RANT: What of Your Vetoes, America?

Today I happened to come across an excellent link to the blog, www.truthaholics.blogspot.com, and an article that they posted as a response to the American "outrage" against Russia and China's veto of sanctions against Syria in the UN back in early February. The United States openly called the veto by Russia and China as "shameful", "deplorable" and even "disgusting."

Doth the United States protest too much (as usual)? One knows so, and as ripped apart by the said post from truthaholics. Below is a complete paste of the entire simply brilliant post on the riposte from truthaholics, with full courtesy thereto:



"A Quick Listing of The United States’ Record of Veto Use at the United Nations (UN): 1972–2011*

Year ~ Resolution Vetoed by the United States

1972 Condemns Israel for killing hundreds of people in Syria and Lebanon in air raids.
1973 Affirms the rights of the Palestinians and calls on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
1976 Condemns Israel for attacking Lebanese civilians.
1976 Condemns Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories.
1976 Calls for self determination for the Palestinians.
1976 Affirms the rights of the Palestinians.
1978 Urges the permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France, China) to insure UN decisions on the maintenance of international peace and security.
1978 Criticises the living conditions of the Palestinians.
1978 Condemns the Israeli human rights record in occupied territories.
1978 Calls for developed countries to increase the quantity and quality of development assistance to underdeveloped countries.
1979 Calls for an end to all military and nuclear collaboration with the apartheid South Africa.
1979 Strengthens the arms embargo against South Africa.
1979 Offers assistance to all the oppressed people of South Africa and their liberation movement.
1979 Concerns negotiations on disarmament and cessation of the nuclear arms race.
1979 Calls for the return of all inhabitants expelled by Israel.
1979 Demands that Israel desist from human rights violations.
1979 Requests a report on the living conditions of Palestinians in occupied Arab countries.
1979 Offers assistance to the Palestinian people.
1979 Discusses sovereignty over national resources in occupied Arab territories.
1979 Calls for protection of developing counties’ exports.
1979 Calls for alternative approaches within the United Nations system for improving the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
1979 Opposes support for intervention in the internal or external affairs of states.
1979 For a UN Conference on Women.
1979 To include Palestinian women in the UN Conference on Women.
1979 Safeguards rights of developing countries in multinational trade negotiations.
1980 Requests Israel to return displaced persons.
1980 Condemns Israeli policy regarding the living conditions of the Palestinian people.
1980 Condemns Israeli human rights practices in occupied territories: 3 resolutions.
1980 Affirms the right of self determination for the Palestinians.
1980 Offers assistance to the oppressed people of South Africa and their national liberation movement.
1980 Attempts to establish a New International Economic Order to promote the growth of underdeveloped countries and international economic co-operation.
1980 Endorses the Program of Action for Second Half of UN Decade for Women.
1980 Declaration of non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
1980 Emphasises that the development of nations and individuals is a human right.
1980 Calls for the cessation of all nuclear test explosions.
1980 Calls for the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
1981 Promotes co-operative movements in developing countries.
1981 Affirms the right of every state to choose its economic and social system in accord with the will of its people, without outside interference in whatever form it takes.
1981 Condemns activities of foreign economic interests in colonial territories.
1981 Calls for the cessation of all test explosions of nuclear weapons.
1981 Calls for action in support of measures to prevent nuclear war, curb the arms race and promote disarmament.
1981 Urges negotiations on prohibition of chemical and biological weapons.
1981 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, national development, etc are human rights.
1981 Condemns South Africa for attacks on neighbouring states, condemns apartheid and attempts to strengthen sanctions: 7 resolutions.
1981 Condemns an attempted coup by South Africa on the Seychelles.
1981 Condemns Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, human rights policies, and the bombing of Iraq:
18 resolutions.
1982 Condemns the Israeli invasion of Lebanon:
6 resolutions (1982 to 1983).
1982 Condemns the shooting of 11 Muslims at a shrine in Jerusalem by an Israeli soldier.
1982 Calls on Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights occupied in 1967.
1982 Condemns apartheid and calls for the cessation of economic aid to South Africa: 4 resolutions.
1982 Calls for the setting up of a World Charter for the protection of the ecology.
1982 Sets up a United Nations conference on succession of states in respect to state property, archives, and debts.
1982 Nuclear test bans and negotiations and nuclear free outer space: 3 resolutions.
1982 Supports a new world information and communications order.
1982 Prohibition of chemical and bacteriological weapons.
1982 Development of international law.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment .
1982 Declares that education, work, health care, proper nourishment, and national development are human rights.
1982 Protects against products harmful to health and the environment.
1982 Development of the energy resources of developing countries.
1983 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law: 15 resolutions.
1984 Condemns support of South Africa in its Namibian and other policies.
1984 International action to eliminate apartheid.
1984 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1984 Resolutions about apartheid, nuclear arms, economics, and international law. 18 resolutions.
1985 Condemns Israel for occupying and attacking southern Lebanon.
1985 Condemns Israel for using excessive force in the occupied territories.
1985 Resolutions about cooperation, human rights, trade and development. 3 resolutions.
1985 Measures to be taken against Nazi, Fascist, and neo-Fascist activities .
1986 Calls on all governments (including the United States) to observe international law.
1986 Imposes economic and military sanctions against South Africa.
1986 Condemns Israel for its actions against Lebanese civilians.
1986 Calls on Israel to respect Muslim holy places.
1986 Condemns Israel for sky-jacking a Libyan airliner.
1986 Resolutions about cooperation, security, human rights, trade, media bias, the environment, and development: 8 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of the Palestinians.
1987 Calls on Israel to stop deporting Palestinians.
1987 Condemns Israel for its actions in Lebanon:
2 resolutions.
1987 Calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
1987 Cooperation between the UN and League of Arab States.
1987 Calls for compliance in the International Court of Justice concerning military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua and a call to end the trade embargo against Nicaragua: 2 resolutions.
1987 Measures to prevent international terrorism, study the underlying political and economic causes of terrorism, convene a conference to define terrorism and to differentiate it from the struggle of people from national liberation.
1987 Resolutions concerning journalism, international debt, and trade: 3 resolutions.
1987 Opposition to the build up of weapons in space.
1987 Opposition to the development of new weapons of mass destruction.
1987 Opposition to nuclear testing. 2 resolutions.
1987 Proposal to set up South Atlantic “Zone of Peace”.
1988 Condemns Israeli practices against Palestinians in the occupied territories: 5 resolutions (1988 and 1989).
1989 Condemns US invasion of Panama.
1989 Condemns US troops for ransacking the residence of the Nicaraguan ambassador in Panama.
1989 Condemns US support for the Contra army in Nicaragua.
1989 Condemns illegal US embargo of Nicaragua.
1989 Opposing the acquisition of territory by force.
1989 Calling for a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict based on earlier UN resolutions.
1990 To send three UN Security Council observers to the occupied territories.
1995 Affirms that land in East Jerusalem annexed by Israel is occupied territory.
1997 Calls on Israel to cease building settlements in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories:
2 resolutions.
1999 Calls on the United States to end its trade embargo on Cuba:
8 resolutions (1992 to 1999).
2001 To send unarmed monitors to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
2001 To set up the International Criminal Court.
2002 To renew the peace keeping mission in Bosnia.
[Chart above from http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/geoff/UNresolutions.htm]

[Chart below from: http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html]
2002 Condemns the killing of a UN worker from the United Kingdom by
Israeli forces. Condemns the destruction of the World Food Programme
warehouse.
2003 Condemns a decision by the Israeli parliament to “remove” the
elected Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat.
2003 Condemns the building of a wall by Israel on Palestinian land.
2003 To end the US’s forty-year embargo of Cuba.
2004 Condemns the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmad Yassin.
2004 Condemns the Israeli incursion and killings in Gaza.
2004 Production and processing of weapon-usable material should be
under international control.
2006 Calls for an end to Israeli military incursions and attacks on Gaza.
2006 Calls for an end to the financial embargo against Cuba.
2007 Calls for peaceful uses for outer space.
2007 Calls for a convention against female discrimination.
2007 Concerning the rights of children.
2007 Concerning the right to food.
2007 On the applicability of the Geneva Convention to the protection
of civilians in time of war.
2007 Calls for the protection of the Global Climate.
2007 Calls for Indian Ocean to be declared a zone of peace. Calls for
a nuclear weapon-free South East Asia.

2007 Calls for the right of self determination for the Palestinian
people. Other resolutions regarding the Palestinians and their rights.
2008 Calls for progress towards an arms trade treaty.
2008 Banning the development of new weapons of mass destruction.
2008 Assuring non-nuclear states they will not be attacked or
threatened with nuclear weapons.
2008 Prevention of the development of an arms race in outer space and
transparency in outer space activities.
2008 Calls to decrease the operational readiness of nuclear weapons
systems and to ban nuclear weapons.
2008 Calls to end the use of depleted Uranium in weapons.
2008 Concerning the trade in illicit small arms.
2008 Calls for a nuclear free Central Asia and a nuclear free Southern
Hemisphere. Prevention of proliferation in the Middle East.
2008 Calls for a comprehensive (nuclear) test ban treaty. Calls for a
nuclear weapon free world.
2008 Calls for a treaty on children’s rights.
2008 Condemns racial discrimination.
2008 Affirms the sovereignty of Palestinians over the occupied
territories and their resources.
2008 Affirms the right of the Palestinians to self determination.
2008 Calls on Israel to pay the cost of cleaning up an oil slick off
the coast of Lebanon caused by its bombing.
2008 Calls for a new economic order.
2008 Calls for a right of development for nations.
2008 Calls for a right to food.
2008 Respect for the right to universal freedom of travel and the
vital importance of family reunification.
2008 Concerning developments in information technology for international security.
2008 Resolutions concerning Palestine, its people, their property, and
Israeli practices in Palestine, including settlements.
2009 Calls for an end to the twenty-two-day-long Israeli attack on Gaza.
2011 Calls for a halt to the illegal Israeli West Bank settlements.
2011 Calls for Israel to cease obstructing the movement and access of
the staff, vehicles and supplies of the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
2011 Calls for the immediate and complete cessation of all Israeli
settlement activities in all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.

* This list will be revised and better documented shortly. Reading Sunday news necessitated quick referencing. Glitches that may be found above at this point do not diminish the larger claim."

I will no doubt come back to this list again and again from now on, thanks to this post by the truthaholics blog.

Need one say more?

It Says It All: The Syrian 'Crisis' & Other 'Fights for Democracy'

I came across this brilliant and extremely telling today. It was from a blog called www.democratic-syria.blogspot.com, and for all its possible pro-Assad or anti-West bias (and on even that I cannot make real call, nor should it matter), the points it makes about the sheer hypocrisy of some of the West and Arab world's vitriol against Assad cannot be wished away. Let me see the validity of some this blog's claims:

• "The West has always been and will always be hypocrites when it comes to slogans and what they really aim to do. Issues like Human Rights, Freedom of Speech, Democracy, Protecting Civilians... Are all great slogans for ugly acts, how many lives were lost under these slogans in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon, Serbia, Bosnia, Vietnam... and the list goes on." - Valid
• "We've seen how Greek officials handle their own peoples' aspiration to rid of the control of bankers of their lives and the result was appointing a banker to rule them." - Valid
• "We've seen Italians and how their government in a copy cat of Greek's handled them." - Valid
• "We've seen the remarkably peaceful and overwhelming Occupy Wall Street movement and how brutally it was handled by 'law enforcement' thugs in the USA." - Valid

Hmmmmm, all very valid points, of course. Which is why so many people look at all the posturing against Syrian "oppression" by countries like the US, UK and France as nothing more than hypocrisy at its most blatant and reprehensible. And that's not even to mention what the Israelis keep doing against the Palestinians or what Saudi Arabia and Bahrain do against their very own people.

Yes, democracy will indeed come to you, replete with bombs and atrocities and dead civilians and destroyed cities and towns and raped economies and puppet governments... whether you like it or not.

Do you get my point?

RANT: The So-Called "Friends of Syria"

Few things in this world make me as angry as hypocrisy. Yet it is everywhere. The historical record is rife with hypocrisy; human nature is rife with hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the powerful, the hypocrisy of the pleb - it has been a mainstay of human society and has shaped who we are, regardless of race, culture or creed. Hypocrisy has no doubt abounded for millennia, it would seem, and certainly continues to abound with wild abandon today.

The Syrian 'crisis' is an excellent case in point.

First and foremost, this is an internal 'crisis', yet it has been mangled by certain Western and Arab powers to be a crisis that somehow 'affects us all'. But it doesn't, not should it. If the Assad regime is under attack from internal forces, then so be it. But it is an internal matter, whatever the 'civilized world' might wish to harp on about. Civil wars and internal revolutions have occurred many times before, and shall continue to occur long into the future.

The hypocrisy of it all is the we all know this is nothing more than a geopolitical battle being waged with one goal in mind - Iran. Syria is strategic conduit to that nation that poses so many 'threats' to so many 'powers' (when in fact, it doesn't). Iran is a threat to the United States and the West because it simply won't capitulate to ludicrous and patently unfair allegations about its nuclear program. Iran is a threat to Israel because the apartheid Jewish state is the hysterical bitch that never shuts the hell up and shit stirs like the most vile gossip on the block.

Iran wants to develop nuclear energy. I am entirely opposed to nuclear energy on ecological and human health grounds, but when nuclear countries like the United States, the UK, France and Israel get all shrill and self-righteous about Iran's 'nuclear intentions', then all I want to do is throw up - such is my bile from the sheer hypocrisy of these anti-Tehran allegations.



However, all the hypocrisy gets even richer when just this weekend a symposium of countries calling themselves 'Friend of Syria" meet in Istanbul to declare their unrelenting devotion (and plenty bucks and arms) to the so-called 'freedom fighters' in Syria trying to topple the Assad regime.

Never mind that these so-called 'freedom fighters in Syria have been:

• Accused by many Syrian witnesses of mostly being comprised of foreign mercenaries
• Accused by many Syrian and foreign aid people inside the country of countless horrific atrocities against civilians in cities like Homs
• Accused by the International Red Cross of being a leading cause of the thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries like Turkey and Jordan
• Aided, abetted and very strongly supported by certain Western and Arab countries with arms, cash and, of course, diplomatic support 

Hillary Clinton, that sold-out and inept Secretary of State from the United States, is there too, grinning like a demented old mog and looking more bedraggled than ever. So too other nations committed to overthrowing Assad, all in the name of the "people of Syria" and that most whored-out word of all, "democracy."

I say hypocrisy because one of the leading bulwarks in this Laughable Posse of Hypocrites congregated in Istanbul is none other than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, undoubtedly one of the most oppressive and outright hideous governments on planet Earth. And there they are berating Syria's Assad for being an "oppressor" and violating "human rights," full of indignant self-righteousness.

This 'indignation' from SAUDI ARABIA?!!

Oh, come on! How can anyone not see the sheer hypocrisy of just that?!

We all know what this is all about: it's about nothing more than oil and geopolitical power by a seriously ailing and declining (and bankrupt, by the way) imperial power and its lapdog allies in the region, as well as from the West. Oil and money-obsessed geopolitics. Nothing else. Hence all the streams and rivers and enormous oceans of putrid, nauseating hypocrisy.

This has stuff all to do with democracy or violations of human rights. This is cynical, malevolent geopolitical posturing at its very worst. And we as human beings should be sick to the stomach that this is what we have progressed to in the year 2012.

Do you get my point?

RANT: Are You Syr-ious?

The whole escalating furore and ganging up by the West and certain Gulf states against Syria is, quite frankly, beyond the pale in its sheer cynicism and blatant geopolitical posturing.



It's not even posturing - it's masquerading at its most gauche and downright embarrassing.

After all, who the hell are the United States (aka Pimp and Sugar Daddy Supreme to the Apartheid State of Israel), United Kingdom, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain et al really kidding with all this jumping up and down regarding Syria and the sudden 'insurrection' by a 'populist movement' against the Assad regime?

They're certainly not kidding me, that much is for sure.

I do believe the Tunisian revolution was genuine and, to a certain degree, so too the spontaneous outpouring in Tahrir Square that toppled the heinous Mubarak regime in Egypt. I cheered loudly and joyfully for the peoples of those countries in their quest to run out corrupt, violent regimes that had ruled them for too long and too hard.

The authoritarian governments in Jordan, Algeria and Morocco suddenly scrambled throwing rights and promises of social and economic reform to their people. The fear of those regimes was palpable. The Arab Spring felt real and like a delirious fever gripping the entire region, and much to my delight. 

But the creepy, brutal quashing of the uprising in Bahrain (fully aided by Saudi tanks and military might, let us not forget) piqued me and provoked an uneasy, sickening stirring deep inside me. Then the travesty known as the Libyan 'civil war' came along, and that made it all too clear - ah yes, the manipulations and geo-political contortions of the United States and its Western-Arab puppets were well under way once more.

The invasion of a sovereign state like Libya on the pretext of 'aiding the human rights' of the civilian population, when we all knew it was all about the gooey black stuff in the ground and getting rid of a dictator who no longer served any purpose, was not only illegal under international law, but set yet another dangerous, perverse precedent in international affairs and diplomacy.

And now Syria. All the usual suspects baying that Assad simply must go, go, GO! - and it's all so utterly transparent and so utterly cynical.

Yes, we all know that Assad is a dictator and that an authoritarian regime is never benign or just. But why now? Why right now? And why not invade nearly every Gulf state if it all boils down to human rights and democracy (which we all know it doesn't)? Jesus, if there's one country that's deserving of a mega invasion to free its people from one of the most disgusting regimes on the planet, then surely it has to be the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?!

Syria would have been invaded a loooong time ago if it had more of that gooey black stuff in its ground. It doesn't, so it's been left alone. But now the United States of Pentagon and its various puppets have set their sights on taking on none other than Iran, with Israel screaming for blood like some vicious little senile bitch on the sidelines, so where to go first? Ah, of course - Iran's closest ally in the region.

Enter, Syria.

And so the charade will get more gargoylesque and more innocent blood will be shed and all for what? Just to eventually invade Iran and create even more mayhem just for the sake of the West's hyper-industrial-military complex and that most neurotic, schizophrenic nation of all, Israel?

The cancer of cynicism will just spread and spread and spread. That's all.

It's been said many, many times before throughout history, but these are troubling times indeed.

Do you get my point?