SHAFAQNA

Of course on the surface Hollande's government stresses that by entering Mali, France is not falling back into old habits. But France’s interests in Africa are not something that at the current economic situation it is ready to relinquish. A new form of colonialism has been evident since the old one was no longer sustainable. The United States of America and Britain are also backing France including the deployment of American drones.

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – "We must stop the rebels' offensive, otherwise the whole of Mali will fall into their hands - creating a threat for Africa and even for Europe," French foreign minister Laurent Fabius told reporters to justify Mali's invasion.
For months, Paris has been planning to get involved in Mali on the excuse of driving out the anti-government rebels out of France’s ex-colony.

This intervention came weeks after Paris’s involvement in another ex-colony of Central African Republic (CAR). In CAR, the French stalled President Francois Bozize accepted a power-sharing pact with the opposition. Both sides in CAR have French backing.  Both Mali and Central African Republic are countries with massive reserves of minerals, oil and gas.
France’s president Hollande ordered the first military strikes of his career in Mali. Now France has deployed 550 troops, C-160 transport aircrafts, attack helicopters and has Rafale jets on standby. The important question here is what are the intentions behind the recent adventures by France and its western allies?

Of course on the surface Hollande's government stresses that by entering Mali, France is not falling back into old habits. But France’s interests in Africa are not something that at the current economic situation it is ready to relinquish. A new form of colonialism has been evident since the old one was no longer sustainable. The United States of America and Britain are also backing France including the deployment of American drones. With the full control of the international organisation, the western presence is now legitimised by the United Nations resolutions allowing foreign intervention to support Mali. Exactly the same route when France and Britain ordered NATO’s invasion and air strikes in Libya to oust Gaddafi.

The western allies needed an excuse to justify the invasion of Mali. For months they were preparing the public opinion by saying that Islamists are taking over Mali and other parts of Africa harboring fears that the area could soon become a hub for al-Qaeda linked militants. Shocking reports of public amputations in rebel-held northern Mali as tough shariah (Islamic law) is imposed will persuade many French voters the intervention was just. The “so called Mali Islamists” are a rag-tag army with no significant military equipment or training with most of their arms is smuggled out of Libya.

“There is that much at stake financially and strategically in Mali. But on the other hand this is the sort of intervention that could drag on for very long time. I think what triggered it was the move by the Islamist rebels towards Bamako, which is the capital where most of the French citizens are. Most of them are located at the southern end of the country and I think Hollande felt he had to do something to protect them.” France-based independent journalist Robert Harneis said.

France claimed new successes in its campaign to oust rebels from northern Mali, bombarding the major city of Gao with airstrikes targeting the airport and camps used by the rebel group controlling the city. France’s foreign minister also said the intervention is gaining international support, with the help from the United States, Britain, Denmark and other European countries. The invasion has come with a human cost in the city of Konna, the first to be bombed on Friday and Saturday. According to reports many innocent civilians were killed, including children who threw themselves into a river and drowned trying to avoid the falling bombs.

Mali is a country with massive natural resources which include gold, phosphates, kaolin, salt, limestone, uranium, gypsum, granite, hydropower which mostly exploited by westerners particularly France who has a large French nationals living in the country whilst The country’s population living in absolute poverty. Also new natural resources have been discovered in Mali which include bauxite, iron ore, manganese, tin, and copper deposits but so far not exploited. The existence of hydrocarbons in Mali has been known since the 1970s, when drilling tests proved massive oil resources which can be developed at low costs.

In the current economic situation when all western economies facing massive problems, the unexploited African resources seem very attractive for old colonial powers. The powers, who never relinquished their hold on their colonies, instead changed their tactics which today is known as the “new colonialism”. Having the full control of international bodies such as the United Nations where they can pass resolutions at any time combined with the massive propaganda machines to propagate the “Islamophobia” seem strong tools in the hands of the advocates of the “new colonialism”.

www.shafaqna.com/english

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) — Leading Australian politicians and former defence chiefs are demanding an independent investigation, along the lines of the Chilcot inquiry in Britain, into their country's role in the invasion of Iraq.

They say an independent inquiry must investigate the circumstances that led the then National-Liberal coalition to participate in the US-led invasion in 2003 in which Australia contributed 2,000 troops, including special forces. It must also conduct a review of the war powers of the government, and draw lessons for the future.

Demands for an inquiry are led by former Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, former defence secretary, Paul Barratt, and former chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Peter Gration.

In a foreword to the publication "Why did we go to war in Iraq? A call for an Australian inquiry", which says Australia was exposed to the accusation of waging an illegal war, Fraser writes that an inquiry would not rake over old coals but rather "develop a better understanding of how warfare decisions are reached and to strengthen the governmental structures against precipitous or ill-considered actions in future."

The call for an inquiry is also supported by a statement signed by 30 leading academics in politics and law, retired senior diplomats and experts in the field of war and conflict.

"In retrospect", Fraser writes, "what we now see were frantic efforts to create the prerequisites by manipulating intelligence assessments to fit the case, with all the sophistication that task required. The general public had become confused as to whether the weapons of mass destruction allegedly being developed or held by Saddam Hussein existed and were being placed in a state of readiness to justify both 'national interest' and 'self-defence' claims."

He adds: "In all this, the Australian government may have thought it had no choice if it were to retain the confidence of the US. But was this a misjudgement? [...] Did the government really think through the issues independently and the implications for our standing with Asian neighbours? Did it really evaluate the intelligence presented to it and ignore its flaws? Did it want to? Did it really consider the legal issues surrounding the proposed invasion objectively, or was it not really interested?"

The Australian parliament's role in war is merely "ex post facto, to approve actions already taken under the prerogative at a stage where the denial of finance would in effect betray the armed forces", say those calling for an inquiry.

They note that the justifications given by US and British leaders for the invasion, which Australia accepted, "were later shown to be based on false information, on which Australia apparently relied".—www.shafaqna.com/english

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) - US, British, NATO, and GCC are arming and funding the foreign invasion of Syria - Western media providing increasingly tenuous "revolutionary" cover.

Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf ) - listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as "foreign invasion."

Reuters today provides us with a spectacularly contradictory headline in their report, "Libyan fighters join Syrian revolt." Obviously foreign fighters from Libya, raiding cities, attacking government and civilian targets, and attempting to subvert and overthrow the sovereign government of Syria is not a "revolt." It is an invasion.

Reuters reported, that Mahdi al-Harati, "a powerful militia chief from Libya's western mountains," who is actually a militant of the US, British, and UN listed terrorist organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), "now leads a unit in Syria, made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit." Reuters would go on to explain, "the Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons," and that they "operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics."

Reuters concedes that the ongoing battle has nothing to do with democracy, but instead is purely a sectarian campaign aimed at "pushing out" Syria's minorities, perceived to be "oppressing" "Sunni Muslims."

Reuters' propaganda piece is rounded off with a Libyan terrorist allegedly threatening that "the militancy would spread across the region as long as the West does not do more to hasten the downfall of Assad," a talking point plucked straight from the halls of America's corporate-financier funded think-tanks. In fact, just such a think-tank, the Foreign Policy Initiative, recently published a statement signed by Bush-era Neo-Conservatives stating:

"America’s national security interests are intertwined with the fate of the Syrian people and the wider region.  Indeed, Syria’s escalating conflict now threatens to directly affect the country’s neighbors, including Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel, and could provide an opening for terrorist groups like al Qaeda to exploit."

Inspiring indeed that these two implacable enemies, Al Qaeda's LIFG and America's Neo-Con establishment, are now operating in such seamless harmony. It should be remembered that those who signed this statement, including Elliott Abrams, Max Boot, Ellen Bork, William Kristol, Paul Bremer, Paula Dobriansk, Douglas Feith, Robert Kagan, Clifford D. May, Stephen Rademaker, Michael Weiss, Radwan Ziadeh, were among the very engineers of the fraudulent "War on Terror." Radwan Ziadeh, last on the list, is in fact a "Syrian National Council" member - one of several proxies the US State Department is hoping to slip into power in Syria.

Syria Is Suffering a Foreign Invasion, not a Revolution

To reach Syria, Libyan fighters must cross the Mediterranean Sea and enter via Turkey, or cross Egypt, Israel, and enter via Jordan. The government of Syria has threatened Libya in no conceivable manner, making Libya's campaign an intolerable act of military aggression. Worst of all, the NATO-installed government in Tripoli has officially approved of supporting military operations in distant Syria.

In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, "Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group," would report:

Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey," said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. "Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there."

Another Telegraph article, "Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels," would admit

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya's new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested "assistance" from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

"There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria," said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see."

Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and as recently as last month, CNN, whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that:

Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade's ranks.

A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a "platoon" of Libyan fighters to armed movement.

CNN also added:

On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.

The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.

CNN's reports provide bookends to 2011's admissions that large numbers of Libyan terrorists flush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria, with notorious terrorist LIFG commanders making the arrangements.

In essence, Syria has been under invasion for nearly a year by Libyan terrorists - and as we will see, the Libyans are by no means an imperial force, but rather a terroristic foreign legion employed by far more nefarious players.

The West is Invading Syria by Proxy

NATO-member Turkey is directly complicit in facilitating Libya's extraterritorial aggression by hosting Libyan fighters within its borders, while coordinating their funding, arming, and logistics as they cross the Turkish-Syrian border. Along Turkey's borders also facilitating Libya's invasion of Syria, is America's CIA.

The New York Times admitted in June 2012 in their article, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," that "CIA officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey," and directing weapons including, "automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons." The NYT implicates Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar as the primary underwriters for the weapons while the CIA coordinates the logistics.

To understand this particular arrangement, and why the US has forfeited the plausible deniability it seems it is so painstakingly trying to maintain, we must examine admissions by US policy makers stretching as far back as 2007 admitting that they planned to overthrow the government of Syria with foreign-sectarian extremists, using nations like Saudi Arabia to channel funds and weapons through, specifically to maintain the illusion that they were somehow not involved.

Seymour Hersh's lengthy 9 page report, "The Redirection" published in the New Yorker in 2007 exposes US plans to use clandestine means to overthrow the government of Syria in a wider effort to undermine and destroy Iran. "A by-product of these activities," writes Hersh, "has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

To say that Libya's LIFG is "sympathetic to Al Qaeda" would, however, be misleading. It is Al Qaeda.

LIFG merged with the US-Saudi created terror organization in 2007, according to the US Army's West Point Combating Terrorism Center report, "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq:"

The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al‐Qa’ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al‐Qa’ida on November 3, 2007. (page 9, .pdf)

Hersh's report would continue by stating, "the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria." This included billions to pro-Saudi factions in Lebanon who were propping up militant groups linked to Al Qaeda. These militant groups are now crossing over the Lebanese-Syrian border to join their Libyan counterparts.

Clearly the conspiracy being pieced together and executed in 2007, described by Seymour Hersh citing a myriad of US, Saudi, and Lebanese sources, is unfolding before our eyes. It was a conspiracy hatched of mutual US-Israeli-Saudi interests, not based on humanitarian concerns or "democracy," but rather on toppling sovereign nations seen as a threat to their collective extraterritorial influence throughout the region.

Selling a Terrorist Invasion

The US is executing a strategy where a series of specialized proxies are being used to carry out its geopolitical agenda across the Arab World. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are channeling funding and leading diplomatic efforts to ensure the West's agenda is presented with an "Arab face," while factions within nations like Lebanon, Turkey, and Libya handle varying degrees of logistical support and covert military intervention.

Syria is being invaded by proxy, by the US, NATO, Israel, and the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC). Of this there is no doubt. The corporate-financier interests driving this agenda have ensured a propaganda campaign will accompany this effort. This propaganda campaign is as ceaseless as it is shameless.

For example, in yet another CNN article covering Libyan fighters killing in Syria titled, "Libya rebels move onto Syrian battlefield," we are told that NATO-armed terrorists "tasted the beauty of Jihad" in Libya -  "beauty" Libya is now exporting to Syria.

Video: Wiped out. Tawarga, once home to 10,000 (this video claims up to 35,000) people, many part of Libya's black community who had resided in the country for generations, had its inhabitants either exiled, imprisoned or exterminated. NATO-backed militants told the Telegraph in 2011, " every single one of them has left, and we will never allow them to come back." These sorts of atrocities are what the corporate-financier driven media sold in Libya, and what they are trying to sell again in Syria, ironically couched in "humanitarian concern."

CNN's "beauty" involved a conflict that saw NATO proxy forces empty out entire cities of black Libyans before systematically driving them beyond Libya's borders either killing or imprisoning those who didn't or couldn't flee. This was after cities were blockaded by militants on the ground while NATO ceaselessly bombarded population centers from the air, with the specific goal of starving people into submission.

And for the families of the 3,000 Americans who died on September 11, 2001 who were told Al Qaeda was not just an enemy of America, but an enemy of mankind, or the tens of thousands in America's Armed Forces who were killed, maimed, and otherwise affected by the decade of war that would follow in the so-called "War on Terror," the "contradictory aspects" of America's current foreign policy remain unexplained.

To the victims on both sides of a decade of global war, to see Al Qaeda's terror campaigns, genocide, and other atrocities now underwritten by NATO and both spun and praised throughout the Western media must seem surreal. And such injustice, hypocrisy and misery will continue until we collectively find the resolve to identify, boycott, and entirely replace the corporate-financier interests driving this surreal paradigm.

by Tony Cartalucci