Obama urges UK to stay in EU for ‘ world influence’

In a wide-ranging television interview, President Barack Obama has urged Britain to stay in the European Union in order to have influence on the world stage. He also admitted US gun laws were his “biggest frustration.”

Speaking to the UK’s BBC correspondent in Washington, US President Barack Obama said Britain must remain in the European Union to maintain its global influence. In previous interviews Obama has avoided taking a stance on such issues.

“Having the UK in the EU gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union, and is part of the cornerstone of the institutions built after (the second world war) that has made the world safer and more prosperous,” Obama said. “We want to make sure that the United Kingdom continues to have that influence,” he added.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is following up on an election pledge to negotiate with the EU for improved terms for Britain, ad then to hold a referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017.

Obama said that Britain was the US’ “best partner” because of its willingness to project power beyond its “immediate self-interests to make this a more orderly, safer world.”

US gun laws

Obama admitted that failure to pass “common sense gun safety laws” was the greatest frustration of his presidency.

“If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands,” he commented.

“For us not to be able to resolve that issue has been something that is distressing,” Obama said.

While he has pressed for stricter gun control during his presidency, Obama has been unable to make any significant changes to the laws due to opposition in Congress.

Source: Deutsche Welle

Blatter understands New World Order

Fifa boss understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much, writes Simon Kuper in the FT.

Blatter knows which of the soccer nations have money, and that is why he will be re-elected.

In the 19th century, it was the British, later Americans, then Russians and currently Gulf Arabs.

That’s why on Friday he will be re-elected to his fifth term as president of Fifa, the corrupt global football authority. Western countries rightly decry Blatter. However, we ought to recognise his genius. This 79-year-old understood very early that there’s a new world order in which westerners don’t matter much.

I only realised how deluded most of us westerners were on December 2 2010. That afternoon Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) chose Russia to host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar to stage the 2022 tournament. I had followed the bidding campaigns for years. I had had many off-the-record conversations with western bidders. A few had predicted Russia’s victory. Almost nobody foresaw Qatar’s.

Writing in the Financial Times before the vote, I chastised bookmakers William Hill for making Qatar runaway favourites. Hadn’t Fifa’s own evaluation report called Qatar’s extreme heat “a potential health risk for players, officials, the Fifa family and spectators”? I tipped Russia and the US to win. I was wrong. So were almost all other western observers. Theo van Seggelen, president of the international footballers’ trade union Fifpro, says: “For me — and I was reasonably close to the fire — the vote was a complete surprise.”

It turned out that Fifa cared only about naked power and money. In addition, more than a third of Exco’s 24 members were accused of corruption linked to the vote. Several resigned from football. Jérôme Valcke, Fifa’s secretary-general, wrote in a leaked memo that Qatar “bought” the World Cup. (He later said he’d been misinterpreted.) Last year The Sunday Times alleged that a Qatari, Mohamed bin Hammam, made payments totalling $5m to win support for Qatar’s bid.

Western countries, hopping mad to lose the World Cups, have cried “corruption!” But most non-western participants dismiss them (with some justification) as hypocritical, whining losers. Richard Attias, a French communications consultant who works with Qatar, told me: “Only a microcosm is interested in how World Cups are attributed — a very British microcosm.”

Fifa’s vote presciently recognised the geopolitical rise of Qatar and Russia. Fifteen days after the vote, a Tunisian fruit seller set himself on fire, and north Africans rose in revolt. Qatar, “flush with the success of winning the rights to host the . . . World Cup and with its international recognition soaring as a result,” then helped spark the Arab spring, writes Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. Qatar funded Islamists across north Africa, and helped unseat Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. We live in a new world order.

It suits Blatter. Coming from a small country, he is skilled at accommodating big power brokers.

Moreover, he thinks like them: Blatter, too, likes legal immunity, motorcades on empty highways, and respectful underlings. The central American football officials who recently compared him with Jesus and Nelson Mandela presumably knew the comparisons were absurd. But the absurdity simply emphasised their loyalty.

Western countries are powerless to change Fifa. They could boycott the World Cup but, characteristically, they won’t make sacrifices for their principles.

Now some westerners are complaining about Blatter’s unfair advantages over any opponent in Friday’s vote. Many national football associations fear their supposedly secret ballots won’t stay secret.

Charlize and a Newer World Order

A new world order of warrior earth-mothers?

Imperator Furiosa, Charlize Theron is the “strong woman” figure in the latest Mad Max reboot. Mad Max, Fury Road opened to a box office success, and is undeniably a feat of technical and choreographic brilliance, but there are also deeper messages being conveyed that should be elucidated, especially the notions of the commodification and control of resources.

All aspects of life are portrayed as a controlled resource market. Even sex, which is more recreational in our day, is here presented as a crucial means for the furtherance of bloodlines. Breeding and eugenics are key, as those in control understand a chemically lobotomized populace with no access to necessary resources are unable to continue into the future.

Fury Road is therefore a representation of a nominally Christian redemptive history, yet the outcome is inverted. Instead of a divine Savior who rescues man as the Promised Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3), Max is a purely human savior as Thunderdome portrayed. The seeds of life that will continue into the future do not rest on the “lie of hope,” but on fixing the present world through technology.

In essence, Fury Road is an alchemical presentation of the royal deception, rather than the royal art, where more often than not, in history we do find the polis co-opting religion for the purposes of human control.

The ultimate form of control is that of breeding, and determining whose seed will continue into the future, and through the new Max revolution with his feminine counterpart Furiosa, the implication is that by opposing the older patriarchal forms of power with their dialectical opposite, the “clans of the mothers,” hope can return.

Let’s be realistic here – if the older patriarchal forms of religion are lies, as the film’s narrative suggests, then we are to believe the introduction of a feminine, Gaia-based egalitarian communist order is somehow workable and real?

Is erecting a feminine-based order with the dismissal of Joe’s Golgotha plausible? Nothing is more absurd, nonsensical and mad.

Source: Jay’s analysis

Heroin addict Angelina Jolie’s latest bizarre op

Angelina Jolie, an alleged a heroin addict, said she has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to avoid the risk of ovarian cancer.

Her latest bizarre announcement in a New York Times column printed on Tuesday came nearly two years after the rights campaigner and mother-of-six had a double mastectomy after learning she had also inherited a risk of breast cancer.

Jolie’s earlier announcement of undergoing the double mastectomy (surgically removing both breasts) even though she had no breast cancer might not have been the innocent, spontaneous, “heroic choice” that has been portrayed in the mainstream media.

Some even claim she never had the actual operation, but is promoting androgyny by pretending to have had her breasts removed.

According to Natural News the latest operation is all part of well-timed PR campaign that has been planned for months and just happens to coincide with the upcoming US Supreme Court decision on the viability of the BRCA1 patent.

It caused women to rush out and seek BRCA1 gene testing procedures. Because of this patent, BRCA1 tests can cost $3,000 – $4,000 each. The testing alone is a multi-billion-dollar market, but only if the patent is upheld in an upcoming Supreme Court decision.

It caused the stock price of Myriad Genetics (MYGN) to skyrocket to a 52-week high. “Myriad’s stock closed up 3% Tuesday, following the publication of the New York Times op-ed,” wrote marketwatch.com.

It drove public opinion to influence the US Supreme Court decision to rule in favor of corporate ownership of human genes, an even bigger nightmare than the corporate ownership of genetically modified fruits and vegetables.

Jolie, 39, said she had gone public with her decision to tell other women about the options available to them. But by promoting DNA tests, Jolie is aiding Big Brother to map more DNA, and to pay for the “privilege”.

Promoting the removal of healthy ovaries also seems like an easy way to control population growth.

Despite being a drug addict, she is Goodwill Ambassador to the UN and member of CFR, and using her profile as mother to a malnourished multicultural brood, to promote NATO’s genocidal ‘humanitarian intervention’ war doctrine.

Jolie’s directorial debut, In the land of Blood and Honey, justified NATO’s butchery in Bosnia during the 1990s, and Jolie even specifically refered to Syria in her Al Jazeera interview. She put forth a string of utterly hollow gripes about the inactivity of the ‘international community’ as civilians suffer and die but with her selective morality she did not once mention Libya.

“I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer,'” the fashionably anorexic junky wrote, who likes to carry the blood of people on necklaces around her neck.

The procedure had triggered menopause, she added. “I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes. But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared.”

The Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate vs BRICS

By Peter Koenig

Ever since the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) expressed their unison through the formation of a joint Development Bank – Durban, South Africa on 27 March 2013 – the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate attempted to divide them. The BRICS constitute some 45% of the world population and close to 30% of global GDP. The BRICS idea is to issue a joint alternative currency, fully detached from the US dollar and its greed economy.

In the meantime a number of other countries would like to join the BRICS, including Argentina, Venezuela, Iran, Mongolia, Malaysia and others, which would result in about one third of the world’s economic output and half of the global inhabitants.

This gives the BRICS a profile of strength surpassing that of the United States and Europe together. China alone is not only already the world’s largest economy, China is also dominating the Asian market of some 4.2 billion people, 60% of the world populations and a combined GDP of about US$ 20 trillion, equivalent to about US$ 25 trillion, when comparing purchasing power with the dollar based US economy of about US$ 17 trillion. Asia registered an average growth rate of almost 8% over the past few years, compared to that of the western world, hovering around 1%.

There is no need for the BRICS to fear US interference – divide to rein – if they are able to solidify their union with solidarity – political and monetary solidarity, as well as common trade policies – and if they have the political will to decouple their economies from the dollar – which is key for the BRICS success.

Sir Obama – here also called the western caliphate – has multiple self-assumed capacities. He creates new caliphates at his service, like the ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Syria); then he bombs them making the world believe they are enemies, condones their beheading of western journalists and clandestinely funds their Middle East crusade for energy and world dominance, a crusade the ISIS are carrying out for the supreme caliphate in the White House.

Washington’s caliphate also has a small army of ‘martyr nations’ fighting (and suffering) for him, like the 28 members of the European Union, led (sic) by a like-minded group of Washington-submissive neoliberal Zionist- Christian puppets. They do what Washington says. Most of them are also pro-forma members of the White House caliphate-driven worldwide war machine, called NATO, and ape the war cries of (the) Fogh (of war) Rasmussen, who is Obama’s master puppet in Europe.

Of course, the caliphate is always ready with sanctions for those who don’t behave, especially sanctions which backfire on others. The latest sanctions on Russia follow a series of billion dollar propaganda of lies and outright falsehoods, demonizing Vladimir Putin and Russia. Interestingly the ‘sanctions’ imposed on Russia by Washington’s supreme warrior – and submissively carried out by his European minions, have been retaliated by Russia by blocking most of agro-trading with Europe, leaving European farmers with rotting vegetables and fruit – billion dollar losses, estimated at a multiple of the ‘sanctions’ costs to Russia.

Neoliberals are short-sighted. They are overwhelmed by greed, instant gratification, and a dream of Full Spectrum Dominance, meaning controlling the world’s resources, money and people. But their caliphate empire is doomed, since lies and deceptions work some of the time with some of the people, but not all the time with all of the people. In fact, the tide is shifting – which is the silver lining of the dark cloud shed by the monstrous, murderous western war machine. The larger of the European minions, Germany and France, and some of the newer ones, Poland, Hungary the Czech Republic, to name but a few, become doubting and hesitating on the way of sanctions. They start feeling the hurt.

The Zionist Anglo-Saxon caliphate needs conflicts and wars in order to survive. Its economy is based on producing weapons and on destruction. World peace would make it collapse.

To attain their objective, the western caliphate is using a thousands-of-year-old wisdom – dividing to rein. By a multi-billion dollar driven worldwide propaganda and lie campaign, Obama and his European bootlickers first confuse the people of nations and continents, distort their common sense, then they drive a wedge between them, between allies, neighbors, common cultures, families – turning friends into foes.

Remember, the dollar is fiat money, not worth the paper it’s printed on. It is produced at will and is called Quantitative Easing (QE), a conveniently confusing euphemism for creating debt held as monetary reserves by nations’ treasuries around the globe.

The same happens with funding of the eternal war machine. Printing money at will has become a pastime justifying wars, mass killings for conquering the world’s resources and people. It will last as long as the rest of the world permits it. It’s already a fading phenomenon. Ten to fifteen years ago close to 90% of the world’s reserves were denominated in US dollars. Today that figure has shrunk to about 60%.

Dividing to rein is precisely what the western caliphate intends to do with the BRICS. Starting with Brazil, Washington attempts through an ugly smear campaign to slander Brazil’s leader, Dilma Rousseff and to defame Brazil’s economy. The former is accused of corruption and nepotism and Brazil’s economy is admonished for runaway private debt that supposedly stands at 80% of GDP. However, the smear-campaigners do not explain that thanks to the increase in private debt Brazil’s GDP has grown by 30% in the last decade. They don’t explain either that Brazil’s foreign debt to GDP ratio stands at less than 57%, compared with that of the US of almost 101.5% and of Germany’s, 82%.

In short, Brazil is doing well. But the presstitute media propaganda masters have managed to lower President Rousseff’s popularity to the point where her re-election in the forthcoming ballot is questionable. Precisely what the Washington caliphate wants.

Imagine an economy-based real contest between the western caliphate and the BRICS. With a GDP of about 30% of the world’s economic output, covering almost 50% of the globe’s population, the BRICS have an average debt to GDP ratio of less than 45 % (2014 estimates) – Brazil (56.8%), Russia (13.4%) India (67.7%), China (22.4%), South Africa (46.1%) – compared to that of the US (101.5%) and of the Eurozone (92.6%).

It is clear that the BRICS have nothing to fear from the western caliphate – and its possible slew of sanctions. However – and this is key – the western Zionist-Anglo-Saxon empire controls the current western monetary system. The FED, Wall Street, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF, an extension of the US Treasury and the FED, as well as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank of central banks, the privately owned chief manipulator of gold and currencies – hold the western economies hostage. They finance the US/NATO war machine. The western Zionist-Anglo-Saxon controlled financial system has the same objective of Full Spectrum Dominance, as does the supreme caliphate and assassin-in-chief, Obama, who currently serves the western arms manufacturing and banking oligarchy.

It is therefore high time that the BRICS proceed to reality with their intended alternative currency, completely detached from the dollar and the Wall Street clearing system. The economic viability of such an alternative system stands about 2 to 3 times higher than that of the UD dollar.

An interim measure to stop the western bulldozer may be necessary. Russia and China and a number of other countries have already agreed to trade in their respective currencies and, in particular, to trade hydrocarbons in non-dollar denominated moneys, a measure that will considerably lower demand for the dollar, hence, further lower the dollars viability as a reserve currency. Russia and China are poised to issue a common currency, a basket of currencies that may be joined by other countries willing to detach themselves from the fangs of the western abusive monetary caliphate.

On 3 and 4 September, NATO, the military arm of the western caliphate met in Wales, UK – to discuss its raison d’être. By NATO’s own admission, this was the most important meeting since the collapse of the Soviet Union, attended by 60 heads of state, including the 28 NATO members. As expected the focus of the meeting was to demonize Russia, a key member of the BRICS, with lies and slanders that know hardly any competition in the world of deception. The final briefing report is so full of nonsense and unproven accusations – similar to those continuously aped by Fogh Rasmussen – that Russia doesn’t even need to counter them. The NATO declarations drown in their own lies and deceptions.

It is clear, after 65 years of existence and chaotic disasters all over the world, NATO needs a new identity, a new Cold War, or, better even, a new direct war with Russia – for ‘the security’ of Europe. Therefore, the caliphate Obama, in hopefully one of his last unabashed moves, is requesting that Europe ups its ante – that the European members contribute at least 2% of their GDP to NATO – and let the military industrial complex move more weapons into the European NATO bases. In other words, making Europe more vulnerable to Russian defense attacks, putting the peoples of Europe once again in the firing line. The European leaders (sic) seem to be oblivious to such dangers.

However, there is hope. As said by Pepe Escobar, “The real deal this September is not NATO. It’s the SCO’s summit. Expect the proverbial tectonic shifts of geopolitical plaques in the upcoming meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a shift as far-reaching as when the Ottoman Empire failed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. On the initiative of Russia and China, at the SCO summit, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia will be invited to become permanent members.”

The SCO summit could be the first step towards a new world order – not the notorious “One World Order” proclaimed by the empire of the Zionist-Anglo-Saxon caliphate – but a new direction of the world, away from an usurious, abusive financial and monetary system, away from Washington’s objective of Full Spectrum Dominance – towards a new world of sovereign states.

Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.

Kiev thugs set fire to Odessa building killing 31

odessaAt least 31 anti-government activists have died in a fire at Odessa’s Trade Unions House. Some burned to death, while others suffocated or jumped out of windows, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry reported. The building was set ablaze by pro-Kiev radicals.

Some 40 people were also injured in the fire, the official statement said.

A total of 37 people have died in Odessa violence on Friday and almost 200 others have sustained injuries, including 22 police officers, Interior Ministry reported. Twenty-five people remain in critical condition, according to Odessa City Council.

Police detained over 130 people following Friday’s bloody clashes and opened up 10 criminal investigations with charges including premeditated murder and violence against law enforcement officers.

According to the ministry, the Friday standoff on Odessa included “anti-Maidan” activists on one side and “football fans” from Odessa and Kharkov, as well as “euro-Maidan” activists, on the other. A criminal case on the charges of mass unrest has been opened.

The Trade Unions House was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals after they surrounded and destroyed the tent camp of anti-government activists that stood in front of the building on Odessa’s Kulikovo Field Square. It was torched in a storming attempt after some of the anti-Maidan activists rallying in the square barricaded themselves inside the building.

The majority of the victims were found on the floors of the Trade Unions House having apparently burned to death or suffocated from smoke. Others jumped out of the building’s windows, according to police.

Earlier reports of the clashes in Odessa said that both sides used Molotov cocktails and, allegedly, gunfire. Part of the pro-Maidan activists reportedly bore insignia of the radical Right Sector group.

A live video stream from inside the building showed disturbing scenes of supposedly dead bodies lying around the rooms with thick smoke in the air and blood stains on the floor.

Most of the bodies filmed had St. George ribbons attached to their clothes, distinguishing the victims as pro-Russian or anti-Kiev activists.

The person filming said he counted up to 25 dead bodies on the upper floors alone.

As the house was engulfed in flames, photos posted on Twitter showed people hanging out of windows and sitting on windowsills of several floors, possibly preparing to jump. Reports claimed that those who jumped and survived were surrounded and beaten by football ultras and the Right Sector.

The riot police lines standing beside the building were apparently doing nothing to prevent the violence, the photos showed. Police officers reportedly said they could not do anything because they were “unarmed.”

Activists trapped on the roof of the besieged Trade Unions House building have been rescued and taken to a police station, the self-proclaimed head of the Republic of Odessa told Rossiya 24.

One of the activist trapped there told RT by phone earlier that up 50 people were there with him, including women.

As people were dying in the burning building, some of the pro-Kiev activists jeered on Twitter that “Colorado beetles are being roasted up in Odessa,” using a derogatory term for pro-Russian activists wearing St. George’s ribbons. Few media outlets followed the developing situation, with thousands of people taking to live streams to see the events unfolding.

However, just as the first official death toll emerged, some Western media and leaders rushed to seemingly downplay the role of pro-Kiev activists in the incident and to blame their rivals instead.

“More than 40 people were killed in Odessa on Friday, most caught in a building set on fire after pro-Russian activists and supporters of Ukrainian unity fought running battles across the southern port city,” Reuters wrote.

“Horrible with at least 38 dead in Odessa. Seems to have started with pro-Russian attempt to get control of buildings. Violence must stop!” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter. Earlier, Bildt blamed “pro-Russian thugs” for the street violence in Odessa.

Source: RT

How to join the New World Order

nwo2Investigative reporter Greg Palast has documented a method that is part of a tried and tested formula that the IMF has used time and time again to absorb nations into the new world order.

In April 2001, Palast obtained leaked World Bank documents that outlined a four step process on how to loot nations of their wealth and infrastructure, placing control of resources into the hands of the banking elite.

One of the final steps of the process, the “IMF riot,” detailed how the elite would plan for mass civil unrest ahead of time that would have the effect of scaring off investors and causing government bankruptcies.

“This economic arson has its bright side – for foreigners, who can then pick off remaining assets at fire sale prices,” writes Palast, adding, “A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers but the clear winners seem to be the western banks and US Treasury.”

In other words, the banking elite creates the very economic environment – soaring interest rates, spiraling food prices, poverty, lower standards of living – that precipitates civil unrest – and then like a vulture swoops down to devour what remains of the country’s assets on the cheap.

Just as the US State Department foresaw the Arab Spring, with some of the same people involved in the Euromaidan movement training future Arab Spring leaders how to effectively use Twitter and Facebook years before the protests began, the Ukraine uprising was also entirely predictable.

The elite is so successful at hijacking supposedly grass roots revolts and turning them into managed acts of regime change because mass civil unrest is mathematically predictable.

As Dilip D’Souza explains, “There’s mathematical research that suggests a link between food prices and the occurrence of riots. And this research has pretty accurately predicted the unrest we’ve seen in so many corners of the globe.”

Research has confirmed that when the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s food price index (FPI) rises above 210, unrest quickly follows in the areas of the world most affected. The most recent three countries to suffer food price hikes? Thailand, Venezuela and Ukraine.

Armed with this foresight, this is how global bodies like the IMF, the US State Department and the menagerie of western NGOs that fuel or hijack uprisings around the globe are able to seize control of the outcome.
With the IMF set to sink its teeth into yet another sovereign nation, even as Russia attempts to stir up a counter-revolution, Euromaidan protesters would do well to read up on the history of nations who sell their soul to globalist debt sharks and end up paying a heavier price than anyone could imagine.

Source: prisonplanet.com

The great ‘non-story’ of Iraq

iraq2By Neil Clark

Another day and yet more death and destruction in the Middle East country.

The latest violence has killed at least 54 people and injured over 100 others. In July, over 1,000 people were killed and over 2,300 wounded.

You probably think I’m talking about Syria. But I’m not. I’m talking about Iraq. The country that George W. Bush and Tony Blair ‘liberated’ in 2003. The western military intervention was, we were told, going to usher in a wonderful era of democracy, freedom and human rights. Instead, it has ushered in an appalling decade-long blood-fest, with ordinary Iraqis having to endure a living nightmare of life in what has become one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

Rather like Sherlock Holmes’ The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the silence of pro-war commentators and politicians when it comes to the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq is most revealing.

The same elite figures in the West who couldn’t stop writing or talking about Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, telling us what a terrible threat Saddam Hussein’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were to us all, and how we needed to go to war with Iraq not only to disarm its evil dictator but to ‘liberate’ its people, are now silent in the light of the continuing bloodshed and havoc that the illegal invasion caused. In the run up to the invasion of March 2003, you couldn’t switch on a television news program in Britain or America without seeing a neo-con or ‘liberal interventionist’ obsessing about Iraq. In the lead-up to war, these great ‘humanitarians’ feigned concern for the plight of Iraqis living under Saddam’s dictatorship – but today show little or no concern for the plight of Iraqis being blown to pieces by bombs on a regular, almost daily basis. There are no calls from the ‘usual suspects’ for a Western ‘humanitarian’ intervention to stop the killing in Iraq. For these serial interventionists, Iraq, post-invasion, has become the greatest ‘non-story’ of the modern era. Instead, the same people who couldn’t stop talking about Iraq in 2002-2003 now can’t stop talking about Syria – feigning concern over the plight of Syrians in the same way they shed crocodile tears over Iraqis in early 2003.

It’s interesting that when it comes to casualty tolls, pro-war politicians can tell us exactly how many people have died in Syria since the violence started there in 2011, (and of course for them, all the deaths are the personal responsibility of President Assad), whereas when it comes to Iraq and the number of people who have been killed there since March 2003, there’s a great deal more vagueness. “We don’t do body counts on other people” Donald Rumsfeld famously declared in November 2003. The Iraqis killed since March 2003 (and casualty figures vary from around 174,000 to well over one million) are, for our political elite, ‘non-people.’ In 2013, it’s only dead Syrians (and Syrians whose deaths can be blamed on Syrian government forces) that matter – not dead Iraqis.

Because Iraq is deemed a ’non-story’ and our leaders never talk about the situation there, it’s no surprise to see that public perceptions of the death toll are way below even the most conservative estimates. Sixty-six percent of Britons in a poll earlier this year estimated that 20,000 or fewer Iraqis had died since the invasion of 2003. Donald Rumsfeld would no doubt be delighted to hear that.

If they had any sense of shame, the people who have destroyed Iraq would at least have had the grace to retire from public life. But neo-cons and liberal imperialists don’t do shame or remorse. The same bunch of ’humanitarian’ interventionists and hawks who urged the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have spent the last two years propagandizing for an attack on Syria. These manic warmongers would rather we ‘move on’ from Iraq to focus on the next Middle Eastern country on their hit list. But we must never ’move on’ from Iraq until those who destroyed the country are put in the dock. The chaos and bloodshed we see in Iraq today is a direct consequence of the destabilizing and destructive neo-con policies of the US and Britain and those responsible for ‘the supreme international crime’ of waging a war of aggression against a sovereign state must be held to account for the enormous amount of human misery they have caused.