[Saying they are] “deeply concerned at the escalation of violence” that threatens to widen the [Syrian] conflict into a regional war, they demand “the cessation of armed violence in all its forms.” Who are these pacifists? Members of the Action Group for Syria, which met in Geneva on June 30 and issued a closing communiqué. Leading the pacifist chorus is the United States. In reality it is the director of the ongoing war operation which, after destroying the Libyan state last year, is now attempting to dismantle the Syrian one. CIA agents, writes the New York Times, operating clandestinely in southern Turkey, are recruiting and arming groups that fight the Syrian government. Through a cross-border shadow network, in which the [Israeli] Mossad also operates, they receive automatic rifles, ammunition, antitank rockets and explosives. With a video on YouTube, they show that they know how to use them: the explosion of a powerful remote-controlled bomb destroys a civilian truck driving past a store. Turkey also expressed its “opposition to the further militarization of the conflict,” which must be “resolved through peaceful dialogue.” But Turkey provides the command center in Istanbul that directs the operation and the military bases in which armed groups are trained before they infiltrate Syria. Turkey also, using the pretext of Syria’s shooting down Turkey’s military aircraft — which was flying at low altitude along the Syrian coast to probe anti-aircraft defenses — is now massing its troops on the border threatening a “defensive” intervention. That could trigger a large-scale NATO attack under Article 5, dusted off for the occasion, while the non-Article 5 was used for the attack on Libya. Other members of the Group — France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar — claim to be “committed to defending the sovereignty, independence, national unity and territorial integrity of Syria.” Those same forces are now carrying out the same operation in Syria that they did in Libya: training and arming the “Free Syrian Army” and about another 100 groups recruited from various countries, whose members are paid by Saudi Arabia. They also use reactionary Islamic militants and entire armed Islamic groups, earlier branded as dangerous terrorists, and they infiltrate special forces into Syria, such as those from Qatar sent last year into Libya, disguised as internal opposition groups. And the members of the Action Group seeking “freedom of movement throughout the country for journalists” are the same who manipulated photographs while leading a relentless worldwide media campaign to blame the Syrian government for all the massacres. These same people organized the terrorist attack that killed three Syrian journalists when an armed group attacked Television-al-Ekhbaria in Damascus, hitting it with rockets and blowing it up. They’d like to also blow away the assurances of Russia and China, [other] members of the Action Group, that no outsider should make decisions that concern the Syrian people. The Western powers have already decided, by activating their war machine, to once again annex Syria to their empire. Translated by John Catalinotto, a WW managing editor, from a July 3 article in Il Manifesto (Italy).