If I may, I’d like to let you know of another similar idea not much heard in the West.

Halabja, where the major complaint of “gassing his own people” comes from is true as far as I can tell. But there is in fact nuance to it that I’ve never heard in the West. Halabja is a border town between Iraq and Iran. It is a Kurdish town. As we all know, Iraq and Iran were at war and as (I hope) we have all seen by now, the Kurds will go with whomever is “winning” in order to further their own goals. We have seen this in both Iraq and Syria for example.

It is fairly well known in Iraq that the Kurds in Halabja at the time were allowing Iranian soldiers to infiltrate slowly across the border. Their numbers had grown quite large and the population was hiding them in their homes and civilian facilities all over town. It would soon be a border town lost to the other side without so much as a bullet fired. The Iraqi authorities became aware of this and gave numerous warnings to the population to stop. And being in the middle of a war, and also being thuggish, the warnings were sealed with an “or else!”statement. The warnings were not headed and the “or else!” came to pass.

I am an Iraqi, for the record, who was no lover of Sadam Hussein or his band of thieves. Nor was I a lover of Khomeini and his band of thieves. In fact, I am not a lover of any government anywhere, regardless of who they pretend to represent. I’m not foolish enough to believe they represent me or anyone else. They all, and I truly mean all, view us as expendable slaves.

“Iraq” is not a Farsi word. It comes from the word “Uruk”, which was an ancient Iraqi city-state. The fabled Gilgamesh was king and they worshiped primarily the goddess Inanna, as well as others from the ancient pantheon. In the Iraqi Arabic dialect, there are still very many words from the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. Probably the most famous example is “Shako Mako”, which means basically “What’s up” in English. It’s been ported to other Arabic dialects as “Shu Fi Ma Fi”, which means the same thing but is actual Arabic, whereas “Shako Mako” has no root in any language spoken in the area in modern times. Neither does “Iraq”.

“Baghdad”, is from the Farsi language though.

Sorry, I went off the rails with my explanation. I truly get off on this stuff. All hail Inanna!

Wow, this is the most refreshing and clear minded comment I’ve seen here in a while. Nice job WorkingClass, you’ve managed to keep your mind clear and not buy into the BS. You’ve given me some hope 🙂 Thank you.

Mr. Petras, my hats off to you. This is the most to-the-point, honest assessment of what’s going on I’ve read in a long time.

My only complaint is the use of the term “Middle East”. We should all drop this British colonial era term and just call it what it is: Southwest Asia. Please don’t take that as being nit-picky and looking for fault (not my intention at all)…your article is brilliant. But we have to start somewhere.

Oh I beg to differ…Having the Gulf States at one another’s throats is an unbelievably happy prospect! Let the Wahabbi scum kill each other off.

Do you want to see peace in the Middle East? Do you want global terrorism to sharply decline? Well my friend, every gulf nation needs to be flushed down the toilet bowl of history (along with a certain Zionist state) in order for that to happen. Nearly every single problem in the Middle East and terrorism outside of the Middle East can be traced right back to the gulf countries and their Zionist pals.

I say let the flushing commence!!

I just want to point out something, not trying to be an ass, just getting some facts out there.

You said “Black-bloc/anti-fa seems to be the unofficial goon squad of the Left and of democratic run big cities”

Black Bloc is an Anarchist group. It is a common misconception to think of Anarchists as somehow representing the far Left. Anarchists hate Leftists. That’s a fact. They also hate Rightists. They do not represent the democratic establishment whatsoever and are just as firmly against the Left as well as the Right. You should look into a little Anarchist philosophy. By definition, they do not believe in or support the State, hence are opposed to all of the States factions (Left, Right, whatever). Remember the Battle of Seattle? Bill Clinton was president. So how come the Black Bloc’s fought there? And who did they fight?

You also said “The GOP and Trump are not about to fight for our first amendment rights. We’re on our own.”

I couldn’t agree with you more. Anyone here who still believes, or believed at any time, that Donald Trump (or any politician for that matter) was somehow here to serve the people (of ANY faction), is completely delusional. The tug of war between democrat and republican is just an internal family struggle of who will run the show, but don’t be fooled, the “show” is exactly what they BOTH want it to be and not what any common man/woman wants. We’re set upon ourselves to fight and kill each other while they sit in their high castles and laugh at us. Wake up people. Stop falling for the same damn tricks over and over again.

“The people they want to convince to leave Syria are the gifted students, the entrepreneurs, the excellent doctors and teachers of Syria. Only if great numbers of Arabs, be they Christians or Muslims or of any other belief, leave the Middle East, Israel can survive.”

You nailed it. That is exactly why there is such a push for refugees. I am not a person who opposes immigration, I believe if there is a country willing and people willing to, then it is fine as long as it is done by the correct and established means of the receiving country. But I am also not fool enough to see that these refugees, bombed and slaughtered at home, are being used as a weapon in a much larger game (if they know it or not).

The ones who flee war zones are usually the ones with the means to do so. And that usually means the educated, and often wealthy, class. I can tell you from very close experience that Syria experienced an economic boom when the rest of the world was was suffering in 2008. This was entirely due to the Iraqi influx that began in 2003. Who were those Iraqis? Mostly well off, highly educated, refugees who transferred their money and business to Syria. By 2008 they were well established and were approximately 10% of the population. I don’t mention this to say that this is what will happen wherever refugees go, I’m using this to illustrate that the people that a society really need to keep it afloat are the first ones to leave during times of strife. Because they have the means. And someone certainly wants all of these people to leave their homes in the Arab countries.

“As an Anarchist:

I Respect All! And Bow to None!”

Right on brother! The notion of “State” and it’s built in violence has caused humanity far too much to continue believing in it. Israel is such a perfect example.

“Did Exxon-Mobil, BP and Shell moved into Iraq after the war? Do your research.”

Yes, they did. Not meaning to pick on you, but they did. Also, to be clear, I am in agreement with you that what’s going on in Syria and Iraq (let’s not fool ourselves, it’s the same war) is not simply about this one pipeline. The pipeline is one of many reasons. I think it’s right up there in the top one or two spots, but I doubt it’s the only reason.

One more thing I’m curious about….have you ever been to Syria? I’ve been there many many times and I never saw a warlord. In fact, what I saw were highly educated people who for the most part loved their President. I’d wager these warlords you speak of have only been introduced since the Qatari pipeline was rejected. There’s a ton of evidence on who they are and where they come from as well as who is paying them. Funny how things work out huh? But I guess that’s all “normal”.

Pretty likely your not anyone’s buddy. And to be clear, I didn’t mean it literally. It’s call a figure of speech.

“you expect it to be secure and not stolen by people who just happen to have control over it this week and who do not respect contracts that you have signed.”

And by the above quoted, do you mean Uncle Sam, or his allies….or does that only apply to the “bad guys”?

And by the way, what you call normal in war time, I call abhorrent and criminal in war time and peace. Nice double standard buddy.

“When you have destruction and chaos you cannot have secured pipeline.”

I beg to differ. I have friends who live in Basra, Iraq and I can tell you this much…the port of Basra was booming with unflagged tankers going in and out of Iraq loaded to the brim with oil for years. FREE oil. Chaos and destruction, of Iraq anyways, certainly led to a whole lot of unaccounted for oil being shipped out. How much is that worth? Billions?

Besides the oil, you have the looting of antiquities, completely unchecked and also worth a pretty penny. Then you have the shenanigans of people simply flying cash out of the country, like our boy Ayad Allawi tried to do in Iraq. A plane full of millions of dollars that was turned back over Lebanese airspace when it requested to land. Who knows where he went with it after the Lebanese told him to get the hell out.

War is a business buddy. The most lucrative business on Earth. You can call this all fairy tales as much as you like, but something tells me you are not anywhere within the borders of Syria or Iraq or any war-torn country. So your word is as good as mine or anyone else on this forum. You can say to yourself and others that my friends who live in Basra (and Baghdad, Karbala, Kirkuk, and Kut) are all liars or people I’ve made up, but that’s up to you and whatever your motives may be. Read a little, objectively that is, and you might learn something worth knowing.

To my knowledge, there was a a few years back a rather large amount of natural gas found underneath the Persian/Arab gulf, split in the territorial waters of Iran and Qatar. Both countries want to get it out to European markets. Iran signed a pipeline deal with Iraq and Syria and I believe have already constructed the pipeline through most of Iraq. Qatar wants to build one through Saudi Arabia and Syria out to a Turkish port. President Assad turned down the offer as he already had an exclusive deal with Iran and Iraq. Once he did so, the proxy war began. One of the Kennedy’s wrote an article about this. I actually found that link on this site somewhere, though the information has been reported numerous times elsewhere.

I have leaned from far far left to middle left to finally refusing the left AND right of the political spectrum in my life. This is where I currently stand. I am an Anarchist, for lack of a better term. I know that’s a loaded word and many of you will probably consider it somehow associated with the left, but that’s neither here nor there. Your opinions are your right.

I’ve stated the above to introduce myself in a way, because I’ve never commented here, though I’ve been a reader for more than a year. I check this site daily, sometimes more than once a day, and this kind of article is exactly why. I applaud you Mr. Unz. You and many of the writers and commenters on this site have shown what I used to think was a rare and fairly unheard of trait. That is the trait of truly opening ones eyes to see beyond the accepted paradigm of left and right. I see a lot of that on this site.

We are all being sucker punched daily by both left and right….the sheep-like masses buy this false paradigm completely. The devastating truth that neither left or right care about us is too hard a truth to face for them. The “ruling class”, Plato’s philosopher kings (or so they’d like to believe). Laughable! The only difference between left and right of this class is their general approach and tone. But the goal is one and the same. They are in lock-step firmly and fully against the natural rights of the worlds people, weather Americans, Russians, Syrians, Iraqis, Chinese…it doesn’t matter. They view us all as slaves and cattle. The words Democracy, Communist, Monarchy, Theocracy, etc. have absolutely no meaning to these people and are only disguises used to trick the masses into believing they somehow live in a world of law and order. We live in a jungle. And the mighty are all evil, regardless of what philosophy they claim to represent. It is a lie. No “government” represents ANY people, much less it’s own people.