SYRIA REGIME CHANGE:
United Nations Duplicity,
Kofi Annan and Diplomats Wives.
By Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research, April 26, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30535
“Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues They've got expensive doctors To cure their hearts of stone ...” (Maya Angelou, 1928 - )
If destabilization, duplicity, insurgency and
mass murder could surprise yet again, with blame of the victim adding to
the “shock and awe”, after Libya, Syria would certainly be a case in
point.
America’s decades long plan (i, ii) for another
puppet government and quasi client state status for the country is well
underway. Any observer of the shenanigans within the US Embassy in
Damascus would be forgiven for mistaking it for a covert operations
centre rather that a seat of diplomacy.(iii) Michel Chossudovsky gives
graphic life to Ambassador Ford’s - surely coincidentally - eminently
pertinent and relevant qualifications.(iv)
Of course no plan for a country’s ruination is
complete without the help of the UN. Think Libya and Resolution 1973,
the green light for a “humanitarian” blitzkrieg, regime change, razed
towns, murder from air and ground on an industrial scale, including that
of most of the country’s leading family, with small grand children and
the butchering of Colonel Quaddafi, the country’s sovereign leader, his
body still unaccounted for.
Lynch-law ruled, under UN mandate.
Who then, better to be appointed “Peace Envoy” to
Libya than Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General (1997-2006) who
silently acquiesced to the average deaths of 6,000 children a month in
Iraq from “embargo-related causes”, throughout the hundred and nineteen
months of his tenure, bowing to the US-UK driven UN embargo
Inevitably, for his silence, the man who one diplomat
described to this publication, as: “like Pontious Pilate, he washes his
hands”, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2001, jointly with the
UN, for amongst other delusional rubbish, his: “emphasizing its
obligations as with regard to human rights.”
Presumably this “emphasis” also applied to his
deafening muteness as America and Britain, illegally, bombed Iraq for
his entire tenure, often daily, routinely re-destroying vital
infrastructure and erasing lives in uncounted numbers.
The UN’s Baghdad cabal, with its fine restaurant and
barbecue parties, ensconced at the Canal Hotel, at Iraq’s expense, were
in a perfect position to visit these sites, record and account. They
never bothered.
That was yesterday. Apart from Annan, the UN has another weapon for Syria: UN diplomat’s wives.
The wives of the German and British Ambassadors to
the UN, Frau Huberta Voss-Wittig and Lady Sheila Lyall Grant, have
released a video appeal and an online petition to President Assad’s
wife, Syria’s First Lady, Asma al Assad. A performance of skin crawling,
patronizing, head patting, treacled trash, which reflects nothing but
the UN’s duplicity and its representatives privileged, reality- removed
lives in its ivory tower.(v)
The “initiative”, the pampered pair stress, is entirely independent, theirs alone, and nothing to do with their husbands.
Of course, ladies.
Frau Voss-Wittig’s involvement, it might be surmised,
lies in: “The German ‘ no’ to the US about Iraq”, in 2002.(vi)
“Historically this was the deepest ever division between the White House
and any post-cold-war German Chancellor.”
Additionally, in August 2002, Germany and France
agreed the “Declaration of Schwerin”, named after the German town where
their representatives had a working dinner, resolving that they: “had to
oppose the war ... and that they had to do it in public and as
forcefully as possible.” An overt collision course with the US and UK.
Only when Angela Merkel took office were links
tentatively repaired formally, but “shock-waves” remained. Two wives
have clearly taken delivery of bricks and tools and set about erecting
bridges, never mind demolishing those of others.
Sheila Lyall Grant is the wife of Sir Mark Lyall
Grant, former political Director General of the UK Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, a post with wide responsibilities including for
Iraq, 2007-2009 and also line manager of post-invasion UK Ambassadors to
Iraq.
He was senior policy adviser to the Foreign Secretary
on various strategic Foreign Office priorities regarding Iraq, in which
capacity he attended major European, G8, UN, OSCE and NATO meetings.
Sir Mark clearly went through the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office’s rigorous and scrupulous selection process as to
suitability for key posts:
“I was not an Arabist. I haven't been posted in the Middle East”, he told the Chilcot Inquiry on Iraq (20th January 2010.)
However: “It naturally fell to the Foreign Office to
look at where Britain's long-term strategic interests were in Iraq and
in the wider region ...”
The Iraq priority for Sir Mark had been: “ a strong economy.”
Whilst: “Abidance of human rights and better social
conditions, better social delivery to the people (were) highly
desirable, I don't say it is absolutely essential in the near future”,
he told the Inquiry. (Emphasis mine.) “Let them rot”, comes to mind.
Given that Nuri al Maliki’s Iraq is now firmly allied
with Iran, and a disaster on every level, with economy, health,
malnutrition and social conditions worse than the embargo years, it
might be though that the Foreign Office and Sir Mark would think twice
before stepping aside, as his “independent” wife became another regional
unguided missile.
The wives petition, which is pretty much the same as their toe curling video reads, in part:
Dear Asma, Some women care for style and some women
care for their people. Some women struggle for their image and some
women struggle for their survival. Some women have forgotten what they
preached about peace and some women can only pray for their dead.
Hundreds of Syrian children have already been killed or injured. One
day, our children will ask us what we have done to stop this bloodshed.
What will your answer be, Asma? That you, Asma had no choice? Every
single child had a name and a family. Their lives will never be the same
again.Asma, when you kiss your own children goodnight, another mother
will find the place next to her empty. These children could all be your
children.They are your children. Stand up for peace, Asma. Speak out
now. Stop being a bystander. No one cares about your image. We care
about your action. Right now.” Lady Lyall Grant, has been a diplomat
since 1980. Her most recent post was Head of VIP Visits at the Protocol
Directorate in the heart of government, Whitehall. Clearly her induction
course in protocol did not include instructions on how to address the
wife of a Head of State. Incidentally, Sir Mark apparently cares as
little about the UN as he did Iraq. Asked at the Inquiry about the
current role of UN in Iraq, he replied that they were no longer there,
after the bombing of their building in, he hesitated, then: “ 2005, was
it?”
The bombing of the Canal Hotel, which killed
seventeen, including the Head of Mission, Sergio de Mello, and injured
scores, was on 19th August 2003.
Corrected by the Chairman, Sir Mark responded: “2003,
was it? I apologise”, apparently as sanguine about his colleagues being
blown to bits as in assessing that basic provisions to sustain Iraqi
lives were not “absolutely essential.”
Now, for Syria, in a crisis so clearly manipulated
from without, as Kofi Annan ratchets up the number of “UN Observers”
from ten to three hundred – surely as Iraq, many will be meddlers, spies
and worse, Sheila Lyall Grant writes: “One day, our children will ask
us what we have done to stop this bloodshed.” Every child: “had a family
and a name.”
The child victims of Afghanistan, decimated by the
invasion also had names – but the Taliban was blamed. As did their small
counterparts in Iraq since that illegal takeover, the 4,5 million
orphans, 600.000 of whom live on the streets, are still somehow the
fault of Saddam Hussein - and their traumatized little global siblings
in Libya are still somehow the fault of Colonel Quaddafi, who brought
the country the best welfare and highest living standard in Africa.
Perhaps the diplomatic duo have not noticed that
Syria, generous host country to two million Iraqis, fleeing their
“liberation” now have their own nationals fleeing in fear, over the
border to Jordan, Syrians now joining the near similar number of Iraqis
there, now refugees themselves. Iraqis in Syrian have no where to run.
The ladies have seemingly also missed the media
coverage of senior, experienced Al Jazeera journalists, who have walked
away from their livilihood in protest and disgust at the media
distortion and manipulation of Syria’s plight, the portrayal, of course,
that it all blame lies with President al Assad.
Further, “Peace Envoy” Kofi Annan has already let
slip that both he and the “truce monitors”: “should help pave the way
for much needed political process”, presumably he means with those
insurgents with foreign passports. Read: “Regime change.”
And no planned destruction, overthrow and general
catastrophe would be complete without hidden weaponry and hardware with
which the leader “oppresses his own people.” Syria, say - as ever -
unnamed “activists” is hiding tanks and weapons in government compounds.
The media faithfully repeats the mantra. None seem to
have mentioned that one of the “Peace Envoy’s” stipulations, to which
Bashir al Assad agreed, was to take tanks and weapons off the streets.
Where rebel violence is such that government troops are not forced to
respond, they have been withdrawn - back to government compounds. Mr
Annan, seemingly has not thought to point this out.
China’s Ambassador, Li Baodong seems to be watching
more closely than most. He expressed the hope that: “the Supervision
Mission will fully respect Syria’s sovereignty and dignity, act in
strict accordance with the authorization of the Security Council, adhere
to the principles of neutrality and impartiality ...”(vi.) Quite.
If Lady Lyall Grant cares about children, which could
equally be “her” children, she should ponder on, and tell her
humanity-deficient husband of just one, which represents the trauma of
every child, in every street, in every country targeted by an unholy
Western alliance – and the UN.
It is an Iraqi boy of about five, in an orphanage,
asleep. He has drawn a huge picture, depicting his mother, on the floor,
her arms outstretched. He is curled up on it. Every night he goes to
sleep the same way, on the floor, between her arms.
Well past time for the powerful to grow the hell up.Those children could be your children,
