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Ben Norton #moonbat #conspiracy bennorton.com

Murray Bookchin’s explicit, public support for Israeli colonialism, and his equally strident condemnations of anti-Zionist leftists, have been quietly swept under the rug by a Western “libertarian” left that is eager to portray allies of US imperialism as the truly progressive forces.

With the international proxy war on Syria that began in 2011, Bookchin’s renown reached new heights. The Kurdish-led militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is linked to the PKK and whose political program is based in large part on Bookchin’s thought, has enjoyed the support of the US empire.

The YPG rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2015, at the direct request of the Pentagon. It subsequently allowed the construction of more than a dozen US military bases in northeastern Syria.

The SDF’s spokesperson insisted in 2017 that American troops would be remaining in the region “for decades to come,” as Washington had a “strategic interest” in maintaining its military occupation.

A strategic interest indeed: this US-occupied area just so happens to have most of Syria’s oil reserves, and also serves as the nation’s breadbasket region.

US-backed Kurdish nationalists, proud followers of Bookchin’s anarchist ideology, have even acceded to Washington’s demands and held Syria’s own grain production hostage, refusing to sell wheat to Damascus, as a political and economic weapon.

In this roughly 30 percent of US-occupied, Syrian sovereign territory — an ethnically and religiously diverse area populated by not only Kurds but also Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmen, Arabs, and more — US-backed Kurdish nationalists created an autonomous region they referred to as Rojava.

Rojava was aggressively marketed as a utopian social experiment in egalitarianism, ironically by the very same corporate media apparatus that has spent decades publishing propaganda and justifying wars of aggression against any shred of socialism that has dared to challenge the US-led capitalist imperialist system.

Large segments of the Western left has fetishized the Kurdish groups in Syria with a kind of orientalist fixation, and mainstream journalists who are normally hopelessly antagonistic to the socialist left published report after report waxing poetic on how incredible, brave, enlightened, democratic, and feminist the YPG and its women’s wing the YPJ are — coincidentally right at the moment when these forces allied with the US and allowed American troops to occupy nearly a third of Syria’s sovereign territory. (By the way, there are women who fight in the Syrian army and allied militias, too — but they are dehumanized and disparagingly portrayed as “Bashar al-Assad’s female fighters,” as if they were his personal property.)

Writer David Mizner noted that the US government’s propaganda arm Voice of America, a longtime vehicle for CIA lies and information warfare against the international left, “even gave Bookchin a pat on the back,” praising the Vermont anarchist for inspiring Washington’s Kurdish allies in Syria.

Ben Norton #moonbat bennorton.com

Alot of my work as a journalist has been dedicated to exposing the role of so-called “human rights” groups and “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) as tools of US imperialism. But rarely is their status as an arm of Washington’s imperial power openly acknowledged.

That is what makes the follow remarks from blood-soaked war criminal Colin Powell so, well, explosive.

On October 26, 2001, top US military General Powell, who was then serving as secretary of state under the George W. Bush administration, gave a speech at the “National Foreign Policy Conference for Leaders of Nongovernmental Organizations,” held in the State Department.

This was well over a month after the 9/11 attacks, and the United States was already several weeks into its war on Afghanistan. The Bush administration was also setting the stage for its subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Powell gathered leaders of prominent NGOs in Washington to butter them up and emphasize the crucial supplementary role that they would be playing in the US government’s war efforts.

Powell heaped praise on NGOs that “shed light on human rights.” He noted that they were a key part of US military efforts, a “force multiplier” in Washington’s wars, and “such an important part of our combat team.”

Powell dispelled any pretense that American NGOs do work around the world in the interest of vague notions like “human rights.” Rather, he gloated, these NGOs serve the United States’ imperial interests, and it is in fact the illusion of their ostensible “independence” from the US government that is precisely what “makes [them] so valuable.”

[…]

Although he might be most well remembered for his infamous speech lying to the United Nations Security Council about non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Iraq, never forget that Powell presided over the following atrocities:

the criminal US invasion of Panama, a blunt act of murderous neocolonialism, in which thousands of homes were burnt down and the bodies of civilians were shoveled into mass graves;

the first war on Iraq, the heinous Persian Gulf War, in which Washington intentionally bombed the country back to the stone age, devastating civilian infrastructure, even slaughtering fleeing Iraqi soldiers and Palestinian civilians on the abominable “Highway of Death”;

and the unspeakably criminal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, in which more than 1 million Iraqis lost their lives, their country once again destroyed.

When Powell says purported “human rights” groups and other NGOs serve as “force multiplier” and “an important part of our combat team,” he means they help the US empire more effectively carry out blood-curdling war crimes like these.

All of this is only further confirmation that NGOs’ supposed support for “human rights” is just an imperial fig leaf to cover for Uncle Sam’s subjugation and exploitation of the planet.