The sad TRUTH about the TRUTH is don't believe anything you READ, HEAR or SEE on this site or any other News sites as we have all been Deceived and Lied to on a daily basis for most of our lives especially by Mainstream Media News outlets like CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and MSNBC so "BEWARE" as they outright lie and spread Propaganda for the Puppet Government of the Elite 1% Scumbags. So before you believe or form your own opinion, do your own Thorough Research – Due Diligence first. This Site is a collection of Important News Stories on any and all issues of the day. They are collected from all over the net to Inform, Alert and educate The Public Quote "And so it is to the printing press to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with the TRUTH man will be what he was born to be: Free and Independent". J.F.K
Privacy: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the NSA, as it enters every computer and pries whatever data can be stolen and recorded in perpetuity. Its ongoing mission: to explore the internet and all TCP/IP packets, to seek out new emails, phone records, backdoors, webcams and bank accounts, to boldly go where no man with or without a search warrant has gone before.
Those who will recall our brief biopic on the “Meet The Man In Charge Of America’s Secret Cyber Army” remember that before Keith Alexander was put in charge of the NSA, he “was a one-star general in charge of the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the military’s worldwide network of 10,700 spies and eavesdroppers. In March of that year he told his hometown Syracuse newspaper that his job was to discover threats to the country. “We have to stay out in front of our adversary,” Alexander said. “It’s a chess game, and you don’t want to lose this one.” But just six months later, Alexander and the rest of the American intelligence community suffered a devastating defeat when they were surprised by the attacks on 9/11. Following the assault, he ordered his Army intercept operators to begin illegally monitoring the phone calls and email of American citizens who had nothing to do with terrorism, including intimate calls between journalists and their spouses. Congress later gave retroactive immunity to the telecoms that assisted the government.”
That much is known. What may come as a surprise is that during his tenure at the AISC, Alexander made it quite clear that he perceived himself as none other than Star Trek’s James T. Kirk, or to a lesser extent, Jean-Luc Piccard, if only based on how he decorated his “office” – the amusingly titled “Information Dominance Center.” Amusingly, because said information dominance failed completely to foresee the events of September 11.
“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
“‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”
Alexander wowed members of Congress with his eye-popping command center. And he took time to sit with them in their offices and explain the intricacies of modern technology in simple, plain-spoken language. He demonstrated a command of the subject without intimidating those who had none.
Today, courtesy of the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who tracked down the layout of said Information Dominance Center to designs prepared by DBI Architects who supposedly were in charge of creating the General’s work environs, we now have a glimpse of just how Star Trekishly the megalomaniac intercepting all US and global electronic communications and financial transactions thought of himself.
It’s a 10,740 square foot labyrinth in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The brochure touts how “the prominently positioned chair provides the commanding officer an uninterrupted field of vision to a 22′-0″ wide projection screen”:
The glossy display further describes how “this project involved the renovation of standard office space into a highly classified, ultramodern operations center.” Its “primary function is to enable 24-hour worldwide visualization, planning, and execution of coordinated information operations for the US Army and other federal agencies.” It gushes: “The futuristic, yet distinctly military, setting is further reinforced by the Commander’s console, which gives the illusion that one has boarded a star ship”
Any casual review of human history proves how deeply irrational it is to believe that powerful factions can be trusted to exercise vast surveillance power with little accountability or transparency. But the more they proudly flaunt their warped imperial hubris, the more irrational it becomes.
And some more pictures of how egomaniacs with unchecked power enjoy decorating their workspace:
As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve.
Image: Federal Reserve
Unelected, unaccountable central planners from a private central bank run our financial system and manage our economy. There is a reason why financial markets respond with a yawn when Barack Obama says something about the economy, but they swing wildly whenever Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke opens his mouth. The Federal Reserve has far more power over the U.S. economy than anyone else does by a huge margin. The Fed is the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world, and if the American people truly understood how it really works, they would be screaming for it to be abolished immediately. The following are 25 fast facts about the Federal Reserve that everyone should know…
#2 The United States never had a persistent, ongoing problem with inflation until the Federal Reserve was created. In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent. In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent, and it would be even higher than that if the inflation numbers were not being so grossly manipulated.
#3 Even using the official numbers, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 95 percent since the Federal Reserve was created nearly 100 years ago.
#4 The secret November 1910 gathering at Jekyll Island, Georgia during which the plan for the Federal Reserve was hatched was attended by U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department A.P. Andrews and a whole host of representatives from the upper crust of the Wall Street banking establishment.
#5 In 1913, Congress was promised that if the Federal Reserve Act was passed that it would eliminate the business cycle.
#6 The following comes directly from the Fed’s official mission statement: “To provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. Over the years, its role in banking and the economy has expanded.”
#7 It was not an accident that a permanent income taxwas also introduced the same year when the Federal Reserve system was established. The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.
#8 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.
#9 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950. The Federal Reserve created the “dotcom bubble”, the Federal Reserve created the “housing bubble” and now it has created the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet.
#10 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loansto the big banks during the last financial crisis. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report…
Citigroup – $2.513 trillion Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion Merrill Lynch – $1.949 trillion Bank of America – $1.344 trillion Barclays PLC – $868 billion Bear Sterns – $853 billion Goldman Sachs – $814 billion Royal Bank of Scotland – $541 billion JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion Deutsche Bank – $354 billion UBS – $287 billion Credit Suisse – $262 billion Lehman Brothers – $183 billion Bank of Scotland – $181 billion BNP Paribas – $175 billion Wells Fargo – $159 billion Dexia – $159 billion Wachovia – $142 billion Dresdner Bank – $135 billion Societe Generale – $124 billion “All Other Borrowers” – $2.639 trillion
#11 The Federal Reserve also paid those big banks $659.4 million in fees to help “administer” those secret loans.
#12 The Federal Reserve has created approximately 2.75 trillion dollars out of thin air and injected it into the financial system over the past five years. This has allowed the stock market to soar to unprecedented heights, but it has also caused our financial system to become extremely unstable.
#13 We were told that the purpose of quantitative easing is to help “stimulate the economy”, but today the Federal Reserve is actually paying the big banks not to lend out 1.8 trillion dollars in “excess reserves” that they have parked at the Fed.
#14 Quantitative easing overwhelming benefits those that own stocks and other financial investments. In other words, quantitative easing overwhelmingly favors the very wealthy. Even Barack Obama has admitted that 95 percent of the income gains since he has been president have gone to the top one percent of income earners.
#15 The gap between the top one percent and the rest of the country is now the greatest that it has been since the 1920s.
#16 The Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is “not an agency” of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
#17 The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations“.
#18 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the “member banks” that own them.
#19 The Federal Reserve system greatly favors the biggest banks. Back in 1970, the five largest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets. Today, the five largest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
#20 The Federal Reserve is supposed to “regulate” the big banks, but it has done nothing to stop a 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives bubble from inflating which could absolutely devastate our entire financial system.
#21 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine. The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape. Since the Federal Reserve was established nearly 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.
#23 If the average rate of interest on U.S. government debt rises to just 6 percent (and it has been much higher than that in the past), we will be paying out more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.
#24 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So exactly why is the Federal Reserve doing it?
#25 There are plenty of possible alternative financial systems, but at this point all 187 nations that belong to the IMF have a central bank. Are we supposed to believe that this is just some sort of a bizarre coincidence?
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The Biggest Ponzi Scheme In The History Of The World
By Michael Snyder, on June 23rd, 2013
Did you know that you are involved in the most massive Ponzi scheme that has ever existed? To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a man named Sam. When he was younger, he had been a very principled young man that had worked incredibly hard and that had built a large number of tremendously successful businesses. He became fabulously wealthy and he accumulated far more gold than anyone else on the planet. But when he started to get a little older he forgot the values of his youth. He started making really bad decisions and some of his relatives started to take advantage of him. One particularly devious relative was a nephew named Fred. One day Fred approached his uncle Sam with a scheme that his friends the bankers had come up with. What happened next would change the course of Sam’s life forever.
Even though Sam was the wealthiest man in the world by far, Fred convinced Sam that he could have an even higher standard of living by going into a little bit of debt. In exchange for IOUs issued by his uncle Sam, Fred would give him paper notes that he printed off on his printing press. Since the paper notes would be backed by the gold that Sam was holding, everyone would consider them to be valuable. Sam could take those paper notes and spend them on whatever his heart desired. Uncle Sam started to do this, and he started to become addicted to all of the nice things that those paper notes would buy him.
Fred took the IOUs that he received from his uncle and he auctioned them off to the bankers. But there was a problem. The IOUs issued by Uncle Sam had to be paid back with interest. When the time came to pay back the IOUs, Uncle Sam could not afford to pay back the debts, pay the interest on those debts, and buy all of the nice things that he wanted. So Uncle Sam issued even more IOUs than before so that he could get enough notes to pay off his debts. As time rolled on, this pattern just kept on repeating. Uncle Sam repeatedly paid off his old debts by taking out even larger new debts.
Meanwhile, since the notes that Uncle Sam was using were backed by gold, everyone else in the world decided to start using them to trade with one another. This was greatly beneficial to Uncle Sam, because the rest of the world was glad to send him oil, home electronics, plastic trinkets and anything else that Uncle Sam wanted in exchange for his gold-backed notes.
Eventually, however, the rest of the world started to suspect that the number of gold-backed notes that Uncle Sam was issuing far exceeded the amount of gold that Uncle Sam actually had. So the rest of the world started to trade in their notes for gold.
And by that time Uncle Sam definitely did not have enough gold to back up his notes. Realizing that the scheme was starting to collapse, one day Uncle Sam announced that his notes would no longer be backed by gold. But he insisted that the rest of the world should continue using his notes because he was the wealthiest man on the planet and everyone should just trust him.
And the rest of the world did continue to trust him, although it wasn’t the same as before.
As Uncle Sam got greedier and greedier, he started to issue IOUs and spend notes at a rate that nobody ever dreamed possible. The great businesses that Uncle Sam had built when he was younger were starting to decline, and Uncle Sam started buying far more stuff from the rest of the world than they bought from him. The rest of the world was still glad to take Uncle Sam’s notes because they used them to trade with one another, but they started accumulating far more notes than they actually needed.
Not sure exactly what to do with mountains of these notes, the rest of the world started to loan them back to Uncle Sam. It eventually got to the point where Uncle Sam owed the rest of the world trillions of these notes. Even though the notes were losing value at a rate of close to 10 percent a year, Uncle Sam somehow convinced the rest of the world to loan him notes at an average rate of interest of less than 3 percent a year.
One day Uncle Sam woke up and realized that the amount of debt that he owed was now more than 5000 times larger than it was when Fred had first approached him with this ill-fated scheme. Uncle Sam now owed more than 16 trillion notes to his creditors, and Uncle Sam had already made future financial commitments of 202 trillion notes that he would never be able to pay. Meanwhile, the notes that Fred had been printing up for Uncle Sam were now worth less than 5 percent of their original value. Uncle Sam was becoming concerned because some of his other relatives were warning that this whole scheme was about to collapse.
Sadly, Uncle Sam did not listen to them. Uncle Sam knew that if he admitted how fraudulent the financial scheme was, the rest of the world would quit sending him all of the things that he needed in exchange for his notes and they would quit lending his notes back to him at super low interest rates.
And if the rest of the world lost confidence in his notes and quit using them, Uncle Sam knew that his standard of living would go way, way down. That was something that Uncle Sam could not bear to have happen.
When a financial crisis almost caused the scheme to crash in 2008, a desperate Uncle Sam went to Fred and asked for help. In response, Fred started printing up far more notes than ever before and started directly buying up large amounts of IOUs from Uncle Sam with the notes that he was creating out of thin air. Fred hoped that the rest of the world would not notice what he was doing.
It seemed to work for a little while, but then an even worse financial crisis came along. Once again, Uncle Sam started issuing massive amounts of new IOUs and Fred started printing up giant mountains of new notes to try to fix things, but their desperate attempts to keep the system going were to no avail. The rest of the world started to realize that they had been sucked into a massive Ponzi scheme, and they lost confidence in the notes that Uncle Sam was using. Suddenly nobody wanted to lend notes to Uncle Sam at super low interest rates anymore, and people started asking for far more notes in exchange for the things that Uncle Sam wanted.
Uncle Sam’s standard of living dropped dramatically. Since he could no longer flood the world with his notes, Uncle Sam could not continue to consume far, far more wealth than he produced. Uncle Sam sunk into a deep depression as he watched the scheme fall apart all around him.
Uncle Sam had once been the wealthiest man on the entire planet, but now he was a broke, tired old man that was absolutely drowning in debt. Unfortunately, once he was down on his luck the rest of the world did not have any compassion for him. In fact, much of the rest of the world celebrated the downfall of Uncle Sam.
All of this could have been avoided if Uncle Sam had never agreed to Fred’s crazy scheme. And once Uncle Sam made the decision to stop backing his notes with gold, it was only a matter of time before the scheme was going to collapse.
Does this little story sound crazy to you? It shouldn’t. The truth is that you are involved in such a scheme right now. In case you haven’t figured it out, "Uncle Sam" is the United States, the "notes" are U.S. dollars, and "Fred" is the Federal Reserve.
Please share this story with as many people as you can. Our country is headed for complete and total financial disaster, and we need to get people educated about this while there is still time.
On September 27, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will release part of their fifth assessment report on climate change. For the first time since 1990, this report will scale back the hysteria on global warming.
Matt Ridley at The Wall Street Journal viewed a few leaks from the 31-page document and talked to one of the senior climate scientists. The temperature rise due to man-made carbon dioxide is lower than their prediction in 2007. Originally a three degrees Celsius increase was predicted, but that number is now expected to be between 1-2.5 degrees Celsius.
Specifically, the draft report says that "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), "likely" to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.
Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC’s emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.
Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher.
Ridley pointed out that many papers in the last year have come to this same conclusion. Scientists at the University of Illinois and Oslo University in Norway found the ECS levels would be lower than the models showed. Three papers followed, including one produced by 14 lead authors of the IPCC report, that backed the evidence. Francis Zwiers and others at the university of Victoria, British Columbia found that global warming was overestimated by 100% over 20 years.
No word yet on Al Gore’s reaction to this very important report.
The fact that the Fukushima reactors have been leaking huge amounts of radioactive water ever since the 2011 earthquake is certainly newsworthy. As are the facts that:
If one of the pools collapsed or caught fire, it could have severe adverse impacts not only on Japan … but the rest of the world, including the United States. Indeed, a Senator called it a national security concern for the U.S.:
The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen and physician Helen Caldicott have both said that people should evacuate the Northern Hemisphere if one of the Fukushima fuel pools collapses. Gundersen said:
Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that’s probably the lesson there.
Former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura calls removing the radioactive materials from the Fukushima fuel pools “an issue of human survival”.
So the stakes in decommissioning the fuel pools are high, indeed.
But in 2 months, Tepco – the knuckleheads who caused the accident – are going to start doing this very difficult operation on their own.
Thousands of workers and a small fleet of cranes are preparing for one of the latest efforts to avoid a deepening environmental disaster that has China and other neighbors increasingly worried: removing spent fuel rods from the damaged No. 4 reactor building and storing them in a safer place.
Tom Snitch, a senior professor at the University of Maryland and with more than 30 years’ experience in nuclear issues, said “[Japan officials] need to address the real problems, the spent fuel rods in Unit 4 and the leaking pressure vessels,” he said. “There has been too much work done wiping down walls and duct work in the reactors for any other reason then to do something…. This is a critical global issue and Japan must step up.”
In November, Tepco plans to begin the delicate operation of removing spent fuel from Reactor No. 4 [with] radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. …. It remains vulnerable to any further shocks, and is also at risk from ground liquefaction. Removing its spent fuel, which contains deadly plutonium, is an urgent task…. The consequences could be far more severe than any nuclear accident the world has ever seen. If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire. Any of these situations could lead to massive releases of deadly radionuclides into the atmosphere, putting much of Japan — including Tokyo and Yokohama — and even neighboring countries at serious risk.
The radioactive leak at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant is far from under control and could get a lot worse, a nuclear energy expert, who compiles the annual “World Nuclear Industry Status Report” warned.
***
The big danger – and it was identified by Japan’s atomic energy commission – is if you lose water in one of the spent fuel pools and you get a spent fuel fire.
[Mycle Schneider, nuclear consultant:] The situation could still get a lot worse. A massive spent fuel fire would likely dwarf the current dimensions of the catastrophe and could exceed the radioactivity releases of Chernobyl dozens of times. First, the pool walls could leak beyond the capacity to deliver cooling water or a reactor building could collapse following one of the hundred of aftershocks. Then, the fuel cladding could ignite spontaneously releasing its entire radioactive inventory.
The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is preparing to remove 400 tons of highly irradiated spent fuel from a damaged reactor building, a dangerous operation that has never been attempted before on this scale.
Containing radiation equivalent to 14,000 times the amount released in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima 68 years ago, more than 1,300 used fuel rod assemblies packed tightly together need to be removed from a building that is vulnerable to collapse, should another large earthquake hit the area.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) is already in a losing battle to stop radioactive water overflowing from another part of the facility, and experts question whether it will be able to pull off the removal of all the assemblies successfully.
“They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods,” said Arnie Gundersen, a veteran U.S. nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, who used to build fuel assemblies.
The operation, beginning this November at the plant’s Reactor No. 4, is fraught with danger, including the possibility of a large release of radiation if a fuel assembly breaks, gets stuck or gets too close to an adjacent bundle, said Gundersen and other nuclear experts.
That could lead to a worse disaster than the March 2011 nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant, the world’s most serious since Chernobyl in 1986.
No one knows how bad it can get, but independent consultants Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt said recently in their World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013: “Full release from the Unit-4 spent fuel pool, without any containment or control, could cause by far the most serious radiological disaster to date.”
***
The utility says it recognizes the operation will be difficult but believes it can carry it out safely.
Nonetheless, Tepco inspires little confidence. Sharply criticized for failing to protect the Fukushima plant against natural disasters, its handling of the crisis since then has also been lambasted.
***
The process will begin in November and Tepco expects to take about a year removing the assemblies, spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai told Reuters by e-mail. It’s just one installment in the decommissioning process for the plant forecast to take about 40 years and cost $11 billion.
Each fuel rod assembly weighs about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) and is 4.5 meters (15 feet) long. There are 1,331 of the spent fuel assemblies and a further 202 unused assemblies are also stored in the pool, Nagai said.
***
Spent fuel rods also contain plutonium, one of the most toxic substances in the universe, that gets formed during the later stages of a reactor core’s operation.
***
“There is a risk of an inadvertent criticality if the bundles are distorted and get too close to each other,” Gundersen said.
He was referring to an atomic chain reaction that left unchecked could result in a large release of radiation and heat that the fuel pool cooling system isn’t designed to absorb.
“The problem with a fuel pool criticality is that you can’t stop it. There are no control rods to control it,” Gundersen said. “The spent fuel pool cooling system is designed only to remove decay heat, not heat from an ongoing nuclear reaction.”
The rods are also vulnerable to fire should they be exposed to air, Gundersen said. [The pools have already boiled due to exposure to air.]
***
Tepco has shored up the building, which may have tilted and was bulging after the explosion, a source of global concern that has been raised in the U.S. Congress.
***
The fuel assemblies have to be first pulled from the racks they are stored in, then inserted into a heavy steel chamber. This operation takes place under water before the chamber, which shields the radiation pulsating from the rods, can be removed from the pool and lowered to ground level.
The chamber is then transported to the plant’s common storage pool in an undamaged building where the assemblies will be stored.
Tepco confirmed the Reactor No. 4 fuel pool contains debris during an investigation into the chamber earlier this month.
Removing the rods from the pool is a delicate task normally assisted by computers, according to Toshio Kimura, a former Tepco technician, who worked at Fukushima Daiichi for 11 years.
“Previously it was a computer-controlled process that memorized the exact locations of the rods down to the millimeter and now they don’t have that. It has to be done manually so there is a high risk that they will drop and break one of the fuel rods,” Kimura said.
***
Corrosion from the salt water will have also weakened the building and equipment, he said.
And if an another strong earthquake strikes before the fuel is fully removed that topples the building or punctures the pool and allow the water to drain, a spent fuel fire releasing more radiation than during the initial disaster is possible, threatening about Tokyo 200 kilometers (125 miles) away.
ABC Radio Australia quotes an expert on the situation (at 1:30):
Richard Tanter, expert on nuclear power issues and professor of international relations at the University of Melbourne:
***
Reactor Unit 4, the one which has a very large amount of stored fuel in its fuel storage pool, that is sinking. According to former prime Minister Kan Naoto, that has sunk some 31 inches in places and it’s not uneven. This is really not surprising given what’s happened in terms of pumping of water, the aftermath of the earthquake and the tsunami, the continuing infusions of water into the groundwater area. This is an immediate problem, and if it is not resolved there is an extraordinary possibility we really could be back at March 2011 again because of the possibility of a fission accident in that spent fuel pond in Unit No. 4.
Mitsuhei Murata, a former Japanese ambassador to Switzerland has officially called for the withdrawalof Tokyo’s Olympic bid, due to the worsening crisis at Fukushima, which experts believe is not limited to storage tanks, but also potential cracks in the walls of the spent nuclear fuel pools.
The spent-fuel pool … was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, and is in adeteriorating condition. It remains vulnerable to any further shocks, and is also at risk from ground liquefaction.
***
If a fuel rod is dropped, breaks or becomes entangled while being removed, possible worst case scenarios include a big explosion, a meltdown in the pool, or a large fire.
***
This is literally a matter of national security – another mistake by TEPCO could have incredibly costly, even fatal, consequences for Japan.
Like Pulling Cigarettes Out of a Crumpled Pack
Fuel rod expert Arnie Gundersen – a nuclear engineer and former senior manager of a nuclear power company which manufactured nuclear fuel rods – recently explained the biggest problem with the fuel rods (at 15:45):
I think they’re belittling the complexity of the task. If you think of a nuclear fuel rack as a pack of cigarettes, if you pull a cigarette straight up it will come out — but these racks have been distorted. Now when they go to pull the cigarette straight out, it’s going to likely break and release radioactive cesium and other gases, xenon and krypton, into the air. I suspect come November, December, January we’re going to hear that the building’s been evacuated, they’ve broke a fuel rod, the fuel rod is off-gassing.
***
I suspect we’ll have more airborne releases as they try to pull the fuel out. If they pull too hard, they’ll snap the fuel. I think the racks have been distorted, the fuel has overheated — the pool boiled – and the net effect is that it’s likely some of the fuel will be stuck in there for a long, long time.
The racks are distorted from the earthquake — oh, by the way, the roof has fallen in, which further distorted the racks.
The net effect is they’ve got the bundles of fuel, the cigarettes in these racks, and as they pull them out, they’re likely to snap a few. When you snap a nuclear fuel rod, that releases radioactivity again, so my guess is, it’s things like krypton-85, which is a gas, cesium will also be released, strontium will be released. They’ll probably have to evacuate the building for a couple of days. They’ll take that radioactive gas and they’ll send it up the stack, up into the air, because xenon can’t be scrubbed, it can’t be cleaned, so they’ll send that radioactive xenon up into the air and purge the building of all the radioactive gases and then go back in and try again.
It’s likely that that problem will exist on more than one bundle. So over the next year or two, it wouldn’t surprise me that either they don’t remove all the fuel because they don’t want to pull too hard, or if they do pull to hard, they’re likely to damage the fuel and cause a radiation leak inside the building. So that’s problem #2 in this process, getting the fuel out of Unit 4 is a top priority I have, but it’s not going to be easy. Tokyo Electric is portraying this as easy. In a normal nuclear reactor, all of this is done with computers. Everything gets pulled perfectly vertically. Well nothing is vertical anymore, the fuel racks are distorted, it’s all going to have to be done manually. The net effect is it’s a really difficult job. It wouldn’t surprise me if they snapped some of the fuel and they can’t remove it.
And Chris Harris – a, former licensed Senior Reactor Operator and engineer – notes that it doesn’t help that a lot of the rods are in very fragile condition:
Although there are a lot of spent fuel assemblies in there which could achieve criticality — there are also 200 new fuel assemblies which have equivalent to a full tank of gas, let’s call it that. Those are the ones most likely to go critical first.
***
Some pictures that were released recently show that a lot of fuel is damaged, so when they go ahead and put the grapple on it, and they pull it up, it’s going to fall apart. The boreflex has been eaten away; it doesn’t take saltwater very good.
Like Letting a Murderer Perform Brain Surgery On a VIP
Tepco’s recent attempts to solidify the ground under the reactors using chemicals has backfired horribly. And NBC News notes: “[Tepco] is considering freezing the ground around the plant. Essentially building a mile-long ice wall underground, something that’s never been tried before to keep the water out. One scientist I spoke to dismissed this idea as grasping at straws, just more evidence that the power company failed to anticipate this problem … and now cannot solve it.”
Mainstream Media Awakens to the fact that Fukushima Is Still a Total Mess
After visiting Fukushima a year ago, Senator Ron Wyden warned that the situation was worse than reported … and urged Japan to accept international help to stabilize dangerous spent fuel pools.
A year ago, an international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups called on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
A year ago, former U.N. adviser Akio Matsumura – whose praises have been sung by Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Ambassadors Stephen Bosworth and Glenn Olds, and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State and Goldman Sachs co-chair John C. Whitehead – noted:
The current Japanese government has not yet mentioned the looming disaster, ostensibly to not incite panic in the public. Nevertheless, action must be taken quickly. *** We believe an independent, international team of structural engineers and other advisers must be assembled and deployed immediately.
Increasingly, experts are arguing that the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, cannot be trusted to lead what is expected to be decades of cleanup and the decommissioning of the plant’s reactors without putting the public, and the environment, at risk.
***
“The Fukushima Daiichi plant remains in an unstable condition, and there is concern that we cannot prevent another accident,” Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said at a news conference.
***
“No wonder the water is leaking,” said Hideo Komine, a professor in civil engineering at Ibaraki University, just south of Fukushima. He said that the outer protective lining should have been hundreds of times thicker.
***
Muneo Morokuzu, a nuclear safety expert at the Tokyo University Graduate School of Public Policy, said that the plant required a more permanent solution that would reduce the flood of contaminated water into the plant in the first place, and that Tepco was simply unable to manage the situation. “It’s become obvious that Tepco is not at all capable of leading the cleanup,” he said. “It just doesn’t have the expertise, and because Fukushima Daiichi is never going to generate electricity again, every yen it spends on the decommissioning is thrown away.”
“That creates an incentive to cut corners, which is very dangerous,” he said. “The government needs to step in, take charge and assemble experts and technology from around the world to handle the decommissioning instead.”
A makeshift system of pipes, tanks and power cables meant to carry cooling water into the melted reactors and spent fuel pools inside shattered buildings remains highly vulnerable, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka acknowledged Wednesday.
***
The problems have raised doubts about whether the plant can stay intact through a decommissioning process that could take 40 years, prompting officials to compile risk-reduction measures and revise decommissioning plans.
***
Just over the past three weeks, there have been at least eight accidents or problems at the plant, the nuclear watchdog said.
***
Experts suspect the radioactive water has been leaking since early in the crisis, citing high contamination in fish caught in waters just off the plant.
***
“The nuclear crisis is far from over,” the nationwide Mainichi newspaper said in a recent editorial. “There is a limit to what the patchwork operation can do on a jury-rigged system.”
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You Won’t BELIEVE What’s Going On at Fukushima Right Now
NRA [Nuclear Regulation Authority] officials said highly contaminated water may be leaking into the soil from a number of trenches, allowing the water to seep into the site’s groundwater and eventually into the ocean.
***
Both radioactive substances are considered harmful to health. An NRA official said Monday that the very high levels were likely to be even higher than those within the reactor units themselves.
***
It was by far the highest concentration of radioactivity detected since soon after Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and tsunami ….
And the problems which have been detected at ground-level are only the tip of the iceberg. Japan Timespoints out:
Cesium levels in water under Fukushima No. 1 plant soar the deeper it gets, Tepco reveals
***
Tepco found 950 million becquerels of cesium and 520 million becquerels of beta ray-emitting radioactive substances, including strontium, in the water from 13 meters [~43 feet] underground.
Water from 1 meter down contained 340 million becquerels, and a sample from 7 meters down contained 350 million becquerels.
***
Cesium, a metallic element, is subject to gravity.
TEPCO spokesman Noriyuki Imaizumi revealed the water level of the tainted groundwater in a test well located on the sea side of the No. 2 reactor has risen rapidly.
“If the water level continues to rise, it could reach the ground surface,” Imaizumi, an acting general manager of the company’s nuclear power-related division, said at a press conference Monday.
According to the company, the water level has risen about 70 centimeters over the past 20 days.
***
To prevent contaminated groundwater from leaking into the sea, TEPCO is working to reinforce the ground foundation of seawalls. The rising water level in the test well means the measures to prevent leakage have been working.
However, the company apparently failed to give much thought to the fact that the groundwater would have nowhere else to go ….
Even Tepco admits that the groundwater problems are due to a lack of planning. NHK points out:
[Tepco] learnt on Wednesday that its efforts to prevent radiation-tainted groundwater from seeping into the sea are failing.
***
TEPCO has been trying to solidify the embankment of the crippled power plant.
***
TEPCO says water levels in one of the contaminated wells have risen by about 1 meter since the work began in early July.
It says this is likely the result of its work to solidify the ground [to a depth of 16 meters], using chemicals.
The company says soil up to 2 meters below the ground cannot be hardened, and water may be seeping out.
Atsunao Marui, head of the Groundwater Research Group at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, said, “Groundwater also flows beneath the seafloor, so it’s possible that contaminated groundwater could spring up outside the port.”
Marui added that water outside the port also needs to be carefully checked.
Reuters notes that the bolts in Fukushima’s tanks will corrode in just a few years, and a plant workers reveal — “Tepco says it doesn’t know how long tanks will hold”:
Experts say Tepco is attempting the most ambitious nuclear clean-up in history, even greater than the Chernobyl disaster ….
***
Radioactive water that cools the reactors …]mixes with some 400 tonnes of fresh groundwater pouring into the plant daily.
Workers have built more than 1,000 tanks ….
With more than 85 percent of the 380,000 tonnes of storage capacity filled, Tepco has said it could run out of space.
The tanks are built from parts of disassembled old containers brought from defunct factories and put together with new parts, workers from the plant told Reuters. They say steel bolts in the tanks will corrode in a few years.
Tepco says it does not know how long the tanks will hold.
[Tepco’s] appallingly shoddy handling of radioactive water that is leaking from the crippled plant into the sea.
***
At the No. 3 reactor, highly radioactive “mystery steam” has been spotted.
The fact that radioactive substances are still being released into the ground, the sea and the air is irrefutable proof that the nuclear disaster of March 2011 is not over. The responsible parties must take this situation gravely ….
The utility’s glaring ineptitude with crisis management was noted right from the start of the Fukushima disaster.
***
We have zero faith in the utility’s reliability as an operator of any nuclear power plant. In fact, allowing the company to handle nuclear energy is simply out of the question.
The entire company now needs to be focused on preventing radioactive substances from escaping into the environment.
Yomiuri argues that the government agency overseeing Fukushima has no idea what’s going on:
The Nuclear Regulation Authority, which oversees safety management at the nuclear plant, decided to set up a working team to analyze conditions concerning contamination.
But the NRA’s actions have also been badly delayed. At a meeting Monday, an expert said the NRA “still can’t grasp the risks posed by the current situation.”
In case one hasn’t paid attention the constant stream of international experts who have called for TEPCO to be removed as the organization in charge of decommissioning the crippled Fukushima Daiichi reactors, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority has also called for Tokyo Electric to be removed. “It is simply too big for one company to handle,” said Tanaka, at a press conference Wednesday. “Placing all the burden (of controlling the site) on them won’t solve the problem.”
It’s taken about two-and-a-half years, but it seems the Japanese government is finally losing patience with the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant. The reason: its haphazard approach to stabilising the complex. Last week it was unexplained steam rising from the shattered remains of the building housing the melted reactor number three. This week it’s TEPCO’s admission that radioactive water from the plant has probably been leaking into the Pacific for the last three months.
The operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant sat on its hands for more than two years despite having pledged to seal a leaking hole in a turbine building ….
[Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide] Suga told reporters after the Cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the government views this as a grave matter.
Tepco’s own advisors are also blasting the operator of the stricken nuclear plant. AFP points out:
Foreign nuclear experts on Friday blasted the operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, with one saying its lack of transparency over toxic water leaks showed “you don’t know what you’re doing”… “appears that you are not keeping the people of Japan informed. These actions indicate that you don’t know what you are doing …you do not have a plan and that you are not doing all you can to protect the environment and the people.” [said Dale Klein, Former NRC Chairman and Tepco advisory committee member]
Fukushima … seems to lurch from one problem to the next ….
***
When the situation is so bad that Shunichi Tanaka, the NRA chairman, is stating in a press conference, with regard to water leaks, that “if you have any better ideas, we’d like to know,” it should be clear that Fukushima No. 1 still requires the upmost attention.
The chairman of the NRA also says (via the New York Times):
Considering the state of the plant, it’s difficult to find a solution today ortomorrow… That’s probably not satisfactory to many of you. But that’s the reality we face after an accident like this… We don’t truly know whether that will work….
Hiroshi Tasaka, a nuclear engineer and professor at Tama University who advised the prime minister after the disaster … said the government target of removing all the rods by the end of next year may prove too optimistic because of many unknowns, the need to develop new technology and the risk of aftershocks.
Concerning the extraction of fuel debris [at Fukushima], which is considered the most challenging process, “There is no technology which may be directly applied,” said [top EnergySolutions executive] Morant.
A top American government nuclear expert – William D. Magwood – told the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:
It is very difficult to overstate how difficult the work is going to be at that site. There will need to be new technologies and new methodologies created to be able to enable them to clean the site up and some of these technologies don’t exist yet, so there’s a long way to go with that …. There’s a long, long way to go.
(Magwood is a Commissioner for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, former 7-year Director of Nuclear Energy with the U.S. Department of Energy , where he was the senior nuclear technology official in the U.S. government and the senior nuclear technology policy adviser to the Secretary of Energy, and the longest-serving head of the United States’ civilian nuclear technology program, serving two Presidents and five Secretaries of Energy from 1998 until 2005.)
And Greenpeace notes that even storing the waste removed from Fukushima is a challenge:
A group of scientists from the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) are advising the government via the Japan Atomic Energy Company (JAEC) to completely overhaul its nuclear waste disposal plan. Currently, the government plans to bury spent nuclear fuel 300 meters below ground, where it will need to stay for tens of thousands of years until it is no longer radioactive.
The SCJ group said that because Japan is so prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity, there’s no guarantee of safety for future generations.
Instead, the researchers recommend storing the waste in “temporary safe storage” facilities, either above ground or underground, for up to a few hundred years—and in the meantime, actively working to develop new technology to ensure safe burial of the highly radioactive material. That technology does not exist at this point. “Based on current scientific knowledge, we cannot determine a geological formation that would be stable for hundreds of thousands of years …. But discussions on where the spent fuel should ultimately be stored have not even begun.
Postscript: We don’t mean to imply that the situation is hopeless. Indeed, we are big believers in the ability of humans to come up with ingenuous solutions … when we put our minds to it.
For example,Sandia National Laboratories has engineered a special “molecular sieve” which can more efficiently remove radiation from wastewater.
Engineers are also furiously working on developing robots which can withstand higher levels of radiation.
But before we can tame this monster, we have to admit that Fukushima is one of the top short-term threats to humanity and deploy the resources necessary to develop the required technologies.
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DEATH HAS COME TO THE WORLD, AND NO ONE CAN ESCAPE IT! “The governments are gathering together, and betting upon the power of the press, to bombard people into believing in falsehood – and that is the number one government agenda next to genocide.”… "enough radiation will leak from the Fukushima Plants, to poison two thirds (2/3) of the population of the Americas… For some it will be slow. But others – especially the elderly and infants, will die very fast.”
Over the past few days, there has been a tremendous wave of optimism that it may be possible for war with Syria to be averted.
Credit: Public Domain
Unfortunately, it appears that a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria is extremely unlikely. Assad is certainly willing to give up his chemical weapons, but he wants the U.S. to accept a bunch of concessions that it will never agree to. And it certainly sounds like the Obama administration has already decided that “diplomacy” is going to fail, and they continue to position military assets for the upcoming conflict with Syria. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are all going to continue to heavily pressure the Obama administration. They have invested a huge amount of time and resources into the conflict in Syria, and they desperately want the U.S. military to intervene. Fortunately, overwhelming domestic and global opposition to an attack on Syria has slowed down the march toward war for the moment, but unfortunately that probably will not be enough to stop it completely. The following are ten reasons why war is almost certainly coming…
#1 Assad wants a guarantee that he will not be attacked by the United States or by anyone else before he will give up his chemical weapons.
That is extremely unlikely to happen.
#2 Assad is not going to agree to any chemical weapons deal unless the U.S. stops giving weapons to al-Qaeda terrorists and other jihadist rebels that are fighting against the Syrian government.
That is extremely unlikely to happen.
In fact, according to the Washington Post, the U.S. has been ramping up the delivery of weapons to jihadist rebels in Syria…
The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.
#3 Assad is suggesting that the Israelis should give up their weapons of mass destruction.
The “top rebel commander” is now declaring that the Free Syrian Army “categorically rejects the Russian initiative”, and he is calling on the United States to strike the Assad regime immediately.
#5 Saudi Arabia desperately wants the U.S. military to intervene in Syria. The Saudis have spent billions of dollars to support the rebels in Syria, and they have been lobbying very hard for an attack.
#6 Qatar desperately wants the U.S. military to intervene in Syria. Qatar has also spent billions of dollars to support the rebels in Syria, and it has been reported that “Arab countries” have even offered to pay for all of the costs of a U.S. military operation that would remove Assad.
#7 Turkey has wanted a war which would remove Assad for a very long time. And CNN is reporting that Turkey has moved troops to the border with Syria in anticipation of an upcoming attack.
#8 Many members of the U.S. Congress want this war. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are virtually foaming at the mouth, and Robert Menendez, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that he “almost wanted to vomit” after reading Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plea for peace in the New York Times.
#9 Obama does not want to look weak, and he seems absolutely obsessed with starting a war with Syria. For the moment, he has been backed into a corner diplomatically by Russia, but the Obama administration is already laying the groundwork for making it look like “diplomacy has failed”. According to CNN, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is already talking about the “consequences” that will happen when the Syria deal falls apart…
Any agreement reached must be “comprehensive,” “verifiable,” “credible” and “able to be implemented in a timely fashion,” Kerry said, adding that “there ought to be consequences if it doesn’t take place.”
#10 There have been reports that U.S. soldiers are now receiving orders to deploy to Syria.For example, the following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson…
Venture capitalist Dan Bubalo claims he was told by a source close to Ft. Hood that US troops have been ordered to deploy to Syria.
Writing for conservative columnist Mychal Massie’s website, Bubalo cites a “close and verifiable source” who told him that a friend at Ft. Hood had received news that he was to be sent to Egypt for the next nine months.
“This particular soldier said that while he was not really thrilled about the assignment to Egypt, it was better than the soldiers that remained at the military base BECAUSE THEY HAD JUST RECEIVED THEIR DEPLOYMENT ORDERS TO GO TO SYRIA,” writes Bubalo.
If you want to read the original report, you can find it right here.
For the moment, Obama and Kerry will dance around and make it look like they are considering peace. They will try to get Congress to authorize a strike “if diplomacy fails”.
But they already know that diplomacy is going to fail. Once they are ready, Obama will declare that the conditions for war set forth in the congressional authorization have been fulfilled and then he will start raining cruise missiles down on Syria.
When that happens, will Obama have your support? The video posted below is one of the funniest that I have seen in a long time…
Middle Eastern expert Jonathan Spyer has spent a lot of time on the ground among the Syrian rebels recently. The following is what he has to say about who they are…
“Undoubtedly outside of Syria, and in the Syrian opposition structures, there are civilian political activists and leaders who are opposed to al-Qaida and opposed to Islamism,” Spyer explained to TheDC in an email interview. “There are also civilian activists and structures within the country which are opposed to al-Qaida and Islamism. But when one looks at the armed rebel groups, one finds an obvious vast majority there who are adherents of Islamism of one kind or another — stretching from Muslim Brotherhood-type formations all the way across to groups openly aligned with al-Qaida central and with al-Zawahiri.”
“The ‘moderate’ force which we are told about supposedly consists of those rebel brigades aligned with the Supreme Military Command, of Major-General Salim Edriss,” he continued. ”Most of the units aligned with the SMC actually come from a 20-unit strong bloc called the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front. This includes some powerful brigades, such as Liwa al-Islam in the Damascus area, Liwa al Farouq and Liwa al Tawhid. These and the overwhelming majority of the units aligned with the SMC are Islamist formations, who adhere to a Muslim Brotherhood-type outlook.”
And as NBC News recently pointed out, a high percentage of these “rebels” have come in from outside Syria…
Abu Abdul Rahman, a 22-year-old from Tunisia, sat in a safe house earlier this week in Antakya — a southern Turkey town that’s fast becoming a smugglers transit route. He was waiting for a smuggler to take him across the border to fight in Syria.
“Almighty Allah has made Jihad a duty on us. When our Muslim brethren are oppressed, it is a duty to support them wherever they are, because Muslims are not separated by countries,” he said.
Abdul Rahman is one of thousands of al-Qaeda volunteers who are flocking to Syria to join what they see as a battle to defend Muslims no one is bothering to help.
“This was a dream for me, to wage jihad for Allah’s sake, because this is one of the greatest deeds in Islam, to lift aggression off my brothers, to bleed for Allah and no other,” he said.
Is this really who Obama intends for us to become “allies” with?
Today, I found an account from a Time Magazine reporter that chillingly describes the brutality of these fanatics…
I don’t know how old the victim was but he was young. He was forced to his knees. The rebels around him read out his crimes from a sheet of paper. They stood around him. The young man was on his knees on the ground, his hands tied. He seemed frozen.
Two rebels whispered something into his ear and the young man replied in an innocent and sad manner, but I couldn’t understand what he said because I don’t speak Arabic.
At the moment of execution the rebels grasped his throat. The young man put up a struggle. Three or four rebels pinned him down. The man tried to protect his throat with his hands, which were still tied together. He tried to resist but they were stronger than he was and they cut his throat. They raised his head into the air. People waved their guns and cheered. Everyone was happy that the execution had gone ahead.
Should the U.S. military be used to help those jihadist thugs take control of Syria?
If Obama gets us into this war, it has the potential to spin totally out of control very rapidly.
Let us hope and pray that it does not happen. Because if we do go to war in Syria, it could ultimately lead us down the road to World War III.
Paul Craig Roberts Infowars.com September 13, 2013
Image: Vladimir Putin
Putin’s article in the September 11 New York Times has the stuck pigs squealing. The squealing stuck pigs are just who you thought they would be–all those whose agendas and profits would be furthered by an attack on Syria by the Obama Stasi regime.
Included among the squealing stuck pigs are Human Rights Watch bloggers who seem to be financed out of the CIA’s back pocket.
Does any institution remain that has not been corrupted by Washington’s money?
Notice that the reason Putin is being criticized is that he has blocked the Obama regime from attacking Syria and slaughtering countless numbers of Syrians in the name of human rights. The stuck pigs are outraged that Obama’s war has been blocked. They were so much looking forward to the mass slaughter that they believe would advance their profits and agendas.
Most of Putin’s critics are too intellectually challenged to comprehend that Putin’s brilliant and humane article has left Putin the leader of the free world and defender of the rule of law and exposed Obama for what he is–the leader of a rogue, lawless, unaccountable government committed to lies and war crimes.
Putin, being diplomatic, was very careful in his criticism of Obama’s September 10 speech in which Obama sought to justify Washington’s lawlessness in terms of “American exceptionalism.” Obama, attempting to lift his criminal regime by the bootstraps up into the moral heavens, claimed that United States government policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”
What Obama told Americans is exactly what Hitler told the Germans. The Russians, having borne more than anyone else the full weight of the German war machine, know how dangerous it is to encourage people to think of themselves as exceptional, unbound by law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Security Council, and humane concerns for others. Putin reminded Obama that “God created us equal.”
If Putin had wanted to give Obama the full rebuke that Obama deserves, Putin could have said: “Obama is correct that the policy of the US government is what makes the US exceptional. The US is the only country in the world that has attacked 8 countries in 12 years, murdering and dispossessing millions of Muslims all on the basis of lies. This is not an exceptionalism of which to be proud.”
Putin is obviously more than a match for the immoral, low grade morons that Americans put into high office. However, Putin should not underestimate the mendacity of his enemies in Washington. Putin warned that the militants that Washington is breeding in the Middle East are an issue of deep concern. When these militants return to their own countries, they spread destabilization, as when extremists used by the US in the overthrow of Libya moved on to Mali.
The destabilization of other countries is precisely the main aim of Washington’s wars in the Middle East. Washington intends for radicalization of Muslims to spread strife into the Muslim populations of Russia and China. Washington’s propaganda machine will then turn these terrorists into “freedom fighters against oppressive Russian and Chinese governments,” and use Human Rights Watch and other organizations that Washington has penetrated and corrupted to denounce Russia and China for committing war crimes against freedom fighters. No doubt, chemical weapons attacks will be orchestrated, just as they have been in Syria.
If Washington’s NATO puppet states wake up in time, the warmongers in Washington can be isolated, and humanity could be spared WWIII.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
…And he also just happens to be the head of Al-Qaeda
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 13, 2013
Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the primary opposition fighting force in Syria, has called for terror attacks inside the United States.
Image: Ayman al-Zawahri (left)
Al-Zawahri just happens to be the leader of another group you might have heard of….Al-Qaeda.
“Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri urged small-scale attacks inside the United States to “bleed America economically”, adding he hoped eventually to see a more significant strike,” reports Reuters.
“We should bleed America economically by provoking it to continue in its massive expenditure on its security, for the weak point of America is its economy, which has already begun to stagger due to the military and security expenditure,” he said.
As the Bipartisan Policy Center highlighted in a report released earlier this week, al-Zawahri took control of Jabhat al-Nusra when he “personally intervened to settle a dispute between Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda in Iraq….and declared the Syrian group to be under his direction.”
Jabhat al-Nusra, which according to reports is “essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad” and conducts the “heaviest frontline fighting” in Syria, publicly pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda earlier this year.
Since then Al-Qaeda, which had previously been on “life support” according to expert Peter Bergen, is now undergoing a process of “revival and resuscitation” by establishing a new foothold in Syria through Jabhat al-Nusra.
Given that Al-Qaeda head Al-Zawahri is now the spiritual leader of the primary Syrian opposition group, it’s unsurprising that opposition militants sing the praises of his predecessor Osama Bin Laden while glorifying the 9/11 attacks.
Essentially, the Central Intelligence Agency is arming a terrorist group which is directed by the head of Al-Qaeda, who is simultaneously calling for terror attacks inside the United States – and it’s all being conducted in plain view.
Americans are seeing their tax dollars used to equip terrorists who are an integral part of the same ideology which led to the slaughter of 3,000 Americans in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington 12 years ago this week.
Only through greater understanding of this fact will opposition to the Obama administration’s intervention on the side of the rebels be maintained and a deadly conflict that could lead to a regional war be averted.
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America’s Ridiculous Position on Syria
by JOHN CHUCKMAN
I read that an American Senator, Bob Menendez, wanted “to vomit” when he was supplied with a copy of Vladimir Putin’s New York Times’ op-ed piece about Syria.
Well, I’m sure it wasn’t just a matter of Sen. Menendez’s delicate stomach: there have been many times in the past I wanted to vomit over something in TheNew York Times.
It is, after all, an impossibly pretentious, often-dishonest publication faithfully serving America’s military-industrial-intelligence complex, one which never fails to support America’s countless wars, insurgencies, dirty tricks, and coups – all this while publicly flattering itself as a rigorous source of journalism and even a newspaper “of record.” Many regard The Times as simply the most worn-out key of that thunderous public-relations instrument an ex-Agency official once called his “mighty Wurlitzer.” Only in the antediluvian political atmosphere of America could The Times manage to have something of a reputation for being “liberal.”
Mr. Menendez, as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, holds a powerful position, one he has used in lockstep with President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to promote illegal war. Like them he blubbers about rights and democracy and ethics while planning death and destruction to people who have done nothing against the United States except disagreeing with it and being hated by that greatest single outside determinant of American foreign policy, Israel.
Sen. Menendez’s personal anecdote actually provides a perfect miniature replica of the entire operation of America’s foreign affairs. American officials never fail to invoke words about democracy or human rights when addressing their next piece of dirty work or effort to pressure another people into doing what America wants.
So naturally the Senator might be a bit upset over Putin’s upstaging the top officials of the United States and proving himself the superior statesman and rational politician in every detail.
First, every honest, well-read person, not trying to promote American special interests, knows there is no proof that Assad used chemical weapons. Absolutely none. Even as I write, an Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports that the UN inspection team could find no evidence of chemical weapons used in the place cited by Syria’s rebel army.
A video which made the rounds among American allies and which purported to show the attack has been declared a fake by the UN. Russia’s secret services also declared it a fake.
The only other bit of “evidence” worth mentioning is a supposed recording of Syrian officials provided to American officials by Mossad. Yes, that’s Mossad, the very people who pride themselves on deception and who have a long track record of expertly using it, even in several cases successfully against the United States.
You do not kill thousands of people and destroy a country’s infrastructure citing rubbish like that.
Again, as I write this, a former British Ambassador, Craig John Murray, states that the United States has been deceived by Mossad with its purported recording and that Britain’s super-sensitive listening post in Cyprus, vastly superior to Israel’s listening assets, had picked up no such information.
Germany, based on its secret service operations, also has publicly stated that Assad did not use chemical weapons.
And, of course, after all America’s huffing and blowing and threatening in recent months, Assad and his senior associates would have to have been genuinely mad to use them, but there is no sign of madness. Assad remains a calm and thoughtful person whose voice is largely silenced in the West by his having been declared arbitrarily not an acceptable head of state.
Second, there is significant proof that ugly elements of the rebellion – the substantial al Qaeda-like components who hate Assad for his tolerance towards all religions in Syria – did indeed use limited amounts on more than one occasion, hoping, undoubtedly to create a provocation for American entry. The UN has said so and so have other agencies.
We have incidents, reported reliably, of rebel elements receiving small canisters of chemical weapons, likely from Saudi agents working on behalf of American policy. We also have an incident of a canister caught by authorities moving across the Turkish border in the hands of rebel fighters, the Turkish border having been used extensively since the beginning of the rebellion as a way to inject weapons and lunatic fighters into Syria and as a refuge for rebels when corned by Syria’s army. Even the American military confirms this last event.
Third, we absolutely know that Israel has a stockpile of this horrible stuff, Sarin, but not a word is said about it. This stockpile has been confirmed by CIA sources recently. Even before CIA sources, we knew of Israel’s chemical weapons from the 1992 crash of an El Al cargo plane in Amsterdam, a plane whose illegal cargo proved to be precursor chemicals for such weapons.
Now, if you were regarded as an enemy by Israel, the most ruthless country in the Mideast when simply measured by the number of times it has attacked its neighbors, wouldn’t you want weapons to counteract theirs? And, of course, to counteract not just Israel’s chemical weapons but secret nuclear ones? So it is hardly a terrible thing for Assad’s military to posses them.
Perhaps most importantly, the United States is in no position to draw lines or make public judgments about the behavior of anyone with regard to such weapons.
It stands as likely the greatest user of various chemical weapons over the last four or five decades. Napalm and Agent Orange were used on a colossal scale in Vietnam, a true holocaust in which the United States killed about three million people. The residue from millions of pounds of Agent Orange still causes horribly mangled babies to be born in Vietnam, and the United States has never lifted a finger to clean the mess or treat its victims.
In the terrible Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, the United States supplied Iraq – the clear aggressor in the war – with the materials for chemical weapons which eventually killed many thousands of Iranian soldiers.
In the illegal invasion of Iraq – where the United States killed upwards of half a million people and created millions of refugees – it employed white phosphorus (a good substitute for napalm), flame-throwers, depleted-uranium (cancer-inducing) ammunition, and hideous child-crippling cluster bombs. The children of Iraq today suffer a plague of cancer caused by breathing tons of vaporized depleted-uranium the United States dumped there.
In the unnecessary invasion of Afghanistan, the United States used massive carpet bombing to support the thugs of the Northern Alliance, who happened to be old enemies of the Taleban, though often being equally horrible in behavior. This was one of the first instances of the strategy America employed in Libya and wants to employ in Syria: local rebels on the ground, supplied with money and intelligence and weapons, are supported by high-tech hell from the air, yielding the needed results with minimum American casualties.
Thousands of Taleban prisoners of war were “disappeared’ by members of the Northern Alliance by sealing them in trucks, driving them out to the desert to suffocate, and then dumping their bodies in mass graves – all this while American soldiers looked on and picked their noses.
Nothing which has happened in recent years so horrifyingly recalls the work of Hitler’s Einsatzkommandos using mobile killing-trucks before the death camps were built, yet there can be no question that senior American commanders and the White House were aware of these events.
And of course, the only nation on earth ever to actually use atomic weapons – twice, and both times on civilian, non-military targets – is the United States, a country which also seriously planned to use them in Cold War pre-emptive strikes against Russia and China and later in Vietnam.
The voice of the United States today is shrill with hypocrisy and dishonesty and self-interest when it is heard condemning Syria, or anyone else, for using unacceptable weapons. Where was that voice when its ally, Israel, committed atrocities, as it did in Lebanon and in Gaza and on the high seas against unarmed humanitarians or when it steals the land of defenceless occupied people? Indeed, the white phosphorus and cluster bombs Israel used in some of Israel’s attacks were supplied by the United States, as were the planes and artillery used to deliver them.
And this brings us to the real cause of the rebellion in Syria. Israel would like Assad gone and Syria reduced to a broken state the way Iraq was reduced. It does not want to do this directly because Syria is a serious military opponent and not easy prey, and Israel’s doing so would arouse new waves of anger in the Mideast and new difficulties for the United States.
So the United States has had a long-term program of creating a kind of cordon sanitaire around Israel, breaking all of its potential opponents for many hundreds of miles around, but doing so always under contrived circumstances of supporting peoples’ revolts or removing dictators. It surreptitiously supplies large amounts of money and useful intelligence to the genuinely disaffected peoples of various states, encouraging them to revolt, indicating air and other support once things are underway. This is reminiscent of the dirty work of Henry Kissinger carried out with Iraq’s Kurdish population in 1975, promising them anything if they revolted but failing to deliver and leaving them to face a massive slaughter by Saddam Hussein’s troops.
Today’s is a complex black operation using a bizarre collection of intermediaries and helpers. Events in Benghazi, Libya, never explained in the United States, were certainly one little corner of this with the CIA operating there to collect weapons and jihadist types for secret entry into Syria through Turkey.
Saudi Arabia too plays a large role, surprising as that may seem to some given that Israel is a major beneficiary. Saudi Arabia’s ruling family plays the anti-Israel card just enough to keep its own fundamentalist Wahhabi population from revolting. But in truth, the wealthy Saudi elites have always had more in common with American and Israeli elites than with popular leaders in the Mideast.
Those Saudi elites were rendered extremely vulnerable to American pressures during 9/11. George Bush, always a good friend and beneficiary of Saudi largess, secretly rounded up a number of them who were in the United States (at places like Las Vegas casinos) and shipped them back to Saudi Arabia for their safety. As it proved, the greatest number of perpetrators of 9/11 were Saudi extremists, and it was discovered, though not publicly announced, that bin Laden’s movement regularly received bribes from the royal family to keep his operations out of Saudi Arabia. Thus the royal family financed bin Laden. All this made the Saudis extremely nervous and willing to be of more conspicuous future assistance in the Mideast.
And so they are, supplying money and weapons through various routes to the rebels. There is also a report of the Saudis releasing more than twelve hundred violent prisoners from death row in return for their training and going to Syria to fight as jihadist volunteers.
American officials know all these things while they stand and blubber about democratic rebels and “red lines” and other fairy stories. They want to bomb Syria because the recent success of Assad’s army has begun to endanger the huge effort to have him overthrown. Just as their planes and missiles tipped the scales in Libya with a phony zero-fly zone, they want to repeat that success in Syria.
Now, Putin appears to have upset the plan with admirable statesmanship, and Sen. Menendez will just have to console himself with Pepto-Bismol.
But then the Russians have always been great chess players.
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About the author John Chuckman
John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. He has many interests and is a lifelong student of history. He writes with a passionate desire for honesty, the rule of reason, and concern for human decency. John regards it as a badge of honor to have left the United States as a poor young man from the South Side of Chicago when the country embarked on the pointless murder of something like 3 million Vietnamese in their own land because they happened to embrace the wrong economic loyalties. He lives in Canada, which he is fond of calling “the peaceable kingdom.” John’s columns appear regularly on Counterpunch, Media Monitors, Politics Canada, Baltimore Chronicle, Online Journal, Scoop (New Zealand), Asian Tribune, Aljazeerah.info, Smirking Chimp, Dissident Voice, and many other Internet sites. He has been translated into at least ten languages and is regularly translated into Italian and Spanish. Several of his essays have been published in book collections, including two college texts. His first book has just been published, The Decline of the American Empire and the Rise of China as a Global Power, published by Constable and Robinson, London.
The U.S. and its allies have long been complicit in the manufacturing and use of biological and chemical weapons, yet has targeted other countries for alleged possession and use of these same weapons. This partial chronology is intended as a starting point for critical research and analysis of bio-chemical weaponry and foreign policy.
A Canadian soldier with mustard gas burns, ca. 1917-1918. Credit: Library and Archives Canada
400s B.C.: Spartan Greeks use sulfur fumes against enemy soldiers.
256 A.D.: Sasanian Persian Empire may have used toxic smoke against Roman soldiers in a tunnel in modern-day Syria.
1346: Tatars catapult plague-infected corpses into Italian trade settlement in Crimea.
1500s: Spanish conquistadors use biological warfare used against Indigenous peoples in the Americas.
1763: British Gen. Jeffrey Amherst advocates use of smallpox blankets against Native peoples during Pontiac’s Rebellion. Smallpox blankets given to Native delegates during talks at Fort Pitt.
1789: Smallpox ravages Australian Indigenous communities in New South Wales; debate persists whether the British deliberately introduced it.
1800s: Smallpox, measles, and other diseases ravage Native American and First Nation communities; U.S. and British/Canadian officials use quarantine techniques to isolate diseases in white communities, but not in Native villages.
1845: British attack Maori resisters with poison gas in Battle of Ohaeawai, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
1907: Hague Convention outlaws chemical weapons; U.S. does not participate.
1914-18: World War I begins; Germans introduce chlorine gas at Second Battle of Ypres. Poison gas such as mustard gas and chlorine gas produces 85,000 deaths, 1,200,000 injuries on both sides.
1919-21: Poison gas used in Russian civil war, against rebels by the Bolsheviks, and against Bolsheviks by the Royal Air Force.
1920s: Spanish and French forces use mustard gas against Berber rebels in Spanish Morocco. Britain proposes use of chemical weapons in Iraq “as an experiment” against Arab and Kurdish rebels seeking independence; Winston Churchill “strongly” backs the proposed “use of poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes,” which was apparently not carried out.
1928: The Geneva Protocol (first signed in 1925) by the League of Nations prohibits gas and bacteriological warfare; most countries that ratify it prohibit only the first use of such weapons.
1935: Italy begins conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), using mustard gas.
1937: Japan invades China, widely uses chemical weapons in war to conquer China, and used biological weapons such as plague-carrying fleas.
1939: World War II begins; both sides decide not to use bio-chemical arms in large-scale attacks, due to fears of retaliation in kind.
1941: U.S. enters World War II; President Roosevelt pledges U.S. will not be first to use bio-chemical weapons.
1942: German forces may have used poison gas against Soviet resisters in tunnels during the Battle of Kerch in Crimea.
1943: U.S. ship damaged by German bombing raid on Bari, Italy, leaks mustard gas, killing 1,000.
1945: When concentration camps are liberated, inmates report that Germans have used Zyklon-B in the extermination of civilians. Japanese military discovered to have conducted biological warfare experiments on POWs, killing 3000. U.S. shields officers in charge from war crimes trials, in return for data. Soviets take over German nerve gas facility in Potsdam. The Nazis had stockpiles of nerve gas against which the Allies had no defenses, and had also been working on blood agents.
1947: U.S. possesses germ warfare weapons; President Truman withdraws Geneva Protocol from Senate consideration.
1949: U.S. dismisses Soviet trials of Japanese for germ warfare as “propaganda.” Army begins secret tests of biological agents in U.S. cities.
1950: Korean War begins; North Korea and China accuse U.S. of germ warfare–charges never proven. San Francisco disease outbreak matches Army bacteria used on city.
1951: African-Americans exposed to potentially fatal simulant in Virginia test of race-specific fungal weapons.
1952: German chemical weapons researcher Walter Schreiber, working in Texas, exposed as a perpetrator of concentration camp experiments, and flees to Argentina.
1954: Fort Detrick in Maryland initiates Operation Whitecoat to research the effects of biological agents on soliders and conscientious objector volunteers; program lasts until 1973.
1956: Army manual explicitly states that bio-chemical warfare is not banned. Rep. Gerald Ford wins policy change to give U.S. military “first strike” authority on chemical arms.
1959: House resolution against first use of bio-chemical weapons is defeated.
1961: Kennedy Administration begins hike of chemical weapons spending from $75 million to more than $330 million.
1962: Chemical weapons loaded on U.S. planes during Cuban missile crisis.
1963-66: US, UK and Israel accuse Egypt of using chemical weapons during its intervention in North Yemen’s civil war.
1966: Army germ warfare experiment in New York subway system.
1968: Pentagon asks for the chance to use some of its arsenal against protesters to demonstrate the “efficacy” of the chemicals. Maj. Gen. J.B. Medaris says, “By using gas in civil situations, we accomplish two purposes: controlling crowds and also educating people on gas. Now, everybody is being called savage if he just talks about it. But nerve gas is the only way I know of to sort out the guys in white hats from the ones in black hats without killing any of them.”
1969: Utah chemical weapons accident kills thousands of sheep; President Nixon declares U.S. moratorium on chemical weapons production and biological weapons possession. U.N. General Assembly bans use of herbicides (plant killers) and tear gasses in warfare; U.S. one of three opposing votes. U.S. forces cause tear gas fatalities in Vietnamese guerrilla tunnels, and widely use napalm (jellied gasoline that stick to skin).
1971: U.S. ends direct use of herbicides such as Agent Orange; had spread over Indochinese forests, and destroyed at least six percent of South Vietnamese cropland, enough to feed 600,000 people for a year. Diseases and birth defects affected Vietnamese civilians and U.S. veterans. White phosphorus grenades also used against South Vietnamese rebels. U.S. intelligence gives swine-flu virus to anti-Castro Cuban paramilitary group, which lands it on Cuba’s southern coast (according to 1977 newspaper reports).
1972: Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. Cuba accuses CIA of instilling swine fever virus that leads to death of 500,000 hogs.
1974: U.S. finally ratifies 1928 Geneva Protocol.
1975: Indonesia annexes East Timor; planes spread herbicides on croplands.
1978: Bulgarian secret service uses ricin in umbrella tip to assassinate Bulgarian dissident in London.
1979: Anthrax leak from Soviet biological weapons lab kills 60 near in the Ural Mountains of Russia, near Sverdlovsk. Washington Post reports on U.S. program against Cuban agriculture since 1962, including CIA biological warfare component. White government of Rhodesia contaminates Africans with anthrax in the last stages of the Zimbabwe independence war, resulting in 10,000 cases, 182 of them fatal.
1980: U.S. intelligence officials allege Soviet chemical use in Afghanistan, while admitting “no confirmation.” Congress approves nerve gas facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Iraq begins eight-year war with U.S. arch-enemy Iran; both sides use chemical weapons in the war.
1981: U.S. accuses Vietnam and allies of using mycotoxins (fungal poisons) in Laos and Cambodia. Some refugees report casualties in Laos; one analysis reveals “yellow rain” as bee feces, but questions remained.
1984: U.N. confirms Iraq using mustard and nerve gasses against Iranian “human wave” attacks in border war, killing up to 100,000 Iranians; State Department issues mild condemnation, yet restores diplomatic relations with Iraq, and opposes U.N. action against Iraq. Bhopal fertilizer plant accident in India kills 2,000; shows risks of chemical plants being damaged in warfare. President Reagan orders over a half-million M55 rockets retooled so they contain high-yield explosives as well as VX gas. (The Army later claimed that many of these rockets were “unstable” and leaking nerve gas.)
1985: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents. U.S. firms begin supplying Iraq with numerous biological agents for a four-year period (according to a 1994 Senate report).
1986: U.S. resumes open-air testing of biological agents.
1987: Senate ties in three votes on resuming production of chemical weapons; Vice President Bush breaks all three ties in favor of resumption.
1988: Iraq uses chemical weapons against Kurdish minority rebels and civilians in Halabjah, killing at least 5,000. U.S. continues to maintain agricultural credits with Iraq; President Reagan blocks congressional sanctions against Iraq.
1989: Paris conference of 149 nations condemns chemical weapons, urges quick ban to emerge from Geneva treaty negotiations; U.S. revealed to plan poison gas production even after treaty signed.
1990: U.S., Soviets pledge to reduce chemical weapons stockpiles to 20 percent of current U.S. supply by 2002, and to eliminate poison gas weapons when all nations have signed future Geneva treaty. Israel admits possession of chemical weapons; Iraq threatens to use chemical weapons on Israel if it is attacked.
1991: U.S. and Coalition forces invade Kuwait and Iraq in the Gulf War; Iraq possesses chemical weapons but does not use them. At least 28 alleged bio-chemical production or storage sites are bombed in Iraq during the Gulf War, including fertilizer and other civilian plants. CNN reports “green flames” from one chemical plant, and the deaths of 50 Iraqi troops from anthrax after air strike on another site. New York Times quotes Soviet chemical weapons commander that air strikes on Iraqi chemical weapons would have “little effect beyond neighboring villages,” but that strikes on biological weapons could spread disease “to adjoining countries.” Czechoslovak chemical warfare unit detects sarin nerve gas after air strikes on Iraqi chemical weapons facilities. Egyptian doctor reports outbreak of “strange disease” inside Iraq. After the war, U.S. troops use explosives in Khamisiya to destroy Iraqi chemical weapons storage bunkers.
1992: Reports intensify of U.S. and Coalition veterans of Gulf War developing health problems, involving a variety of symptoms, collectively called Gulf War Syndrome. U.N. sanctions intensify civilian health crisis inside Iraq, making identification of similar symptoms potentially difficult. Two members of anti-government Minnesota Patriots’ Council arrested for plan to use ricin chemical against law enforcement officer.
1993: President Clinton continues intermittent bombing and missile raids against Iraqi facilities; U.N. inspectors step up program to dismantle Iraqi weapons. U.S. signs U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, though approval later blocked in Senate.
1994: Russian forces extensively use white phosphorus shells as incendiary weapons in Chechnya.
1994-95: Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo launches deadly sarin nerve gas attacks on the Matsumoto community and on the Tokyo subway system.
1996: Congressional hearings on Gulf War Syndrome focuses on Iraqi storage bunker destruction, rather than other possible causes, and does not call for international investigation of symptoms among Iraqis. CIA investigation asserts that U.S. bombing of chemical weapons sites did not contaminate population.
1997: Cuba accuses U.S. of spraying crops with biological agents. Iraq expels U.S. citizens in U.N. inspection teams, which are allowed to continue work without Americans, but choose to evacuate all inspectors. U.S. mobilizes for military action. Senate act implements Chemical Weapons Convention, with a provision that “the President may deny a request to inspect any facility” on national security grounds.
1998: Chief UN weapons inspector Richard Butler orders inspectors out of Iraq just prior to U.S. bombing. In Operation Desert Fox, Clinton again bombs alleged Iraqi bio-chemical weapons sites, after Iraq questions role of American U.N. inspector, and restricts inspector access to presidential properties and security. U.S. launches missile attack on pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that it alleges produces nerve gas agents–a claim disputed by most of the international community.
1998-99: Series of anthrax hoaxes against U.S. media and government targetss. Ex-Aryan Nations member Larry Wayne Harris carries out anthrax hoax to dramatize warning of alleged “Iraqi threat.” Three members of Republic of Texas militia group arrested for intention to use anthrax and other biological agents against public officials. Upsurge in anthrax hoaxes against abortion clinics.
1999: NATO bombs Yugoslavia in Kosovo Crisis, triggering massive Serbian expulsion of ethnic Albanians. NATO bombers hit a Serbian petrochemical plant in Pancevo, sending a toxic cloud with 2,000 tons of chemicals over the city, and chemicals were released in other bombings of industrial plants.
2000: “Topoff Exercise” involving federal and state authorities fails to cope with simulated chemical, biological and nuclear attacks in three widely separated metropolitan areas.
2001: U.S. withdraws from the first round of Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC), crippling international efforts to establish global measures against biological weapons. In wake of September 11 attacks, anthrax spores sent by mail to multiple political and media targets around the U.S., resulting in anthrax exposures, infections, and at least 5 deaths. Real anthrax attacks accompanied by increase in anthrax hoaxes by “Army of God” and other groups and individuals.
2002: Russian police use chemical gas against Chechen rebels holding hostages in Moscow theater; 42 rebels and 120 hostages died from the gas raid. Bush Administration renews allegations that Iraq possesses biochemical weapons (drawing on allegations by Iraqi exiles), reluctantly acquiesces in return of United Nations weapons inspectors (after four years of absence) to prove or disprove the claim. Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix reports no evidence of renewed chemical or biological weapons programs in Iraq.
2003: UN inspectors find evidence of Iraqi violations of ballistic missile range limits, and begin to destroy missiles. Bush Administration not satisfied with extent of UN inspection. Just prior to U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq, UN orders inspectors out of country. After invasion, U.S. contends it will hunt for Weapons of Mass Destruction on its own, and finds none. As a member state of the UN Security Council, Syria proposes a WMD-Free Zone in the Middle East, which the U.S. rejects.
2004: During the First Battle of Fallujah, U.S. forces use white phosphorus artillery shells (intended for aerial illumination) as an incendiary weapon against Iraqi insurgents, killing and injuring many civilians. Pentagon finally admits in 2013 its use of white phosphorus as a weapon in Fallujah. Environmental justice protests in Anniston, Alabama oppose incineration of chemical weapons in populated area.
2007: Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia carries out chlorine gas tank bombings in Iraqi civil war. White phosphorus train derails in Ukraine, contaminating 90 sq km.
2008: Israel uses white phosphorus shells during its three-week war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. U.S. government employee suspected in 2001 anthrax attacks commits suicide.
2009: Taliban and U.S. forces accuse each other of using white phosphorus as weapons. Rebels in Yemen accuse Saudi warplanes of dropping white phosphorus.
2011: Some news sources report white phosphorus use by NATO forces in Libya. Four militia members arrested in Georgia for plotting to use ricin to attack politicians, media, and the IRS.
2012: U.S. has closed 7 of 9 chemical weapons depots and destroyed 90 percent of its stockpiles, to meet the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention it signed in 1993. Israel hits UNRWA compound in Gaza City with white phosphorus; announces the following year that it will stop using white phosphorus weapons.
2013: Actress allegedly mails ricin mailed to the President and other U.S. leaders. In January, UK issues licenses to export chemicals to Syria that could be used to make sarin; licenses revoked when sanctions begin against Syria in July. Syrian government and rebels trade accusations of using sarin in April and August. Doctors Without Borders documents 355 killed in August sarin attack in Ghouta area; Secretary of State John Kerry claims that Syrian government is responsible for killing 1,429 Syrians. UK declines to back military strikes on Syria; France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel back U.S. military action.
Dr. Zoltan Grossman is a Professor of Geography and Native Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. His faculty website ishttp://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz and email is grossmaz@evergreen.edu
List compiled in 1998, 2003, and 2013 from articles in Z magazine by Stephen Shalom (“Bullets, Gas, and the Bomb,” Feb. 1991), Zoltan Grossman (“Ecocide in the Gulf?,” March 1991), Council for a Livable World, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, National Geographic, William Blum’s Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II,and from news reports and Wikipedia timelines. Thanks for Stephen Shalom for comments.
Obama’s Tuesday night address didn’t surprise. It featured demagogic boilerplate. Defending the indefensible took center stage.
Bombast assured business as usual. More on his speech below.
War plans remain on track. They’re delayed. They’re not deterred. They’re prioritized. Obama wants another country ravaged and destroyed.
He hides behind a shield of humanitarian intervention. He does so through cruise missile diplomacy.
He’s no peace president. He’s hell bent for war. He’s waging one after another. He’s done so since day one in office. Ahead of his Tuesday night address, Francis Boyle said:
Reports suggest he’ll “argue that his threat of war has produced this offer by Syria to eliminate chemical, and therefore he needs a resolution to authorize war in order to promote diplomacy.”
Of course, this is nonsense. Bush Jr. made the same argument to get his War Power Resolution authorization knowing full well he was going to use that to go to war.
He “told Rice in March 2002: F..k Saddam. We’re going to take him out.”
“Obama et al” decided the same thing for Assad. “It took Bush Jr. maneuvering from October 2002 until March of 2013 before he launched the war.”
So in the event Obama gets his WPR against Syria, it might take a few more weeks of maneuvering.
The die is cast. It’s written in stone. There’s no stopping it. Assad must go. “It does not really matter what (he) does from here on in.”
Like Bush, (Obama) will simply (tell) Congress that the conditions (for war) have been fulfilled when he (launches) cruise missiles.
“The test for circumstantial evidence cases is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” It’s based on the World Court’s Corfu Chanel case. Obama’s alleged evidence doesn’t exist. His claims don’t pass the smell test.
America’s “in material breach of its solemn obligation to dismantle all its chemical weapons by April 2012,” said Boyle
So is Israel. On September 11, Voice of Russia headlined “CIA document indicates Israel likely to have chemical weapons,” saying:
It “secretly developed a range of (them) in the 1960s and ’70s.” It’s one of seven non-signatory Chemical Weapons Convention states. Others include Angola, Egypt, Myanmar, North Korea, South Sudan and Syria.
Its arsenal includes large stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. It’s a non-signatory Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty state. It’s a rogue state.
Obama plans lawless aggression on Syria. Israel’s very much involved. “This is not even a case of preemptive self defense or anticipatory war,” said Boyle.
The Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles rejected waging war for either reason. It called doing so the supreme crime against peace.
Obama’s in violation multiple times. Attacking Syria will add another high crime to his rap sheet.
“Kosovo was the model for Libya (and same one) for Syria,” said Boyle. Shock and awe cruise missile attacks are planned. So is high altitude B1, B2 and B52 bombing.
Enormous damage will be caused. Thousands may be killed. Many more will be injured and displaced. Civilians will suffer most.
“No legal” national security issue is at stake. Syria threatens no one. Claiming otherwise is false. Assad’s defending his nation responsibly.
He’s doing it against Western-enlisted death squads. They bear full responsibility for mass killing, chemical weapons use, destruction, torture and other atrocities.
“Like Iraq (Afghanistan and Libya), there will be no political solution,” said Boyle. “Syria will be destroyed as a state.” It’ll be balkanized.
I’ll be “carved into its ethnic units. Chaos and genocide will prevail against Alawites and Christians.” Lawless aggression operates that way.
Obama intends it. His Tuesday night address wreaked of duplicitous fabrications. It repeated one Big Lie after another.
It was typical Obama. Syria is his war. It was planned years ago. Stopping it’s as simple as calling off his dogs.
It’s cutting off their weapons, funding, training and direction. It’s going all out for peace. It’s polar opposite of what Obama’s pursuing.
He lied calling Syria’s conflict “civil war.” There’s nothing “civil” about it. Syria was invaded. Western-enlisted death squads are employed. Salvador Option rules apply.
They include no-holds-barred mass killing, destruction, torture and other brutal atrocities. Assad’s wrongfully blamed for insurgents’ crimes.
On Tuesday, Obama strung one Big Lie after another together, saying:
Assad turned “peaceful protests into a brutal civil war.” He killed (o)ver 100,000 people.”
America’s “work(ing) with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition, and to shape a political settlement.”
But I have resisted calls for military action, because we cannot resolve someone else’s civil war through force.
On August 21, “(t)he situation profoundly changed when Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people, including hundreds of children.”
Fact check
Obama bears full responsibility for two and a half years of bloody conflict, mass killing, destruction, brutal atrocities, and appalling human suffering.
He obstructs humanitarian aid. He doesn’t provide it.
No political settlement is planned. He rejects it out of hand.
Western-enlisted death squads bear full responsibility for killing scores, perhaps several hundred, not over a thousand Ghouta residents. Cause of death remains to be determined.
Obama lied claiming otherwise. He’s responsible for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide against Syrian civilians.
His entire address turned truth on its head. It was beginning to end lies. He abhors peace. He’s selling war.
“If we fail to act,” he said, “the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons.”
(O)ther tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using (it).
If fighting spills beyond Syria’s borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel.
And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction, and embolden Assad’s ally, Iran – which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon, or to take a more peaceful path.
This is not a world we should accept. This is what’s at stake.
And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.
The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.
Fact check
Annual US intelligence assessments call Iran’s nuclear program peaceful. No evidence suggests a military component.
Tehran’s in full compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty provisions. America and Israel are serial violators.
Obama wants war. Peaceful conflict resolution proposals are dead on arrival. He intends massive shock and awe attacks.
He plans ravaging and destroying Syria entirely. He wants another imperial trophy. Mass killing and destruction are small prices to pay.
Obama lied saying he “will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.” CIA and special forces already operate there covertly. They’ve done so for months. Plans are readied to deploy thousands of troops if needed.
“I will not (repeat) Libya or Kosovo,” he said. He claimed his only objective is “deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading Assad’s capabilities.”
False! Deposing Assad and replacing him is planned. So is full-scale war. Before it ends, hundreds of thousands may die. Greater mass destruction will be inflicted.
Charnel house conditions writ large will follow. Syria’s already a humanitarian disaster. Obama bears full responsibility. He represents the worst of rogue governance. Stopping him matters most.
He deplores political solutions. He rejects diplomacy. He claims otherwise. He rages for more war.
“I’ve ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on Assad,” he said. He stopped short of explaining it’s to wage war.
It’s to violate core international law principles. It’s to pistol whip independent nations into submission. It’s to replace them with pro-Western puppet governance.
It’s to control global resources. It’s to exploit people everywhere as serfs. It’s to destroy fundamental freedoms. It’s to institute police state ruthlessness.
It’s to crack down hard on nonbelievers. It’s to make the world safe for capital. It’s to do so through the barrel of a gun. It’s to do it with the world’s largest gulag.
It’s by making torture official policy. It’s by practicing death squad diplomacy. It’s by ravaging the world one country at a time.
It’s by stealing public wealth for corporate favorites. It’s by consigning millions to poverty, unemployment, hunger, homelessness and unspeakable human misery.
It’s by waging war on humanity. It’s by risking destroying it altogether. Imperial priorities come first. Rogue leaders think that way.
Obama’s by far the worst. It bears repeating. Stopping him matters most. Everything else pales by comparison.
A Final Comment
John Pilger said “(t)he great unmentionable is that humanity’s most dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic.”
John Kerry’s farce and Barack Obama’s pirouettes are temporary.
Russia’s peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with (derision and) contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy.
Obama “intends to crush the last (remaining) independent” Middle East states. “Syria first, then Iran,” Lebanon’s Hezbollah governance, and Palestine’s Hamas.
No-holds-barred terror bombing is planned. It’s longstanding US policy. So-called humanitarian intervention is cover for crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.
Militarism is America’s way of life. Obama’s its latest exponent. He hides behind a facade of lies. He represents fascism writ large.
He’s comfortable about inflicting dystopian harshness. Nuremberg judges were clear and unequivocal, saying:
Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity.
“The ordinary people of Syria, and countless others, and our own self respect, deserve nothing less now,” said Pilger.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html
MOSCOW, September 12 (RIA Novosti) – A potential US strike on Syria is fraught with dangerous consequences, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned in an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times.
Washington is currently contemplating a strike on Syria as retaliation for a deadly August 21 chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb, which it has attributed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Official Damascus has blamed the attack on rebel forces, and Russia has tentatively backed its long-time ally, while calling for further investigation.
“Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies,” Putin said in the op-ed, entitled “A Plea for Caution from Russia,” which was posted on the US newspaper’s website Wednesday.
“The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders,” he said.
“A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa,” Putin wrote.
“It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance,” he said in the article.
The unrest in Syria began in March 2011 and later escalated into a civil war. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far, according to UN estimates.
“From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law,” he wrote.
“We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos,” Putin said in his op-ed in the New York Times.
He underlined that the current international law only permits use of force “in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council,” adding that all other ways are “unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.”
Noting that “no one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria,” Putin said the gas “was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry meets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Thursday for hastily organized talks on a Russian plan to prevent a US attack on Syria by placing the war-torn country’s chemical weapons under international control.
Speaking on the Al-Mayadeen pan-Arabic satellite television channel, Russia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, said Moscow had handed over to the UN Security Council evidence that chemical weapons in Syria were used by rebel forces.
The Russian president voiced concern that “military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States.”
He expressed doubt that it could be in the United States’ long-term interest and added that many people worldwide “increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force.”
Noting that his working and personal relationship with US President Barack Obama was “marked by growing trust,” Putin said: “I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria.”
The Russian leader said he and Obama “must work together to keep this hope alive.”
“If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues,” Putin wrote in the article.
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A Plea for Caution From Russia
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
Published: September 11, 2013
MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Al-Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fuelled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen non-proliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.
I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Bashar al-Assad warned that any number of factions in the region could attack U.S. military bases if America strikes Syria in retaliation for ‘alleged’ chemical weapons use, likely referring to Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Iran
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has warned that the United States should expect retaliation if the Obama administration moved forward with military strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack on August 21.
‘You should expect everything,’ Assad told American journalist Charlie Rose in a wide-ranging interview, portions of which were broadcast Monday morning on CBS.
Such attacks could come from any of a number of different sources, he said, while not ruling out that his own military could launch them.
Assad described possible future retaliation against the U.S. as ‘not necessarily through the government. It’s not only – the government is not the only player in this region. We have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideologies. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that. … Expect every action.’
When Rose asked if that included the possibility of chemical warfare, Assad replied, ‘That depends.’
‘If the rebels or the terrorists in this region, or any other group have it – It could happen. I don’t know. It could happen. I’m not a fortune teller, to tell you what will happen.’
Anti-government rebel groups in Syria include both pro-Democracy factions and Islamist groups, including the global terror group al-Qaeda.
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Charlie Rose interviewed the Syrian dictator in Damascus, in an interview previewed on CBS and slated for broadcast in its entirety on PBS Monday night
The Middle East is a powder keg that’s ready to explode, Assad said, insisting that the U.S. will have to deal with the consequences of failing to understand the nature of terror groups in the region
President Obama tried during the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia to wrangle international support for striking Syria, but the White House hasn’t persuaded any other nation to participate in a military attack
Assad has warned the US to expect reprisal attacks if it…
But Assad also leverages groups inside the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah to push rebel forces back on the streets of Damascus, and nearby Iran also backs his regime.
Retaliation against the U.S., he acknowledged, ‘could take different forms, both direct and indirect,’ hinting that he could work in concert with Hezbollah and the Iranians.
The Syrian leader, on the brink of seeing American Tomahawk missiles and Predator drones rain down on his own military installations, said that Obama’s administration is ‘going to pay the price if you’re not wise in dealing with the terrorists.’
‘So nobody expects – there are going to be repercussions … Nobody expected the 11th of September, so you cannot expect – It would be difficult for anybody to tell you what is going to happen.’
‘It’s an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.’
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday in London that Assad could avoid a military strike by turning over all his chemical weapons within a week but immediately made clear he was sure that would never happen
Anti-war protesters held signs and banners outside the Foreign and Commonwealth office in central London on Monday as Kerry met with Britain’s Foreign Minister William Hague
Polls show that t vanishing minority of Americans support striking Syria, and Obama will have to contend with a growing protest movement at home as he tries to convince Congress to endorse military action
Assad has denied that he was responsible for the suspected August 21 sarin gas attack aimed at a rebel-controlled area of Syria, and challenged the Obama administration to publicly show the evidence it has and ‘prove it now.’
The president ‘didn’t present’ evidence publicly ‘because he doesn’t have [it]. Kerry doesn’t have [it], no one in the organization has. If they had it they would have presented it to you as media.’
Obama will sit down Monday afternoon for interviews with the three major TV networks and with CNN, Fox News and PBS. He is also scheduled to address the nation in a prime-time speech Tuesday night – on the eve of this year’s 9/11 anniversary.
Rose reminded Assad that Secretary of State John Kerry has disclosed that the U.S. was able to track the flight of missiles originating from government-controlled Syrian territory and landing in an area overrun by rebels.
‘We know that his regime gave orders to prepare for a chemical attack,’ Kerry said during a press conference Monday at the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.’
We know that they deployed forces and put them in the places where this took place. We know, by tracing it, physically where the rockets came from and where they landed. And it is no accident that they all came from regime-controlled territory and all landed in opposition-controlled or contested territory. We know this.’
But ‘the Russians have completely opposite evidence,’ Assad countered to Rose, ‘that the missiles were thrown from an area where the rebels control.’
He likened the current controversy to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s public presentation before Congress of evidence, which later proved faulty, that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
That evidence was the basis for the approval of a U.S.-led invasion.
‘He said "this is our evidence," Assad recalled, but ‘it was false evidence. Kerry didn’t even present evidence. He [said] "We have evidence" and he didn’t present anything. Not yet. Nothing so far. Not a single shred of evidence.’
Ultimately, Assad insisted, his government forces ‘were not in the area where the alleged chemical attack happened … Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically. Our soldiers. They went to the hospital as casualties because of chemical weapons.’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem (L) met Monday in Moscow. Russia’s government remains one of Syria’s only allies, with ties strengthened by arms sales and a Russian naval base on Syrian soil
Assad insisted that the White House doesn’t have ironclad evidence that his government used chemical weapons, and said Obama is leading a ‘social media administration’
‘But in the area where they say the government used chemical weapons, we only had video, and we only have pictures and allegations. … how can you talk about what happened if you don’t have evidence?’
‘We’re not like the American administration. We’re not a social-media administration or government. We are a government that deals with reality.’
Members of Congress should ask themselves, he said, ‘What do wars give America? Seems there’s is nothing now. Nothing. No political gain, no economic gain, no good reputation.’
America’s credibility around the world, Assad claimed, is an ‘an all-time low.’
He also insisted, as several high-profile politicians have in Washington, that starting a war in Syria would be ‘against the interests of the United States.’
‘Why? First of all because this is the war that’s going to support al-Qaeda and the same people who killed Americans on the 11th of September.’
In Moscow on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to discuss the increasingly tense situation.
We are asking ourselves how Obama can … support those who in their time blew up the World Trade Center in New York, Moualem saidduring a press conference following the meeting.
Lavrov claimed there was clear evidence the anti-Assad rebels have chemical weapons, and hinted that there are still questions about who initiated the August 21 attack.
Terrified Christians claim Syrian rebels ordered them to convert to Islam on pain of death when they ‘liberated’ their ancient village.
Opposition forces, including fighters linked to Al Qaeda, gained temporary control of the Christian village of Maaloula after fighting with regime forces.
The reports have reignited fears about western support for the rebel groups, which are increasingly being infiltrated by Islamic extremists.
A Syrian military solider fires a heavy machine gun during clashes with rebels in Maaloula
Government media has provided a different account of the battle suggesting regime forces are winning
A general view of Maaloula, northeast of the capital Damascus. Rebels including al-Qaida-linked fighters are believed to have gained control of the village
Syrian government forces stand guard in Maaloula village, a scenic mountain village where people still speak the ancient Middle Eastern language of Aramaic
One Maaloula resident said the rebels, many of whom had beards and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great), attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village.
‘They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?’
Another Christian resident said: ‘I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, “Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded”.’
Another said one church had been torched, and gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them.
The beautiful mountain village, 25 miles from Damascus, is one of the few places in the world where residents still use the ancient language of Aramaic, which was spoken by Jesus and his disciples.
Historic: A church in Maaloula which is on a UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites
State-run TV reported that all churches in Maaloula were now safe and the army was chasing gunmen in the western hills
It has become a key strategic battleground in the Syrian civil war because of its proximity to the capital. It was held by President Assad’s regime, but taken at the weekend in a rebel advance spearheaded by the hardline Islamist al Nusra Front.
Villagers said they heard several foreign accents among the rebels, with many feared to be Al Qaeda fighters imported into the conflict. A villager said he heard mainly Tunisian, Libyan, Moroccan and Chechen dialects.
In a video posted online, a rebel commander shouted at the camera: ‘We cleansed Maaloula from all the Assad dogs and all his thugs.’ But Syria’s state news agency claimed the rebels had withdrawn and the regime had regained the village, saying: ‘The army inflicted heavy losses in the ranks of the terrorists.’
A Christian woman who spoke to the Associated Press on Thursday also said there were reports that militants threatened villagers with death if they did not convert to Christianity
A church in Maaloula where fighting has been taking place overnight. A poster with the portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad is seen bottom right
US White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough made the unbelievable admission this week that Western interests have concluded Syria carried out an alleged chemical attack in eastern Damascus based on “common sense” rather than “irrefutable evidence.” Slate’s “White House: “Common-Sense Test” And Not “Irrefutable” Evidence Hold Assad Responsible,” states [emphasis added]:
White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough went on the Sunday talk shows to drum up support for what he called a “targeted, limited effort” that will change “the momentum on the battle field” in Syria. Yet he also acknowledged on CNN that the evidence that ties Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus that allegedly killed 1,429 people has more to do with a “common-sense test” rather than “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence.”
And while McDonogh, and his collaborators both in Washington and abroad, claim their planned assault on Syria is not a repeat of Iraq in terms of scale, it is clear that in terms of deception it is.
Slate would continue by stating [emphasis added]:
Now do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence? This is not a court of law and intelligence does not work that way.” Meanwhile, McDonough also emphasized on NBC that “nobody is rebutting the intelligence; nobody doubts the intelligence.”
The answer highlights how the White House still has not shown the public a concrete piece of intelligence that directly connect Assad’s regime to the alleged chemical weapons attack, as the Associated Press points out in a detailed story.
The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence – no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications – connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.
In its absence, Damascus and its ally Russia have aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either. That’s left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a possible military strike.
What is also clear is the documented conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government and destabilize neighboring Iran and Lebanon with a sectarian bloodbath by directly funding, arming, and otherwise providing material support for sectarian extremist groups aligned with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and who hold allegiance to Al Qaeda. This conspiracy began under the Bush administration as early as 2007 and has continued onward throughout the Obama administration.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” stated (emphasis added):
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
More recently, it would be revealed that the United States, the United Kingdom, and its regional axis including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have sent millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weaponry to a predominantly Al Qaeda led terrorist force operating inside and along Syria’s borders.
It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November.
The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.
The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.
British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.
These are the same extremists drawn from Al Qaeda, the United States has warned for well over a decade might obtain chemical weapons and use them against a civilian population to achieve their goals. This points the finger directly toward Western-backed terrorists regarding the recent alleged chemical attack in Damascus, not the Syrian government. The attack would enable the United States and its military axis to take a more active and direct role in supporting these terrorist forces who have this past year suffered tremendous irreversible loses against a prevailing Syrian Arab Army.
“Common sense” points the finger in the opposite direction White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough has suggested. Without any actual evidence coming from a nation who has waged war habitually on fabricated justification, and who is clearly involved in a long-standing conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government, and who is responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe it feigns interest in now ending, the world has understandably and universally opposed this latest act of unprovoked military aggression.
Unfortunately, the decision on whether or not the US goes ahead anyway with another act of unprovoked war and 21st century conquest, does not hinge on real common sense or the will of the American people who categorically oppose any military operation, but rather on the compromised, corporate-financier purchasedUS Congress. In Congress, astoundingly, the lack of evidence is not at the center of debate, but rather what the consequences of America’s proposed military assault might be, and whether the assault should be, in fact,expanded.
Obama’s top aide says the administration lacks “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking.
Moreover, President Obama correctly noted in 2007:
The President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
Some people had noted, and I think this is true, that had I been in the Senate in the midst of this period, I probably would have suggested to a Democratic or a Republican president that Congress should have the ability to weigh in an issue like this, that is not immediate, imminent, time-sensitive.
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We may not be directly, imminently threatened by what’s taking place in …Syria … in the short term, but our long-term national security will be impacted in a profound way, and our humanity is impacted in a profound way.
No wonder that Obama has lost some of his biggest initial supporters for a strike against Syria.
White House efforts to convince the U.S. Congress to back military action against Syria are not only failing, they seem to be stiffening the opposition.
That was the assessment on Sunday, not of an opponent but of an early and ardent Republican supporter of Obama’s plan for attacking Syria, the influential Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers.
Rogers told CBS’s “Face the Nation” the White House had made a “confusing mess” of the Syria issue. Now, he said, “I’m skeptical myself.”
Why is the Obama Regime so desperate to commit a war crime despite the warnings delivered to the White House Fool two days ago by the most important countries in the world at the G20 Summit?
What powerful interest is pushing the White House Fool to act outside of law, outside the will of the American people, outside the warnings of the world community?
The Obama Regime has admitted, as UK prime minister david cameron had to admit, that no one has any conclusive evidence that the Assad government in Syria used chemical weapons. Nevertheless, Obama has sent the despicable john Kerry out to convince the public and Congress on the basis of videos that Assad used chemical weapons “against his own people.”
What the videos show are dead and suffering people. The videos do not show who did it. The Obama Regime’s case is nonexistent. It rests on nothing that indicates responsibility. The Obama Regime’s case is nothing but an unsubstantiated allegation.
What kind of depraved person would take the world to war based on nothing whatsoever but an unsubstantiated allegation?
The world’s two worse liars, Obama and Kerry, say Assad did it, but they admit that they cannot prove it. It is what they want to believe, because they want it to be true. The lie serves their undeclared agenda.
If Obama and Kerry were to tell the public the real reasons they want to attack Syria, they would be removed from office.
The entire world is teetering on a war, the consequences of which are unknown, for no other reason than two people, devoid of all integrity who lack the intelligence and humanity to be in high office, are determined to serve a tiny collection of warmongers consisting of the crazed, murderous Israeli government and their Muslim-hating neoconservative agents, who comprise a fifth column inside the Obama Regime.
The Russian government has given evidence to the UN that conclusively proves that the al-Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliated invaders are responsible for the attack. There is also conclusive proof that the “rebels” have chemical weapons. In addition, a highly regarded journalist has reported, using direct quotes and the names of al-Nusra fighters, that the chemical weapons were given to al-Nusra by Saudi Arabia without proper handling instructions, and that an accidental explosion occurred before al-Nusra could use the Saudi-supplied weapons to frame-up the Assad government.
However the deaths were caused, they are unfortunate, but no more so that the deaths that Obama has caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. The proven deaths for which Obama is responsible are many times the unproven deaths that Obama attributes without evidence to Assad.
The indisputable fact is that Syrian deaths occur only because Washington initiated the invasion of Syria by external forces similar to the ones that Washington used against Libya. However the deaths occurred, the deaths are the doings of the criminal Obama Regime. Without the criminal Obama Regime seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government, there would be no deaths by chemical weapons or by any other means. This was a war initiated by Washington, Israel, Israel’s neoconservative fifth column inside America and the White House, and the captive western media that is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby.
Assad did not start the war. The Syrian government was attacked by outside forces sent in by Washington and Israel.
Assad has much higher public support in Syria than Obama has in the US, or cameron has in the UK, or hollande has in France, or merkel has in Germany, or netanyahu has in Israel.
The White House Fool keeps repeating his nonsensical statement, as if the Fool is a wound-up talking doll, that Assad’s unproven “use of chemical weapons is a threat to global security.”
Dear reader, who besides the White House Fool is so unbelievably stupid as to believe that Syria is a threat to world security?
If Syria is a “threat to world security,” like Iraq was a “threat to world security,” like Iran is alleged to be a “threat to world security,” what kind of superpower is the United States? How low does the IQ have to be, how mentally impaired does the public have to be to fall for these absurd hysterical allegations?
Let’s turn Obama’s claim upon the Fool. Why isn’t it a threat to global security for Obama to attack Syria? There is no authority for Obama to attack Syria just because he wants to and just because he has demonized Assad with endless lies and just because Obama is the total puppet of the crazed Israeli government and his neoconservative national security advisor, in effect an Israeli agent, and just because the Ministry of Propaganda, including NPR, repeats every Obama lie as if it were the truth.
Isn’t it a threat to international security when a superpower can, acting on a whim, demonize a leader and a country and unleash mass destruction, as the US has done seven times in the past twelve years,? There are millions of innocent but demonized victims of the “indispensable, exceptional USA,” the “light unto the world.”
Forget about the US media, which is nothing but a propaganda ministry for the Israel Lobby. What the members of Congress and what the American people need to ask Obama is why does the White House only represent the Israel Lobby?
No one supports an attack on Syria but the Israel Lobby.
Why is Obama going to add yet another war crime to Washington’s 12-year record? Wasn’t it enough to destroy the lives and prospects of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Egypt? Why kill and destroy the life prospects of yet more millions of people in Syria and other countries into which Obama’s war could spread?
Maybe the answer is that Obama, Kerry, and the crazed Netanyahu and his neoconservative fifth column are zombies.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
President will conduct six television interviews in bid to beat war drums
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 9, 2013
Image: Wikimedia Commons
President Barack Obama will conduct interviews with no less than six television networks later today in a desperate bid to drum up support for an attack on Syria before his speech to the nation on Tuesday.
“Obama will tape interviews Monday afternoon with anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News,” reports Politico. “The interviews will be conducted by ABC’s Diane Sawyer, CBS’s Scott Pelley, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Fox’s Chris Wallace, NBC’s Brian Williams and PBS’s Gwen Ifill.”
Despite building opposition amongst members of Congress, White House officials are still bizarrely confident that lawmakers will give the green light, with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough telling ABC yesterday, “This resolution is going to pass after we work this.”
However, the latest whip count of Congressmembers likely to vote against the authorization shows 222 votes against, with only 217 needed to defeat the resolution. That doesn’t even include any of the other 186 representatives who are undecided or haven’t made their position clear in public.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said yesterday that should Obama lose the vote, he does not have the authority to launch an attack without being in violation of the Constitution.
Should Obama ignore Congress, prominent talking heads like Princeton University’s Cornel West have warned that the President would open himself up to impeachment.
“It would be an illegal war. It would be an immoral war for the United States to begin bombing and sending missiles to Syria and killing more innocent people,” said West, adding that such a “dictatorial” move would be “grounds for impeachment.”
Since last month’s alleged chemical weapons attack, which the latest German intelligence report suggests was not even ordered by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, military intervention has become more about saving Obama’s supposed “credibility” than any pretense at discouraging the use of chemical weapons.
“If Congress votes against a military attack on President Bashar Assad’s regime, Obama’s credibility may be shot, perhaps for the rest of his tenure. At a minimum, it would cement the idea that he is weak in Washington, let alone worldwide,” writes Sink.
Meanwhile, as the image below shows, Syrians are begging Obama not to use depleted uranium and white phosphorus, as the US did in Serbia and Iraq, during any potential bombardment of the country.
A Belgian teacher who was kidnapped by rebels in Syria said he overheard the militants acknowledging that President Bashar Al-Assad was not responsible for last month’s chemical weapons attack.
Speaking French, Piccinin tells RTL that he overheard rebels acknowledging that Assad was not behind the chemical weapons attack.
Pierre Piccinin da Prata was kidnapped along with Italian war journalist Domenico Quirico back in April near Damascus. According to Quirico, the two were subjected to torture, humiliation and mock executions by the western-backed rebels. They were freed yesterday and flown to Rome after the Italian Foreign Ministry managed to secure their release.
According to Quirico, the rebels who held him and Piccinin as prisoners set about on a “terrifying odyssey across Syria.”
“We were moved around a lot…it was not always the same group that held us, there were very violent groups, very anti-West and some anti-Christian,” he told AFP, adding that when the two escaped they were tracked down by rebels within 48 hours and “seriously punished.”
Piccinin told Italy’s RTL radio that he heard a conversation during which members of the Abu Ammar rebel brigade admitted that Assad was not behind the attack in Ghouta that the Obama administration has cited in building a case for military intervention.
“It is a moral duty to say this. The government of Bashar al-Assad did not use Sarin gas or other types of gas in the outskirts of Damascus,” said Piccinin.
While the Obama administration has insisted that “common sense” and not “irrefutable evidence” is enough to prove that Assad was behind the attack, others have begged to differ.
On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the attack was a “provocation” carried out by rebels in order to create a pretext for US military intervention.
Last week, Russia announced that it had compiled a 100 page report proving opposition rebels “were behind a deadly sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb earlier this year,” the same attack that Carla Del Ponte, the leading member of the UN inquiry into the incident, blamed on rebels.
As we previously highlighted, Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta admitted to a reporter that they were responsible for last month’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.
Despite the fact that the report was written by credible Associated Press and BBC correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has received virtually zero mainstream attention.
In addition, leaked phone conversations that emerged earlier this year between two members of the FreeSyrian Army contain details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer. Footage was also leaked showing opposition militants testing what appeared to be nerve agents on laboratory rabbits.
On Thursday we featured a video of an FSA militant apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.
Washington (CNN) — As President Barack Obama presses his case for a strike on Syria, a new national survey shows him swimming against a strong tide of public opinion that doesn’t want the United States to get involved.
The CNN/ORC International poll released on Monday shows that even though eight in 10 Americans believe that Bashar al-Assad’s regime gassed its own people, a strong majority doesn’t want Congress to pass a resolution authorizing a military strike against it.
More than seven in 10 say such a strike would not achieve significant goals for the United States and a similar amount say it’s not in the national interest for the country to get involved in Syria’s civil war.
The poll comes at the start of a pivotal week for the president.
The Senate is expected to take up the resolution after returning from its summer recess on Monday while Obama participates in a round of interviews with the major television outlets. Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Obama will air Amid a flurry of briefings by White House officials, Obama will travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to make his case with lawmakers hours before he speaks to the nation in a prime-time address.
"Even as he works members of Congress one by one in small group settings, President Obama’s biggest challenge is the American public at large," said John King, CNN chief national correspondent.
"More than seven in 10 Americans simply don’t see a military response making any difference. They don’t see it doing any good. They’re very skeptical, post Iraq and even post Libya and post Egypt, that the United States can do something in a limited way in the Middle East and walk away with a success. And so the skepticism is driving it right now."
The stakes are high for the president.
After pushing for strikes against Syria, Obama unexpectedly announced on August 31 that he would ask Congress to authorize military action. Failing to get Congress to go along would be an embarrassment for the commander in chief.
"He’ll go to establishing a new high bar to what it means to being a lame duck this early," CNN contributor and Republican strategist Ana Navarro said. "It would be devastating, I think, for rest of his agenda."
But Stephanie Cutter, another CNN contributor who was Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager, said Congress’s not passing the resolution would be "a blow to the United States, not a blow to the president. It’s a blow to the United States’ authority all over the world. And unprecedented."
"That’s why you’re going to see some members of Congress vote for that particular reason. Some said they’re voting for that particular reason," she said.
The Senate could vote on the resolution as early as Wednesday and the outcome there is very much in doubt. Even more uncertain are prospects in the House where Republican leaders say they’ll wait to see what happens in the Senate first.
"Congressional approval would help Obama a little, but a majority would still oppose airstrikes against military targets in Syria," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "If Congress authorizes military action, 55% of Americans would still oppose airstrikes."
The president has had at least a small majority of public support behind him in conflicts involving the United States over the past 20 years.
Eighty-six percent of those surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll less than a month after the 9/11 terror attacks favored military action, and 56% backed the United States and its allies in creating a "no-fly" zone over Libya in 2011.
Only U.S. involvement in NATO airstrikes on Serbia in 1999 during the Clinton administration split the public down the middle, with 43% supporting involvement and 40% opposing it.
While 64% supported using American ground troops in Iraq in 2003, intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction was later discredited. That has contributed to public doubts about Obama administration claims of evidence showing that al-Assad’s regime gassed its own people on August 21 outside Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people.
Fifty-nine percent of people questioned say they don’t think Congress should approve a proposed resolution authorizing military action against Syria for up to 90 days — an initial 60-day window plus another 30 following congressional notification — but prohibiting the use of ground troops. About 40% support that plan.
If Congress rejects the Syria resolution, the White House has said that the president still has the authority to strike.
"I think it would be a mistake for me to jump the gun and speculate because right now I’m working to get as much support as possible out of Congress," Obama said on Friday when asked by CNN senior White House correspondent Brianna Keilar what he would do if the resolution failed.
But the poll indicates Americans are quite clear on that point: More than seven in 10 say they would oppose U.S. airstrikes against Syria if Congress does not authorize it.
The debate over Syria has caused intra-party divides among both parties: Hawkish Republicans and moderate Democrats say the United States should strike, while the libertarian wing of the GOP says involvement is not in the U.S. interest. Liberal Democrats say there are alternatives to military action that haven’t been exhausted.
The poll also suggests those surveyed who identified themselves as Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye on the resolution. Fifty-six percent of Democrats think Congress should pass it, but only 36% of Republicans and 29% of independents say the same.
"Bringing Congress into the equation seems to have added a political dimension to the Syria debate," Holland said. "Once Congress makes up its mind, however, the gap between Democrats and Republicans nearly vanishes."
If Congress does authorize military action, the gap between Democrats and Republicans shrinks to just four points, with 51% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans favoring military action. And if Congress rejects the resolution authorizing military action, large numbers in both parties oppose airstrikes.
"It appears that while the debate is still in the hands of Congress, politics will affect Americans’ views on Syria," Holland said. "Politics may still stop at the water’s edge for most Americans, but Capitol Hill remains a highly partisan environment, even when international affairs are being debated."
The poll gives some insight into why many Americans oppose action.
While more than eight in 10 say that it’s likely or certain that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, nearly seven in 10 say that it’s not in the U.S. national interest to get involved in Syria’s civil war. And more than seven in 10 say that airstrikes would not achieve significant goals for the U.S.
And while most of those questioned said that how their members of Congress voted on the resolution wouldn’t affect how they voted in future elections, but the remainder by a nearly 3-1 margin said they would be more likely to vote against the lawmakers if they supported the resolution.
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International on September 6-8, with 1,022 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
Dyess officially responds to secret nuke transfer, refuses to deny
Anthony Gucciardi Infowars.com September 9, 2013
Update: Dyess Air Force base has issued another official response to the high level military intelligence regarding the unsigned nuke transfer, which appears to be issued to team members (likely due to widespread concern on the base and potential intelligence within the base) through their Facebook page. This time we see Dyess initiate a more direct answer, but once again they cite that the intel is simply untrue because they did not release it themselves. The post reads:
“**ATTENTION TEAM DYESS**
Dyess AFB has not been involved in the transfer of any nuclear weapons. Please be advised that any reports of this nature are inaccurate and information contained in these articles was not released, nor verified by the 7th Bomb Wing commander or other Dyess representatives.”
Engineers at Pantex work on nuclear warhead. / photo via Pantex.
Forced to respond by countless comments throughout social media as well as a bombardment of calls to the base, Dyess Air Force base has now released an official response to the high level military intelligence we revealed to you last week regarding a secret nuke transfer from the base to S.C.
Posting on their official Facebook page, Dyess responded to a question regarding the nuke transfer piece now seen by millions worldwide:
“Dyess Air Force Base: Please be advised that the information contained in recent reports on nuclear weapons movement from Dyess AFB was neither released nor supported by the 7th Bomb Wing commander or representatives from Dyess AFB. Please reference the Dyess AFB website (www.dyess.af.mil) or other official Air Force websites for accurate, up-to-date information.”
In other words, Dyess is saying virtually nothing. Instead of denying the transfer of nuclear warheads which coincided with a warmongering announcement by S.C. Senator Lindsay Graham that a nuclear attack may hitS.C. if we don’t go to war with Syria, Dyess is instead refusing to deny the secret nuke transferoutright. Their answer, as you can plainly see, is to direct readers to their official site for information about Dyess.
Why not immediately ‘debunk’ the intel if there was no transfer of nuclear warheads?
The fact that the base even responded is amazing, considering the level of information we’re talking about when it comes to a secret nuke transfer. But adding on new information we’ve uncovered regarding the nearby Pantex Plant, which assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons, the story becomes even more interesting. Extremely close to Dyess, Pantex is America’s ‘only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility and is charged with maintaining the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.’
Was Dyess simply a temporary holding facility for nuclear weapons originally coming out of Pantex? Here are some more comments (at least the ones that haven’t been deleted assuming many may have been removed) that are absolutely blasting the official Facebook page. Virtually all of these questions are now receiving the copy paste of the Dyess refusal to deny the transfer, and many comments acknowledge the real lack of answer from the base:
The answers coincide with what I was told by an official on the phone after contacting the base, who told me she could not divulge information regarding any ‘weapons transfers’ when I did not mention anything to do with weapons in the first place. The official also told me they would get back with me by the end of the day on Friday (after telling me days earlier they’d also get in touch ‘soon’). Today, I still have not received a call. Checkout the call below for yourself:
Following the Constitution and going to Congress for war authorization displays Obama’s “weakness” and has damaged the presidency, according to John Bolton, the recess appointed ambassador to the United Nations under Bush.
Obama: I was elected to end wars.
“I was stunned,” Bolton told Newsmax after Obama said he would seek authorization from Congress to bomb Syria – not a declaration of war, as stipulated by the Constitution. “What the president did was a display of weakness of the kind we haven’t seen in an American leader in decades, if not since the 19th century.”
New York Rep. Peter King said Obama is “abdicating his responsibility as commander in chief and undermining the authority of future presidents,” while former Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, said it is too early to know if Obama’s “lead-from-behind” style of leadership will damage the concept of the imperial presidency.
Hoekstra said by going to Congress, Obama has presented “a real opportunity” for al-Qaeda and the enemies of America.
Other insiders have also criticized Obama’s behavior, including the former Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman who characterized it as a “fiasco reminiscent of the Carter days.” Gillerman said Obama’s decision to hold off bombing Syria for its unsubstantiated use of chemical weapons would elicit “gloating and celebrating” in Iran. He said the decision to consult Congress and gain the approval of the American people will cast “a very dark shadow” over the credibility of U.S. foreign policy.
“What we seem to be losing, as we confront the challenges in Syria and Iran, is credibility,” Wall Street Journal columnist and establishment foreign-policy expert Bret Stephens told Newsmax. “We’re not taken seriously. And we’re not taken seriously because we have a president who issues a red line – as he said a red line ‘for me’ – and then several months later tells us that he didn’t issue the red line, it was the world.”
Obama’s decision, viewed as harmful vacillation by neocons and Democrat war hawks alike, has apparently damaged the long-standing effort to take out Iran.
“The feeling is that something was wrong here, that this was not the way this should have gone down, that this is not the way a superpower should act,” a former Israeli diplomat told Fox News last week.
“We look at Syria, and we think Iran. … What conclusions should be drawn about how America will act in other circumstances? Here was a clear red line. It was breached a few times. This looks like a clever move; but America’s willingness to ‘walk the walk’ now is very questionable.”
Bolton, King, Hoekstra and other Obama critics fail to understand that the founders deliberately weakened the executive branch in favor of decisions made by the legislative, at one time the direct representatives of the American people. A balance of power, James Madison wrote in the The Federalists no. 10, was imposed on government in order to defeat “the reprobated axiom of tyranny.”
No one will die. Syria is a fiction. Brian Williams, who will narrate the attack, is just the latest Pixar cartoon.
This is what I told Mr. Shrink this morning. He frowned and said the drugs weren’t working. I didn’t let him stop me. I kept going.
I told him Obama and Kerry are producers who are trying to sell the series to the networks. They’ve got the sponsors lined up, but there’s an argument about whether it should be three episodes or 12.
One NBC exec remarked, “Okay, so we have the initial missile launch. That’s one night. But afterwards, do we see ground troops? If not, the whole thing could be a bust.”
Kerry said, “If we play it right, we’ll have ground troops. They’ll take a few small towns. Maybe a city.”
CNN has built a studio in Atlanta, consisting of two rooftops, where Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper will do stand-ups in bush jackets, as they pretend to watch the missiles in the sky.
Mr. Shrink put up his hand to halt me.
“Look,” he said, “you’ve gone off the rails. Syria is real. People will die there, innocent people.”
“No,” I said. “And you know how I know that? Because you’re sitting here talking to me. If you really believed innocent people were about to die, you’d be out in the street, protesting, doing something. But you’re not. You’re crazier than I am.”
That stopped him for a few seconds.
He leaned back in his chair and slanted his head to one side and smiled. He shook his finger at me.
“You’re delusional but clever,” he said. “You’re playing some kind of angle. What is it?”
“No angle,” I said. “Ever since television came in, there’s been nothing but television. All other reality was banished. People just don’t realize it yet.”
He nodded.
“Well,” he said, “in that case there’s no problem. You must be very happy knowing all suffering has ceased. We’re all just watching television.”
“No,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong, Doc. I’m here because I’m afraid television is a fragile medium. Any number of events could cause it to go offline. And then where will we be? We’ll sink into a great Void.”
He sniffed a therapeutic opening.
“What’s this Void like?” he said.
“It’s dark,” I said. “There’s no programming. No news, no CSI, no Law and Order. You know what that means? The concomitant programing in our minds will cease as well, because we’re all wired for television and nothing else.”
“So we’ll just sit there in the great Void and stew in our own juice?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a moot question. You’re asking me to comment on what I’d be like without my internal programming. But I can only respond to you THROUGH my programming. Get it?”
He sighed and looked at his watch.
“You’re screwing with me,” he said. “Syria is real. The war would be real. The missiles are real. The destruction and loss of life would be very real.”
“Look at it this way,” I said. “Suppose, as you say, the war is real. But suppose it isn’t on television. Nothing about it, the debate, the lead-up, the attack…none of it is on television. Therefore, none of us know anything about it. See? So I ask you, would they stage the war at all? What would be the point if it wasn’t on television? The so-called message we’re sending, the punishment for Assad using chemical weapons, the muscle-flexing. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t play.”
He stood up. He started pacing around.
“In other words,” he said, “we all have a disease called television. We don’t know how sick we are.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s all-embracing. Wall to wall. The television disease is reality now. Ever since 1950, it’s all there is.”
“You need a better drug,” he said.
“I already have a drug. The screen.”
“But it’s counter-productive,” he said.
“So cure me.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?”
“You make up stuff all the time. You’re making up stuff now.”
Suddenly, across the room, the television set, sitting on an oak table, went on. A large face filled the screen. It was a man’s angry face. The man spoke:
THIS IS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. ALL CONVERSATION ABOUT THE WAR WILL STOP NOW. IT IS NOW ILLEGAL TO DISCUSS THE WAR. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS DEBATING THE ISSUE AND WILL SOON COME TO A CONCLUSION. ANYONE CAUGHT DISCUSSING THE WAR WILL BE ARRESTED AND QUARANTINED. I REPEAT, STOP DISCUSSING THE WAR.
The face vanished. The screen was blank. The television set turned off.
“See,” I said. “It’s starting.”
Mr. Shrink was blinking. His face was pale.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.
“They just censored the news.” I said. “Pretty soon there won’t be any more news. Then the other programs will go away. Television will cease.”
“You’re stark raving mad,” he said.
The television set came back on. The same bland angry face was there:
AS OF THIS MOMENT, ALL TELEVISION PROGRAMMING WILL STOP. THERE WILL ONLY BE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS. WE ARE IN A CRISIS. WE WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED.
The set turned off.
The shrink sat down hard in his chair. He looked straight at me.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Well, Doc,” I said, “apparently we’re all heading for the Void.”
“No!” he said. “There has to be television!”
“No,” I said. You’re off the mark there. There doesn’t have to be television. There only has to be government. Do you see? Government is the last stand against people being by themselves thinking their own thoughts.”
“What thoughts?” he said.
“Looks like we’re about to find out. But I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. Like I said, the war is only a television event. Without war, we all hit the Big Nothing. That’s where we’re just…wherever we are.”
“AND WHERE IS THAT?”
“In the reality that is finally real.”
He shook his head vigorously. I thought he was going to dislocate his spine.
“WE’VE GOT TO HAVE WAR SO WE CAN HAVE TELEVISION,” he said.
“Now you’re getting it,” I said. “When did that idea first occur to you? Was it just now…or was there a time, perhaps, in childhood when you realized it?”
He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath and let it out.
“I remember when I was nine,” he said. “I was all alone in the house. My parents had gone down the street to see a neighbor. I didn’t want to go. I was sitting in the living room watching the news. I suddenly wondered what would happen if there wasn’t any news.”
“You mean you wondered what would happen if there was nothing newsworthy to report?”
He closed his eyes.
“No,” he said. “I just wondered what would happen to people if the news stopped.”
“And how did you feel when you had that thought?”
“I felt happy. I don’t know why. Then I felt guilty.”
“You felt guilty?” I said. “Why?”
He paused, then opened his eyes and looked at his hands.
“I think I felt guilty because I felt…powerless. I wanted to…invent my own news. I wanted to invent a completely different kind of news. But I didn’t think I could. The networks were too strong. I didn’t see how I could go up against them.”
“That’s interesting,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “It is. Even at that age, I saw we were all living in a bubble.”
“And war reinforces that bubble.”
“But,” he said, “war is real. People die.”
“Of course it is. Of course they do. But if they can’t put it on television, then what?”
He thought about it.
“Then we might wake up,” he said. “They’d keep killing lots of people and we’d wake up, and then something different would happen. I don’t know what it would be, but…”
He smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pistol. He checked the load and extended his arm. He fired three shots into the television set. The screen exploded.
He laid the gun down on the desk.
We sat there for a minute.
“Listen,” he said, “can I come back next week? Do you have an opening? Same day, same time?”
“Of course, Doc,” I said. “I’ll be here. But listen. Those psychiatric journals you keep stealing from the library? Try to ease off on that. I wouldn’t want you to be in jail and miss your appointment. Your parole officer is a bit of a hard-ass.”
He stood up and looked around the office.
“We might be getting somewhere,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Good work today. See you next week.”
We had a long road ahead of us, but for the first time, I believed we were making progress.
Jon Rappoport is the author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com
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How the White House and the CIA Are Marketing a War in the YouTube Era
Posted: 09/09/2013 8:04 am
Governments have always used fear and manipulation of emotion to get the public to support wars. The Bush administration did it in 2002 in Iraq and it is happening again in Obama’s push for war in Syria.
In possibly the biggest development yet in the story, we learned this weekend that the CIA has now been enlisted to sell this new war with unproven evidence. On Saturday, U.S. intelligence officials claimed they "authenticated" 13 videos that show the horrific aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria in August. What exactly did they "authenticate"?
Why are these videos suddenly news when they have been publicly circulating the web for weeks? Here’s why: The videos are meant to market the war, not to "prove" who committed the atrocities. (CBS News and others have reported that the White House case for war has been described as "largely circumstantial.")
We’ve seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well. A decade after the Bush administration used the CIA’s "yellow cake" tale and other faulty evidence, the government is yet again relying on the CIA to lead a domestic propaganda effort for military action abroad. If these videos can sway American public opinion, as they’re intended to do, and influence Congress to vote to attack Syria, this could become the first YouTube war.
No American could look at these horrifying videos of people suffering and dying and not be moved. But that doesn’t mean a military strike is the only way to respond to the humanitarian tragedy happening in Syria. So bald-faced is the rush to war that the White House could not restrain its anticipation that the videos could be successfully employed to market the war. As the Washington Post reported, "Administration officials and their congressional allies believe the horrific scenes depicted in the videos could help sway public opinion." But CNN, which broadcast portions of the grim videos this weekend, added thequalification that they could not independently authenticate them.
The release of these graphic videos is a cynical maneuver by the White House because the rest of the case for war remains unproven, with open questions about transcripts, satellite imagery and signal intelligence under the shield of classified information. What does it mean when the government’s case for war relies more on emotion than on evidence? Welcome to war marketing in the YouTube era.
Just as the White House would have us believe that others created the "red line," the administration has just shifted responsibility for the war onto the CIA, which is famous for the use of emotional and psychological warfare. To point to just one example, in the 1960s the Agency’s "Operation CHAOS" spied on American anti-war activists to try to disrupt and discredit opposition to the Vietnam War in order to sway public opinion against the anti-war movement.
This is the way intelligence seems to work lately: a classified sales pitch within a broader marketing plan. In an interview this weekend, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough acknowledged the administration’s case wasn’t 100%: "Do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence? … This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way," he said.
Actually there are laws against aggressive war and faked intelligence.
I personally witnessed this game in advance of the Iraq War. As a member of Congress, I sat in classified sessions where maps were ceremoniously produced, conjecture elevated, scenarios spun and "evidence" concocted, leading me to conclude that there was no legitimate case to attack Iraq, as I argued five months before the Iraq invasion.
The marketing of a war using the manipulation of the public’s emotion is wrong. Here are immediate remedies:
We must insist that all information presented behind closed doors to advance a war be immediately declassified and released.
Congress must demand that the CIA desist in promoting the war and investigate its role in this domestic propaganda campaign: Who demanded the CIA "authentication" and when? Which division of the CIA supplied it?
Congress must recall for additional testimony from James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, who oversees the CIA.
Congressional investigators need to demand the underlying intelligence supporting the "classified" briefings.
There must be no war based on secret information.
The administration must be made to account for any decisions they make to go to war.
Eleven years ago the American people were lied to in the cause of war. We can’t let it happen again.
Dennis J. Kucinich is a former 16-year member of Congress and two-time U.S. presidential candidate. Visit his website www.kucinichaction.com.
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Syria says it ‘welcomes’ Russian proposal on securing chemical weapons
MOSCOW — The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday said it welcomed a Russian proposal to avert U.S. military strikes by having Damascus turn over control of its chemical weapons to international monitors.
The statement by Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow offered the first indication that a diplomatic solution may be possible to the international standoff that has evolved since apparent chemical weapons attacks on rebel-held suburbs outside Damascus on Aug. 21.
In Washington, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told reporters Monday that the United States “would welcome a decision and action by Syria to give up its chemical weapons.” But he expressed skepticism that Syria would do so.
Hours earlier, in London, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sketched out a transfer-of-control scenario similar to the Russian proposal, then dismissed it, after being asked by a reporter whether there was anything that Assad could do to avoid an attack. “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.”
Kerry also sparked criticism by commenting that any U.S. strike would be “an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”
Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said after a meeting with President Obama that if Syria immediately surrenders its chemical weapons, “that would be an important step, but this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction.”
Last month’s reported chemical attacks, which the United States says killed more than 1,400 civilians, brought world-wide condemnation, as well as vows of military action by Obama, who had previously described the use of such banned weapons as a “red line.” But Russia, which is Syria’s chief patron, blocked efforts to generate a response by the U.N. Security Council. And the United States has struggled to build support for unilateral military strikes, although the White House announced Monday that 13 more countries have signed a statement holding the Syrian government responsible for last month’s attack.
On Monday, while meeting with Moualem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country would ask Syria to relinquish control of its chemical weapons to international monitors to prevent a U.S. strike. Lavrov also called on Syria to sign and ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons, which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.
“If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country will avoid strikes, we will immediately begin working with Damascus,” Lavrov said. “We call on the Syrian leadership not only to agree on a statement of storage of chemical weapons under international supervision, but also to their subsequent destruction.”
Moualem said Syria “welcomes the Russian initiative,” but he did not say whether his country would agree to what Russia was asking. “We also welcome the wisdom of the Russian leadership, which is trying to prevent American aggression against our people,” Moulaem said.
In a White House news briefing, Blinken said, “We want to take a hard look at the proposal” and talk to the Russians about it. He noted that the international community has tried for 20 years to get Syria to sign on to the Chemical Weapons Convention and that Assad only last week refused to admit that he even has chemical weapons, “despite overwhelming evidence.”
He said U.S. intelligence believes that Assad ultimately controls the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria.
“We would welcome Assad giving up his chemical weapons and doing it in a verifiable manner,” Blinken said. He added that “unfortunately the track record to date” does not inspire confidence.
Kerry learned of the announcement before it was made, when he received a call from Lavrov about two hours into a flight to Washington from London, a senior State Department official said. Lavrov said Russia was “willing to engage” on the issue of weapons inspections and surrender of Syria’s chemical stocks, and he made specific reference to the possibility of U.S. action.
Kerry “expressed serious skepticism and said the United States was ‘not going to play games,’ ” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the conversation.
While Kerry told Lavrov the United States would consider a serious proposal, the official made clear that he did not consider the Russian statement Monday to be one.
Kerry “also made clear that [the Russian statement] cannot or will not be a reason to delay our efforts with Congress to authorize the president’s proposal” for a military strike, the official said.
Kerry “made clear that the Russians cannot go back to Syria and say this is a joint U.S.-Russian proposal,” the official said. “We have seen no details; we have seen no ‘proposal.’ ”
Kerry “still feels it is not possible” to arrange an adequate inspection and verifiable destruction of Syrian weapons in any reasonable time frame, the official added.
The official said the Obama administration had “batted around” in the past the idea of an ultimatum to Syria on giving up its chemical weapons, but that the idea had died internally when it was judged too complicated and likely to provoke Syrian subterfuge and delay.
Lavrov had also previously discussed the idea in conversations with Kerry, including a telephone call as recently as Thursday, the official said, but never in the context of the proposed U.S. military action.
Clinton, commenting on the situation in Syria during a speech at the White House on the fight against wildlife trafficking, said Assad’s “inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against innocent men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order, and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community led by the United States.”
She added: “The international community cannot ignore the ongoing threat from the Assad regime’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, whether they are used again against Syrian civilians, or transferred to Hezbollah or stolen by other terrorists. . . . The world will have to deal with this threat as swiftly and as comprehensively as possible. Now if the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control — as was suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians — that would be an important step, but this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. And Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”
The discussion about transferring control of those weapons could take place only “in the context of a credible military threat by the United States” to maintain pressure on Syria and its allies, Clinton said. She said she would continue to support Obama’s efforts, “and I hope that the Congress will as well.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a supporter of congressional authorization for U.S. strikes, said in a statement that she, too, would welcome the transfer and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons.
“I believe that Russia can be most effective in encouraging the Syrian president to stop any use of chemical weapons and place all his chemical munitions, as well as storage facilities, under United Nations control until they can be destroyed,” she said.
Feinstein also noted to reporters that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and British Prime Minister David Cameron have already signaled support for the plan.
“I think if the U.N. would accept the responsibility of maintaining these [chemical weapons] facilities, seeing that they’re secure and that Syria would announce that it is giving up any chemical weapons programs or delivery system vehicles that may have been armed, then I think we’ve got something,” she said.
Asked about Kerry’s remarks earlier Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Kerry was making a “rhetorical” point in the face of Assad’s long-standing intransigence. “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons. Otherwise he would have done so long ago,” Psaki said. “That’s why the world faces this moment.”
Obama has said U.S. intelligence and video documentation clearly show the Syrian government was responsible for last month’s strikes, part of a bloody civil conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people in the past 2 1/2 years. Obama and Kerry are working to win enough support for congressional authorization of a strike.
The Syrian dictator said Kerry’s effort to generate support for a strike reminded him of the “big lie” told in early 2003 by then-president George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, in justifying what became the U.S. war in Iraq. Powell based his argument for that war on claims that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, which later proved false.
Kerry emphasized to reporters in London that any strikes ordered by the United States would be limited and would not resemble the lengthy actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that have left a legacy of public resentment.
“We’re not talking about war. We’re not going to war,” Kerry said, describing the proposed strikes as similar to action taken by then-president Ronald Reagan against Libya after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
“We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground in any kind of prolonged effort, in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war,” Kerry said. “That is exactly what we’re talking about doing. An unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”
His words sparked a fresh round of criticism, however, from people who said that describing U.S. plans as “unbelievably small” and “limited” was hardly a good way to take a moral stand against actions the United States has said are untenable.
“Kerry says #Syria strike would be “unbelievably small” — that is unbelievably unhelpful,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on Twitter.
In London on Monday, both Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague dismissed the idea that there was “still time” to avoid consequences for what Obama has called a “horrific” chemical weapons attack. “There can’t be a negotiated settlement if the Assad regime is allowed to eradicate the moderate opposition,” Hague said.
In Paris, a French defense official said France has intelligence that Assad’s “brother, cousins or nephew” might have ordered last month’s chemical weapons attack. Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential assessments, the official said France believes that the chemical strikes on the Damascus suburbs may have been launched because the Assad government feared “a powerful attack” by Syrian rebels armed with “new, more powerful weaponry” from abroad.
In the event of U.S.-led military action, the official said, France could conduct “very precise strikes without putting too many of our assets at risk.” He said France has cruise missiles that can be fired from planes roughly 30 to 40 miles from their targets.
However, he added, a Western attack “is taking an enormous risk. We are not fools.”
During his overseas trip, Kerry appears to have won backing from Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the idea of a U.S. military strike. He also generated additional support for a statement condemning the use of chemical weapons, holding Assad responsible for the strike and calling for a “strong international response.”
The statement was shepherded by the administration after the Group of 20 summit in Russia failed to agree on a common position on Syria last week. The initial signatories to the statement were Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, Britain and the United States. Germany signed a day later.
On Monday, the White House announced that Albania, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Honduras, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Qatar, Romania and the United Arab Emirates had signed on as well.
The G-20 nations that did not sign the statement included Brazil, India and Indonesia, along with China and Russia, Assad’s principal arms supplier.
On Saturday, the 28-member European Union unanimously agreed to a similar statement. But neither document mentioned support for a military strike, and the E.U. said there should be no action against Syria until U.N. investigators who visited the site of the alleged chemical attack issue their report later this month. The administration has said the U.N. report is irrelevant because the investigators’ mandate is only to determine whether a chemical weapons attack occurred – which is not in dispute at this point – not who carried it out.
Although administration officials have indicated that they have wide allied backing for military intervention, the only other nations to publicly indicate support are Turkey and France, which said last week it wants to wait for the U.N. report. In Britain, Parliament rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s request for authorization to join the United States in a military strike.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been among the leading arms suppliers to the Syrian rebels and have long backed unspecified direct foreign intervention in Syria. Although neither has said whether it would participate in a U.S.-led military strike, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah said Sunday that his government was considering how it could be of assistance. Qatar sent bombers and other resources to aid the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.
Speaking through an interpreter, Attiyah said that “the Syrian people over more than three years has been demanding or asking the international community to intervene.”
“Several parties that support the Syrian regime,” he said, have intervened in that country since the war began with an uprising against the government in 2011. He was apparently referring to Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite movement.
Assad, interviewed by Charlie Rose of CBS News in Damascus, said that “it had not been a good experience” for the American people “to get involved in the Middle East in wars and conflicts.” He added that “they should communicate to their Congress and to their leadership in Washington not to authorize a strike.”
Many of Assad’s comments, which were conveyed by Rose in a telephone report from Beirut on CBS’s “Face the Nation”ahead of their broadcast Monday, appeared designed to play on what opinion polls have shown is strong public opposition to U.S. intervention. The comments indicated that Assad is closely following media reports about the U.S. deliberations.
Rose said the Syrian president “denied that he had anything to do with the [chemical] attack. He denied that he knew, in fact, that there was a chemical attack. . . . He said ‘I can’t confirm or deny that we have chemical weapons.’ ”
“He suggested, as he has before, that perhaps the rebels had something to do” with the reported attack, Rose said, and he quoted the Syrian leader as saying there had been no evidence that he had used chemical weapons against his people.
If the Obama administration had evidence, he said, Assad suggested “they should show that evidence and make their case.”
Assad said that his forces “were obviously as prepared as they could be for a strike,” Rose reported, and that he was “very, very concerned” that an American attack would tip the military balance of the war in the rebels’ favor.
Syria won some indirect support of its own Sunday as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a Baghdad news conference with his Iranian counterpart that Iraq “will not be a base for any attack nor will it facilitate any such attack on Syria.”
Speaking during his first visit abroad since his appointment last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that U.S. intervention in Syria risks igniting a regionwide war.
“Those who are shortsighted and are beating the drums of war are starting a fire that will burn everyone,” Zarif said.
DeYoung reported from London. Wilgoren reported from Washington. William Branigin in Washington, Michael Birnbaum in Berlin and Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.
Following up on this morning’s shocking “appeasement” turn of events by Russia and Syria, the White House has promptly fired back in the only way it knows:
Yes – in Rwanda, Somalia and all those tens of other conflicts the US never got involved in because Qatari/Saudi petrodollar/gas interests were not involved.
With the mainstream media proclaiming last night’s Charlie Rose interview with Assad “propaganda”, the following headlines from a speech by national security advisors Susan Rice will frighten even the most “Miley Cyrus”-numb American:
RICE SAYS OPENING DOOR TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS THREATENS U.S.
RICE SAYS CHEMICAL WEAPONS COULD BE USED EVEN WITHIN THE U.S.
RICE SAYS U.S. ALLIES BECOME `TEMPTING TARGETS’ IF NO RESPONSE
RICE SAYS ASSAD ATTACK THREATENS GLOBAL SECURITY, U.S. INCLUDED
We can only imagine the ‘score’ underlying her words, which are getting scarier and louder with every verbal escalation…
RICE SAYS SYRIA UNLEASHED `HELLISH CHAOS’ IN CHEMICAL ATTACK
and an ominous Carmina Burana ‘drum beat’, crescendoing with:
RICE SAYS NOT RESPONDING MAY EMBOLDEN N KOREA, IRAN, TERRORISTS
So, it would appear, that a Syrian strike is no longer about preventing Assad from using weapons, as was the story until now, but deterring others from doing what Assad may or may not have done.
At the end of the day, the US will refuse to accept checkmate by being humiliated by grandmaster Putin in the world arena: it seems the decision is already made:
RICE SAYS U.S. WOULD LIKE UN BACKING BUT IT WON’T HAPPEN
And finally, here is the admission after all. As expected, the whole point of this entire farce was to topple Assad and replace him with a pro-Syria, pro-Qatar, anti-Russia regime:
And if we were Iran we would be worried. Very worried. A false flag in which Tehran attacks Israel is coming any second:
A chemical attack may be launched on Israel by Syrian rebels from government-controlled territories as a “major provocation,” multiple sources told RT.
Photo: FreedomHouse via Flickr
The report comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed that Syria puts its chemical weapons arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction in order to prevent a possible military strike against the war-torn republic.
Moscow also urged the Syrian authorities to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The offer has already been passed over to the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, who met Lavrov in Moscow for talks on Monday.
“We don’t know if Syria will accept the offer, but if imposing international control over chemical weapons stored in the country can help to avoid military strikes, we are immediately going to start working with Damascus,” Lavrov said.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry has welcomed Moscow’s initiative, “based on the Syrian’s government care about the lives of our people and security of our country,” Muallem said later on Monday.
Meanwhile, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice made a statement saying that Damascus’ alleged “use of chemical weapons against its own people” posed threat to US national security. “The use of chemical weapons also directly threatens our closest ally in the region, Israel,” she said speaking at the New America Foundation in Washington.
The statement has come shortly after RT published a report about the possibility of a chemical provocation.
A few hours earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that to avoid a military operation Syrian President Bashar Assad has a week to surrender control of “every single bit” of his stock of chemical weapons to the international community. “But he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done,” he added, speaking at a media conference in London, as he was wrapping up his European tour in a move to win support for the Obama-proposed “limited” strike against Syria.
The US Administration has blamed the Syrian government for the alleged chemical weapons use in the Damascus suburbs on August 21. Washington has maintained it has the intelligence to prove it, but has so far refused to make public a single piece of concrete evidence that would link the Assad regime to the deadly incident.
On Sunday, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released a series of 13 videos showing what is purported to be proof of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The disturbing images of the victims of the alleged attack were earlier shown during a closed-door briefing to a group of senators, as Obama is trying to get authorization from Congress for the military strike on Syria. The administration told senators that the authenticity of the videos was verified by the intelligence community, reported CNN, which first aired the graphic material.
The videos depict scenes of convulsing children, men vomiting and struggling to breathe and, also what appeared to be dozens of dead bodies wrapped up in white sheets, lying side by side. But they still do not provide an answer to the question of who was behind the attack. The Syrian government and the opposition forces point the finger of blame at each other.
It also remains unclear as to why exactly President Assad would order a chemical attack at a time when a group of UN experts were carrying out an investigation in the country.
There is proof the footage of the alleged chemical attack in Syria was fabricated, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, mother superior of the St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, told RT. She added that she plans to submit her findings to the UN.
“I will not vote to send my son, you son, or anyone’s daughter to fight for stalemate”
Infowars.com Sept. 9, 2013
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of Congress’s more recent proponents of foreign non-interventionism, has written a letter to his fellow Congressmen explaining why he’s voting no on going to war with Syria, as well as encouraging them all to do the same.
“[War] should never be the first option. It should occur only when America is attacked or threatened, or when American interests are attacked or threatened,” Paul declares in his letter.
“I will not vote to send my son, you son, or anyone’s daughter to fight for stalemate,” Paul says, as he lays out why pursuing a war would be foolish, if not altogether illegal.
Washington (CNN) – One day before President Barack Obama gives a prime time speech to make his case against Syria, a new national poll indicates the president’s approval rating on foreign policy has hit an all-time low. And only three in ten approve of how he is handling Syria.
But according to a CNN/ORC International survey, the number of Americans who approve of how Obama is handling his job in general remains steady.
Only four in ten approve of the job Obama is doing on foreign policy, with 57% of those questioned giving the president a thumbs down. The 40% approval rating on foreign policy is Obama’s lowest level ever on that issue in CNN polling.
The CNN poll’s Monday release comes as the president sits down for interviews with the country’s major broadcast and cable news networks, including CNN, to push for congressional authorization for U.S. military action to punish the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against its own citizens.
"President Obama’s approval rating on foreign affairs has continued its steady decline – from 54% in January to 49% in April, 44% in June, and just 40% now," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "This may be a troubling sign for a president who in past polls had always scored his highest ratings for his handling of foreign affairs."
Specifically on Syria, only 31% of the public approves of the president’s policies and actions, with 63% giving him a thumbs down. Four in ten Democrats say they disapprove of the job Obama’s doing on Syria, with 54% saying they approve.
There is a wide partisan divide on this question, with only 26% of independents and just nine percent of Republicans approving of how Obama is handling the situation in Syria, which is suffering through two years of a bloody civil war between government forces and various rebel factions.
"The number of Democrats who disapprove of how the president’s handling Syria may cause problems for the White House," adds Holland. "Given his low approval scores on Syria among independents and Republicans, the 40% of Democrats who disapprove may mean there is no base to rally on this key issue."
The president’s overall approval rating stands at 45%, with 52% saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing in the White House. The 45% approval rating is unchanged from CNN’s previous poll, which was conducted in June.
"An unchanged overall approval rating perhaps comes as a surprise to some observers, but arguably the unpopularity of military action against Syria is balanced by the fact that the public wanted the president to consult with Congress before taking action on Syria, and that’s exactly what he did," adds Holland.
The 45% approval rating is not Obama’s lowest mark in CNN polling. His all-time low was a 43% approval rating in September of 2011.
The poll also indicates the president’s approval rating on the economy stands at 43% on the economy, 42% on health care, and 36% on the budget deficit, all basically unchanged from earlier this year.
While the president’s overall approval rating is nothing to brag about, it’s still soars above Congress. According to the CNN poll, only one in five give federal lawmakers a thumbs up on the job they’re doing on Capitol Hill, with 78% saying they disapprove.
The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International September 6-8, with 1,022 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.
It’s called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and it’s a super secret trade pact being negotiated completely outside of law, with no congressional authority but with the aim of forcing nations around the world to ban GMO labeling, embrace Monsanto’s GMO crops and keep pharmaceutical prices artificially high to enrich the world’s medication monopolists.
A purely executive creation of the Office of the United States Trade Representative — i.e. created outside of law with zero public accountability — the TPP involves White House loyalists running around the world, strong-arming over a dozen nations into signing on to a corporate domination agreement knowingly misnamed “free trade.”
Details of the TPP are so secret that even members of Congress are not allowed to review them or disclose them. What we know about the TPP has only come from leaks, as the full text of the entire agreement is being kept not only from Congress but also the American people. Yet over 600 corporate CEOs — including CEOs of companies that have been repeatedly found guilty of felony crimes in America — have been allowed to influence the details of the TPP agreements. Monsanto, Wal-Mart and Big Pharma corporations are reportedly given top influence positions in this super-secret Obama organization that hands the future of the world over to the most evil corporations of all time.
GMO labeling to be illegal, generic drugs to be all but shut down
The countries currently involved in the TPP include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. More are being bullied into signing the agreement with each passing month. Although the exact language of the TPP is a tightly-protected secret, it is reported that the TPP will require:
• Dropping of all bans on GMOs. All countries signing the TPP must allow GMOs to be grown in their country and secretly used throughout the food supply — all GMO labeling will be outlawed.
• Shutting down all generic drug manufacturers who make “copycat” drugs that compete with the monopoly patents of top U.S. drug makers.
• Redefining resistance against GMOs as “anti-free trade practices” that can result in economic sanctions against nations that attempt to ban GMOs.
• The outlawing of “Fair Use” of copyrighted material. Anyone using an image, a short video clip, an audio clip, etc., would be criminalize and possibly arrested and imprisoned under the TPP.
• Flooding the U.S. market with polluted, unsafe food products from nations that have virtually no enforcement of regulations on pesticides and herbicides. As Nationofchange.org reports, “[Corporations] are carefully crafting the TPP to ensure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.”
• Banning people from using the internet if they engage in Fair Use of copyrighted material. This would shut down virtually the entire alternative media, many blogs, and silence most critics of the global corporate cabal.
• Forcing member nations to criminalize small-scale copyright infringement such as someone sharing a music file with a friend. Domineering copyright enforcement provisions are being influenced by the MPAA which has also been given extraordinary influence over the language of the TPP.
• Vastly reducing banking regulations, allowing criminal banksters to steal even more money globally while facing no repercussions for their actions. “The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis,” writes Wallach in the NY Times. “Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.”
Essentially, take every criminal corporation you can imagine, make a list of all their most evil priorities to dominate and enslave humankind, and write them all down. That’s the TPP. It is the executive enforcement of a totalitarian wish list of corporate evil to dominate and enslave humankind. (No wonder Obama doesn’t want you to be able to read it…)
Maybe this is why the TPP is being referred to as the “Death Star” of our modern economy.
Monsanto, GMOs and how the TPP would forbid GMO labeling globally
The best information on the GMO side of all this comes from a site called Nation Of Change. This pagedescribes the implications of the TPP on GMOs and how the TPP would globally ban GMO labeling:
• The labeling of foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will not be allowed. Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP Japan would no longer be able to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. In the US we are just beginning to see some progress towards labeling GMOs. Under the TPP GMO labels for US food would not be allowed.
• In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru’s agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. What will become of Peru’s moratorium if the TPP is passed?
Under the terms of the TPP, drug companies could force member nations to keep drug costs artificially high, thereby enriching the profits of Big Pharma. The TPP Timeline reveals that PhRMA, the lobby group representing the top drug companies and vaccine manufacturers, has special influence over the TPP.
As written in the NY Times, “Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the [TPP] agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.”
The intellectual property provisions of the TPP are also a big handout to Big Pharma. They allow drug companies to shut down generic drug manufacturers that are currently keeping medication costs low in many member nations. Under the TPP, drug companies like Merck would be able to enforce global monopoly pricing, even across poor nations where the costs of a month’s medications would vastly exceed a typically monthly income.
But that’s how Big Pharma operates: the goal of the entire industry is to extract as much human wealth from the planet as possible, regardless of the true cost in human suffering or global chemical pollution from pharmaceutical manufacturing.
All this could be forced upon the world without even a debate in Congress. “Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill,” write Wallach and Beachy in the NY Times. “Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it. And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote.”
“The secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance. That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government.”
In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes “Another leaked portion of the TPP text would take aim at policies to control medicine costs. Pharmaceutical companies are among the firms enjoying privileged access to TPP negotiators as official ‘advisers’. They have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Their goal is to keep their already unaffordably high profit margins up. One leaked TPP text reveals terms that would allow pharmaceutical firms to challenge the measures that the US government uses domestically to negotiate lower medicine costs for Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health programmes.”
So secret that even Congress is not allowed to see it
The federal government of the USA has, of course, become a super-secret corporate mafia that answers to no one. So when it came time to create the TPP and force U.S. corporate imperialism upon the nations of the world, Congress was left completely out of the loop. The TPP was dreamed up entirely by the executive branch without a single vote ushering it into existence. It answers to no law and has zero transparency. No representative of the People votes on its provisions. There is no oversight. There is no recourse for the public to challenge its language. The TPP exists utterly outside the boundaries of government and of U.S. law, including the Constitution.
“This is astounding, given that the US Constitution provides Congress exclusive authority over trade policy,” writes Wallach in the Bangkok Post.
This idea of total secrecy with zero oversight from Congress or the public is to offensive to the fundamental ideas of democracy that 132 members of Congress signed on to this letter demanding transparency over the language of the TPP. The letter was utterly ignored by the Obama administration, once again proving it is willing to sell out the American people for corporate interests.
“While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released,” write Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy in a NY Times op-ed.
“This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports,” they add.
In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes, “A big-business-dominated group of more than 600 official US trade ‘advisors’ enjoy privileged access to TPP texts and negotiators.
Congressman declares TPP as “assault on democratic government”
After years of attempts by members of Congress to even see the TPP, finally one congressman was able to review only a few select sections of the agreement. That congressman’s name is Alan Grayson.
He immediately characterized it as an “assault on democratic government.” Watch his video here.
The Obama administration threatened Grayson if he tried to release any of the information he saw by calling the TPP “classified” information. (Yeah, national security and all that.) This is, of course, a runaway abuse of power by the federal government as well as yet another use of the police state secrecy tactics that have already made our government utterly unaccountable to the People. When the government doesn’t want the public to see something it’s doing, it simply slaps the “classified” label on the project and proceeds to engage in wild, runaway criminality with absolutely no repercussions.
“What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it,” Grayson said. “It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.”
“Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty,” Grayson told HuffPost. “And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”
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A brief history of Zionist Israel and the House of Rothschild or the Synagogue of Satan
No history of Zionist Israel would be complete without a complete history of the Rothschild Dynasty and how it was the Power and the Financial Power behind The Zionist Israeli Extremist from its very inception
Part 1
The History of the House of Rothschild or the Synagogue of Satan
Rev.13 [16] And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: [17] And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [18] Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. = 666 = Rothschild
The Rothschild's have been in control of the world for a very long time, their tentacles reaching into many aspects of our daily lives, as is documented in the following timeline. However, before you jump to the timeline, please read this invaluable introduction which will tell you who the Rothschild's are as oppose to who they claim to be.
The Rothschild's claim that they are Jewish, when in fact they are Khazars. They are from a country called Khazaria, which occupied the land locked between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which is now predominantly occupied by Georgia. The reason the Rothschild's claim to be Jewish is that the Khazars under the instruction of the King, converted to the Jewish faith in 740 A.D., but of course that did not include converting their Asiatic Mongolian genes to the genes of the Jewish people.
You will find that approximately 90% of people in the world today who call themselves Jews are actually Khazars, or as they like to be known, Ashkenazi Jews. These people knowingly lie to the world with their claims that the land of Israel is theirs by birthright, when in actual fact their real homeland is over 800 miles away in Georgia.
So, next time you hear an Israeli Prime Minister bleating about the so-called persecution of the Jews, consider this, every Prime Minister of Israel has been an Ashkenazi Jew. Therefore when all these Prime Ministers have curried favour with the West for their re-establishment of a Jewish homeland, they have knowingly and deliberately lied to you, as they were never from that region, and they well know it, because it is they who call themselves Ashkenazi Jews.
The Book of Revelation, Chapter 2, Verse 9, states the following which would appear to be about these Ashkenazi Jews:
"I know thy works, and tribulation and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."
The most wealthy bloodline in the world bar none and the leader of the Ashkenazi Jews in the world today is the Rothschild family. As you will see in the timeline, the Rothschild's have obtained this position through lies, manipulation and murder. Their bloodline also extends into the Royal Families of Europe, and the following family names: Astor; Bundy; Collins; duPont; Freeman; Kennedy; Morgan; Oppenheimer; Rockefeller; Sassoon; Schiff; Taft; and Van Duyn.
However, these are not the only bloodlines to worry about. You are probably aware of the centuries old pratice undertaken by many Ashkenazi Jews whereby they would change their name, in order for them to appear part of the dominant race of the country in which they lived, so as they could obtain influential positions in that country, which they would then exploit to serve their real masters elsewhere. There is plenty of evidence to prove the Rothschild's continue that deceptive tradition.
Furthermore the Rothschild's are known to sire many children secretly that they can put into positions of power when required. This started with the very first man who took the name Rothschild, who had a secret sixth son. Finally, remember the world is a diverse place, I could if I wanted change my name to Rothschild, or any of the names listed above, and that would not make me part of this family anymore than converting to Judaism in 740 A.D. will make these Ashkenazi Jewish.
Please, therefore, do not automatically assume someone you see with the name Rothschild or any of the names listed above are part of the Rothschild criminal network. Furthermore and most importantly, the majority of Ashkenazi Jews are innocent and not part of this network. Check the facts out for yourself first, this article is designed to inform people who the enemy is, not single out people of a particular race or people with a particular surname, who may have nothing to do with this Rothschild criminal network.
1743: Mayer Amschel Bauer, an Ashkenazi Jew, is born in Frankfurt, Germany, the son of Moses Amschel Bauer, a money lender and the proprietor of a counting house.
Moses Amschel Bauer places a red sign above the entrance door to his counting house. This sign is a red hexagram (which geometrically and numerically translates into the number 666) which under Rothschild instruction will end up on the Israeli flag some two centuries later... cont.
Download Full Synagogue of Satan The Rothschild History text file here: SYNAGOGUE of SATAN
Bible REV.20.4 Guillotine for Beheading in End Time
Coffin sites Like this one are all around US
These Coffins were first discovered about 2002 The Guillotine Answer what there for
George Bush Authorizing NOAHIDE LAW
George W. Bush Re – Authorizing NOAHIDE LAW
The NOAHIDE LAWS
Here the TRUTH about NOAHIDE LAWS
Now do you Understand The DHS Buying Billions of Bullets , the FEMA Camps, The Guillotines and The Million of Coffins, So now You know Who there For and Who there From
ZIONIST+NOAHIDE = TALMUD = RACISM+HATE
NOAHIDE LAW Its DEADHEAD Serious
IHS Isis Horus Seth IHS The Luciferian Vatican
The Angel of Light Vatican Luciferian Sun Worship
THRONE OF SATAN-LUCIFER
IUSTUM, NECAR, REGES, IMPIOUS. The meaning of which is: It is just to exterminate or annihilate impious or heretical Kings, Governments, or Rulers.
BEWARE OF
STEREO EUVI – Ahead and Behind Beacon Images, along with an SDO/AIA Image In Between – NASA – Solar Terrestrial
By Michael Snyder, on June 23rd, 2013 
TRUTHTALK13NEWS 