Sunday, September 22, 2013

US pressuring Russia into passing UN resolution on Syria under Chapter 7 - Lavrov



Video Source: Russia Today YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4bs0DswnVA

Story Source: Russia Today Online
http://rt.com/news/us-russia-syria-resolution-pressure-202/

The US is pushing Russia into approving a UN resolution that would allow for military intervention in Syria, in exchange for American support of Syria’s accession to OPCW, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State John Kerry',” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Channel 1's Sunday Time program.

Chapter 7 of the UN charter would allow for potential military intervention in Syria.

Western countries blinded by 'Assad must go' attitude

The head of Russia’s Foreign Ministry went on to say he was surprised by the West’s “negligent” approach to the conflict.

“Our partners are blinded by an ideological mission for regime change,” said Lavrov. “They cannot admit they have made another mistake.”

Slamming the West’s intervention in Libya and Iraq, the foreign minister stated that military intervention could only lead to a catastrophe in the region. Moreover, he stressed that if the West really was interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict that has raged for over two years, they would now be pushing for Syria’s entry into the OPCW in the first place, not for the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

“I am convinced that the West is doing this to demonstrate that they call the shots in the Middle East. This is a totally politicized approach,” said Lavrov.

The Russian foreign minister pointed out that in the case of a military scenario, militants would come to power and Syria would no longer be a secular state. Up to three quarters “of these guys are Jihadists,” including the most radical groups such as Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, who want to create an Islamic Caliphate in Syria and in neighboring territories, Lavrov said.

“If our western partners think at least two steps ahead, they cannot but understand it,” Lavrov noted.

As to why the West would want that, Moscow has so far received no clear answer, but hears “mantras” on the necessity to promote democracy and protect human rights, said the minister. That is important, but “responsible politicians should be guided not only by that. Not to care about stability in a key world region is absolutely irresponsible,” he added.

According to Lavrov, some experts alleged that “someone is attempting to create a guided chaos” in the region for their own benefits. However, the foreign minister said he personally sees no possible advantages that Western countries would gain if they were behind moves to stir up instability.

“There’s only an attempt to grasp a straw, and turn a blind eye to the fact that the world is changing and becoming multipolar,” Lavrov concluded.

'A repeat of Geneva 2012'

Lavrov harked back to last year’s Geneva accord which was agreed upon by the international community, including Russia and the US. However, when the resolution went to the Security Council the US demanded that Chapter 7 be included.

“History is repeating itself. Once again in Geneva an agreement has been reached which does not contain any mention of Chapter 7. But the Security Council wants to redo the document in their own way to include it.”

He called on the West to observe international law and stop writing resolutions motivated by their “geopolitical ambitions.”

Both sides must hand over chemical weapons’

Sergey Lavrov has also insisted that opposition forces take part in the decommissioning of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

“The solutions currently being worked out at the OPCW suggest that all stocks of Syrian chemical weapons must be brought under control and ultimately destroyed.”

Lavrov further charged that the West was “not telling the whole story” by asserting that chemical weapons are only possessed by the regime, and not the opposition.

He added that the available information provided by the Israelis confirmed that on at least two occasions, the rebels had seized areas in which chemical weapons were stored and those arms might have fallen into their hands.

"According to our estimates, there is a strong probability that in addition to home-grown labs in which militants are trying to cook up harmful and deadly concoctions, the data provided by the Israelis is true,” the Russian FM said.

“Preparatory work for OPCW inspectors to assume control of chemical weapons storage sites requires that those who fund and sponsor opposition groups – including extremists – demand that they hand over the [arms] which have been seized so that they can be destroyed, pursuant to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

Lavrov added that Russia was not a guarantor for the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons, as Syria’s commitments fell under the auspices of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which is internationally administered by the OPCW.

Lavrov said Russia and the US were working out a draft resolution to be submitted to the OPCW, although several points were yet to be agreed upon.

Earlier in September, Moscow said it would submit data to the UNSC proving that the chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb were used by the rebels. These “purely technical” documents were handed over to Russia by the Bashar Assad government and are being examined by Russian specialists. This data “is an addition to what we already know and to what is known to…independent experts who give their assessments and confirm that the opposition regularly resort to provocations, attempting to accuse the regime of using chemical weapons” and this way get foreign military support, Lavrov said.

A UN experts team, who investigated the August 21 attack in Syria, presented a report on their findings, in which they described the ammunition and substances they discovered on the scene, but made no conclusions regarding who was behind the incident.

However, the US, along with Britain and France, moved quickly to repeat their accusations against the Syrian government. “Such an approach is neither scientific, nor professional but rather politicized and ideology-driven,” the Russian foreign minister stressed.

According to Lavrov, it was no secret that they did not need any report. Long before the document was prepared, they stated that they already knew everything from their intelligence findings – which have never been presented to the public in full, the Russian minister noted.

“What they did show to us does not convince that the [Syrian] regime is linked to the episode with the use of chemical weapons,” Lavrov said.

He reiterated that there is also evidence by eyewitnesses, including nuns from the Christian monastery close to the scene of the deadly attack, and journalists who visited the area. Reporters, Lavrov said, talked to militants who told them that they “received from abroad munitions that they had never seen before and did not know how to use them, but they used them in the end.” There was also an open letter by the Pentagon and CIA veterans to President Obama, where they say that the rebels could have used chemical weapons.

Moscow expects the UN experts to go back to Syria to finish their investigation there, which should include three other incidents - on August 22, 24 and 25 – when the Syrian army was attacked with poisonous gas, Lavrov said.

Logistics of destruction

Sergey Lavrov said that the time frame for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons was not unrealistic.

"The overwhelming majority of the figures as per timing, term, beginning, finishing of the mission have been suggested by the American side," he added.

Even if the time frame is feasible, there remains disagreement on the cost of the venture.

Earlier this week, President Assad said the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal would be a costly venture.

“It needs a lot of money, it needs about one billion [US dollars]. It’s very detrimental to the environment. If the American administration is ready to pay the money, and to take responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don’t they do it?” Assad told Fox News

Lavrov said he had heard of the cost estimate, although during his negotiations with his US counterpart in Geneva last week, the figure was much lower. Lavrov said the discrepancy stemmed from the fact that a professional estimate was in order.

“When OPCW experts visit Syria and view the storage sites for chemical weapons, they will understand what can be destroyed on the spot (and this is also possible) with the use of mobile equipment which a number of states have, and those where special factories need to be built, as we did when destroying Soviet chemical weapons stockpiles. But for those which need to be taken out of the country – toxic substances – will require a special decision, because the convention considers it essential that the destruction takes place on the territory of that country which possesses the chemical weapons,” he said.

Lavrov said legal grounds would need to be found to move forward in this case, but if all sides could agree in principle, then drawing up a legally binding document will not be hard.

He further noted the difficulties that would be faced in assuring the security of both the Syrian and international experts tasked with bringing the chemical weapons under control and laying the groundwork for their ultimate destruction.

“We’ve considered that an international presence will be demanded in those areas where experts are working. We are prepared to allocate our own servicemen or military police to take part in those efforts. I do not believe it is necessary to send in a strong [military] contingency.] It seems to me that it will be sufficient to send in military observers. It will be necessary to do it in such a way that the observers will come from all permanent members of the UN Security Council, Arab states and Turkey, so that all conflicting sides in Syria understand that this contingent represents all external forces who are collaborating with one or the other conflicting sides in Syria…so that they don’t resort to provocations,” he said.

Lavrov reiterated previous statements made during his negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry following their talks in Geneva last week that the opposition was equally responsible for providing for the safety of OPCW and UN experts in the country and not allowing for any “provocations.”

 

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Humankind’s Most Dangerous Moment: Fukushima Fuel Pool at Unit 4. “This is an Issue of Human Survival.”


 

The world community must now take charge at Fukushima


By: Harvey Wasserman
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2013/1985
Source: Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/humankinds-most-dangerous-moment-fukushima-fuel-pool-at-unit-4/5350779
 
We are now within two months of what may be humankind’s most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focussed on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.

Fukushima’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.

The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.

Why is this so serious?

We already know that thousands of tons of heavily contaminated water are pouring through the Fukushima site, carrying a devil’s brew of long-lived poisonous isotopes into the Pacific. Tuna irradiated with fallout traceable to Fukushima have already been caught off the coast of California. We can expect far worse.

Tepco continues to pour more water onto the proximate site of three melted reactor cores it must somehow keep cool.Steam plumes indicate fission may still be going on somewhere underground. But nobody knows exactly where those cores actually are.

Much of that irradiated water now sits in roughly a thousand huge but fragile tanks that have been quickly assembled and strewn around the site. Many are already leaking. All could shatter in the next earthquake, releasing thousands of tons of permanent poisons into the Pacific.

The water flowing through the site is also undermining the remnant structures at Fukushima, including the one supporting the fuel pool at Unit Four.

More than 6,000 fuel assemblies now sit in a common pool just 50 meters from Unit Four. Some contain plutonium. The pool has no containment over it. It’s vulnerable to loss of coolant, the collapse of a nearby building, another earthquake, another tsunami and more.

Overall, more than 11,000 fuel assemblies are scattered around the Fukushima site. According to long-time expert and former Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, there is more than 85 times as much lethal cesium on site as was released at Chernobyl.

Radioactive hot spots continue to be found around Japan. There are indications of heightened rates of thyroid damage among local children.

The immediate bottom line is that those fuel rods must somehow come safely out of the Unit Four fuel pool as soon as possible.

Just prior to the 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami that shattered the Fukushima site, the core of Unit Four was removed for routine maintenance and refueling. Like some two dozen reactors in the US and too many more around the world, the General Electric-designed pool into which that core now sits is 100 feet in the air.

Spent fuel must somehow be kept under water. It’s clad in zirconium alloy which will spontaneously ignite when exposed to air. Long used in flash bulbs for cameras, zirconium burns with an extremely bright hot flame.

Each uncovered rod emits enough radiation to kill someone standing nearby in a matter of minutes. A conflagration could force all personnel to flee the site and render electronic machinery unworkable.

According to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with forty years in an industry for which he once manufactured fuel rods, the ones in the Unit 4 core are bent, damaged and embrittled to the point of crumbling. Cameras have shown troubling quantities of debris in the fuel pool, which itself is damaged.

The engineering and scientific barriers to emptying the Unit Four fuel pool are unique and daunting, says Gundersen. But it must be done to 100% perfection.

Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire, releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the health and safety of all us.

Chernobyl’s first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima’s in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.

Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima “would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.”

Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet’s best scientists and engineers.


For now, we are petitioning the United Nations and President Obama to mobilize the global scientific and engineering community to take charge at Fukushima and the job of moving these fuel rods to safety.


If you have a better idea, please follow it. But do something and do it now.

The clock is ticking. The hand of global nuclear disaster is painfully close to midnight.Harvey Wasserman is Senior Editor of the Columbus Free Press and Free Press. He edits Nuke Free.

For now, we are petitioning the United Nations and President Obama to mobilize the global scientific and engineering community to take charge at Fukushima and the job of moving these fuel rods to safety.

 

Friday, September 20, 2013

Broken Foundations and the Fall of Western Society



By: Stewart Brennan
World United News

At the end of World War II and as a result of the Nuremberg Trials, the shattered Foundations of Civilization were rebuilt by the adoption of Human Rights, and laws put in place to end Aggressive War. Both of these initiatives empowered a new United Nations assembly which embraced the promise of all nations being treated as equals. These were key points in building a World free of war and would be enforced through mutual agreement and International law by a United Nations body.

We owe our thanks in large part to the principals, ideals, and values expressed by US Chief Justice “Robert H. Jackson” as witnessed in his opening statement as the US Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. 

Mr Jackson’s statement was believed by the worlds population at that time to be on behalf of the western establishment as to the way in which western society was going to stand, from that day forth. Indeed the war weary populations of the world believed these words to be true because in them they found hope, truth, and justice.

Even though many of us awake today are aware that the crimes committed by the Allied forces during World War II went unpunished, we still believed, at least before the internet came into being, that the monstrous crimes committed during World War II would never be committed again simply because we believed there was a moral overseer called the United Nations that pledged to take the lead in the name of Peace, Justice and the guiding principals of Human Rights. At least that was the general feeling between 1945 to 2001 by most of the people in the West. I for one, believed that my government had taken an oath to uphold these foundations while representing the will and needs of their own people at home.

Today, we find the economic victors of WWII pushing their greedy interests all over the world through sanctions, war and terrorism, while at home they push national governments to apply austerity measures on their own people. The United Nations is now a place to make war on other nations legal, which is in complete contrast as to what our belief was in this institution and the establishment that runs the worlds economy.

Looking back in history, I see that nothing has changed in over 2,000 years. Now instead of a single nation driving for empire by an economic elite, we have a collective of nations driving for empire by an economic elite that is intent on growing their empire through hostile takeovers of victim nations to maintain their economic growth and drive to global domination…

Nothing has changed with regards to Information Control, Propaganda and the suppression of Alternative News either. Control of information is an important tool by the elites to hold their plans together.


Before the availability of the Internet, the population within each and every nation was controlled and held captive in a bubble of propaganda that was fed by mediums of Newsprint, TV and Radio.

Since the days of the Roman Empire, people the World over have been subject to the established news mediums that have always controlled the narrative for a handful of extremely wealthy people.

During the Roman Empire, “Criers” would take up their positions in towns and villages across the land to report the news and views of the Patrician’s to the people that would gather in the squares to hear them. There were no alternative news criers. Any differing views were quickly silenced and their originators put to death for daring to speak out against the authority of those times. The Patricians greed and lust for power ruled and did not stand for any challenges to their rule.

Here we are 2,000 years later and nothing has changed. I don’t see any difference today, as free speech is under attack in every OECD member nation. Anyone that tries to expose government lies, corporate corruption, or military crimes are quickly silenced, Imprisoned or put six feet under, because it gets in the way of the overall plans of those that control the economics behind the scenes.

Lately there has been an exponential increase in the number of attacks on free speech, freedom of the press, and human rights by the establishment on those that speak out. What is also evident is the exponential rise in O.E.C.D. Terrorism and military aggression, something which the United Nations was empowered to stop after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials.

The sentencing of Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for doing what he was supposed to do under International law by reporting war crimes is a return to darker times. The manhunt for Edward Snowdon and the grounding and search of Presidential planes also breaks International law. Not to mention the Arming of terrorists to overthrow leaders of sovereign nations is also considered a war crime yet Western Governments continue to get away with these crimes without penalty or the force of International law.

Both Israel and Egypt are guilty of crimes against humanity for the blockade on the people of Gaza. Israel is guilty of committing war crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria and continues to make the people in the West Bank and Gaza suffer by committing the most heinous of crimes. The USA and Great Britain are Guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by an aggressive war on Iraq, which was started by their own fabrication. The NATO countries that took part in the War on Libya committed war crimes and crimes against humanity from the total destruction of that country including using depleted uranium and targeting civilian centers and infrastructure. Today western nations are arming terrorists and supporting the most vile and ruthless scum ever to emerge from under Saudi Arabian Petro dollars.

The list of crimes committed by Western Countries goes on and on with more frequency everyday, millions have died and tens of millions more have been displaced by their crimes…

I am reminded of the words in Robert H. Jackson’s opening speech during the Nuremberg trials after WWII...and through all the years leading up to 911 and the Internet I actually believed my Country stood up to enforce the International laws handed down as a result of the Nuremberg trials. What’s even worse is that in some twisted way our government leaders actually believe they are upholding International law, but I don’t see how…do you?


Opening Statement by US Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson at Nuremberg


“The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrong’s which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.

This Tribunal, while it is novel and experimental, is not the product of abstract speculations nor is it created to vindicate legalistic theories. This inquest represents the practical effort of four of the most mighty of nations, with the support of 17 more, to utilize international law to meet the greatest menace of our times, aggressive war. The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched. It is a cause of that magnitude that the United Nations will lay before Your Honors.

In the prisoners' dock sit twenty-odd broken men. Reproached by the humiliation of those they have led almost as bitterly as by the desolation of those they have attacked, their personal capacity for evil is forever past. It is hard now to perceive in these men as captives the power by which as Nazi leaders they once dominated much of the world and terrified most of it. Merely as individuals their fate is of little consequence to the world.

What makes this inquest significant is that these prisoners represent sinister influences that will lurk in the world long after their bodies have returned to dust. We will show them to be living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism and violence, and of the arrogance and cruelty of power. They are symbols of fierce nationalisms and of militarism, of intrigue and war- making which have embroiled Europe generation after generation, crushing its manhood, destroying its homes, and impoverishing its life. They have so identified themselves with the philosophies they conceived and with the forces they directed that any tenderness to them is a victory and an encouragement to all the evils which are attached to their names. Civilization can afford no compromise with the social forces which would gain renewed strength if we deal ambiguously or indecisively With the men in whom those forces now precariously survive.

What these men stand for we will patiently and temperately disclose. We will give you undeniable proofs of incredible events. The catalog of crimes will omit nothing that could be conceived by a pathological pride, cruelty, and lust for power. These men created in Germany, under the "Fuehrerprinzip", a National Socialist despotism equalled only by the dynasties of the ancient East. They took from the German people all those dignities and freedoms that we hold natural and inalienable rights in every human being. The people were compensated by inflaming and gratifying hatreds towards those who were marked as "scapegoats". Against their opponents, including Jews, Catholics, and free labor, the Nazis directed such a campaign of arrogance, brutality, and annihilation as the world has not witnessed since the pre-Christian ages. They excited the German ambition to be a "master race", which of course implies serfdom for others. They led their people on a mad gamble for domination. They diverted social energies and resources to the creation of what they thought to be an invincible war machine They overran their neighbors. To sustain the "master race" in its war-making, they enslaved millions of human beings and brought them into Germany, where these hapless creatures now wander as "displaced persons". At length bestiality and bad faith reached such excess that they aroused the sleeping strength of imperiled Civilization. Its united efforts have ground the German war machine to fragments. But the struggle has left Europe a liberated yet prostrate land where a demoralized society struggles to survive. These are the fruits of the sinister forces that sit with these defendants in the prisoners' dock.

In justice to the nations and the men associated in this prosecution, I must remind you of certain difficulties which may leave their mark on this case. Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole continent, and involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, and dealing with the legal consequences of local and limited events seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation. Yet less than 8 months ago today the courtroom in which you sit was an enemy fortress in the hands of German SS troops. Less than 8 months ago nearly all our witnesses and documents were in enemy hands. The law had not been codified, no procedures had been established, no tribunal was in existence, no usable courthouse stood here, none of the hundreds of tons of official German documents had been examined, no prosecuting staff had been assembled, nearly all of the present defendants were at large, and the four prosecuting powers had not yet joined in common cause to try them. I should be the last to deny that the case may well suffer from incomplete researches and quite likely will not be the example of professional work which any of the prosecuting nations would normally wish to sponsor. It is, however, a completely adequate case to the judgment we shall ask you to render and its full development we shall be obliged to leave to historians.

Before I discuss particulars of evidence, some general considerations which may affect the credit of this trial in the eyes of the world should be candidly faced. There is a dramatic disparity between the circumstances of the accusers and of the accused that might discredit our work if we should falter, in even minor matters, in being fair and temperate.

Unfortunately the nature of these crimes is such that both prosecution and judgment must be by victor nations over vanquished foes. The worldwide scope of the aggressions carried out by these men has left but few real neutrals. Either the victors must judge the vanquished or we must leave the defeated to judge themselves. After the first World War, we learned the futility of the latter course. The former high station of these defendants, the notoriety of their acts, and the adaptability of their conduct to provoke retaliation make it hard to distinguish between the demand for a just and measured retribution, and the unthinking cry for vengeance which arises from the anguish of war. It is our task, so far as humanly possible, to draw the line between the two. We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this Trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity's aspirations to do justice.

At the very outset, let us dispose of the contention that to put these men to trial is to do them an injustice entitling them to some special consideration These defendants may be hard pressed but they are not ill used. Let us see what alternative they would have to being tried.

More than a majority of these prisoners surrendered to or were tracked down by the forces of the United States. Could they expect us to make American custody a shelter for our enemies against the just wrath of our Allies? Did we spend American lives to capture them only to save them from punishment? Under the principles of the Moscow Declaration, those suspected war criminals who are not to be tried internationally must be turned over to individual governments for trial at the scene of their outrages. Many less responsible and less culpable American-held prisoners have been and will continue to be turned over to other United Nations for local trial. If these defendants should succeed, for any reason, in escaping the condemnation of this Tribunal, or if they obstruct or abort the trial, those who are American-held prisoners will be delivered to our continental Allies. For these defendants, however, we have set up an International Tribunal and have undertaken the burden of participating in a complicated effort to give them fair and dispassionate hearings. That is the best- known protection to any man with a defense worthy of being heard.”
-----------

NOT JUST WORDS

These were not just mere words Robert H Jackson spoke, but Ideals that led to the basis and foundation of a future world built by moral guiding principals, respect and International Law. We were all sold on the idea that a United Nations would bring together the people of the World as equals and embrace a set of values and principals in an international framework of mutual respect…ideals that most people still believe in today.

However, it is abundantly clear that the Governments of today within the collective of the OECD nations or as a collective of Western Nations have completely ignored their oath to uphold International Law. Instead they have made the clear choice to repeat history on a larger scale by using aggressive war and the use of terrorists to achieve the gains and interests of those weaving webs behind the economic and power lust scenes.

In the days of the Roman Empire at least, those that owned all the land, money and power also held office as senators so they were in the open. In today’s Western Empire, the owners stay in the shadows while buying the politicians to represent them. Elections have always been an illusion when it comes to democratic representation and economics. All you need to do is follow the money to find the truth and the criminals.

The founding, Principals and Ideals for a Moral and Just Society referred to by Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials have been destroyed by elitist arrogance, greed, and lust for power. The assimilation of nations into their economic control and collective is not new…however it has become news in the last 12 years since the free flow of information on the internet which challenges the elitist controlled mainstream and state propaganda news corporations. 
It is my belief that the establishment who own all the land that we pay taxes on, and who own the majority of corporations and wealth, including and direction of most countries through puppet dictatorships, never intended to abide by the laws set down at Nuremberg even though they pretend that they stand on these guiding principals.

Our Western Governments are out of control and well on their way to destroying the planet. Only an awakened citizenry can change the course or direction the world is heading in so that means we need to connect in defiance of our governments wishes and become the alternative news, and town criers of today…but we must also mobilize in our masses and hold these tyrants accountable for the crimes they have committed because there are no nations coming to your rescue this time. We simply will not survive the elitist’s end game if we do not stand up…the Foundations of civilization that we believe in, are broken and the fall of Western society is at hand...I’m tired of the Western Governments double standards, aren’t you?

~ Stewart Brennan ~

Links:





Thursday, September 19, 2013

President Assad Interviewed by Dennis Kucinich & Fox News Sept 17, 2013



President Al-Assad's interview with Dennis Kucinich, former U.S. Congressman & Greg Palkot, senior foreign affairs correspondence, Fox News - 17 September 2013.


Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Why the US, UK, EU and Israel hate Syria


AFP Photo / Achilleas Zavallis

By: Adrian Salbuchi
Source: Russia Today

A young, soft-spoken girl living the Syrian tragedy spells it out with far more common sense, truth and honesty than powerful Western governments and their money-controlled mass media puppets.

Identifying herself only as “Syrian, Patriot, anti-Neocon, anti-NWO, anti-Zionist”, early last year she set up her own YouTube Channel (YouTube/User/SyrianGirlpartisan).

In a short (nine-minute) video she explains “eight reasons why the NWO (New World Order) hates Syria.” We would all do well to listen in…

Her ‘Top Eight Reasons Why They Hate Us’ is an excellent wrap-up, applicable to just about every self-respecting country in the world: no Rothschild-controlled Central Bank, no IMF debt, no genetically modified foods, oil and pipelines, anti-secret societies, anti-Zionism, secularism and nationalism.

Why The N.W.O. Hates Syria



Video Source: SyrianGirlPartisan

Her brief message unravels as a sort of common sense manual which explains why the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the European Union (especially France) and Israel are so keen on destroying Syria, a country whose leadership just won’t bow down to the New World Order elites embedded deep inside the Western powers’ own public (government) and private (corporate/banking) power structures.

She describes these eight reasons succinctly and convincingly, giving the world much food for thought and should hopefully inspire deep soul-searching. Especially amongst the people of the US, UK, EU and Israel who are the only populations that can put very direct pressure on their elected politicians in Washington, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and other Western capitals, forcing them to stop behaving like global criminals gone berserk, and to start heeding the word of We the People, in a responsible and democratic manner.

8 reasons the New World Order hates Syria

1) Syria’s Central Bank is state-owned & controlledIn other words, it manages its national currency so that it serves the Syrian people and not the Rothschild-controlled global bankers operating from their New York, London, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, Basel and Paris hideouts.

This means that the volume of currency it issues is in proper sync with the true needs of real economy of work, labor, production and all that is useful to Syria’s people, instead of being in sync with parasitic, usurious, speculative foreign financiers. The latter seek to control local central banks so they can artificially limit the volume of currency available for genuine economic needs, especially the no-interest credit needed to finance useful things in the real economy: power plants, roads, gas works, housing, private enterprise and initiatives. This forces productive players – public and private - to have to resort to deadly interest and usury-based private banking loans whereupon the eternal debt chain starts to grow and grow as the so-called ‘sovereign debt crises’ that hit country after country throughout decades of time eloquently show.

By artificially distorting the volume of ‘public currency’issued by sovereign central banks that generates no interest, countries are thus forced to resort to high interest bearing ‘private currency’ (loans) handled by the monopolistic private bankster cabal in the hands of Rothschild, Rockefeller, Warburg, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, CitiCorp, JP Morgan Chase interests.

Clearly, a very good reason for these parasitic banksters to want to take out Syria.


 
screenshot from youtube video by SyrianGirlpartisan

2) Syria has no IMF (International Monetary Fund) debt. This means that Syria’s leadership understands that the IMF – a public multilateral agency of member governments - is controlled by the global mega-bankers, and acts as their auditor and debt collection police whenever one of its weaker member states runs into sovereign debt trouble, which is another way of saying when those countries reach a point where they cannot siphon enough money out of their real economies - the work, toil and labor of its people - to hand it over to the parasitic private global bankers.

In a sense, the IMF’s real job is to act as the global power elite’s tax office – its ‘IRS’ so to speak – only that it does not tax people directly, but rather through proxy government and nation-states’ tax offices. Are we starting to understand the real roots of the ‘debt crises’ hitting Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Argentina, Spain, Italy, UK, US, Portugal, France?

Global slavery couldn’t have been better thought out and planned!

Actually, true Islamic nations rightly reject banking fractional lending and interest practices as being immoral. That’s what Libya’s Gaddafi did, and what Syria and Iran presently do.

Clearly, a very good reason for parasitic banksters to want to take out Syria, just as they took out Libya and now target Iran.

3) Syria has banned genetically modified (GMO) seedsBashar Assad banned GMO’s in order “to preserve human health,” knowing full well that the Monsantos of this world are out to control the world’s entire food supply, because coming global crises will not only be about oil, but about how much food countries will be able to put on their people’s tables.

That’s why after invading Iraq, the US ordered that only Monsanto seeds should to be used. That’s why submissive client states like Argentina are poisoning their own soil and people by bowing down really low to Monsanto’s demands.

Clearly, a very good reason for Monsanto to want to take out Syria.

4) Syria’s population is well informed about the New World Order - Its media and universities openly debate the global power elite’s influence in things. This means that they fully grasp the fact that real power in the West lies not in the White House, 10 Downing Street, Congress or Parliament, but rather with the complex and powerful grid of elite think-tanks led by New York’s Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Conference, Trilateral Commission, Americas Society, World Economic forum and London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, which interact with mega-bankers, media, universities, the military, multinationals and the corporate over-world.

As our young friend aptly explains, Syrians dare to talk about secret societies like Freemasonry or Yale University’s Skull & Bone Lodge whose members include top cats like former President George W Bush and current Secretary of State John Kerry.

Clearly, a very good reason for those top cats to order their errand boy Obama to take out Syria.

5) Syria has massive oil and gas reserveshere we go again! Every time the West goes to war to protect “freedom, human rights and democracy,” there’s always the nauseous stench of oil; whether in Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, the Falklands, Afghanistan… Syria has offshore and onshore oil and gas reserves, and is helping to build a massive pipeline together with Iran, but without Western oil giants’ control. Clearly, the full militarization of all oil production and reserve zones, and the militarization of transportation routes to ‘bring oil home’ from everywhere in the world, is a key on-going joint US/UK strategy.


 
A worker walks in the Ebla natural gas plant near Homs, northeast of Damascus (Reuters / Khaled al-Hariri)

Clearly, a very good reason for BP, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, Texaco, Total, Repsol and Chevron to want to take out Syria.

6) Syria clearly and unequivocally opposes Zionism and Israel - Israel practices criminal racist apartheid against the occupied Palestinians. Syria’s leadership has no qualms in accusing Israel of being what it is: a racist, imperialist, genocidal entity, as the Wall of Hate Israel erected around Palestine clearly shows. Israel manages what can only be described as an Auschwitz-like mega-concentration camp in Palestine with millions of ill-treated, often-assassinated and humiliated prisoners.

Such geopolitical clarity of mind was shared by Gadhafi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq, and today also by Iran, China, Russia and India.

Clearly a very good reason for political juggernauts like AIPAC (American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee), the World Jewish Congress, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), Likud, Kadima and Netanyahu/Lieberman to want to take out Syria.

7) Syria is one of the last secular Muslim states in the Middle East, whilst Zionist Jewish supremacists - in line with born-again-Israel-First-Bushite ‘Christian’ kooks in the West - need for everybody to align to the will of their dark demiurge god which has its own ‘chosen people’.

The Global Power Elite’s implicit order is clear: everybody must believe in Israeli superiority, whilst our young Syrian friend aptly points out that Syria, like Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya and Iran just could not be convinced of that.

She adds that in Syria, “asking about religion is not polite,” because Syria has bred many of mankind’s prime religions for thousands of years, and those millennia have taught Syrians to be sensitive, tolerant and respectful of all creeds. Something we clearly do not see in the pro-West Arabian sheikdoms, nor in the US, UK and EU with its anti-Islamic paranoia, and where laws are passed imposing the most blatant cultural, political and historical lies demanded by religious bigots who insist that their god will only accept their own holocaust offerings.

Clearly, another very good reason for neocon fanatics and their Orwellian Thought Police to want to take out Syria.

8) Syria proudly maintains and protects its political and cultural national identity – she stresses how Syria “holds on to its uniqueness,” whilst respecting the uniqueness of others. The standardized coming world government simply abhors anybody standing up to its imposed standardization of thought, behavior and ‘values’, where the West’s global megabrands, shopping malls, and fashion & style dictatorships “makes every place look pretty much the same, which leads to a very boring world.”


 
Syrian women eat ice cream at the Al-Hamidieh market in old Damascus, September 8, 2013 (Reuters / Khaled al-Hariri)

Today, revolutionary thought in the West even amongst the young, boils down to choosing between Coke and Pepsi.

Clearly, a very good reason for Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, Levis, Lauder, Planet Hollywood and Burger King to want to take out Syria.

Our young Syrian friend ends her message by reminding us that “if Syria falls, it could be the tipping point the ends in victory for the New World Order,” adding that today “Syria is the frontline against the New World Order.”

Wise words from a young lady who understands the catastrophic failure of the Western powers’ political class, who have now completely turned our world upside down; where the very worst and most malignant criminals have infected governments and private power structures, be it in Washington, New York, London, and Paris, or in Berlin, Rome, Bogota, Madrid, Tokyo, Seoul, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires or Riyadh.

If sometimes Hollywood serves as a showcase that reveals the darkest recesses of the Western power elite’s sick group psyche, we might even say that they are playing our the ‘Planet of the Apes’ saga, where a weird and hellish genetic inversion places horrendously destructive animals in places of world power, whilst noble vanquished humans are enslaved and thrown into cages.

Is this today’s metaphor best describing the US against Syria drama?

The eight points mentioned above are as good a guide to get all our countries back on course as we can muster in today’s troubled, out-of-control world.

Whether American, European, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Shinto, the time has come for ‘We the People’ to make our voices heard on the streets, with neighbors, family and friends, work and school colleagues, through social networks, demanding that Western so-called ‘democratically-elected’ governments – all of which are the direct result of the will of money-sloshing elites that financed their climb to top government posts through their favorite lie they call ‘democracy’ - stop doing what they are doing, and start doing what we demand they do. Now; immediately: we must take our countries back.

Our young Syrian friend has certainly set an example for all of us to follow.
----------------
Links:

Adrian Salbuchi – Official website
Syrian Partisan Girl - YouTube

Friday, September 13, 2013

Syrian Chemical Attack: More Evidence Only Leads to More Questions



By: Yossef Bodansky


The paucity of revealed facts highlights the reality that little is really known about the actual attack. There is still no agreed upon number of fatalities, with unverified claims ranging from the US assertion of 1,429 fatalities to the French assertion that only 281 were killed. In other words, the French Intelligence number is about 20 percent that of the US assertion. Most Syrian opposition sources now put the number of fatalities at between 335 and 355, as does the non-governmental organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This is about 25 percent of the US number. Either way, this is too huge a gap not to be explained and substantiated.


It is still not clear what type of agent killed the victims.


To-date, the US position in documents submitted to Congress is that the victims died as a result of “nerve agent exposure”. Orally, however, Secretary Kerry claimed the US has proof it was sarin. The French intelligence report also attributes the deaths to “chemical agents” without further identification. The most explicit finding to-date comes from the UK’s Defence Science Technology Laboratory. Soil and cloth samples “tested positive for the nerve gas sarin”. The sarin in the cloth was in liquid form that soaked into the cloth. As discussed below, this finding reinforces the conclusion that “kitchen sarin” was used. Hence, so much will depend on the UN’s findings when their tests are completed.


The claim that the agent used was a “military sarin” is problematic because military sarin accumulates (like a gaseous crystal) around the victims’ hair and loose threads in clothes. Since these molecules are detached and released anew by any movement, they would have thus killed or injured the first responders who touched the victims’ bodies without protective clothes, gloves and masks. However, opposition videos show the first responders moving corpses around without any ill effects. This strongly indicates that the agent in question was the slow acting “kitchen sarin”. Indeed, other descriptions of injuries treated by MSF – suffocation, foaming, vomiting and diarrhea – agree with the effects of diluted, late-action drops of liquified sarin. The overall descriptions of the injuries and fatalities treated by MSF closely resemble the injuries treated by the Tokyo emergency authorities back on March 20, 1995. The Tokyo subway attack was committed with liquified “kitchen sarin”. The know how for this type of sarin came from North Korean Intelligence, and is known to have been transferred, along with samples, to Osama bin Laden in 1998. That the jihadist movement has these technologies was confirmed in jihadist labs captured in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as from the wealth of data recovered from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001/2.


As well, it is not yet clear what weapons were used to disperse the chemical agent. The specifics of the weapon will provide the crucial evidence whether this was a military type agent of the kind available in the Syrian arsenal, or improvised, kitchen-style agent of the type known to be within the technical capabilities of the jihadist opposition.


Meanwhile, the mangled projectiles shown by the opposition, and which were tested by the UN inspectors, are not standard weapons of the Syrian Armed Forces. These projectiles have very distinct ribbed-ring fins, which are similar to projectiles used by the opposition in Aleppo, Damascus, and other fronts with both high explosives and undefined materials. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) retrieved a video claiming to be of the attack, but is most likely of a daylight testing of the launcher. The truck-mounted launcher included a chemical sleeve that was supposed to absorb leaks from the improvised warheads and not harm the launch crew; hardly the precaution taken with a military weapon.


Moreover, the warheads used in Damascus were cylindrical tanks which cracked and permitted a Tokyo-style mixture of liquids, rather than the pressurized mix and vaporization at the molecular level by the force of core explosion in a standard Soviet-style chemical warhead. Had Syrian militarily-trained experts built these warheads, they would have used the upper pipe for the core-charge the explosion of which would have created a significantly more lethal vaporized cloud of the toxic agent. The mere fact that the pipeline remained empty suggests the work of amateurs found in the ranks of the improvised weapon makers of the jihadist opposition.


As well, the opposition also pointed to cracked plastic pieces which resembled shreds from large blue plastic tanks/bottles (like a water cooler’s huge bottles) fired by chemical launchers the opposition had bragged about in the past. These weapons are in agreement with the multitude of images of victims publicized by the opposition, which did not show any injury due to shrapnel, which would have come from Soviet-style chemical munitions of the type known to be in the Syrian military arsenal.


Most important, of course, is the question “Who could have done it?” given the available data. Significantly, evidence collected by numerous Arab sources on the ground in the greater Damascus area and recently smuggled out of Syria narrows the scope of potential perpetrators and the reason for the attack. This evidence points to specific commanders of Liwaa al-Islam and Jabhat al-Nusra known to be cooperating in the eastern Damascus theater.


On the night of August 20/21. 2013, and the early morning of August 21, 2013 – a day before the chemical attack – the jihadists’ Liberating the Capital Front, led by Jabhat al-Nusra, suffered a major defeat during Operation Shield of the Capital. Operation Shield of the Capital is the largest military operation of the Syrian Army in the Damascus region since the beginning of the conflict. The jihadists also amassed a huge force of over 25,000 fighters for their Front from 13 armed kitaeb [battalion-groupings].


The main units belonged to Jabhat al-Nusra and Liwaa al-Islam. The other kitaeb were Harun al-Rashid, Syouf al-Haqq, al-Mohajereen, al-Ansar, Abu Zhar al-Ghaffari, Issa Bin Mariam, Sultan Mohammad al-Fatih, Daraa al-Sham, the Jobar Martyrs, and Glory of the Caliphate. They included both Syrian and foreign volunteers. (The mere gathering of so many kitaeb for the battle of eastern Damascus refutes the assertion in the US and French intelligence reports that the opposition was incapable of conducting coordinated large-scale operations and therefore the chemical attack must have been launched by Assad’s forces.)


Around dawn on August 21, 2013, the Liberating the Capital Front suffered a strategic defeat in the Jobar entrance area.


The Jobar entrance was the opposition’s last staging areas with access to the heart of Damascus from where they could launch car-bombs and raids. The Jobar entrance is also the sole route for reinforcements and supplies coming from the Saudi-Jordanian-US intelligence base near Jordan’s major airbase and military facilities in al-Mafraq (from where the eastern route to Damascus starts) and distributed via the Ghouta area to the outlaying eastern suburbs of Damascus. The eastern route is so important that the efforts are supervised personally by Saudi Princes Bandar and Salman bin Sultan, and overseen by Col. Ahmad al-Naimeh, the commander of the opposition’s Military Council of the Southern Region and Horan.


The jihadists’ defeat on August 21 effectively sealed any hope of a future surge from Jordan by CIA-sponsored jihadist forces because the jihadists who, starting August 17/18, 2013, were attempting to use the western route to Damascus from the base in Ramtha, Jordan, had by now been encircled and defeated not far from the Golan border with Israel.


As the jihadist forces were collapsing, the Front commanders deployed an élite force to block at all cost the Syrian military’s access to the Jobar entrance area. The majority of the jihadists in this force were from Liwaa al-Islam and the rest from Jabhat al-Nusra. The commander of the force was a Saudi jihadist going by the nom de guerre Abu-Ayesha. (Abu-Ayesha was identified by a Ghouta resident called Abu Abdul-Moneim as the jihadist commander who had stored in a tunnel in Ghouta weapons some of which had “tube-like structure” and others looked like “huge gas bottles”. Abdul-Moneim’s son and 12 other fighters were killed inside the tunnel by a chemical leak from one of these weapons.)


According to military and strategic analyst Brig. Ali Maqsoud, the Liwaa al-Islam forces arrayed in Jobar included “the so-called ‘Chemical Weapons Front’ led by Zahran Alloush [the supreme leader of Liwaa al-Islam]. That group possesses primitive chemical weapons smuggled from al-Qaida in Iraq to Jobar, in the vicinity of Damascus.”


When the jihadist Front collapsed, the jihadist leaders decided that only a chemical strike could both stop the advance of the Syrian army and provoke a US military strike that would deliver a strategic victory for the jihadists. The chemical agents were then loaded on what Russian intelligence defined as “rockets [which] were manufactured domestically to carry chemicals. They were launched from an area controlled by Liwaa al-Islam.”


Maqsoud is convinced the chemical weapons strike was launched at the behest of Washington and on Washington’s orders. “In the end, we can say that this [post-strike US] escalatory rhetoric aims to achieve two things. The first is strengthening [the US] position as leader of the opposition and imposing conditions in preparation for the negotiating table. The second is changing the [power balance on the] ground and stopping the Syrian army’s advance,” Maqsoud told al-Safir of Lebanon.


The identification of Liwaa al-Islam under Zahran Alloush as the jihadist force most likely to have conducted the chemical attack raises major questions regarding the Saudi involvement and particularly that of Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Zahran Alloush is the son of a Saudi-based religious scholar named Sheikh Abdullah Muhammad Alloush. During the 1980s, he worked for then Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Turki al-Faisal in both Afghanistan and Yemen.


Zahran Alloush was involved with the neo-salafi/Wahhabi underground in Syria since the 1990s, was jailed by Syrian Mukhabarat, and released in mid-2011 as part of Bashar al-Assad’s amnesty aimed to placate Riyadh. Zahran Alloush immediately received funds and weapons from Saudi intelligence which enabled him to establish and run Liwaa al-Islam as a major jihadist force.


On July 18, 2012, Liwaa al-Islam conducted the major bombing of the headquarters of Syria’s national security council in Rawda Square, Damascus, assassinating, among others, Assaf Shawkat, Bashar’s brother-in-law and nominally the deputy Minister of Defense, Dawoud Rajiha, the Defense Minister, and Hassan Turkmani, former Defense Minister who was military adviser to then-Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa. In Spring 2013, Zahran Alloush helped the Saudis weaken the Qatari-sponsored jihadist forces in the Damascus area. In June 2013, he suddenly withdrew his forces in the middle of a major battle with the Syrian army, leaving the Qatari-sponsored First Brigade and Liwaa Jaish al-Muslimeen to be defeated and mauled.


Significantly, in late August 2013, the opposition insisted on having Zahran Alloush and Liwaa al-Islam secure and escort the international experts team when they collected evidence in the opposition-controlled parts of eastern Damascus. Zahran Alloush entrusted the task of actually controlling and monitoring the UN team to his close allied katiba, the Liwaa al-Baraa from Zamalka. Thus, the international experts’ team operated while in effective custody of those jihadists most likely responsible for the chemical attack.


According to several jihadist commanders, “Zahran Alloush receives his orders directly from the Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan” and Liwaa al-Islam is Saudi Arabia’s private army in Syria.


The Bandar aspect is important to understanding strategic-political aspects of the chemical strike.
No independent evidence ties Bandar to the actual chemical attack.


Presently, there is no independent evidence connecting Bandar, or any other Saudi official, to the supply and use of chemical weapons in Damascus. There exist, though, the long-time connections between the various jihadist commanders and both Saudi intelligence and Bandar himself. However, Bandar’s threats in the meeting with Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin cast a shadow on the question of Riyadh’s foreknowledge, and, given the uniquely close relations between Bandar and CIA Chief John Brennan, Washington’s foreknowledge as well.


On August 2, 2013, Prince Bandar had an unprecedented meeting with Pres. Putin at the Kremlin.


Their meeting covered a host of issues ranging from future energy economy to the situation in Egypt to what to do about Syria. Throughout, Bandar made a huge mistake – believing that Putin was just like the successive US senior officials Bandar has dealt with in the past – namely, that like the Americans, Putin would also be easy to bribe with flattery, weapons acquisition, and oil-related cash. Putin was not.


Of significance to the issue of the chemical strike in Damascus was the exchange between Bandar and Putin regarding the future of Bashar al-Assad. Bandar wanted Putin to support the toppling of the Assad Administration and its replacement with a Saudi-sponsored opposition administration. Bandar promised that Russia’s interests in Syria would be preserved by the proposed Saudi-sponsored post-Assad government.


In this context Bandar sought to both allay Putin’s concerns regarding jihadist terrorism and to deliver a veiled threat. “As an example,” Bandar stated, “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move [also] in the direction of the Syrian territory without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”


Putin responded quietly. “We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism that you mentioned.”


Toward the end of the meeting, Bandar again discussed the Syrian issue at length. He stressed that as far as Riyadh was concerned, there was no future for the Assad Administration. “The Syrian regime is finished as far as we and the majority of the Syrian people are concerned,” Bandar said, and they, the Syrian people, “will not allow President Bashar al-Assad to remain at the helm.”


Putin responded that Moscow’s “stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters.” Again, Bandar resorted to threats. He warned Putin that their dispute over the future of Syria led him, Bandar, to conclude that “there is no escape from the [US-led] military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate”. Bandar added that Riyadh saw no future for the negotiating process.


Bandar expected such a military intervention to soon commence.


Did he have any foreknowledge of a provocation to come? Significantly, Bandar insisted throughout his visit to Moscow that his initiative and message were coordinated with the highest authorities in Obama’s Washington. “I have spoken with the Americans before the visit, and they pledged to commit to any understandings that we may reach, especially if we agree on the approach to the Syrian issue,” Bandar assured Putin.


Did the Obama White House know in advance about the Saudi claim to controlling jihadist terrorism in both Russia and Syria? Did the Obama White House know about Bandar’s anticipation of an US-led military intervention?


Several Arab leaders, as well as senior intelligence and defense officials from the Arabian Peninsula are now convinced that the chemical strike was aimed to provoke a US-led military intervention which would in turn lead to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad and the empowerment of an Islamist government in Damascus.


These senior intelligence and defense officials have privately expressed anger that the US has not [yet] struck at Syria, as was so widely anticipated in the Arab world. These notables point out that in late Spring, the top leaders of the Syrian opposition and its regional sponsors impressed on the highest authorities in Washington and other Western capitals the gravity of the situation. The opposition and sponsors warned that unless there was a major military intervention during the Summer, the struggle for Syria would be lost come Autumn. The leaders of the opposition and their sponsors now insist that they were assured in these discussions that the US and key West European powers were eager to provide such help and intervene in order to topple the Assad Administration and empower the opposition in Damascus.


Given the political climate in the US and the West, the Arab leaders say that they were told, it was imperative for US and Western leaders to have a clear casus belli of an absolute humanitarian character. Recently (but before the chemical attack), the opposition and sponsors were asked for lists of targets to be hit by US-led Western bombing should there be a Western intervention. The opposition provided such target lists, convinced that their bombing was imminent. The leaders of the opposition and their sponsors now feel cheated, for there had just been an humanitarian catastrophe in Damascus with all the characteristics of the sought-after casus belli, and yet, there were no US and Western bombers in the skies over Damascus!


Significantly, most of these Arab leaders and officials are not in the know. They don’t pretend to have any specific knowledge of what happened in Damascus beyond the coverage in the Arab media. They complain so bitterly on the basis of their comprehension of how things should have been done given the overall strategic circumstances. And for them, such a self-inflicted carnage is the most obvious thing to do if that was what Washington and other Western capitals needed in order to have a viable casus belli for an intervention.


Meanwhile, the US case against the Assad Administration continued to crumble.


“No direct link to Pres. Bashar al-Assad or his inner-circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some US sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward,” observed Reuters’ Mark Hosenball.


A closer study of the much-touted electronic intercepts proves that Assad and his inner-circle were stunned by the news of the chemical attack. When the first reports of the chemical attack surfaced, a very senior Syrian military officer called in panic the artillery commander of the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army which is under the direct command of Maher al-Assad.


The senior officer wanted to know if the brigade had fired any chemical munitions in contravention of the explicit orders of the top leadership not to do so. The artillery commander flatly denied firing any rocket, missile, or artillery. He added that he had already checked and confirmed that all his munitions were accounted for, and invited the general staff to send officers to verify on their own that all brigade’s munitions were in safe storage. The senior officers took the commander to task and he was interrogated for three days as a thorough inventory of the munitions was carried out. This artillery officer was returned to duty as it was confirmed beyond doubt that no munitions were missing. (Since there was no other chemical-capable unit in the area, the claim of rogue officers should identify from where and how they had obtained chemical munitions.)


The reaction of the Assad inner-circle was in agreement with earlier observations by German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).


The BND reported that since the beginning of Spring 2013, Syrian brigade and division commanders had repeatedly asked the Presidency for permission to use chemical weapons against jihadist forces besieging them. The Presidency had always denied permission in strong and uncompromising terms. The BND has no indication, let alone proof, that this consistent policy changed on or before August 21. 2013.


This is also the opinion of a very senior Iranian official in Beirut. When the news of the chemical attack first broke, a very senior HizbAllah official called the Iranian for advice. The BND intercepted the call. The HizbAllah official wondered whether “Assad had lost his temper and committed a huge mistake by giving the order for the poison gas use”. The Iranian senior official assured his HizbAllah counterpart that there was no change to Assad’s “long-standing steadfast policy of not using these [chemical] weapons”.


One of the main reasons for Washington’s accusatory finger at the Syrian military was the assertion that the chemical attack took place in the context of a Syrian military effort to recapture this part of the Damascus area. Having met stiff resistance and under immense pressure to decide the battle swiftly, Washington’s explanation goes, the Syrian military used chemical weapons in order to break the opposition.


However, the Syrian Armed Forces have a long history of training by the Soviet Armed Forces and access to Soviet-era weaponry, both chemical agents and means of dispersal. Among these are huge quantities of the vastly more lethal VX and grenade-size aerosols optimized for dense urban environment. Syrian commando was supplied with, and trained on, these systems starting the late-1970s when preparing to fight the jihadist insurrection in some of Syria’s main cities. Hence, had the Syrian military wanted to clear the said areas with the use of chemical weapons, they would have used VX in aerosols with greater efficiency and lethality. And why not use the same VX-filled aerosols in other key urban battle-fronts like Aleppo or Homs to expedite victory? Why use “kitchen sarin” and wide-area-effect munitions that will only hinder military advance into contaminated areas?


Hence, what is the basis for the Obama Administration’s confidence that “Assad did it” to the point of threatening military action which in all likelihood would evolve into US involvement in Syria’s bloody civil war? The most honest answer was provided on September 8, 2013, by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough on CNN’s State of the Union program. McDonough asserted it was “common sense” that the Syrian Government carried out the chemical attack, and provided no further evidence to back his statement. Nobody pressed McDonough on this point.


The US has long taken sides in the Syrian civil war and all the regional wars and strife integrated into it.


The US placed itself as the self-anointed manager and arbiter of the outcome of this fateful dynamic. Nobody in the region believes the Obama White House’s assurances about a limited strike with no intent of “regime change”. After all this was the exact assurances given by the Obama Administration on the eve of the UNSC’s vote on Libya solely in order to convince Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to abstain and let the resolution pass (which they did). Now, should the US strike Syria, alone or at the head of a makeshift coalition, the US would have crossed the threshold of active participation and leadership. Pressure would mount on the US to complete the job: to invade and get involved directly in the fighting, to secure the strategic weapon arsenals (which will take 75,000-100,000 troops by the Pentagon’s latest estimates), and to overthrow Assad and empower what Bandar calls “moderate” Islamists.


Arab leaders and their Islamist protégés are now convinced that only the US can, and should, defeat the Assad Administration and empower the Islamists for them. Should the US shirk or dither, there would be more and worse provocations, and more innocent Syrians would die in the hands of their brethren and saviors until the US delivered Damascus to the Islamists-jihadists and their sponsors.


After the catastrophe that Libya is today, does Washington really want to try again in Syria?


Wouldn’t confronting reality and the Islamists-jihadists be a more expedient (and honest) way of doing things?


Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

---------------------- 

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