By Patrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire
November 25, 2011
If anyone has any doubts as to how out of touch the Arab League is with regards to Arab events, they only have to digest this twisted piece of theater taking place in Cairo.
Members of the Arab League scheduled an emergency meeting today in Cairo, Egypt to work out what exactly they ‘must do about Syria’ – while outside of their conference (in Egypt, the world’s largest Arab country), a shamelessly violent US-backed military junta continues to crack the heads of genuine unarmed protesters in Tahrir Square.
Meanwhile, no harsh words from ‘Friends of Syria’ Secretary Hillary Clinton, no democracy speeches from Obama, and certainly no condemnation from the Arab League – most of whom run military-style dictatorships back in their respective countries. Certainly, US puppet Bahrain can shoot who it wishes in its streets, and you will hear nothing from the Arab League. And certainly, not a peep from the UN.
The Arab League has now publicly adopted the official Western propaganda line for this latest contrived stage of a so-called “humanitarian crisis” in Syria, claiming that President Bashar al-Assad has refused to end a ‘brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters’ in his country.
The irony here is only eclipsed by the hypocricy of the pro-American Arab League. As Syria struggles to maintain order with CIA and MI6-backed armed rebels running wild inside its own borders, Egypt’s unelected military regime have murdered 35 and seriously injured over 1,500 of its own unarmed citizens protesting the military’s illegal occupation of the country’s civilian government. In addition, Syria’s own neighbor Turkey are hosting a 15,000-strong force of paramilitary insurgents called the “Free Syria Army” over Syria’s Turkish border.
This confirms the existence of an armed force operating with the covert approval of the Turkish government, and follows evidence that their attacks inside of Syria are placing Syrian security forces into body bags. Any US, UK, French or Israeli support of this armed insurrection is a clear violation of international law, and as is the case for Libya, this should be viewed as a crime against humanity. But do not expect the UN to raise any objections here.
Somehow, the hypocrisy does not seem to bother Arab Leaguers, as Egyptian blood runs through the streets of Cairo. Instead, the Arab League stick to Washington, London and Tel Aviv’s agenda for Syria of economic sanctions, a No-Fly Zone and of course, regime change.
While Syria fights against a western-backed civil war in its own country, the UN are no where to be found – a sad international situation which brings back memories of another useless international ‘league’ – The League of Nations, founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War.
During Hitler’s rise to military dominance, the League aptly stood by and did nothing as Germnay’s aggressive war machine marched eastward through Czechoslovakia, and later Poland in the early days of WWII. The result was the that feeble nature of the League of Nations was exposed on a global stage. Historically, the parallels between the reasons for the League’s collapse and today’s castration of the United Nations in New York have never been so stark:
On 23 June 1936, in the wake of the collapse of League efforts to restrain Italy’s war against Abyssinia, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told the House of Commons that collective security had…“failed ultimately because of the reluctance of nearly all the nations in Europe to proceed to what I might call military sanctions … The real reason, or the main reason, was that we discovered in the process of weeks that there was no country except the aggressor country which was ready for war … [I]f collective action is to be a reality and not merely a thing to be talked about, it means not only that every country is to be ready for war; but must be ready to go to war at once. That is a terrible thing, but it is an essential part of collective security.”
“Ultimately, Britain and France both abandoned the concept of collective security in favour of appeasement in the face of growing German militarism under Hitler.”
In 2011, and under the cloak of UN Resolution 1973, the recent illegal war and destruction of sovereign state Libya by Western Axis powers and their NATO military coalition, demonstrated the same policy of appeasement by UN member states towards the ambitions of the US, Britain, France, Italy and Israel – whose joint strike led to the dismembering of the Libyan state and its government. Following the war, Western nations have shamelessly moved in to carve up Libya’s state assets and bolster its new unelected government.
Recent reports of the detention of 7,000 people in prisons and camps by the anti-Gaddafi forces, along with hundreds of reports of brutal rape, torture and extrajudicial assassination by NATO-backed Libyan rebels – all met with a deafening silence from the UN – as it was indeed complicit in the looting and raping of Libya by the West under the cynical disguise of “humanitarian intervention”.
UN member states will normally stand back, preferring not to challenge the US and partner Israel, for fear of economic and political reprisals. This policy of economic and political retribution was demonstrated recently as the US threatened the withdraw the funding for the UN’s own UNESCO branch following a successful application for international recognition via UNESCO membership by fledgling state Palestine. Ultimately, the US retains control over the UN, because the US pays for most it, as well as hosts UN operations. This fact alone nearly compromises the entire institution.
Following the US lead, Israel proceeded to pile on additional punitive measures against Palestine, threatening to build an additional 2,000 settler homes and freeze the transfer of Palestinian tax funds – all for joining UNESCO.
Despite the open corruption and illegal coercion present through the Palestine debacle, once again, the UN and its member states remained mostly silent – further proof of the non functionality of the UN. Those who did voice an objection, would never be able to back it up with any real action, as the issue becomes swallowed into the UN’s internal politics and its impressive multi-billion dollar bureaucracy.
The Arab League has shown itself to be nothing more than a passive functionary of US and NATO nation interests in the Middle East, and the UN has become nothing more than a newLeague of Nations, and acts a passive functionary of US and its partners.
Unfortunately for the Syrians – as it was for Libya, regime change in Syria and the carving up of that country’s resources and national assets are a high priority now for the US and its Axis powers. And nothing can stop them, save for another powerful nation intervening on Syria’s behalf.
Certainly, the UN will not do anything this time but flash a green light as it did with Libya, making the UN one of the biggest obstacles to international justice and material accomplice to injustice the world has ever seen.
The Arab League and the UN are simply two bad apples of the same bunch, and both need to exit from the world stage sooner than later.
The Syrian affair is just the latest in a string of UN-sponsored, Western regime change and economic rape project by the West – nothing more.
Meanwhile real reformers are beaten to death in Cairo, right in front of our eyes.
READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files