – in the instance, to deplore but not to curse. It observes the crimes engineered by the current wretched few, and can hardly refrain from cursing.
They are crimes committed in the name of an abstract fiction called “the people.” For let there be no illusion – the people are great until they remain an abstraction. But the concrete individual, real though contributing to the abstraction, is shit.
Which brings to mind the reaction of a character in the Tempest, when he meets with the monster Caliban, “I do smell all horse-piss; at which my nose is in great indignation.”
Except that here we are not dealing with an individual Caliban-style monster, but with the evil soul of evil humans, pretending to represent the will of an abstract “people.”
*** The use of aviation as a means to provoke terror was first foretold during World War I by an Italian general. But another school of thought eventually prevailed – namely that fighter planes would neutralize the large and less maneuverable bombers.
This had a historically important consequence. The Americans and the British built their air-force based on bombers rather than on fighter planes. With the expressed purpose (at least in the mind of Churchill), to use them both for tactical bombing and for the mass elimination of people – “to depress their morale” were the terms used. Those interested may watch the (2) videos on the destruction of Dresden, carried out two months before the end of WW2, destruction that killed 135,000 civilians, almost twice as many as at Hiroshima (https://youtu.be/_V8aV5l5f9k part 1 and https://youtu.be/0BQL9nkr_SM part 2).
Whereas the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese and the Russians were late in building large bombers with extended range. They only had small bombers, for tactical short-range use. Germany was too late in building a large bomber. When they finally did, it was not used for military purposes.
Thanks to an Italian journalist I am also reminded of an episode at the end of WW2. Near Milan there is a monument to the martyr children of a little town named Gorla.
The allied commander of the raid had made a mistake in calculating the route, and found himself off course, with the bombs still in the bay. Rather than waiting to drop them when he was at sea, or in a non-populated area, he dropped them on the little town, hitting an elementary school and killing 184 children.
Graphics. Courtesy of Vincenzo Apicella