Cameron insults our intelligence over Syria… and gets a slap from Putin
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Finian CUNNINGHAM
They say a picture paints a thousand words. The photograph of British Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in London recently certainly does. When the two leaders gave a press conference at the weekend in Downing Street ahead to the G8 summit, Cameron had the excruciating look of a desperate man. Putin, by contrast, appeared in control. The latter spoke in measured tones and with discernible contempt in his voice.
The two leaders had emerged from a «difficult» – diplomatic language for «combative» – private meeting in which Syria was top of the agenda. Apparently, President Putin had kept his British host waiting for one hour before arriving.
Afterwards, at the press conference, Cameron winced and gripped the podium as if it was a precipice from which he was hanging, as Putin delivered his comments. Cameron had good reason to look fearful as he hung on every word emanating from the Russian leader.
Then Putin pushed diplomacy to the limit when he said: «You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras. Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years».
It was the rhetorical equivalent of a public slap in the face for the conceited British prime minister.
Putin was referring explicitly to the countless videos that have emerged over recent months showing a litany of barbarities committed by the Western so-called «rebels» who have been waging a war inside Syria for the past two and half years to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The depravities include eviscerating bodies of slain victims and forcing children to decapitate soldiers and civilians.
In reality these «pro-democracy rebels» whom the Western governments and media have lionized are a rag-tag paramilitary force of extremists and terrorists who have gravitated to Syria from up to 30 countries, including Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the Russian Caucasus. These mercenaries share the same abstruse Wahhabi/Salafist theology, which gives them an ideological green light to butcher anyone that stands in their way of setting up a fundamentalist Emirate in Syria. The NATO powers, led by the US, Britain and France, have armed this proxy army to the teeth and equipped it with logistics and training from Special Forces to do the West’s dirty work of regime change.
Consistent reports testify that the American CIA and British M16 are directing the terrorist traffic into Syria from bordering Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. There are also reliable reports that Western military intelligence agents have equipped and trained the mercenaries in Syria in the use of chemical weapons, including the deadly nerve poison sarin, which confounds British, French and American government claims last week that it is the Syrian national forces that are using these weapons. That Western claim – presented without of a scintilla of evidence – has been firmly rebutted by both Russia and Syria.
Yet when Cameron spoke first at the London press conference, he appeared to be exhorting Putin on the need for humanitarian principles and urgency.
Ironically, Britain and its allied Western sponsors of state terrorism in Syria have accused Russia of destabilizing Syria and the region from its maintenance of normal diplomatic relations with the sovereign government in Damascus and for Moscow’s support of a planned peace conference in Geneva between the Assad administration and members of the internal political opposition. Putin reminded his British host that Russian delivery of weapons to Assad, in particular the S-300 anti-aircraft defense system, was part of a long-standing legal transaction – unlike the clandestine orchestration of foreign jihadists by Western and Arab rogue states in complete violation of international law and norms.
Still, in face of this damning evidence, Cameron struggled to sound statesmanlike as Putin looked on with an admixture of indignation and tedium.
Cameron tried ever-so desperately to strike a pose of consensus with his Russian guest. He said: «What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognize that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them, and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them».
Cameron’s vow «to let the Syrian people decide who governs them, and take the fight to the extremists and defeat them» is plain old execrable duplicity of the flavour that British politicians are past masters at selling.
The British premier added that Britain and Russia should put aside their differences to find «common ground». What this archetypal British dissembling is aiming at is to somehow inveigle Moscow into jettisoning its strategic relations with the Assad government and to leave Syria at the mercy of marauding Western-backed death squads. Where is the «common ground» in that arrangement? It sounds more like wanting to push Russia and Syria over the abyss.
Within hours of the Downing Street meeting between Cameron and Putin, the former French foreign minister Roland Dumas was separately revealing to French media that he was approached by British officials with a plan to destabilize Syria – two years before the outbreak of conflict in March 2011.
Elsewhere at the weekend, British foreign minister William Hague was maintaining the fiction that Britain was on the side of «moderates» in Syria. Hague told the BBC: “We are currently sending equipment that saves lives, and who are we sending that to? Well, we are sending it to those more moderate, more sensible elements of the opposition. Obviously, we’re not sending it to extremist groups, to groups that we’re very concerned about, that could become a terrorist threat».
This is again sheer British duplicity and dissembling in the glaring spotlight of truth. The so-called Free Syrian Army of mercenaries, better known as the Foreign Supplied Army, is comprised of more than 70 per cent of foreign jihadist, most of whom like the Jabhat Al Nusra are affiliated with Al Qaeda. The liaison between British and American military intelligence and Al Qaeda-linked Mujahideen is a long-standing collusion, dating back to Afghanistan during the 1980s when these foot soldiers waged a dirty war for the West against the Soviet Union.
The Russians hardly need to snoop on British government phone calls and emails to know of the decades-old collusion that exists between Britain, the US and Al Qaeda proxy terrorists – a collusion which has now caused a maelstrom of destruction and human suffering in Syria, with over 90,000 deaths.
So, when Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke in London of organ-eating terrorists supported by the NATO powers, he was right to rhetorically slap Britain’s Cameron in the face. Putin was just right, too, to make Cameron wince and grip that podium with white knuckles before delivering the all-embarrassing slap. For Cameron had minutes earlier just tried to insult Putin’s intelligence, and the rest of the world’s, with bare-faced lies about Britain’s nefarious role in Syria.
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
SEE ALSO
Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before “The Arab Spring” – by Gearóid Ó Colmáin
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About the Author
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specializes in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today. His interests include capitalism, imperialism and war, socialism, justice and peace, agriculture and trade policy, ecological impact, science and technology, and human rights. He is also a musician and songwriter. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the political upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests.
The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted many human rights violations by the Western-backed regime.
For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream media, including ,The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.
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