5 Responses to “Protect Sirisena from Assassination Attempts for the Good Name of Sri Lanka and Rulers”

1. Vimutti Says:
   January 4th, 2015 at 4:55 am

   Calm down, Dilrook – Maithripala’s Modi-style vest is more than a fashion statement, more than a ‘trust me’ signal to the Tamils, more than an attempt to re-create a Modi-style anti-government imagery – it is KEVLAR (Google: “kevlar vest”)

2. Ananda-USA Says:
   January 4th, 2015 at 5:38 am

   Hey Dilrook,

   Sirisena should be given police protection by the GOSL, at least until the end of the election at least!

   Gunning down one’s own “Pambaya” to create a PRETEXT for external interference is a COPYBOOK CIA tactic!

   There are ALREADY such incitements happening in Sri Lanka on the eve of the election, which their “democracy” propagandists exploit to the maximum!

   Aiyo, Sirisena … what have you done!

3. Christie Says:
   January 4th, 2015 at 6:52 am

   “Sri Lanka’s image and the UNHRC”. Who cares?

4. Nalliah Thayabharan Says:
   January 4th, 2015 at 9:45 am

   The UN based the whole premise for its Security Council Resolution 1973 for Libya on reports from western-backed Libyan rebels and the NTC. Their wild claims included – unbelievably and highly reported by the western media – that Gaddafi led jet attacks on his own people, and killed more than 6,000 unarmed protester cum civilians in the run up to NATO intervention. This jet claim was needed as a key component in order to get a No Fly Zone included in resolution 1973. During the run-up to their vote on the matter, no due diligence was carried out by any of the UN member states, which stands to reason, why the whole UN Libyan affair – from beginning to end, was planned and executed as a political operation – hardly of any humanitarian concern. And like clockwork, the same patterns are emerging to sway western public opinion, against President Assad and his Syrian government. It seems that consumers of the press in the west are being force fed another endless diet of false claims designed to sway public opinion in favor of military action by NATO, or NATO-backed allies in Syria, and later in Iran.

   If the Arab Spring proved anything it was that the will of the people can prevail to topple age long regimes. So, why is Bashar al-Assad, fours since the uprising began still in power? Well, the clue lies in the fact that the ‘people’ of Tunisia and Egypt galvanized to oust their leaders because they wanted regime change. In Syria however, the legitimate grievances the people may of have had against the regime were capitalized on by Syria’s enemies who continue to mercilessly pursue their political agenda.

   The western and Gulf media have consistently portrayed the Syrian president and his army as being total monsters, carrying out heinous crimes against their people. The Gulf media have chosen to depict the conflict in terms of a Sunni –Shia war whereby the minority Alawite sect rules the people, particularly the Sunnis with an iron fist. There’s one major problem with this – Bashar al Assad’s genuine popularity at home. If the Syrian people truly wanted to depose of their president they are truly sufficient in numbers to do so. The fact is that the anti-Bashar propaganda machine is being debunked and this is causing a PR problem for the west and their Gulf acolytes.

   In 2012 Reuters, the Guardian and the Time magazine reported that three armed Islamists from the Free Syrian Army conceded that the president enjoys 70% support from the people of Syria. They told the media: “all of them, are loyal to the criminal Bashar, they inform on us; or they they are all informers…they hate us. They blame us for the destruction”. The problem is Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood do hate the man and the west have relied on MB associated sourced to lend credence to Assad the boogeyman.

   It turns out that the west’s ‘moderate rebels’ have been responsible for most of the atrocities that have taken place in Syria. The UN, Human Rights Watch and the propaganda machine have blamed them on the government and the army.

   Let’s go back to start in 2011, the government was criticized for using excessive force against the protesters in Dera, the cradle of the revolution. Anwar el-Eshki, a Saudi official told the BBC in unequivocal terms that his country armed the Islamists taking part in those protests. They then started sniping from rooftops and took cover among the civilian protesters. Yes, the force used to quell them was strong but Assad, who has always emphasized the safety of civilians sacked the mayor of Dera for this.

   By now you may be thinking that armed opposition members taking cover in the protests recklessly endangered the lives of innocents; well, you’ve not heard anything yet!

   Pledging to support and arm the moderate rebels who were portrayed as being more pious than having sectarian or Islamist ambitions was all very wrong.
   The largest Free Syrian Army brigade, Farouk who were promoted as the poster boys of the revolution took over parts of Homs. They did so, with the slogan: ‘Alawis to the grave, Christians to Beirut’. Like all Islamists they blew the hospital chanting Allahu Akhbar because the hospital was treating Syrian soldiers. The churches firmly placed the blame of the ethnic cleansing of more than 50,000 Christians on Farouk. Journalists have since revealed that Farouk members were Salafists, armed and funded by Saudi Arabia.

   Just days before a UN Security Council meeting was to be held to discuss intervention in Syria – a horrible massacre took place – killing 100 civilians in Houla. Immediately, the propaganda machine was ablaze with anti-Syrian rhetoric, blaming the government and the army. Again, journalists and the Mother Superior of a Monastery all interviewed survivors, who said that Farouk had overwhelmed the on duty army officers and sought to kill pro-government and Alawi families, and some Sunnis who had participated in the elections.

   A year later an independent report showed how the UN Houla investigation was mired by the Islamists. As they had relied on them for witness accounts and ignored the wider witnesses who contradicted their story. Basically, they tried to cover up a heinous crime to place the blame on the government when this clearly wasn’t the case.

   The false accusations didn’t end there and neither did the astounding hypocrisy. The Syrian government has come under serious criticism for its indiscriminate shelling of rebel held areas. This has inevitably led to the unfortunate deaths of innocent civilians. In the case of Qusayr, a town that was liberated by the Syrian Arab Army being occupied by Farouk and other Islamist fighters, it was a failed negotiation that led to the military onslaught. Prior to the intervention the army dropped notices requesting that the civilians leave the area. It’s reported that the rebels deliberately prevented the civilians from leaving, claiming that they had no place to go.

   The US was quick to rebuke the government for their evacuation notices citing deliberate displacement of civilians. But, where was this outspoken level of condemnation when the Israelis in their ‘collective punishment campaign’ this summer bombed Gaza to smithereens? Gazans received abrupt text messages telling them to leave as their houses were going to be destroyed. Where were the Gazans supposed to go? Considering the all-out siege of land, sea and air continues. The double standards are shocking.

   The most controversial allegation and the most pivotal in accruing public opinion at critical mass in favor of the rebels came in 2013. When the government was accused of chemical warfare. The rebels were quick to post images of dead children online and once again falsely accusing the government of a massacre. The calls for military intervention were fierce as now the west and the enemies of Assad thought they had the green light intervene on humanitarian grounds. They were bitterly disappointed when Russia and China vetoed at the UN. When the incident took place the government insisted that UN inspectors visit the country to see first-hand that their stockpile of chemicals had never been used.

   It soon emerged that the residents of East Ghouta, where the attack took place, pinned the blame of the rebels, who in this case were armed by the Saudi Prince Bandar to carry out the atrocity. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, poured scorn all over the accusations against the government. He said, at the time that the evidence had “been cherry picked…to justify a strike against Assad”. The macabre truth is that Syria is another domino in the neo-conservative mission to destabilize the country on ethnic grounds. The Islamists are once again being used as proxies to do so.

   Hillary Clinton, to worldwide gales of laughter, called Vladimir Putin “Hitler” for bloodlessly “invading” and integrating Crimea into Russia (Russia already had thousands of troops in Crimea legally, and was allowed thousands more legally, under security agreement with Crimea, and was called upon for help by the elected president of Ukraine).
   Clinton’s statements were propaganda because they hid:
   ·There were actual Nazis and Hitlerites involved in the situation, and they were backed by the USA, not Russia. The USA has a long history of supporting and collaborating with Nazis, including ones from these same Ukrainian Hitlerite traditions.
   ·Clinton’s staggering record of support for the most extreme crimes, including illegal annexation.
   · When Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain in 2011 to help Bahrain violently crush peaceful protests, the US supported the invasion because the US adamantly and forcefully opposes democracy in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Hillary Clinton of course did not refer to the Saudi and Bahraini dictators as Hitlerites, even though the Saudis invaded and carried out mass violence, and the Bahrainis are systematically torturing children as part of their repression, according to Amnesty International. Instead, the Obama regime bolstered the Saudi Arabian theocratic despots by sending them the biggest shipment of lethal weaponry in US history. That Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive was no deterrent, as Saudi Arabia is the USA’s most important oil ally.

   The Obama regime overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected leader in February 2014 in a brazen act of military aggression against Russia. Ever since 1783, Russia’s core national security asset, its Black Sea Fleet, was stationed in Crimea, but Obama’s Ukrainian coup-Government wanted to kick them out (and this is one of the reasons why Obama perpetrated his coup). The aggression here was entirely on the American side. Russia wasn’t responding only in order to protect Crimeans; Russia was especially responding in order to protect its core naval base.

   A US standard operating procedure is one of personal demonization of the leaders of countries designated as enemies. Once the label has been put on such a country, is that US media start to want to help, and they then start to amplify government propaganda, and self-censor by not reporting things that may shed a good light on such countries. It appears that the US are ill advised to demonize opposing leaders. One of the more troubling aspects of the American political discourse on foreign policy right now is a propensity for propaganda and deliberate and obvious lies that has become a permanent feature of its foreign policy announcements. We see a concerted effort by media and Washington to degrade their own capability to come to a reality based understanding of a situation and to make informed foreign policy decisions about it. One could see that already when the Bushmen leaked those stories on the Aluminium tubes to Judith Miller and then referred to this as evidence. “It is not just us, everybody is saying this – and you doubt it?” That was pervasive during the run up to the war. As a result, US congress and media were essentially talking about fiction when they debated the equally fictious question how great exactly a threat Saddam posed. That was no debate about reality. Indeed, by putting out their narrative, the Bushmen created their own virtual reality. But that didn’t change Iraq, or its demographics, its society or the fact that Saddam didn’t have WMD. What it did was to generate public support for the war against Iraq.

   The Obamaites act in much the same way when they blather about Ghouta being Assad’s handiwork, when it is by now pretty much clear that that was not the case.

   The corrosive effect all this has on the idea that policy ought to be debated openly in congress should be obvious. To put it pointedly: When half of the info is secret, and the other half nonsense, the resulting dysfunction should not surprise anybody. In that spirit, the authorization to use military force was enacted without the matter having been debated rationally at all.

   Of course, all that is not so if one asks the culprits: The messes today and their familiar prescriptions for how to deal with them reflect that sorry state of affairs.

   On one hand there are the self-pitying self-justifiers like Tony Blair, which can be summed up with very little exaggeration as follows: “Iraq went bust? Well, it is a very complicated situation, and, I have spent a lot time on this, you must know, and let me tell you: Things are hazy, and there are no easy solutions and who could have known what would happen. You are as surprised as I was. You cannot begin to understand how difficult this all was, and how heavy the burden of responsibility weighed on my shoulders! But in conclusion I have to tell you – whatever we did was perfectly right and we feel vindicated! I was so right – in fact I would do the same thing today, without hesitation!” The man knows no shame.

   And then there are the concrete heads: Sanctions don’t work? Then more sanctions will do! Cuba is a model case for how well that works. Iraq is an utter mess and the US were kicked out and now it is unstable? US support of rebels incited a civil war in Libya, which is now split into two feuding Jihadistans, and which spilled over into neighbouring Mali? Easy – find a good guy to support. US support of rebels incited a civil war in Syria, which bred ISIS? Just as easy – that is because the moderate rebels need still more support, and perhaps a bombing campaign! Of course, this time it’ll work!

   Einstein’s definition of insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” By that standard US foreign policy is insane.
   Regime change NOT a surrogate for having a foreign policy

   For whatever reason, there appears to be conviction abound in Washington that a goal of regime change is a surrogate for a policy. Regime change is an ideé fixe that persists and festers in US foreign policy brains like a malignant tumor that rots mental faculties.

   ,b> It’s as simplistic as it gets: Whenever a country is doing things the US doesn’t want it to do, and the leaders are not going to change their mind, the US is going through the motions: First these leaders are being scolded, but this may be skipped on occasion. When that doesn’t work, pressure is being applied – legal, extralegal, illegal – and when that country still persists in resisting, and since the US backing down is not ever an option, sanctions follow, and support for the opposition etc. If that doesn’t work there is the silver bullet – regime change.

   The idea must be that if only that troublesome leader in question goes away, everything will be peachy. The prime example would be Iraq. When one listens to US policy pronouncements there appears to be little concern for why foreign leaders act as they do. Their and their countries interests don’t matter. They are more like a stage for the US to act out their global reach and play to their domestic audiences.

   Just take for instance Syria and their alliance Hezbollah and Iran. Why is Syria allied with Iran? How important is this alliance for Syria? Never mind, the US want to roll back Iran, and Hezbollah (for the Israelis and the Saudis, one of the more peculiar alliances of our days), and Syria is with Iran, so Syria either falls in line or into chaos.

   What does the US offer as an alternative to Syria’s alliance with Iran and Hezbollah? Well, unconditional surrender of course. Compromise is not on the table. And in face of such a generous offer Assad won’t accept US terms? Just because doing so would probably mean death for him, his wife, kids, their extended family and persecution of religious minorities, including Christians, in Syria by Jihadi fanatics? What’s not to like!

   If one accepts the wisdom of John Kerry and the US media, the reasons why some foreign leaders just won’t fall in line remain mysterious, and are usually attributed to personal flaws rather than matters of policy – which in turn leads to ridiculous theses like: Putin wants to recreate the USSR, and he’s a thug – he was in the KGB! – that’s why he is being so nasty. It’s nothing that the US does and could stop doing. NATO’s creeping expansion towards Russia’s borders is just an accident.

   It’s not that US policies are just bad because they consistently don’t work (as the various Middle Eastern messes underline). They are often just plain dumb. Often it could and should have been quite clear from the onset that they would not work, usually because they ignore realities on the ground as a matter of course.

   The examples for that are plentiful – starting with seeing sympathy for Hashemite kings were there isn’t any, or not seeing holy places where there are many and (sadly) not ending with seeing moderates where there only is the Muslim pendant to the Khmer Rouge.

   As a result, in US policy prescriptions and the media descriptions there is that one bad guy, the demonized leader, and then there are the good guys. Like ISIS. On which folks like McCain say that, at least, they are not working with Iran.

   And because the newsies are not much brighter, the inglorious architects of these various messes are reinvited on TV again and again, and not shamed and marginalized as it would befit bumblers and fools and as accountability would suggest. Obviously, in America a record of delusion is no obstacle to be invited as an expert on TV.

   Ghaddafi’s fate is a good example. The US got him killed. Why? Because, regime change. Well, and because the US wanted to be seen vanguarding the Arab spring, lest it takes a direction the US couldn’t control. Or so they thought. Ambassador Stevens could tell a story about how well steering that one worked, if he was still alive. And then there was that surprising spillover into Mali. Oopsie.

   The US flirt with Iran suffers from the America being afflicted with bipolar disorder. It’s a near marvel that the Iranians put up with the way the US have conducted themselves, and IMO their persistence only shows how serious they are. Naturally, the Obamaites are split between those who support a deal and those who oppose it, with the latter probably seeing the negotiations as signs of Iranian weakness and are eagerly trying to poison the deal by moving the goalposts. Probably they think that there is a chance that this perceived weakness may, finally, lead to regime change.

   The US relation to Russia likewise suffers from US bipolarity. US-Russian cooperation prevented wear against Syria and Iran, and probably made that US-Iranian flirt possible in the first place. Russia helped the US resupply Afghanistan. They helped against Islamist terrorism. But despite all that, the quaint idea that good relations with Russia are sensible (not only because they have a lot of nukes) and useful was apparently shared only by some folks in the NSC, with the State Department and the rest of the administration remaining hostile, and Obama, ever hedging, presiding over his rivalling rivals, refusing to decide anything but in the last moment lest he needs to take sides in their infighting.

   The result? The US rewarded Putin for his help by kicking loose the mess in Ukraine. Why? Because, regime change. Because regime change has been the default setting for the last decade anyway. And probably nobody had a better idea. The odds are that, if anybody was supervising Nuland, he or she may have just liked what she did. A display of unadulterated brilliance.

   And again back to regime change and Russia: How on earth can anybody seriously believe that, if Putin went away, Russia would rediscover their inner Boris Yeltsin, pop up a barrel of Vodka and merrily revive the days of drunken bumdom, rapacious (i.e. Chodorchovskiite) looting and servile subordination to the US that greatly helped to wreck the country after the Cold War ended?

   The Russians have interests, and these interests won’t go away with Putin. Putin represents a Russian foreign policy consensus, which he admittedly helped shaping, but which is nevertheless a consensus. Regime change won’t change that. Neither will it undo NATO expansion, missile defense and continuing NATO encroachment to Russia’s borders. It also won’t undo rejection by the EU to let Russia participate in some form in Europe’s common market. And in particular it won’t undo US habitual and reflexive hostility towards a Russia with a modicum of assertiveness.

   Then there is that other major point that Obama and his people, just as if destabilizing countries by facilitating civil war wasn’t enough, are busy at work killing the Westphalian Order, drone strike by drone strike, entirely oblivious or indifferent to the ripple effect that has for international stability and sovereignty.

   That is something on which any debate in the US is pretty much nonexistent anywhere but in narrow academic circles. Obviously, for the policymakers hegemony overrides sovereignty, so this is something for lesser countries to worry about. Well, until China flies drones over the US, but that may take some years. And for so long, bombs away!

   If Assad ever gets to make a deal with the US, he would be well advised to check the drinks for poison and to have escape routes ready. The US just might try to get him killed anyway if again someone sways Obama at the 11th hour. Because, regime change.

   With varying degrees of intensity, the regime change machine is up and running in unfriendly nations which are all targets of Obama’s “freedom and democracy” agenda in Russia, North Korea, Syria, Thailand, the Ukraine, Venezuela and in Sri Lanka.

5. Dilrook Says:
   January 5th, 2015 at 2:38 am

   It is not about Maithripala’s life. It is about the good name of Sri Lanka and the impact it can have on the outcome of the election.

   As Ananda pointed out it is a classic national destabilization tactic and must be avoided by providing adequate security.

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