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
Friday, August 8, 2014, 8:28 PM – A man from Brampton, Ontario is being treated for Ebola-like symptoms after travelling to West Africa but doctors are warning the public not to jump to conclusions, as the presence of Ebola has not been confirmed.
Public health officials said the man was admitted to the Brampton Civic hospital Friday, where he is being kept in isolation. The patient frequently travels to Nigeria, one of the areas hardest hit by the outbreak.
Dr. Eileen de Villa, a medical officer with the Region of Peel, stressed the patient has not officially be diagnosed with Ebola and the measures being taken are strictly precautionary, adding that the patient’s symptoms could be the result of several diseases.
The news comes hours after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola epidemic to be a global health emergency.
The infection has killed nearly 1,000 people in West Africa so far. Part of the problem is Ebola’s long incubation period, which can last between 2 and 21 days.
"A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola," WHO said in a Friday statement following an emergency committee meeting.
"The outbreak is moving faster than we can control it," Margaret Chan, director-general at WHO, told reporters via telephone.
"The declaration … will galvanize the attention of leaders of all countries at the top level. It cannot be done by the ministries of health alone."
Nigeria has declared a state of emergency in light of the WHO declaration.
CAN EBOLA BE STOPPED?
Health officials are confident they can put an end to the outbreak.
A patient with symptoms resembling Ebola has been placed in an isolation unit in a hospital near Toronto, health officials said. The patient returned to Canada after visiting Nigeria.
The male was hospitalized at William Osler Health System’s Brampton Civic Hospital, located in Toronto’s suburbs, on Friday.
“As a precautionary measure, Osler put in heightened infection control measures in the emergency department including isolating the patient,” the hospital said in a statement.
Doctors are “working closely” with public health officials “to confirm a diagnosis.”
“To date, there are no confirmed cases of Ebola in Ontario and the risk to Ontarians remains very low,” AFP quoted Ontario’s Interim Chief Medical Officer of Health, Graham Pollett, as saying.
Reuters / Tommy Trenchard
Pollet assured that the province’s healthcare system “is prepared to respond should an individual arrive with symptoms that could suggest a disease, such as Ebola.”
He reminded that Ebola symptoms are similar to other common illnesses and added that doctors have been “advised to be on heightened alert for Ebola cases.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that a preventative vaccine against the Ebola virus has been developed by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, and could be available by 2015.
“We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that’s where we have the cases,” AFP quoted WHO’s head of vaccines and immunization, Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, as saying on French radio.
“And since this is an emergency, we can put emergency procedures in place…so that we can have a vaccine available by 2015,” he added.
At this point, there are several vaccines being tested. There is also a treatment called Zmapp, developed by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical, which produced positive results on monkeys and may have helped two Americans recently infected in Africa.
The current Ebola outbreak, which began in Guinea in March, is considered to be the world’s largest ever, with 961 deaths and nearly 1,800 people infected so far.
Some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion is revealed in this undated handout colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) obtained by Reuters August 1, 2014 (Reuters / Frederick Murphy)
The worst hit countries so far include Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Nigeria also reported nine confirmed cases of Ebola.
On Friday, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declared a national emergency, following in the footsteps of Liberia’s president, who declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization said on Friday that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is an “extraordinary event” which poses a public health risk to other states. The health body described the consequences of a further international spread of the virus as “particularly serious” due to its virulence.
“A coordinated international response is deemed essential to stop and reverse the international spread of Ebola,” the WHO said in a statement after a two-day meeting of its emergency committee.
***************************************
What You Need to Do to Survive Ebola BEFORE the
Panic Starts
The Ebola virus is spreading and no one in any position of authority is releasing information to the public about how serious of a contagion this is
The Ebola virus is spreading and no one in any position of authority is releasing information to the public about how serious of a contagion this is.
It was just a few weeks ago that the CDC and mainstream media claimed it wouldn’t make it to U.S. shores, but as of this morning, reports are flowing in from all over the country from hospitals that have admitted patients who recently traveled to Africa and are showing possible symptoms of the deadly virus.
In Nigeria, where there have only been a couple of deaths reported officially, the medical community has formally requested help in the form of experimental serums from the United States, suggesting things are much worse there than are being reported.
An analysis of confirmed cases from Joshua Krause at The Daily Sheeple suggests that, while the virus almost died out back in April, it is now back with a vengeance and growing at a seemingly exponential rate.
What’s most bizarre and frustrating about all of this is that neither the U.S. government or the Centers for Disease Control have provided any actionable information or advice to the American public. They maintain that they have the facilities to stop any such outbreak and continue to tout the narrative that there is nothing to fear, because they have it all under control.
Should even one single case pop up in a random U.S. city, that narrative will fall apart instantly. If someone in Georgia, Ohio, New York or any other state checked themselves into a hospital and are found to be infected with Ebola it will prove without a shadow of a doubt that all CDC containment efforts have failed.
In such an instance where Ebola is found to be in the “wild” anywhere in the continental United States you can be certain that panic will follow.
Take a look at the following photo. It was taken last week in Toledo about an hour after the city announced that their water supply had been contaminated with toxins:
Notice how every drop of pure H2O has been removed from the shelves.
Imagine for a moment what grocery store shelves, pharmacies and hardware supply stores are going to look like within 12 hours of an Ebola infection or outbreak being announced on U.S. soil.
Things will happen fast.
Now, for all we know the CDC’s containment efforts are successful, and perhaps Ebola will be stopped in its tracks. But being naturally skeptical of our government’s abilities to mitigate such a virus, especially given the lack of any actual information from the CDC or government, we must assume that Ebola will eventually start popping up in the United States.
When it does, the CDC and Homeland Security will likely announce a number of precautions that we need to take. Those precautions are going to include supply lists and strategies.
Guess what 300 million Americans are going to do all at once when those supply lists and recommendation are announced? ( Look no further than the DHS Fukushima radiation announcement and how it affected the supply and price of potassium iodide)
Here’s the bottom line: If you don’t have your supplies before emergency announcements hit the airwaves, then plan on going without.
If you want to take action ahead of millions of panicked Americans, then we urge you to follow the recommendations below. They come from informed sources and will be very similar to what the government will recommend in the event of an Ebola outbreak or pandemic emergency.
Understanding that our lives will change drastically if the population is faced with a pandemic and being prepared for this can help you make better choices toward the well being of your family. Some changes could be:
-Challenges or shut downs of business commerce
-Breakdown of our basic infrastructure: communications, mass transportation, supply chains
-Payroll service interruptions
-Staffing shortages in hospitals and medical clinics
-Interruptions in public facilities – Schools, workplaces may close, and public gatherings such as sporting events or worship services may close temporarily.
-Government mandated voluntary or involuntary home quarantine.
Essentially, once this happens the whole system could potentially go into lock-down.
I know this sounds harsh, but there are to be no exceptions. If you make exceptions, you might as well go wrestle with runny-nosed strangers at the local Wal-Mart and then come home and hug your children, because it’s the same thing.
Once you have gone into lockdown mode, that means that the supplies you have on hand are the supplies you have to see you through. You can’t run out to the store and get something you’ve forgotten.
That means if a family member shows up, they have to go into quarantine for at least 4 weeks, during which time they are not allowed access to the home or family, nor are they allowed to go out in public. Set up an area on your property that is far from your home for them to hang out for their month of quarantine. If at the end of the month they are presenting no symptoms, then they can come in.
It sadly means that you may be forced to turn someone away if they are ill, because to help them means to risk your family.
Now is the time to plan with your preparedness group how you intend to handle the situation. Will you shelter together, in the same location, and reserve a secondary location to retreat to if the situation worsens further or if someone becomes ill? Will you shelter separately because of the nature of the emergency? Decide together on what event and proximity will trigger you to go into lockdown mode. Make your plan and stick to it, regardless of pressure from those who think you are over-reacting, the school that your children have stopped attending, and any other external influences. If you’ve decided that there is a great enough risk that you need to go into lockdown, you must adhere to your plan.
Those items should help with prevention, especially if you take the advice of locking down and staying home.
However, we must assume that some of us, for whatever reason, will still have to make our way out into public. And with that assumption, we must also expect the absolute worst case scenario – an infection or suspected infection within in our own ranks.
If you must venture outside then take a look at what medical personnel are sporting in highly contagious environments:
If you’re forced to exit your home, you’re going to want to be fully protected, and that includes covering your hands, eyes, nose, and mouth.
In addition to the N-95 respirator masks mentioned above, you may also consider upgrading to the more expensive N-100 respirators recommended by the World Health Organization.
Or, go with a full facemask. Insofar as your preparedness efforts are concerned, you may also be able to kill two birds with one stone here and go with a full face mask that includes NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) protection like the US-made NATO SGE 400/3 Military Gas Mask. If going with such a mask, be sure to include some NBC filters.
For protection inside of your home, Tess Pennington of Ready Nutrition recommends building a sick room that can be used to isolate suspected infections or even to be used as a quarantine/observation area for friends and family who may be coming to your home as part of your group lockdown plan.
Building a sick room may include supplies like:
Heavy Duty Plastic Sheeting to go over doors, windows or other potential airborne entry points (4 millimeter home coverall)
The takeaway here is this: You cannot depend on the government to give you accurate information until it is too late. Moreover, emergency services personnel will be overwhelmed and you will have only yourself and those in your lockdown group to depend on.
Plan on no outside help.
That means you need to have food, water, and other supplies on hand. Additionally, if we have a widespread emergency that brings down the commerce system you may need to head out to barter and trade with others for necessary supplies that may have been overlooked. In such an instance you may also want to have some precious metals on hand for trade. The Silver.com price for silver today is about $20. It may be a good time to stock up on some emergency ‘cash’ like silver eagles or pre-1965 US quarters and half-dollars which contain 90% silver. These trade instruments are recognizable and may come in handy.
Prepare now, because as we have seen with disasters past, waiting to do so until after the announcements are made will be too late.
ALERT: From Pigs to Monkeys, Ebola Goes Airborne. Nigerian doctor who treated Ebola patient infected with virus. 8 in Quarantine, 70 Under Surveillance
August 4th, 2014
CNN Gupta says this EBOLA is Different and this will go GLOBAL – Video
From Pigs to Monkeys, Ebola Goes Airborne | HealthMap
When news broke that the Ebola virus had resurfaced in Uganda, investigators in Canada were making headlines of their own with research indicating the deadly virus may spread between species, through the air.
The team, comprised of researchers from the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease, the University of Manitoba, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, observed transmission of Ebola from pigs to monkeys. They first inoculated a number of piglets with the Zaire strain of the Ebola virus. Ebola-Zaire is the deadliest strain, with mortality rates up to 90 percent. The piglets were then placed in a room with four cynomolgus macaques, a species of monkey commonly used in laboratories. The animals were separated by wire cages to prevent direct contact between the species.
In this broadcast Evangelist Anita asks the question: “Is Ebola a Planned, Engineered, Pandemic? This broadcast also includes: – Obama signed Amendment to Executive Order on Biological Attack back in 2009 – Postal Service part of Ebola Outbreak – you will be surprised to learn in what way – Why Ebola is no joke – Quarantine Stations across America just for Ebola, staffed and functional – Will psychological warfare ensue Americans before the actual plague? and much, much, more… Executive Order 13527 — Medical Countermeasures Following a Biological Attackhttp://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-o… Executive Order 13295: Revised List Of Quarantinable Communicable Diseases http://www.cdc.gov/sars/quarantine/ex…
According to the Nigerian Minister, 70 people are now placed under surveillance while eight people would be quarantined on Monday for developing symptoms of the disease. Apart from taking those steps, the government has also set up a treatment research group, that will carry out treatment research, receive and verify treatment claims as well as advise government on issues relating to Ebola virus in Nigeria. Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical workers on Monday to Sierra Leone’s far east, where the density of cases is highest. Military spokesman Colonel Michael Samoura said the operation, code named Octopus, involved around 750 military personnel. Troops will gather in the southeastern town of Bo before travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added. Healthcare workers will be allowed to come and go freely, and the communities will be kept supplied with food. In neighbouring Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and ministers held a crisis meeting on Sunday on putting in place a series of anti-Ebola measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county. Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key entrance and exit points to those infected communities and every resident would be stopped. Nobody would be allowed to exit quarantined communities. Troops were fanning out across Liberia to help to deal with the emergency. “The situation will probably get worse before it gets better,” Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters. “We are over-stretched. We need support; we need resources; we need workers.”
A potentially deadly from the Middle East virus made his way to Europe, highlighting the increased potential pandemics facing us. The virus, respiratory syndrome coronavirus in the Middle East (MERS-CoV), formerly known as the new coronavirus was confirmed in 44 people worldwide since its initial detection. The majority of cases came from the Middle East. Scientists are puzzled as to how the virus could reach into humans, and where it has spread. The strain of the larger family of coronaviruses, which covers many illnesses from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which does not help to identify the origin of the virus.
There is still a lot that scientists do not know about MERS-CoV. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, gave a speech at the 66th World Health Assembly in Geneva on May 27, the deadly new strain of coronavirus. She said, "We will understand only too little about this virus when compared to the magnitude of the potential threat. Any new disease that is growing faster than our understanding is never under control. "
When a high-ranking member of one of the most prestigious health organizations in the world bluntly states that experts do not yet understand this deadly virus, people have to sit and listen.
Chan’s speech was full of warnings. She described the virus as "a threat to the entire world." Keep in mind that this statement was made by someone who deals with health issues around the world on a daily basis. She sees this new strain as a major cause for concern, even more than the recent outbreak of H7N9 influenza in Asia.
His warning comes at a time when the MERS-CoV has traveled the Middle East to Europe. A man traveled from Saudi Arabia to France while carrying the virus without knowing it. When he fell ill and was taken to hospital, he then infected at least one other person before succumbing to the disease. The second infected man left the hospital before doctors realize what had happened. The incubation period of the virus is more than 12 days, which makes it difficult to detect. The man was then taken back to the hospital in critical condition.
Of the 44 cases reported worldwide, 23 people died, fixing the mortality rate at about 50 percent. With so many outstanding questions about the disease, Chan said: "We need more information, and we need it quickly, urgently."
But what kind of information do they need? Science can come up with something to try and eliminate this new disease, but how many deaths will it take to get there? There are several strains of influenza and other emerging diseases, but there is rarely another virus similar to penicillin from laboratories. As mentioned above, the H7N9 is resistant to drugs that have been used in the past.
The information that humanity needs is why these plagues fall on us in the first place. While the pharmaceutical industry has been effective in the fight against many diseases, new diseases continue to grow.
As we explained in our article titled, "The coming pandemic diseases," the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are biblical figures that many can identify, but few can really understand the meaning. One of those riders, the pale horse, means the spread of disease and pestilence in this period of the End Times. MERS-CoV may not be the beginning of a major pandemic, but it is connected to the most tragic time that have yet to befall mankind.
Do you understand the weather where you live? Are you ready for unprecedented devastation by diseases such as the world has ever known? For those who faithfully obey God, He promises;
"You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at your right, you will not be achieved. "(Psalm 91: 5-7)
This is a great hope that we can have, knowing the difficult times ahead.
"And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and it will seem terrible things and great signs from heaven. "(Luke 21: 11)
Happy 1st birthday Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV)
A coronavirus schematic. The spiky bits give the virus its name(corona=crown) and represent the receptor binding, antigenic Spike protein.
…I can remember when you were just a novel little thing. How you have grown young prince and how clever of you to emerge in a Kingdom of all places (corona=crown, named for it’s spikey appearance). You’ve certainly garnered attention worthy of a King given the relatively few cases of disease you gave been associated with in the first year we’ve known of you. It was September 20th when Dr Zaki 1st alerted the world to the death of a Saudi man due to what looked to be a new coronavirus (CoV). Today we have over 135 cases 58 deaths (43%). I’ve previously covered Zaki’s disocvery and the problems posed for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) by the way in which he announced that discovery, apparently without the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) foreknowledge. The way in which the sample was exported from the KSA without their prior consent was also problematic for them.
Soon after we heard of it, we had virus-detection assays with which we could seek out new cases. Were they used as they might have been in the days of the SARS-CoV? Nope. And there still seems to be only a single laboratory in KSA testing for MERS-CoV (despite reports of 3), with Dr Abdullah Al-Aeeri (a director of hospital infection control) claiming a 72-hour reporting turnaround time. Is there an antibody detection assay that has been validated using a panel of known positive sera? Nope. There are some innovative antibody-detection methods around but why do they only include a single positive control? Is there no collaboration at all? Why is the KSA not leading the charge to develop these diagnostics and to hunt for an animal host? Why wait on advice from external organizations to screen samples?
Why has the necessary testing capacity not been built well before now? Is it to do with that pesky material transfer agreement? I hope not because there is little evidence for that being a real block to anything from a public health standpoint. At least we have some new MERS-CoV sequences to celebrate the birthday with. Although they and the 9 preceding them represent less than half of the relatively small number of cases described to date. Why can’t the typing region sequences be released? That should really be part of the diagnostic process. Okay, those may not inform us about the evolution of key regions of the virus but they do confirm it is the strain we know. Why not focus on full or subgenomic Spike gene sequences? They might be a better sentinel for keeping tabs on MERS-CoV change over time.
Most of the detail about MERS-CoV and cases of MERS has come through the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That is pretty normal for respiratory viruses that are not notifiable. But it’s generally a slow medium. Is MERS infection a notifiable disease? It is in some countries (e.g. the US and New Zealand), but is it at the epicenter of the outbreak, the KSA? I’m not sure. It’s not obviously stated as such anywhere I looked on the KSA MOH website. The World Health Organization politely notes:
WHO encourages all Member States to enhance their surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and to carefully review any unusual patterns of SARI or pneumonia cases. WHO urges Member States to notify or verify to WHO any probable or confirmed case of infection with MERS-CoV.
How’s that been working out? In a nice summary of the lack of communication, Helen Branswell and Declan Butler highlight that, as usual, everyone who was asked agreed that it’s not working out well at all. In fact it’s pretty woeful. And to add to matters, the latest WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) takes the form of a summary of 18 "new" cases; no extra or confirmatory detail to be had from it. SO the KSA MOH is now the source for detail.
If we were talking about wanting more data on the monthly proportion of rhinovirus infections, the KSA would be justified in saying that the world doesn’t need to know (I’d like to but that’s my thing).
If we were talking about influenza, then there are plenty of international public health sites publishing these notifiable data on the internet; here’s Queensland, Australia’s for example.
But we’re talking about an emerging disease which kills half of the people it infects, is caused by a novel virus for which no host is known, which transmits between people in a way we don’t yet understand, which is shed from ill (or well) people for an undefined period of time (if at all), which remains infectious in the environment for who knows how long, which jumps to other countries, which may only cause severe disease in those who are already ill with another disease, which may be endemically spreading within the community as mild or asymptomatic infections, for which there is no vaccine or proven antiviral therapy available..I’d say it’s a no-brainer that at the very least the WHO deserves regular and detailed updates of what’s going on. Reading between the lines, that does not seem to be happening even behind closed doors. The mass gathering of pilgrims known as the Hajj is fast approaching. This may trigger a large increase in MERS cases or, in the worst case, a pandemic. I personally believe it won’t go that far. We shouldn’t forget is the 2nd Hajj for MERS. But perhaps the virus is much more widespread than it was in October 2012. But without testing data, we can only guess. So, it’s your 1st birthday MERS-CoV. But instead of wishing you a happy birthday you opportunistic, spiky little killer, I’m wishing Dr Zaki well and congratulating him on co-parenting the birth of this novel coronavirus. Going by what we’ve seen to date, his actions may have been the only way we would have ever heard of this virus otherwise. And, as noted previously, but not given much air to in the above rant (thanks to @MicorbeLover for straightening me out)…
It’s very sad that there are real people in these numbers who have died from MERS. You may have noticed that I try and stick with the cold number-crunching aspect of these outbreaks. It’s not because I’m a heartless b&^$# but because that is not what this blog is about. That and my editorialisation and expositionary writing consume what little time I have spare. But I don’t feel that I have enough information to make any other comments about these or any other lives lost to infectious disease. I personally feel that any unexpected and acute loss of life (if I had to scale loss of life) is the worst kind of loss; it’s a waste of potential, a source of great sorrow for all involved and it’s something we should all strive to prevent, if we can. I know that’s not much to convey, but it’s all I can offer from my kinda comfy chair in Brisbane.
The Saudi MOH says it better in anyway; May Allah have mercy upon the deceased.
Despite the fact that doctors in Africa cannot keep Ebola from spreading, United States officials brought an affected patient into the country only days after President Obama signed an executive order mandating the detention of Americans who show signs of “respiratory illness.”
The first known Ebola patient on U.S. soil, Dr. Kent Brantly, was flown into Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, today after contracting the disease in Liberia during the latest outbreak in West Africa which has claimed the lives of over 700.
“Video from Emory showed someone wearing a white, full-body protective suit helping a similarly clad person emerge from the ambulance and walk into the hospital early Saturday afternoon,” CNN reported.
This has stoked concerns among the American public that Ebola could now spread inside the U.S., especially since the virus has been difficult to contain in Africa.
“It sounds like the perfect script for a horror movie: A virus with no vaccine and no cure kills hundreds of people; despite containment efforts, it keeps spreading, but it’s actually all too real in West Africa, where doctors have said Ebola is now ‘out of control,’” wrote Sheila M. Eldred for Discovery News.
“Allegedly the Ebola carriers will be quarantined in special rooms, but we already know that American hospitals cannot even contain staph infections,” columnist Paul Craig Roberts wrote. “What happens to the utensils, plates, cups, and glasses with which the ebola infected persons eat and drink and who gets to clean the bed pans?”
“One slip-up by one person, one tear in a rubber glove, and the virus is loose.”
This really highlights the reckless nature of the global elite and government officials for importing a virus into the country which has no specific treatment and a mortality rate of up to 90%.
Similarly, state-funded universities and other facilities across the U.S. are maintaining weaponized viruses for so-called “bio-defense” under the Project Bioshield Act passed by Congress in 2004, but because these facilities are only moderately secure for the most part, there is a real risk that a deadly virus could escape into the public and affect millions of Americans in an outbreak on the same level as the pandemics which killed 80% of Native American populations by the 19th century.
The National Research Council found that one of these laboratories in Kansas, for example, has a 70% chance that a virus will spread from its lab in the next 50 years, even though the facility is designated as “maximum security.”
And it should also be pointed out that this is just one lab out of many in the nation, a good percentage of which have even less security.
Simply put, instead of preventing Ebola and other viruses from spreading within the U.S., Obama is readying his administration for a power grab if a major pandemic breaks out throughout the country.
1976 photograph of two nurses standing in front of Mayinga N., a person with Ebola virus disease; she died only a few days later due to severe internal hemorrhaging.
Ebola virus disease (EVD) or Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) is the human disease caused by the Ebola virus. Symptoms typically start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever, sore throat, muscle pains, and headaches. Typically nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys. At this point, some people begin to have problems with bleeding.[1]
The disease may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal (commonly monkeys or fruit bats).[1] It is not naturally transmitted through the air.[2] Fruit bats are believed to carry and spread the virus without being affected. Once human infection occurs, the disease may spread between people as well. Male survivors may be able to transmit the disease via semen for nearly two months. In order to make the diagnoses, typically other diseases with similar symptoms such as malaria, cholera and other viral hemorrhagic fevers are first excluded. Blood samples may then be tested for viral antibodies, viral RNA, or the virus itself to confirm the diagnosis.[1]
Prevention includes decreasing the spread of disease from infected monkeys and pigs to humans. This may be done by checking such animals for infection and killing and properly disposing of the bodies if the disease is discovered. Properly cooking meat and wearing protective clothing when handling meat may also be helpful, as is wearing protective clothing and washing hands when around a person with the disease. Samples of bodily fluids and tissues from people with the disease should be handled with special caution.[1]
There is no specific treatment for the disease; efforts to help persons who are infected include giving either oral rehydration therapy or intravenous fluids.[1] The disease has high mortality rate: often killing between 50% and 90% of those infected with the virus.[1][3] EVD was first identified in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The disease typically occurs in outbreaks in tropical regions of Sub-Saharan Africa.[1] Between 1976, when it was first identified, through 2013, fewer than 1,000 people a year have been infected.[1][4] The largest outbreak to date is the ongoing 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, which is affecting Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.[5] As of July 2014 more than 1320 cases have been identified.[5] Efforts are ongoing to develop a vaccine; however, none yet exists.[1]
Signs and symptoms of Ebola usually begin abruptly with an influenza-like stage characterized by feeling tired, fever, headaches, and joint, muscle, and abdominal pain.[7][8] Vomiting, diarrhea and loss of appetite are also common.[8] Less common symptoms include: sore throat, chest pain, hiccups, shortness of breath and trouble swallowing.[8] The average time between contracting the infection and the start of symptoms is 8 to 10 days, but can occur between 2 and 21 days.[8] Skin manifestations may include a maculopapular rash (in about 50% of cases).[9] Early symptoms of EVD may be similar to those of malaria, dengue fever, or other tropical fevers, before the disease progresses to the bleeding phase.[7]
Bleeding
In the bleeding phase internal and subcutaneous bleeding may present itself through reddening of the eyes and bloody vomit.[7] Bleeding into the skin may create petechiae, purpura, ecchymoses, and hematomas (especially around needle injection sites).
EVD is caused by four of five viruses classified in the genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. These four viruses are Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), Ebola virus (EBOV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Taï Forest virus (TAFV). The fifth virus, Reston virus (RESTV), is not thought to be disease-causing in humans. During an outbreak those at highest risk are health care workers and close contacts of those with the infection.[12]
Transmission
It is not entirely clear how Ebola is spread.[13] EVD is believed to occur after an ebola virus is transmitted to an initial human by contact with an infected animal’s bodily fluids. Human-to-human transmission can occur via direct contact with blood or bodily fluids from an infected person (including embalming of an infected dead person) or by contact with contaminated medical equipment, particularly needles and syringes.[14] Transmission through oral exposure and through conjunctiva exposure is likely[15] and has been confirmed in non-human primates.[16] The potential for widespread EVD infections is considered low as the disease is only spread by direct contact with the secretions from someone who has symptomatic disease.[14] The quick onset of symptoms makes it easier to identify sick individuals and limits a person’s ability to spread the disease by traveling. Because bodies of the deceased are still infectious, some doctors had to take measures to properly dispose of dead bodies in a safe manner despite local traditional burial rituals.[17]
Medical workers who do not wear appropriate protective clothing may also contract the disease.[18] In the past, hospital-acquired transmission has occurred in African hospitals due to the reuse of needles and lack of universal precautions.[19]
EVD is not naturally transmitted through the air.[2] They are, however, infectious as breathable 0.8–1.2 micrometre laboratory generated droplets;[20] because of this potential route of infection, these viruses have been classified as Category A biological weapons.[21] Recently the virus has been shown to travel without contact from pigs to non-human primates.[22]
Bats drop partially eaten fruits and pulp, then land mammals such as gorillas and duikers feed on these fallen fruits. This chain of events forms a possible indirect means of transmission from the natural host to animal populations, which have led to research towards viral shedding in the saliva of bats. Fruit production, animal behavior, and other factors vary at different times and places that may trigger outbreaks among animal populations.[23]
Reservoir
Bushmeat being prepared for cooking in Ghana, 2013. Human consumption of equatorial animals in Africa in the form of bushmeat has been linked to the transmission of diseases to people, including Ebola.[24]
Bats are considered the most likely natural reservoir; plants, arthropods, and birds have also been considered.[25] Bats were known to reside in the cotton factory in which the first cases for the 1976 and 1979 outbreaks were employed, and they have also been implicated in Marburg virus infections in 1975 and 1980.[26] Of 24 plant species and 19 vertebrate species experimentally inoculated with EBOV, only bats became infected.[27] The absence of clinical signs in these bats is characteristic of a reservoir species. In a 2002–2003 survey of 1,030 animals including 679 bats from Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, 13 fruit bats were found to contain EBOV RNA fragments.[28] As of 2005, three types of fruit bats (Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti, and Myonycteris torquata) have been identified as being in contact with EBOV. They are now suspected to represent the EBOV reservoir hosts.[29][30]
Between 1976 and 1998, in 30,000 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods sampled from outbreak regions, no ebolavirus was detected apart from some genetic traces found in six rodents (Mus setulosus and Praomys) and one shrew (Sylvisorex ollula) collected from the Central African Republic.[26][31] Traces of EBOV were detected in the carcasses of gorillas and chimpanzees during outbreaks in 2001 and 2003, which later became the source of human infections. However, the high lethality from infection in these species makes them unlikely as a natural reservoir.[26]
Transmission between natural reservoir and humans is rare, and outbreaks are usually traceable to a single case where an individual has handled the carcass of gorilla, chimpanzee, or duiker.[32] Fruit bats are also eaten by people in parts of West Africa where they are smoked, grilled or made into a spicy soup.[30][33]
Like all mononegaviruses, ebolavirions contain linear nonsegmented, single-strand, non-infectious RNAgenomes of negative polarity that possesses inverse-complementary 3′ and 5′ termini, do not possess a 5′ cap, are not polyadenylated, and are not covalently linked to a protein.[34] Ebolavirus genomes are approximately 19 kilobase pairs long and contain seven genes in the order 3′-UTR–NP–VP35–VP40–GP–VP30–VP24–L–5′-UTR.[35] The genomes of the five different ebolaviruses (BDBV, EBOV, RESTV, SUDV, and TAFV) differ in sequence and the number and location of gene overlaps.
Structure
Like all filoviruses, ebolavirions are filamentous particles that may appear in the shape of a shepherd’s crook or in the shape of a "U" or a "6", and they may be coiled, toroid, or branched.[35] In general, Ebolavirions are 80 nm in width, but vary somewhat in length. In general, the median particle length of ebolaviruses ranges from 974 to 1,086 nm (in contrast to marburgvirions, whose median particle length was measured at 795–828 nm), but particles as long as 14,000 nm have been detected in tissue culture.[36]
Replication
The ebolavirus life cycle begins with virion attachment to specific cell-surface receptors, followed by fusion of the virion envelope with cellular membranes and the concomitant release of the virus nucleocapsid into the cytosol. The viral RNA polymerase, encoded by the L gene, partially uncoats the nucleocapsid and transcribes the genes into positive-strand mRNAs, which are then translated into structural and nonstructural proteins. Ebolavirus RNA polymerase (L) binds to a single promoter located at the 3′ end of the genome. Transcription either terminates after a gene or continues to the next gene downstream. This means that genes close to the 3′ end of the genome are transcribed in the greatest abundance, whereas those toward the 5′ end are least likely to be transcribed. The gene order is, therefore, a simple but effective form of transcriptional regulation. The most abundant protein produced is the nucleoprotein, whose concentration in the cell determines when L switches from gene transcription to genome replication. Replication results in full-length, positive-strand antigenomes that are, in turn, transcribed into negative-strand virus progeny genome copy. Newly synthesized structural proteins and genomes self-assemble and accumulate near the inside of the cell membrane. Virions bud off from the cell, gaining their envelopes from the cellular membrane they bud from. The mature progeny particles then infect other cells to repeat the cycle.[37]
Pathophysiology
Pathogenesis schematic
Endothelial cells, mononuclear phagocytes, and hepatocytes are the main targets of infection. After infection, a secreted glycoprotein (sGP) known as the Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) is synthesized. Ebola replication overwhelms protein synthesis of infected cells and host immune defenses. The GP forms a trimeric complex, which binds the virus to the endothelial cells lining the interior surface of blood vessels. The sGP forms a dimeric protein that interferes with the signaling of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, which allows the virus to evade the immune system by inhibiting early steps of neutrophil activation. These white blood cells also serve as carriers to transport the virus throughout the entire body to places such as the lymph nodes, liver, lungs, and spleen.[38]
The presence of viral particles and cell damage resulting from budding causes the release of cytokines (to be specific, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-8, etc.), which are the signaling molecules for fever and inflammation. The cytopathic effect, from infection in the endothelial cells, results in a loss of vascular integrity. This loss in vascular integrity is furthered with synthesis of GP, which reduces specific integrins responsible for cell adhesion to the inter-cellular structure, and damage to the liver, which leads to coagulopathy.[39]
Diagnosis
The most important method of diagnosis EVD is the medical history, especially travel and occupational history and the person’s exposure to wildlife. EVD can be confirmed by isolating ebolaviruses from or by detection of ebolavirus antigen or genomic or subgenomic RNAs in patient blood or serum samples during the acute phase of EVD. Ebolavirus isolation is usually performed by inoculation of grivet kidney epithelial Vero E6 or MA-104 cell cultures or by inoculation of human adrenal carcinoma SW-13 cells, all of which react to infection with characteristic cytopathic effects.[40][41]
Filovirions can easily be visualized and identified in cell culture by electron microscopy due to their unique filamentous shapes, but electron microscopy cannot differentiate the various filoviruses alone despite some overall length differences.[36]Immunofluorescence assays are used to confirm ebolavirus presence in cell cultures. During an outbreak, virus isolation and electron microscopy are most often not feasible options. The most common diagnostic methods are therefore RT-PCR in conjunction with antigen-capture ELISA, which can be performed in field or mobile hospitals and laboratories.[42]Indirect immunofluorescence assays (IFAs) are not used for diagnosis of EVD in the field anymore.
Classification
Phylogenetic tree comparing the Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus. Numbers indicate percent confidence of branches.
The genera Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus were originally classified as the species of the now-obsolete Filovirus genus. In March 1998, the Vertebrate Virus Subcommittee proposed in the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) to change the Filovirus genus to the Filoviridae family with two specific genera: Ebola-like viruses and Marburg-like viruses. This proposal was implemented in Washington, DC on April 2001 and in Paris on July 2002. In 2000, another proposal was made in Washington, D.C., to change the "-like viruses" to "-virus" resulting in today’s Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus.[43]
Rates of genetic change are 100 times slower than influenza A in humans, but on the same magnitude as those of hepatitis B. Extrapolating backwards using these rates indicates that Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus diverged several thousand years ago.[44] However, paleoviruses (genomic fossils) of filoviruses (Filoviridae) found in mammals indicate that the family itself is at least tens of millions of years old.[45]Fossilized viruses that are closely related to ebolaviruses have been found in the genome of the Chinese hamster.[46]
Ebola viruses are contagious with prevention predominantly involves behavior changes, proper personal protective equipment, and disinfection. Governments and individuals often quarantine the area where the disease is occurring; while the lack of roads and transportation may help.[52]
Techniques to avoid infection involve not contacting infected blood or secretions, including from those who are dead.[13] This involves suspecting and diagnosing the disease early and using standard precautions for all patients in the healthcare setting.[53] Recommended measures when caring for those who are infected include: wearing protective clothing including: masks, gloves, gowns and goggles, equipment sterilization and isolating them.[13]
Due to lack of proper equipment and hygienic practices, large-scale epidemics have occured mostly in poor, isolated areas without modern hospitals or well-educated medical staff. Traditional burial rituals, especially those requiring embalming of bodies, should be discouraged or modified.[53] Airline crews who fly to areas of these areas of the world are taught to identify Ebola and are to isolate anyone who has symptoms.[54]
Vaccines have protected nonhuman primates. Immunization takes six months, which impedes the counter-epidemic use of the vaccines. In 2003, a vaccine using an adenoviral (ADV) vector carrying the Ebola spike protein therefore was tested on crab-eating macaques. The monkeys twenty-eight days later were challenged with the virus and remained resistant.[58] A vaccine based on attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vector carrying either the Ebola glycoprotein or the Marburg glycoprotein in 2005 protected nonhuman primates,[67] opening clinical trials in humans.[63] The study by October completed the first human trial, over three months giving three vaccinations safely inducing an immune response. Individuals for a year were followed, and, in 2006, a study testing a faster-acting, single-shot vaccine began; this new study was completed in 2008.[64] Trying the vaccine on a strain of Ebola that more resembles the one that infects humans is the next step.[citation needed]
On 6 December 2011, the development of a successful vaccine against Ebola for mice was reported. Unlike the predecessors, it can be freeze-dried and thus stored for long periods in wait for an outbreak.[68] An experimental vaccine made by researchers at Canada’s national laboratory in Winnipeg was used in 2009 to pre-emptively treat a German scientist who might have been infected during a lab accident.[69] However, actual EBOV infection could never be demonstrated without a doubt.[70] Experimentally, recombinant vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus (VSIV) expressing the glycoprotein of EBOV or SUDV has been used successfully in nonhuman primate models as post-exposure prophylaxis.[71][72][clarification needed]
CDC worker incinerates medical waste from Ebola patients in Zaire in 1976
While investigating an outbreak of Simian hemorrhagic fever virus (SHFV) in November 1989, an electron microscopist from USAMRIID discovered filoviruses similar in appearance to Ebola in tissue samples taken from crab-eating macaque imported from the Philippines to Hazleton Laboratories Reston, Virginia.[78]
Blood samples were taken from 178 animal handlers during the incident.[79] Of those, six animal handlers eventually seroconverted. When the handlers did not become ill, the CDC concluded that the virus had a very low pathogenicity to humans.[80]
Because of the virus’s high mortality, it is a potential agent for biological warfare.[81]
Given the lethal nature of Ebola, and since no approved vaccine or treatment is available, it is classified as a biosafety level 4 agent, as well as a Category A bioterrorism agent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has the potential to be weaponized for use in biological warfare.[82] The BBC reports in a study that frequent outbreaks of Ebola may have resulted in the deaths of 5,000 gorillas.[83]
2007 to 2011
As of 30 August 2007, 103 people (100 adults and three children) were infected by a suspected hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the village of Kampungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The outbreak started after the funerals of two village chiefs, and 217 people in four villages fell ill. The World Health Organization sent a team to take blood samples for analysis and confirmed that many of the cases were the result of Ebolavirus.[84][85] The Congo’s last major Ebola epidemic killed 245 people in 1995 in Kikwit, about 200 miles (320 km) from the source of the August 2007 outbreak.[86]
On 30 November 2007, the Uganda Ministry of Health confirmed an outbreak of Ebola in the Bundibugyo District. After confirmation of samples tested by the United States National Reference Laboratories and the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization confirmed the presence of a new species of Ebolavirus, which was tentatively named Bundibugyo.[87] The epidemic came to an official end on 20 February 2008. While it lasted, 149 cases of this new strain were reported, and 37 of those led to deaths.
An International Symposium to explore the environment and filovirus, cell system and filovirus interaction, and filovirus treatment and prevention was held at Centre Culturel Français, Libreville, Gabon, during March 2008.[88] The virus appeared in southern Kasai Occidental on 27 November 2008,[89] and blood and stool samples were sent to laboratories in Gabon and South Africa for identification.
On 25 December 2008, it was reported that the Ebola virus had killed 9 and infected 21 people in the Western Kasai province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.[90] On 29 December, Doctors Without Borders reported 11 deaths in the same area, stating that a further 24 cases were being treated. In January 2009, Angola closed down part of its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent the spread of the outbreak.[91]
On 12 March 2009, an unidentified 45-year-old scientist from Germany accidentally pricked her finger with a needle used to inject Ebola into lab mice. She was given an experimental vaccine never before used on humans. Since the peak period for an outbreak during the 21-day Ebola incubation period had passed as of 2 April 2009, she had been declared healthy and safe. It remains unclear whether or not she was ever actually infected with the virus.[92]
In May 2011, a 12-year-old girl in Uganda died from Ebola (Sudan subspecies). No further cases were recorded.[93]
2012 outbreaks
In July 2012, the Ugandan Health Ministry confirmed 13 deaths due to an outbreak of the Ebola-Sudan variant[94] in the Kibaale District.[95] On 28 July, it was reported that 14 out of 20 (70% mortality rate) had died in Kibaale.[96] On 30 July, Stephen Byaruhanga, a health official in Kibaale District, said the Ebola outbreak had spread from one remote village to several villages.[97]
The World Health Organization‘s (WHO) global and alert response network reported on August 3 that the suspected case count had risen to 53, including 16 deaths. Of these cases, five were confirmed by UVRI as Ebola cases. There were no confirmed cases outside of Kibaale District except for a patient who was medically evacuated to Kampala District and then died. WHO and CDC support was on the ground in Uganda supporting the government response. There were no confirmed cases outside of Uganda.[98] Included among populations confirmed to be affected were prisoners in Kabbale prison. [99] Dr. Joaquim Saweka, the WHO representative to Uganda, reported that the outbreak was under control and that everyone known to have had contact with a known Ebola patient was in isolation.[100]
On 8 August, the Ugandan Ministry of Health recorded 23 probable and confirmed cases, including 16 deaths. Ten cases were confirmed by the Uganda Virus Research Institute as Ebola. 185 people who came into contact with probable and confirmed Ebola cases were followed during the incubation period of 21 days.[101]
On 17 August, the Ministry of Health of the Democratic Republic of the Congo reported an outbreak of the Ebola-Bundibugyo variant[102] in the eastern region.[103] By 21 August, the WHO reported a total of 15 cases and 10 fatalities.[104] No evidence suggested that this outbreak was connected to the Ugandan outbreak.[105] By 13 September 2012, the WHO revealed that the virus had claimed 32 lives and that the probable cause of the outbreak was tainted bush meat hunted by local villagers around the towns of Isiro and Viadana.[106]
2014 outbreak
Main article: 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreakpIn February 2014, a strain of the Ebola Virus appeared in Guinea. This is the first Ebola virus outbreak registered in the region. As of April 10, 157 suspected and confirmed cases and 101 deaths were reported in Guinea, 22 suspected cases in Liberia including 14 deaths, 8 suspected cases in Sierra Leone including 6 deaths, and 1 suspected case in Mali.[107][108] Investigations on these are under way.[109][110][111]By late June 2014 the death toll had reached 390 with over 600 cases reported.[112] By 23 July 2014, the World Health Organization had reported 1201 confirmed cases including 672 deaths since the epidemic began in March.[113] On July 31 2014, WHO reports the death toll has reached 826 from 1440 cases. [114]
Emory University Hospital was the first US hospital to care for patients exposed to Ebola.[115] Two American medical providers, Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, were exposed while treating infected patients in Liberia. Arrangements were made for them to be transported to Emory via speciality aircraft. Emory Hospital has a specially built isolation unit set up in collaboration with the CDC to treat patients exposed to certain serious infectious diseases.[116][117][118] On 2 August 2014 Brantly was flown in to Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, Georgia, and transferred to Emory Hospital.[119]
History
For more about the outbreak in Virginia, see Reston virus.
Cases of ebola fever in Africa from 1979 to 2008.
Ebola virus first emerged in 1976 in outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Zaire[120] and Sudan.[121] The strain of Ebola that broke out in Zaire has one of the highest case fatality rates of any human virus, roughly 90%.[122]
The name of the disease originates from one of those first recorded outbreaks in 1976 in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire), which lies on the Ebola River.[120]
Shortly afterward, a US Army team headquartered at USAMRIID went into action to euthanize the monkeys which had not yet died, bringing those monkeys and those which had already died of the disease to Ft. Detrick for study by the Army’s veterinary pathologists and virologists, and eventual disposal under safe conditions.
The Philippines and the United States had no previous cases of Ebola infection, and upon further isolation researchers concluded it was another strain of Ebola, or a new filovirus of Asian origin, which they named Reston ebolavirus (REBOV) after the location of the incident.[123]
Some scientists also believe that the Plague of Athens, which wiped out about a third of its inhabitants during the Peloponnesian War, may have been caused by Ebola. However, these studies are conflicting, and point to other possible diseases such as typhoid.[124]
Other animals
In general, outbreaks of EVD among human populations result from handling infected wild animal carcasses. In general, declines in animal populations precede outbreaks among human populations. Since 2003, such declines have been monitored through surveillance of animal populations with the aim of predicting and preventing EVD outbreaks in humans.[125] Recovered carcasses from gorillas contain multiple Ebola virus strains, which suggest multiple introductions of the virus. Bodies decompose quickly and carcasses are not infectious after three to four days. Contact between gorilla groups is rare, suggesting transmission among gorilla groups is unlikely, and that outbreaks result from transmission between viral reservoir and animal populations.[126]
Outbreaks of EVD may have been responsible for an 88% decline in tracking indices of observed chimpanzee populations in 420 square kilometer Lossi Sanctuary between 2002 and 2003.[126] Transmission among chimpanzees through meat consumption constitutes a significant 5.2 (1.3–21.1 with 95% confidence) relative risk factor, while contact between individuals, such as touching dead bodies and grooming, do not.[127]
Domestic animals
Ebola virus can be transmitted to dogs and pigs.[128] While dogs may be asymptomatic, pigs tend to develop symptomatic disease.
Researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases also found that FDA-approved estrogen receptor drugs used to treat infertility and breast cancer (clomiphene and toremifene) inhibit the progress of Ebola virus in infected mice.[132] Ninety percent of the mice treated with clomiphene and fifty percent of those treated with toremifene survived the tests.[132] The authors of the study concluded that given their oral availability and history of human use, these drugs would be excellent candidates for repurposing efforts to treat Ebola virus infection in remote geographical locations, either on their own or together with other antiviral drugs.
During an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1995, seven of eight patients having received blood transfusions from convalescent individuals survived.[133] However, this potential treatment is considered controversial.[134]
A study in 2012 found a plant based treatment, which successfully provided protection in monkeys, administered post exposure.[135]
Antibodies against Ebola Zaire and Reston viruses have been found in fruit bats in Bangladesh, thus identifying potential virus hosts and signs of the filoviruses in Asia.
Why Experts Were Surprised That Ebola-Infected Doctor Could Walk Into a Hospital
The fact that an Ebola-infected American was able to walk into a Georgia hospital today after his return to the United States surprised even medical experts familiar with the ravages of the deadly disease.
Dr. Kent Brantly arrived at Emory University Hospital today after being evacuated from Monrovia, Liberia where he was being treated for Ebola. Although Brantly had shown signs of the disease for the past week, he managed to walk into the hospital with the support of medical personnel.
All three wore protective gear to contain the deadly virus.
Brantly, along with missionary Nancy Writebol, was infected with the disease after working with Ebola-infected patients in Liberia’s capital city. This current Ebola outbreak is the worst on record and has killed more than 700 in three countries in West African and infected more than 1,300.
Before Brantly arrived in Atlanta, not much about his condition had been made public. According to Samaritan’s Purse, the aid organization he was working for, Brantly was in "serious but stable" condition before being flown to the U.S.
When the doctor was able to walk into the hospital, at least two experts said they were surprised but pleased that the doctor seemed to be doing well.
This strain of the Ebola virus has a fatality rate of approximately 60 percent and past outbreaks had fatality rates as high as 90 percent.
Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said he felt "guardedly optimistic," since Ebola usually advances quickly and Brantly had shown signs of the disease for at least a week.
"The first thing we all said ‘Whoa he’s not on a vent,’" Schaffner said of realizing that Brantly did not need a ventilator to help him breathe. "In general [with] Ebola is … you progress on a downhill course. If you’re at this point and you’re holding your own you’re entitled to be optimistic."
Courtesy Samaritans Purse
PHOTO: Dr. Kent Brantly speaks with a worker outside the ELWA Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia
While the incubation period can last from eight to 21 days, once someone develops symptoms they can be sick for a wider range of time. Schaffner explained that when someone shows signs of Ebola they tend to go downhill fairly rapidly and consistently.
Scaffner explained that once a person shows signs of Ebola the symptoms don’t usually disappear until the person overcomes the virus. As a result, they don’t usually have periods where they could appear healthy and relapse.
Schaffner said the fact that Brantly appeared to be well enough to walk, indicates that at least for the moment his heart rate, respiratory rate and other vital signs were not critical.
Dr. Stephen Morse, a professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said although it does not guarantee Brantly will fully recover, the fact that he could walk 10 days after showing Ebola symptoms is a "good sign."
"If you can walk in, that’s a very good sign. I was surprised but pleasantly," Morse said of seeing Brantly walk to the hospital entrance.
Jack Kearse/Emory University
PHOTO: The Ebola-stricken Americans will be treated this isolation rooms and others similar to it.
Morse said that Brantly was obviously not out of the woods and that he would be under constant monitoring to ensure his blood pressure, lung function, kidney function and other vitals remained steady.
"If he really does get better, we want to know his secret," Morse said.
After Brantly’s arrival, his wife Amber Brantly released a statement saying she is relieved her husband has arrived in the U.S.
"It was a relief to welcome Kent home today," Amber Brantly said in a statement. "I spoke with him, and he is glad to be back in the U.S. I am thankful to God for his safe transport and for giving him the strength to walk into the hospital."
2nd American With Ebola Expected to Arrive in U.S. Tuesday
The plane carrying the second American patient who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia will leave the U.S. for the West African country later today and is expected to return Tuesday, a U.S. official told ABC News.
The private air ambulance is scheduled to take off today and arrive in Liberia after one stopover, the official said. The plane will then bring aid worker Nancy Writebol to Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., and is expected to land midday Tuesday.
The same plane brought Dr. Kent Brantly to Georgia on Saturday. He’s undergoing treatment at Emory University Hospital, where Writebol will be treated after she arrives in the U.S.
Ebola outbreak: Western drugs firms have not tried to find vaccine ‘because virus only affects Africans’, says UK’s top public health doctor
Professor John Ashton accuses pharmaceutical industry of ‘moral bankruptcy’
Britain’s leading public health doctor today blames the failure to find a vaccine against the Ebola virus on the "moral bankruptcy" of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in a disease because it has so far only affected people in Africa – despite hundreds of deaths.
Professor John Ashton, the president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, says the West needs to treat the deadly virus as if it were taking hold in the wealthiest parts of London rather than just Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Writing in The Independent on Sunday, Professor Ashton compares the international response to Ebola to that of Aids, which was killing people in Africa for years before treatments were developed once it had spread to the US and UK in the 1980s.
He writes: "In both cases [Aids and Ebola], it seems that the involvement of powerless minority groups has contributed to a tardiness of response and a failure to mobilise an adequately resourced international medical response.
"In the case of Aids, it took years for proper research funding to be put in place and it was only when so-called ‘innocent’ groups were involved (women and children, haemophiliac patients and straight men) that the media, politicians, scientific community and funding bodies stood up and took notice."
The Ebola outbreak has so far claimed the lives of at least 729 people across Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO), although the number is likely to be far higher.
Yesterday, a US relief organisation confirmed that two US aid workers who contracted the disease in Liberia had left the country. Dr Kent Brantly was being treated in a specialised hospital unit in Atlanta, Georgia, after becoming the first person with the disease to arrive on US soil yesterday evening. The second aid worker, Nancy Writebol, was due to land on a separate private flight.
On Friday, the WHO warned that the outbreak in West Africa was "moving faster than our efforts to control it". The organisation’s director general, Dr Margaret Chan, warned that if the situation continued to deteriorate, the consequences would be "catastrophic" to human life. Professor Ashton believes that more money must be funnelled into research for treatment.
"We must respond to this emergency as if it was in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster. We must also tackle the scandal of the unwillingness of the pharmaceutical industry to invest in research [on] treatments and vaccines, something they refuse to do because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don’t justify the investment. This is the moral bankruptcy of capitalism acting in the absence of a moral and social framework."
Western countries are on high alert after Patrick Sawyer, a civil servant for the Liberian government, died last week after arriving at Lagos airport – the first known case in Nigeria. International airline hubs are the focus of attention because of the high volume of passengers flying into and out of West Africa every day. Dubai’s Emirates airline began a ban yesterday on its flights in Guinea over the crisis, with the suspension lasting until further notice.
Professor Ashton welcomed the decision by the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, to convene a meeting of the Government’s crisis committee, Cobra, last week to discuss the UK’s preparedness for cases of Ebola in this country.
Development of a vaccine is in the early stages in the US, but this is on a small scale and there is little hope of one being ready to treat the current outbreak in West Africa. Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has said it has plans possibly to begin testing an experimental Ebola vaccine on people in mid-September, following encouraging results in pre-clinical trials on monkeys. Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration put a hold on a trial upon healthy volunteers by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation to ensure their potential Ebola treatment has no ill-effects, as it sought more information to ensure the safety of volunteers.
Professor Ashton said: "The real spotlight needs to be on the poverty and environmental squalor in which epidemics thrive and the failure of political leadership and public health systems to respond effectively. The international community has to be shamed into real commitment… if the root causes of diseases like Ebola are to be addressed."
Ebola: covert op in a hypnotized world
Image Credits: YouTube
by Jon Rappoport | August 3, 2014
You show people a germ and you tell them what it is and what it does, and people salute. They give in. They believe. They actually know nothing. But they believe.
The massive campaign to make people believe the Ebola virus can attack at any moment, after the slightest contact, is quite a success.
People are falling all over themselves to raise the level of hysteria.
This is what is preventing a hard look at Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Republic Guinea, three African nations where poverty and illness are staples of everyday life for the overwhelming number of people.
The command structure in those areas has a single dictum: don’t solve the human problem.
Don’t clean up the contaminated water supplies, don’t return stolen land to the people so they can grow food and finally achieve nutritional health, don’t solve overcrowding, don’t install basic sanitation, don’t strengthen their immune systems so they can ward off germs, don’t let the people have power—because then they would throw off the local and global corporate juggernauts that are sucking the land of all its resources.
In order not to solve the problems of the people, a cover story is necessary. A cover story that exonerates the power structure.
Forget everything else. The germ is the single enemy.
Forget the fact, for example, that a recent study of 15 pharmacies and 5 hospital drug dispensaries in Sierra Leone discovered the widespread and unconscionable use of beta-lactam antibiotics.
These drugs are highly toxic. One of their effects? Excessive bleeding.
Which just happens to be the scary “Ebola effect” that’s being trumpeted in the world press.
Forget the fact that pesticide companies are notorious for shipping banned toxic pesticidesto Africa. One effect of the chemicals? Bleeding.
Forget that. It’s all about the germ and nothing but the germ.
Forget the fact that, for decades, one of the leading causes of death in the Third World has been uncontrolled diarrhea. Electrolytes are drained from the body, and the adult or the baby dies.
Any sane doctor would make it his first order of business to replace electrolytes with simple supplementation—but no, the standard medical line goes this way:
The diarrhea is caused by germs in the intestinal tract, so we must pile on massive amounts of antibiotics to kill the germs.
The drugs kill off all bacteria in the gut, including the necessary and beneficial ones, and the patient can’t absorb what little food he has access to, and he dies.
Forget the fact that adenovirus vaccines, which have been used in Liberia, Guinea, and Liberia (the epicenter of Ebola), have, according to vaccines.gov, the following adverse effects: blood in the urine or stool, and diarrhea.
No, all the bleeding comes from the Ebola germ. Of course. Don’t think about anything else.
Liberia Coca Cola bottling plant: foul black liquid seeping into the environment—animals dying.
Chronic malnutrition and starvation—conditions that are endemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea—are the number-one cause of T-cells depletion in the world.
T-cells are a vital component of the immune system. When that system is compromised, any germ coming down the pipeline will cause epidemics and death.
Getting the picture?
Blame it all on the germ.
Allow the corporate-government domination to continue.
But … I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.” (Placard first seen in Gaza, 2012.)
The “most moral army in the world” from “the only democracy in the Middle East” has attacked hospitals, a home for the disabled, a geriatric hospice, demolished five mosques, razed entire neighborhoods, erased entire families – the youngest – so far – just three days old if you do not count the unborn, as in the case of twenty nine year old Samar Al Hallaq (1) killed with her two sons, aged four and five, other members of her family and carrying her third child. Her husband was critically injured.
Yet again a war is declared against children and the young. Forty three percent of Gaza’s population is aged 0-14 and just under twenty one percent, 15-24. (Index Mundi, 2013.) Thus sixty four percent, 0-24.
As Israel trades on eternal victim status whilst murdering neighbouring, fellow Semites with seeming legal impunity, stealing land, obliterating homes, nullifying history preceding even the coming of Christ in the land of his birth, the UN bleats weakly, as ever, of “concern” and “regret” some countries have had enough.
Ecuador has recalled their Ambassador from Israel, Chile has suspended their free trade agreement negotiations. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro have called the assault on Gaza genocide and “extermination”, with Maduro demanding that the UN address the: “systematic violation of the Human Rights of the Palestinian population in Gaza by the State of Israel and adopt the necessary measures to halt those violations.” (2.) Venezuela severed all relations with Israel after its last massacre, “Cast Lead” over Christmas and New Year 2008-2009.
As Prime Minister David Cameron calls the onslaught on the 1.7 million people of Gaza in their forty mile long ghetto “not disproportionate”, President Maduro stated: “It is clear you cannot morally compare occupied and massacred Palestine with the occupying state, Israel, which also possesses military superiority and acts on the margins of international law.”
Meanwhile, amid massive protests in South Africa, the African National Congress in Parliament (who suffered their own long years of apartheid) is calling for the Israeli Ambassador to leave with “immediate effect” and for the South African Ambassador to Tel Aviv to be immediately recalled.
The ANC Chief Whip, Steone Sizane, MP., in a blistering address said: “The office of the UN Secretary General issues statements which have no effect. The UN Security Council must stand up and act to support vulnerable Palestinian people at the time when they need their protection.
“The situation involving Palestine and Israel is an undeclared war, in which the aggressor, Israel, has destroyed the Palestinian economy, robbed people of their land, unilaterally changed borders, and unilaterally built a wall of exclusion to keep Palestinians out of their land. When it feels provoked, it unleashes the most sophisticated military hardware on a defenceless people. Palestinians have been reduced to cheap labor for the Israel economy.
“This relentless destruction of the Palestinian territory and its people by Israel must be stopped. The international community needs to act in unison on this matter.”
Mr Sizane’s call is backed by a host of political and civil bodies including faith groups, the Young Communist League, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, seventy two leading South African Jews and many others. (3)
In Europe, the Norwegian government is resisting pressure to expel the Israeli Ambassador from pro-Palestinian and human rights organizations with the leader of the Joint Committee for Palestine (Fellesutvalget for Palestina, FuP), Anna Lund Bjørnsen telling Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK): “Norway can not uncritically maintain close diplomatic relations with a state that does not show respect for human life, international treaties or UN conventions.”
Even the resisting Foreign Minister Børge Brende acknowledges: “the suffering you see in Gaza and the West Bank”, and cites Israel’s particular responsibility in driving the peace process because its illegal settlements were the key to the conflict.
Labor Party MP and Chairwoman of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee in the Norwegian parliament, Anniken Huitfeldt is widely backed by seven left leaning parties in her call for boycotting products manufactured by Israel in the occupied territories “without wasting time.”
Two parties supporting the boycott, the Labor Party and the Center Party, are demanding a review Norway’s policy of selling arms to third-world countries, which resell those arms to Israel.(5)
In neighbouring Sweden calls are mounting by those involved in academic and cultural boycotts for all collaboration between Swedish and Israeli institutions to cease, with abstention: “from participation in EU funded projects in which Israel is involved. A letter was also addressed to the Board of the Royal Institute of Technology, which has a comprehensive cooperation program with the Technion University in Haifa.”(6)
In Ireland, Dublin City Council unanimously called on the Irish government to enforce an arms and trade embargo on Israel (7) and seventeen EU governments have now: “published online guidance warning their citizens and businesses about risks involved in trade and other economic links with illegal Israeli settlements.” The latest twelve to issue warnings did so last week, after the start of the assault on Gaza. They are: Portugal, Austria, Malta, Ireland, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Greece, Slovakia, Belgium and Croatia, “in a move coordinated at EU level.” France, Italy and Spain issued similar guidelines the previous week.(8)
Across the world in the Maldives the government has scrapped three agreements with Israel and discussions are gathering pace to prohibit the import of Israeli goods. The tropical nation of 1,200 islands, at some potential cost to the economy has said they will also reject investors from Israel, noting international condemnation of Israel’s current actions. (9)
On 19th July, the Guardian published a letter signed by six Nobel Laureates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Adolfo Peres Esquivel, Jody Williams, Mairead Maguire, Rigoberta Menchú and Betty Williams and numerous academic, intellectual, artistic and signaturies from many countries, including João Antonio Felicio, the president of the International Trade Union Confederation, and Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions calling for the UN and governments to impose a military embargo on Israel.(10)
The letter underlines starkly the culpability of the international community in Israel’s ongoing genocidal actions: “Over the period 2009-2019, the US is set to provide military aid to Israel worth $30bn, while Israeli annual military exports to the world have reached billions of dollars. In recent years, European countries have exported billions of euros worth of weapons to Israel, and the European Union has furnished Israeli military companies and universities with military-related research grants worth hundreds of millions.”
It concludes: “Governments that express solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, facing the brunt of Israel’s militarism, atrocities and impunity, must start with cutting all military relations with Israel. Palestinians today need effective solidarity, not charity.”
One Nobel Laureate’s signature was not on the letter, President “Change we can believe in” Obama.
As the death toll exceeded five hundred and serious injuries three thousand two hundred Norwegian Dr Mads Gilbert stated on Democracy Now: “This was truly a massacre, and the injuries were just horrible … Children came in without heads and totally dismantled by the shelling of the residential areas.”
On the same day (Monday 21st July) Obama merely said weakly that he had: “serious concerns.” Pathetic.
Israel too now has “serious concerns” of another kind. Hours after US airlines Delta, United and US Airways cancelled all flights to Israel on Tuesday 22nd July, the US Federal Aviation Authority issued an advisory banning all US carriers from flying to Tel Aviv. Air Canada has also cancelled their flights. The European Aviation Safety Agency has followed suit issuing a “strong recommendation” that airlines avoid travel to Israel until further notice. Air France, EasyJet, Germany’s flag carrier Lufthansa, and the Netherland’s KLM were among European airlines that had already cancelled services.
The financial implications for Israel can only be imagined. Having spent two weeks telling the world of the mortal danger the country faced (in spite of crowds of residents picnicking in the open, standing on car roofs to watch the destruction of Gaza) the Transportation Minister and Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that flying to the country is “safe” and that: “There is no reason whatsoever that American companies would stop their flights and hand terror a prize.” Somewhat contradictory all round.
Further, last year 3.5 million tourists visited Israel, boosting the economy by over twelve Billion $s. This year Yahoo Travel cites Leon Avigad, the developer of Browns Hotels, a chain of boutique hotels in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem who says the conflict was already: “devastating us economically … We are losing tons of money by the minute. The entire profit from the summer (to date) is wiped out.” In the south of the country: “Hotels are completely empty … almost everything is closed.”
Surprisingly, even Israel’s loyal friends, the US State Department have been advising against all but most essential travel to Israel since February.
Especially courageous are the stands across the world by Jews themselves. Ten thousand orthodox Jews demonstrated in support of Gaza in New York, and across the world they, with other Jewish denominations have taken a visible and courageous stand.
Jewish Voices for Peace statement by their Rabbinical Council perhaps encapsulates what many believe. Headed “Stop the Bombing. Hold Israel Accountable” it reads in part:
“We are currently amidst ‘the three weeks’ – the annual Jewish period of quasi-mourning that leads to the fast day of Tisha B’Av. This is the season that bids us to look deeply into the soul of our community and examine the ways that our sinat chinam – baseless hatred – has led to our communal downfall.
“Driven by the spirit of this season, we cannot help but speak out in response to the horrific loss of life currently taking place in Gaza, at the hands of the Israeli military. We deplore the Israeli government’s military crackdown in the West Bank that led to its lethal, military onslaught on the people of Gaza. We mourn the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, including children.
“We condemn Hamas’ rockets attacks on Israel and the anxiety, injury and death they have caused. But we cannot view this as a war between two equal sides. Israel has unlimited hi-tech weaponry; it dominates Gazan airspace, its borders, its utilities and economy…
“We can not stand idly by as the Jewish State acts with such wanton disregard, with such sinat chinam, for the humanity of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, children and elders of Gaza.
“As Jews, we abhor the abuse of human rights that are standard practice of our fellow Jews in the Israeli government and Israeli military. This is not the path of justice.” (11)
Also grieving is NATO Member Turkey, declaring three days of mourning for Gaza this week.
Yesterday activists from Jewish Voices for Peace were arrested for a peaceful demonstration at the Friends of the Israeli Defence Forces on New York’s Broadway.
In Israel, Peace Now and Hand in Hand participants are being “shouted down or physically attacked” for their principled stance. Last week, in Tel Aviv: “about 250 Jewish protesters were set upon, punched and pushed by a well-organized group of right wingers in an attack that left several people with bruises, black eyes, or other injuries. Another (of) about 1,000 people, was also attacked” with eggs and plastic bottles.(12)
Perhaps it is time for President Obama to earn his Nobel Peace status.
This week Dr Mads Gilbert addressed a passionate appeal to him, writing:
“Mr Obama, do you have a heart? I invite you, spend one night – just one night – with us in Al Shifa’a Hospital. I am convinced, one hundred per cent, it would change history. Nobody with a heart and power could ever walk away from a night in Shifa’a without being determined to end the slaughter of the Palestinian people.” If only.
The last word goes to increasingly intellectually challenged Prime Minister David Cameron, who declared on July 21st: “We can’t stand by when a strong nation bullies a weak one.” Indeed. Sadly, he was talking about Russia, who, for those fully bolted down, seems to have bullied no one.
In the few weeks since the Albuquerque Police Department’s propensity to shoot and kill the public was put in the national spotlight after a homeless man was killed on video, 3 more killings by the APD have taken place and the citizens commandeered a city council meeting, threatening to arrest Sheriff Eden.
Ethical questions have also arisen about the cozy relationship between newly retired Police Chief Schutlz and TASER. Over $2 Million of body cameras have been ordered but none were turned on when a 19 year old girl, Mary Hawkes was killed recently. As the Military Industrial Complex expands its new profit center — the Police State Industrial Complex — we see the same pattern of revolving doors and influence peddling.
Ask anyone still thinking of supporting an attack on Syria to explain why the U.S. started supporting the Syrian opposition years before any uprising had occurred there.
And ask them to explain why 4-Star General Wesley Clark was told – right after 9/11 – that Pentagon officials planned to attack 7 countries in 5 years … including Iraq, Libya and Syria:
I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.
***
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
And ask them why this planning of regime change in Syria and 6 other countries started by 1991 at the latest:
It came back to me … a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz.
***
In 1991, he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.
***
And I said, “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.”
And he said: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
(Skip to 3:07 in the following video)
And ask them why the US and British governments considered using a false flag attack 50 years ago to topple the Syrian regime.
There are many other good questions as well, such as:
– Why attack when the top U.S. military commander says that an attack would be both risky and expensive, and he can’t even say why we’d go to war with Syria?
“The European race’s last three hundred years of evolutionary progress have all come down to nothing but four words: selfishness, slaughter, shamelessness and corruption.” Yan Fu
It only took the rest of the world 300 years to catch on to the evil that masquerades as “western civilization,” or perhaps it only took the rise of new powers with the confidence to state the obvious. Anyone doubtful of America’s responsibility for the evil needs to read The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.
The “New American Century” proclaimed by the neoconservatives came to an abrupt end on September 6 at the G20 meeting in Russia. The leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US government attacks Syria without UN authorization.
Putin told the assembled world leaders that the chemical weapons attack was “a provocation on behalf of the armed insurgents in hope of the help from the outside, from the countries which supported them from day one.” In other words, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Washington–the axis of evil.
China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.”
In other words, if you defy the world, Obama, you are a war criminal.
The entire world is waiting to see if the Israel Lobby can push Obama into the role of war criminal. Many are betting that Israel will prevail over the weak American president, a cipher devoid of all principle. A couple of decades ago before the advent of the American sheeple, one of the last tough Americans, Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared that “no US president can stand up to Israel.” America’s highest ranking military officer could not get an honest investigation of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.
We are yet to see an American president who can stand up to Israel. Or, for that matter, a Congress that can. Or a media.
The Obama regime tried to counter its smashing defeat at the G20 Summit by forcing its puppet states to sign a joint statement condemning Syria. However the puppet states qualified their position by stating that they opposed military action and awaited the UN report.
Most of Obama’s bought-and-paid-for “supporters” are impotent, powerless. For example Obama counts the UK as a supporting country because of the personal support of the discredited UK prime minister, David Cameron, despite the fact that Cameron was repudiated by the British Parliament in a vote that prohibits British participation in another of Washington’s war crimes. So, although Cameron cannot bring the British people and the British government with him, Obama counts the UK as a supporter of Obama’s attack on Syria. Clearly, this is a desperate count of “supporting countries.”
The Turkish puppet government, which has been shooting its peacefully demonstrating citizens down in the streets, with no protest from Obama or the Israel Lobby, supports “holding Syria accountable,” but not itself, of course, or Washington.
The puppet states of Canada and Australia, powerless countries, neither of which carry one ounce of world influence, have lined up to do the bidding of their Washington master. The entire point of having the top government job in Canada and Australia is the payoff from Washington.
The Obama cipher also claims the support of Japan and the Republic of Korea, another two countries devoid of all diplomatic influence and power of any kind. Helpless Japan is on the verge of being destroyed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, for which it has no solution. As the radiation leaks spread into the aquifer upon which Tokyo and surrounding areas rely, Japan is faced with the possibility of having to relocate 40 million people.
Saudi Arabia, implicated in the transfer to al-Nusra rebels of the chemical weapons used in the attack, supports Washington, knowing that otherwise its tyranny is toast. Even the neoconservatives headed by Obama’s shrill National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, want to overthrow the Saudis.
Obama claims also to have support from France and Germany. However both Hollande and Merkel have stated clearly that a diplomatic solution, not war, is their first choice and that the outcome rests on the UN.
As for Italy and Spain’s support, both governments are hoping to be rewarded with the Federal Reserve printing enough dollars to bail out their indebted economies so that both governments are not overthrown in the streets for their acquiescence to the looting of their countries by international banksters. Like so many Western governments, those of Italy and Spain, and, of course, Greece, support the international banksters, not their own citizens.
The president of the European Commission has declared that the European Union, the central overlord over Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, does not support a military solution to the Syrian Crisis. “The European Union is certain that the efforts should be aimed at a political settlement,” Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters at the G20 meeting. The EU has the power to issue arrest warrants for the heads of EU governments that participate in war crimes.
What this reveals is that the support behind the liar Obama is feeble and limited. The ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a cover for self-interest, murder, and genocide.
The West has been destroyed by its own governments, who have told too many self-serving lies, and by its capitalist corporations, who offshored the West’s jobs and technology to China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, depriving the Western governments of a tax base and the support of its citizens.
It is difficult to know whether citizens in the West hate their corrupt governments any less than do Muslims, whose lives and countries have been devastated by Western aggression, or than do citizens of third world countries who have been impoverished by being looted by predatory First World financial organizations.
The idiot Western governments have pissed away their clout. There is no prospect whatsoever of the neoconservative fantasy of US hegemony being exercised over Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South America, Iran. These countries can establish their own system of international payments and finance and leave the dollar standard whenever they wish. One wonders why they wait. The US dollar is being printed in unbelievable quantities and is no longer qualified to be the world reserve currency. The US dollar is on the verge of total worthlessness.
The G20 Summit made it clear that the world is no longer willing to go along with the West’s lies and murderous ways. The world has caught on to the West. Every country now understands that the bailouts offered by the West are merely mechanisms for looting the bailed-out countries and impoverishing the people.
In the 21st century Washington has treated its own citizens the way it treats citizens of third world countries. Untold trillions of dollars have been lavished on a handful of banks, while the banks threw millions of Americans out of their homes and seized any remaining assets of the broken families.
US corporations had their taxes cut to practically nothing, with few paying any taxes at all, while the corporations gave the jobs and careers of millions of Americans to the Chinese and Indians. With those jobs went US GDP, tax base, and economic power, leaving Americans with massive budget deficits, a debased currency, and bankrupt cities, such as Detroit, which once was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
How long before Washington shoots down its own homeless, hungry, and protesting citizens in the streets?
Washington represents Israel and a handful of powerful organized private interests. Washington represents no one else. Washington is a plague upon the American people and a plague upon the world.
The administration’s public case for chemical weapons use by the Syrian government is extremely weak, and former high-level intelligence officers say that publicly-available information proves that the Syrian government likely did not carry out the chemical weapons attacks.
The Obama administration claims that classified intelligence proves that it was the Assad government which carried out the attacks.
But numerous congressional members who have seen the classified intelligence information say that it is no better than the public war brief … and doesn’t prove anything.
I have just attended a classified Congressional briefing on Syria that quite frankly raised more questions than it answered. I found the evidence presented by Administration officials to be circumstantial.
New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, for instance, left Thursday’s classified hearing and said she was opposed to the effort “now so more than ever.”
“I think there’s a long way to go for the president to make the case,” she said after the briefing. “It does seem there is a high degree of concern and leaning no.”
Senator Joe Manchin announced he was voting “no” for a Syria strike right after hearing a classified intelligence brieifng.
Congressman Alan Grayson points out in the New York Times:
The documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion. [I.e. it was no more impressive than the 4-page public version.]
On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”
The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)
***
And yet we members are supposed to accept, without question, that the proponents of a strike on Syria have accurately depicted the underlying evidence, even though the proponents refuse to show any of it to us or to the American public.
In fact, even gaining access to just the classified summary involves a series of unreasonably high hurdles.
We have to descend into the bowels of the Capitol Visitors Center, to a room four levels underground. Per the instructions of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, note-taking is not allowed.
Once we leave, we are not permitted to discuss the classified summary with the public, the media, our constituents or even other members. Nor are we allowed to do anything to verify the validity of the information that has been provided.
And this is just the classified summary. It is my understanding that the House Intelligence Committee made a formal request for the underlying intelligence reports several days ago. I haven’t heard an answer yet. And frankly, I don’t expect one.
***
By refusing to disclose the underlying data even to members of Congress, the administration is making it impossible for anyone to judge, independently, whether that statement is correct.
Pepe Escobar Asia Times Online Yes We Scan. Yes We Drone. And Yes We Bomb. The White House’s propaganda blitzkrieg to sell the Tomahawking of Syria to the US Congress is already reaching pre-bombing maximum spin – gleefully reproduced by US corporate media. And yes, all parallels to Iraq 2.0 duly came to fruition when US Secretary of State John Kerry pontificated that Bashar al-Assad "now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein" as an evil monster. Why is Cambodia’s Pol Pot never mentioned? Oh yes, because the US supported him. Every single tumbleweed in the Nevada desert knows who’s itching for war on Syria; vast sectors of the industrial-military complex; Israel; the House of Saud; the "socialist" Francois Hollande in France, who has wet dreams with Sykes-Picot. Virtually nobody is lobbying Congress NOT to go to war. And all the frantic war lobbying may even be superfluous; Nobel Peace Prize winner and prospective bomber Barack Obama has already implied – via hardcore hedging of the "I have decided that the United States should take military action" kind – that he’s bent on attacking Syria no matter what Congress says. Obama’s self-inflicted "red line" is a mutant virus; from "a shot across the bow" it morphed into a "slap on the wrist" and now seems to be "I’m the Bomb Decider". Speculation about his real motives is idle. His Hail Mary pass of resorting to an extremely unpopular Congress packed with certified morons may be a cry for help (save me from my stupid "red line"); or – considering the humanitarian imperialists of the Susan Rice kind who surround him – he’s hell bent on entering another war for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the House of Saud lobby under the cover of "moral high ground". Part of the spin is that "Israel must be protected". But the fact is Israel is already over-protected by an AIPAC remote-controlled United States Congress. [1] What about the evidence? The former "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" are doing their part, enthusiastically supporting the White House "evidence" with a dodgy report of their own, largely based on YouTube intel. [2] Even Fox News admitted that the US electronic intel essentially came from the 8200 unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) – their version of the NSA. [3] Here, former UK ambassador Craig Murray convincingly debunks the Israeli intercepted intel scam. The most startling counterpunch to the White House spin remains the Mint Press News report by AP correspondent Dale Gavlak on the spot, in Ghouta, Damascus, with anti-Assad residents stressing that "certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack”. I had a jolt when I first read it – as I have been stressing the role of Bandar Bush as the dark arts mastermind behind the new Syria war strategy (See Bandar Bush, ‘liberator’ of Syria, Asia Times Online, August 13, 2013). Then there’s the fact that Syrian Army commandos, on August 24, raiding "rebel" tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar, seized a warehouse crammed with chemicals required for mixing "kitchen sarin". The commando was hit by some form of nerve agent and sent samples for analysis in Russia. This evidence certainly is part of President Vladimir Putin’s assessment of the White House claims as totally unconvincing. On August 27, Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Reuters the attack was "aimed at framing Assad”. And in case the UN inspectors found the "rebels" did it, "everybody would forget it". The clincher; "Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdogan of Turkey?" So, in a nutshell, no matter how it happened, the locals in Ghouta said Jabhat al-Nusra did it; and Syrian Kurds believe this was a false flag to frame Damascus. By now, any decent lawyer would be asking cui bono? What would be Assad’s motive – to cross the "red line" and launch a chemical weapons attack on the day UN inspectors arrive in Damascus, just 15 kilometers away from their hotel? This is the same US government who sold the world the narrative of a bunch of unskilled Arabs armed with box cutters hijacking passenger jets and turning them into missiles smack in the middle of the most protected airspace on the planet, on behalf of an evil transnational organization. So now this same evil organization is incapable of launching a rudimentary chemical weapons attack with DIY rockets – a scenario I first outlined even before Gavlak’s report. [4] Here is a good round-up of the "rebels" dabbling with chemical weapons. Additionally, in late May, Turkish security forces had already found sarin gas held by hardcore Jabhat al-Nusra jihadis. So why not ask Bandar Bush? We need to keep coming back over and over again to that fateful meeting in Moscow barely four weeks ago between Putin and Bandar Bush. [5] Bandar was brazen enough to tell Putin he would "protect" the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He was brazen enough to say he controls all Chechens jihadis from the Caucasus to Syria. All they needed was a Saudi green light to go crazy in Russia’s underbelly. He even telegraphed his next move; "There is no escape from the military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be very difficult in light of this raging situation." That’s a monster understatement – because the Saudis never wanted Geneva II in the first place. Under the House of Saud’s ultra-sectarian agenda of fomenting the Sunni-Shi’ite divide everywhere, the only thing that matters is to break the alliance between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah by all means necessary. The House of Saud’s spin du jour is that the world must "prevent aggression against the Syrian people". But if "the Syrian people" agrees to be bombed by the US, the House of Saud also agrees. [6] Compared to this absurdity, Muqtada al-Sadr’s reaction in Iraq stands as the voice of reason. Muqtada supports the "rebels" in Syria – unlike most Shi’ites in Iraq; in fact he supports the non-armed opposition, stressing the best solution is free and fair elections. He rejects sectarianism – as fomented by the House of Saud. And as he knows what an American military occupation is all about, he also totally rejects any US bombing. The Bandar Bush-AIPAC strategic alliance will take no prisoners to get its war. In Israel, Obama is predictably being scorned for his "betrayal and cowardice" in the face of "evil". The Israeli PR avalanche on congress centers on the threat of a unilateral strike on Iran if the US government does not attack Syria. As a matter of fact congress would gleefully vote for both. Their collective IQ may be sub-moronic, but some may be led to conclude that the only way to "punish" the Assad government is to have the US doing the heavy work as the Air Force for the myriad "rebels" and of course jihadis – in the way the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq and the anti-Gaddafi mercenaries in Libya duly profited. So here, in a nutshell, we have the indispensable nation that drenched North Vietnam with napalm and agent orange, showered Fallujah with white phosphorus and large swathes of Iraq with depleted uranium getting ready to unleash a "limited", "kinetic" whatever against a country that has not attacked it, or any US allies, and everything based on extremely dodgy evidence and taking the "moral high-ground". Anyone who believes the White House spin that this will be just about a few Tomahawks landing on some deserted military barracks should rent a condo in Alice in Wonderland. The draft already circulating in Capitol Hill is positively scary. [7] And even if this turns out to be a "limited", "kinetic" whatever, it will only perpetuate the chaos. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has referred to it as "controlled chaos". Not really; the Empire of Chaos is now totally out of control.
The corporate interests driving the United States, its resources, and policy, have invoked dead children in the latest and grisliest propaganda campaign yet, directed at the American public to build support for an otherwise unjustified and universally unwanted war with Syria.
Image: The Summer of 1939, after staging border incidents to frame Poland for unwarranted aggression, Hitler orders the Nazi invasion of Poland. This would not be the first or last time a Western nation used a manufactured “casus belli” to start a war of aggression, now considered a Nuremberg offense and a crime against world peace.
The headline of CNN’s “First on CNN: Videos show glimpse into evidence for Syria intervention,” suggests that by watching the grotesque videos, some sort of evidence exists to justify an assault on Syria. Instead, the videos only show yet again, the crime, and only the crime – a crime which no one, including the Syrian government, denies occurred. What is missing, as has been the case since the US leveled accusations against the Syrian government on August 21, 2013, is any evidence at all as to who actually committed this crime.
Even upon reading the US’ own assessments of the incident reveal there is no evidence. The best the US can say is [emphasis added]:
The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.
Assessing with “high confidence” is not enough to execute a single criminal within the US justice system, yet somehow is enough to justify a military assault on a sovereign nation on the other side of the planet, whichposes no threat to the United States, and will inevitably lead to the death of Syrian soldiers and civilians, while assisting sectarian extremists, many of whom openly pledge allegiance to Al Qaeda. At face value, the US has no case against Syria, and no credibility after habitually using equally tenuous evidence as justification for military assaults against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond.
That CNN is using dead children as “evidence” indicates that the dubious media outlet is attempting to manipulate the American public on the most visceral emotional level possible to sell a war the corporate interests CNN represents desires.
CNN and other Western outlets, have been caught overtly fabricating stories throughout the subversion of Syria, starting in 2011 when they disingenuously portrayed the flooding of Syria with armed extremists as the “Arab Spring,” up to and including featured interviews with “Syria Danny,” who was later revealed to be staging gun fire in the background of theatrical (and fabricated) casualty reports given to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Exploiting dead children to manipulate the public emotionally enables the US to circumvent not only its absolute lack of evidence, but hopefully the myriad of logical conclusions an otherwise rational, intelligent person might draw.
Regarding US Claims
US Claim #1: The Syrian “Regime” Used Chemical Weapons in a Desperate Bid to Save Damascus.
Reality: The US claims in its assessment that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in a desperate struggle for Damascus:
The Syrian regime has initiated an effort to rid the Damascus suburbs of opposition forces using the area as a base to stage attacks against regime targets in the capital. The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighborhoods of opposition elements, including neighborhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21.
Yet it appears that mostly women and children were the victims of the attack – apparently killed in the middle of the night while they slept.
The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that the Syrian government risked using chemical weapons in Damascus, under the nose of UN inspectors, to clear out stalwart “opposition” fighters, and only managed to mass murder women and children in the process while giving the West a long-desired justification for military intervention. And despite “employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems” and allegedly also sarin nerve gas, the Ghouta area was still under terrorist control after the attack.
It should be noted that Ghouta is on the very edge of Damascus, facing open country that stretches to the Al Qaeda infested Syrian-Iraqi border and the extremist hotbed of Al Anbar province in Iraq – implicating another, and the most likely culprit, Al Qaeda.
US Claim #2: The “Opposition” Lacks the Capabilities to Carry Out Such an Attack.
Reality: The US, in its assessment states:
We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely. The body of information used to make this assessment includes intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition.
The “opposition” in Syria is Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda allegedly carried out the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, destroying three (including Building 7) World Trade Center towers in New York City and striking at the very heart of America’s trillion dollar military might, the Pentagon itself – killing in a single day nearly 3,000 using nothing more than box-cutters, pepper spray, and 4 commandeered aircraft.
The US State Department since the very beginning of the violence has acknowledged that the most prominent fighting group operating inside Syria is Al Qaeda, more specifically, the al Nusra front. The US State Department’s official press statement titled, “Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” states explicitly that:
Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks – ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations – in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.
It is also confirmed that many fighters joining al Nusra come from abroad, including from the recently decimated Libya, where a significant arsenal of chemical weapons have fallen into the hands of a sectarian extremist government which is openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria.
The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that despite Al Qaeda having struck at the very heart of US military might, after circumventing a trillion dollar defense system of unprecedented capabilities, it is now somehow incapable of obtaining and using against civilians, chemical weapons – a scenario the US has warned the world of and in fact, used as justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Either we’ve been lied to about the official explanation regarding 9/11, or we’ve been lied to about the capabilities of Al Qaeda in Syria – or more likely, both.
Conclusion
Clearly, at face value, none of what the US proposes regarding the alleged chemical attacks in Syria is rational. The propaganda rolled out against Syria is poorly retreaded lies from the illegal, abhorrent Iraq invasion and occupation and the more recent NATO atrocities committed against the Libyan people who are still suffering from NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” there.
What does it mean when the combined, multi-trillion dollar defense and intelligence resources of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others are categorically incapable of providing a single shred of credible evidence to make their case? That evidence does not exist? Or that it does, but simply points the finger unfavorably in another direction?
Without actual evidence of who committed the crimes showcased on CNN, the first and most important question that must be answered is “cui bono?” – or – to whose benefit? Clearly, the chemical attacks carried out under the nose of UN inspectors, leaving shocking images of dead women and children used to manipulate the public on an emotional level, benefits the special interests driving US, British, European, and Arab policy. These are the same interests who in 2007 openly conspired to initiate a sectarian bloodbath to drown Lebanon, Syria, and Iran – a documented conspiracy being realized in full, beginning in 2011.
The danger of a Syrian government surviving the insidious machinations of Western special interests and restoring order in a unified Syria is an unacceptable outcome for Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv. The unprecedented impetus behind this unpopular, universally opposed war with Syria reeks of desperation and a corporate-financier axis that has used and abused all of its tricks one too many times.
Whatever the outcome in Syria may be, these corporate-financier interests have exposed themselves and have long-since resigned their legitimacy. All that they do now, they do in the open, against the will of the world, amidst growing dissent, and against the background of a socio-technological paradigm shift undermining their institutions and international rackets permanently. However vigorously these interests appear to be digging their grave, it is still, ultimately a grave.
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No law will stop Obama’s democracy-bombs over Syria
Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Regardless of how Congress votes, Obama is going to attack Syria. The president is doing his best to avoid constructive dialogue when the focus should be international law, not ‘international norms’ as defined by Washington.
As world leaders descend on the Russian city of St. Petersburg to discuss global tax regimes and international trade, this year’s G20 Summit is really a G20+1, with an extra seat allocated for the massive elephant in the room.
Many of the leaders attending have brought along their foreign ministers, as the summit will also informally serve as a global platform to discuss the sorry state of affairs in Syria. One can only speculate as to the substance of any exchanges between President Putin and his American counterpart and forced smiles will be in no short supply.
“He is lying and knows he is lying. It’s sad,” said Putin, of John Kerry’s address to the US Congress. That about sums it up – the lies and deceit of the Obama administration are so breathtaking, so innumerable, and they’re being trumpeted knowingly and shamelessly. Want a taste of highly moral and ethical narrative being championed in favor of “the Syrian people?” Look no further than the New York Times, with its recent headline“Bomb Syria, Even If It Is Illegal,” which argues that Obama and his poodles should “declare that international law has evolved and that they don’t need Security Council approval to intervene in Syria."
The establishment press is calling for blood, and they’re claiming the moral high ground while doing it – slightly pathological? You bet. The insane are really running the asylum on this one.
The Russians have been pushing for Geneva II with focused perseverance, but Barry and his flesh-eating rebels aren’t going to let that happen – not without a substantial sprinkling of Tomahawk cruise missiles over Damascus at the very least. The trigger-happy White House, with the most sophisticated military arsenal in the history of man, has demonstrated that it is unwilling to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts its cooker-cutter narrative – it is not open to reasoned arguments, and so the world yet again faces a dangerous precedent due to US intransigence.
To the surprise of many, the British parliament made clear that it would not drink the Cameron kool-aid, and even Ban Ki-moon chimed in to remind the Commander-in-Chief that the use of force is only legal in self-defense or with Security Council authorization.
Members of CodePink, Tighe Barry (L) and Medea Benjamin (2nd L) protest as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) arrives at a hearing on "Syria: Weighing the Obama Administration’s Response" before the House Foreign Affairs Committee September 4, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP )
Air Force One flies above the law
International law? Pssh! Obama knows his bombs-for-peace program isn’t going to get past Russia and China, and in the absence of a unified coalition of the willing, he’s been forced to seek approval from Congress to maintain the façade of legitimacy.
When reading in-between the lines, it’s clear that the Obama administration will proceed with an attack on Syria whether Congress gives the green light or not – in all likelihood, Congress will vote ‘Yes’. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has broken its silence on Syria, and called for war.
Unfortunately, Congress can be bought and be sure that lobbyist dollars are being dealt out faster than you can say ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’ to seal the vote. “Emperor” Obama insists that he is not required to consult Congress to seek approval for his Syrian adventure, but did so anyway after receiving a letter from more than 160 members of the House of Representatives reminding him that to take the country to war without congressional approval is an impeachable offense, which doesn’t exactly bode well for his credentials as a constitutional lawyer.
And what about the evidence? The US government insists that it has “high confidence” that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, and that the evidence is so compelling that Washington is willing to go to war – before the UN team of chemical weapon experts have yet to make a determination. If you question this narrative, you are a conspiracy theorist. But what about the UN’s commission of inquiry led by Carla Del Ponte that implicated the rebels with using chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal? What about the Russian reports that claim the projectiles were crudely produced and clearly not military grade or consistent with the weapons in Assad’s stockpiles? What about reports that rebel forces were caught with cylinders of sarin nerve gas in southern Turkey near the Syrian border? As far as Obama is concerned, all of that has already been sent down the memory hole. It’s not the media’s job to present this information in a balanced and unbiased way, its only function is to sell war and educate the public about the benefits of twerking, as displayed by Miley Cyrus last week, stealing the headlines on CNN as US warships amassed in the Mediterranean.
A picture downloaded on September 4, 2013 from the US Navy website and taken on September 3, 2013 shows an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Blue Diamonds of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 146 launching off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Red Sea. (AFP Photo)
Nobody believes the “limited strike” assurances
Just as in Iraq, the war on Syria is being sold as “limited strike” designed to hasten the rebel advance, but the original draft resolution for military intervention that Congress is set to vote on suggests otherwise. The wording of the text is so broad that Obama could virtually get away with anything he pleases. For example, the phrase “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” is deliberately vague. The intentional legal ambiguousness of the text raised eyebrows in Congress (clearly the executive branch was trying to pull a fast one) so much so that Kerry was forced to prohibit "boots on the ground," which he argued against on the grounds of Obama having options if Syria "imploded".
If there is a real danger of Syria imploding, which it very well might under a sustained campaign of US aggression, then the limited strike rhetoric should be seen as what is it – empty assurances designed to rubber stamp the war as quickly as possible.
The drive to military intervention in Syria is transparently a move to topple the legal authorities in Damascus. If that happens, it would create a power vacuum that would immediately destabilize the country and pit dozens of warring factions against one another as they vie for power – Syria explodes. Al-Qaeda and other jihadi militias will declare caliphates all over Syria while persecuting Alawite minorities and Assad loyalists. The instability could lead to the fracturing of Syria under ethnic and sectarian lines into several smaller states, and the chaos would swallow the currently war-torn and destabilized Iraq.
The toppling of Assad is a transparent declaration of war against Hezbollah and Iran and could lead to a major regional conflict that would kill large numbers of people. In essence, nothing about this situation indicates that it will be limited. Moreover, the United States has few strategic benefits here, while Saudi Arabia and Israel are dragging Washington by the nose into this conflict. When Kerry recently testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he divulged that the House of Saud and Qatar even offered to bankroll the whole US operation in Syria – tough bargain for cash-strapped Washington hawks to pass up!
A handout image released by the Syrian opposition’s Shaam News Network on July 29, 2013, shows an aerial view of destruction in the al-Khalidiyah neighbourhood of the central Syrian city of Homs. (AFP Photo/Shaam News Network)
Obama wears rainbow suspenders
Few have speculated about the recent “joint” missile launch conducted by the US and Israel, which was first denied, then classified as an atmospheric rocket for scientific research purposes, and finally it was admitted to be a test launch of a military rocket.
Nobody, not even NATO, was informed about it and the sketchy cover story only heightens suspicions. The Pentagon eventually admitted that the launch was carried out with technical support from the US Defense Department. This incident was probably not a legitimate Israeli missile defense system test – a launch during the incredibly tense situation in the region suggests a quality of psychological warfare and panic creation, but ultimately the Americans were measuring the preparedness and response of the Syrians to an unannounced missile launch.
Either way, the move was entirely reckless, but nothing else can be expected from Washington and Tel Aviv. As Putin said, the US is lying and it knows it’s lying. The US has fueled the Syrian conflict from the beginning under the euphemistic guise of “democracy promotion” – first by training and financing anti-Assad activists, and once they built momentum in Syria, arms and foreign fighters began pouring in.
The Syrian conflict could not have reached this point without a steady influx of aid from the US, via its stooges in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. Is it really worth it to pass the point of no return by setting off a powder keg in the region? The human losses thus far could pale in comparison to what would follow in a wider regional war. The further destruction of lives, of culture, and even of the Syrian state as it exists is what will follow.
If Washington was serious about peace, it would have called off the rebels and channeled all of its diplomatic muscle into Geneva II, and it would cooperate with Russia, the other largest stakeholder in this conflict. Obama could have met with Putin during this G20 Summit to bridge the differences and put effort behind a political solution, but no.
Obama will use his trip to Russia to meet with gay activists, a childish gesture that is entirely political – a weak attempt to stick it to Putin for his stance on various issues. Meeting with activists and members of civil society is not wrong in and of itself, but the fact that Obama chose to meet with LBGT activists at a time when his cooperation with Putin is most needed on Syria is a move that speaks volumes. Obama is demonstrably doing everything possible to avoid any attempts to make peace through dialogue.
Senator warns South Carolina is nuclear bomb target following Infowars report on black ops nuke transfer
Alex Jones & Anthony Gucciardi Infowars.com September 5, 2013
Senator Lindsay Graham has warned South Carolinians about the threat of a ‘terrorist nuclear attack’ on the same day that our exclusive high level military intel revealed to us that nuclear warheads were being shipped to South Carolina from a major Texas airforce base under an ‘off the record’ black ops transfer.
Found in the CBS report entitled ‘Graham: Nukes In Hands Of Terrorists Could Result In Bomb Coming To Charleston Harbor’, the report details Graham’s warning that a lack of military action in Syria could result in a nuclear ‘bombing’ in Charleston, South Carolina — the very destination of the black ops nuclear transfer. The CBS report reads:
“He [Graham] says if there is no U.S. response [to Syria], Iran will not believe America’s resolve to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Graham also says those nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists could result in a bomb coming to Charleston Harbor.”
Graham is quite literally saying that if we do not launch a war with Syria, South Carolina may be nuked. And this ultimately reeks of yet another false flag being orchestrated by the United States government in order to send us into war, or at the very least a threat. Except this time, we’re talking about nuclear weapons. Amazingly, we were the first to get intel on this from our credible and extremely high level military source, who told us the following:
“Dyess is beginning to move out nuclear war heads today. I got a tap from DERMO earlier. He said it was the first time they have been even acknowledged since being put there in the 80′s. No signature was required for transfer… There was no directive. He said that Dyess Commander was on site to give authority to release. No one knew where they were going really, but the truck driver said to take them to South Carolina and another pick up will take them from there.”
This was sent to us before the Graham report came out warning about the nuclear attack on South Carolina, and coincides exactly with what Graham is saying. I am deeply concerned by these findings, andask everyone to spread the word on this information immediately. Whether or not Graham is receiving intel from higher ups and believes in a legitimate terror attack on the horizon is unknown, but the reality here is that we have intelligence that has linked the unsigned transfer of nuclear warheads to this exact location.
Here is the video report we did on Tuesday regarding the missing nuclear warheads:
Now, we need answers.
The entire event is eerily similar to the unsigned nuke transfer that is now known as the ’2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident’, in which nuclear warheads went ‘missing’ from Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base back in August of 2007. The Minot event, however, was major national news and was even covered by the mainstream media extensively. Disturbingly, however, numerous individuals from the base began dying like flies and committing suicide after the event — and that’s even when it was in the mainstream.
Hopefully, this entire thing will amount to nothing and pass by without any form of ‘terror’ attack. Hopefully the attendee during the speech who told the US News publication that Graham’s speech was‘absolute fear mongering’ is right. Unfortunately, the military source revealing this information is extremely accurate and is absolutely certain that a black ops nuclear transfer did indeed take place. And what’s more concerning is the fact that we have not heard from the source in quite some time.
We are risking our lives bringing you this report on the high level intel and connecting the dots here to what Lindsay is saying. You won’t hear about this in the mega media unless we force them to cover it, and it’s up to us to get this out there. For the first time, we may be able to utilize this high level intelligence to get answers and stop a potential attack.
Does the American public have the strength of character to face the fact that the US government stands before the entire world revealed as a collection of war criminals who lie every time that they open their mouth? Will Congress and the American public buy the White House lie that they must support war criminals and liars or “America will lose face”?
The Obama regime’s lies are so transparent and blatant that the cautious, diplomatic President Putin of Russia lost his patience and stated the fact that we all already know: John Kerry is a liar. Putin said: “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them [the Americans], and we assume they are decent people, but he [Kerry] is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36117.htm
When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal Bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying. It did not occur to the Secretary of State that the White House would send him to the UN to start a war that killed, maimed, and dispossessed millions of Iraqis on the basis of total lies.
The despicable John Kerry knows that he is lying. Here is the American Secretary of State, and Obama, the puppet president, knowingly lying to the world. There is not a shred of integrity in the US government. No respect for truth, justice, morality or human life. Here are two people so evil that they want to repeat in Syria what the Bush war criminals did in Iraq.
How can the American people and their representatives in Congress tolerate these extraordinary criminals? Why are not Obama and John Kerry impeached? The Obama regime has every quality of Nazi Germany and Stasi Communist Germany, only that the Obama regime is worse. The Obama regime spies on the entire world and lies about it. The Obama regime is fully engaged in killing people in seven countries, a murderous rampage that not even Hitler attempted.
Whether the criminal Obama regime can purchase the collaboration of Congress and the European puppet states in a transparent war crime will soon be decided. The decision will determine the fate of the world.
As for facts, the report released to the UN by the Russian government concludes that the weapons used in chemical attacks in Syria are similar to the weapons in the hands of al-Nusra and are different from the weapons known to be possessed by Syria. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36116.htm
The Obama regime has released no evidence to the UN. This is because the criminal regime has no evidence, only made up fairy tales.
If the Obama regime had any evidence, the evidence would have been released to British Prime Minister David Cameron to enable him to carry the vote of Parliament. In the absence of evidence, Cameron had to admit to Parliament that he had no evidence, only a belief that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. Parliament told Washington’s puppet that the British people were not going to war on the basis of the Prime Minister’s unsubstantiated belief.
Are the American people and the rest of the world just going to stand there, sucking their thumbs, while a new Nazi State rises in Washington?
Congress must vote down the war and make it clear to Obama that if he defies the constitutional power of Congress he will be impeached.
If the US Congress is too corrupt or incompetent to do its duty, the rest of the world must join the UN General Secretary and the President of Russia and declare that unilateral military aggression by the US government is a war crime, and that the war criminal US government will be isolated in the international community. Any of its members caught traveling abroad will be arrested and turned over to the Hague for trial.
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.
Q: You were quoted in the Huffington Post on August 30th as saying that the Youtube videos cited by the American government were not conclusive, as you couldn’t tell where or when the videos were taken … or even whether they were from the same incident or different incidents.
Do you still hold that view, or have you seen other videos that change your mind?
Zanders: No, I have not changed my mind. The general observation still stands, and it will stand until we have the actual report from the U.N. investigation.
I do not deny that a chemical with toxic chemicals has taken place. But I am just as concerned about how people are interpreting things in terms of a particular goal … which in this case is military intervention.
Living in a democracy we have the rule of of law, and we collect and analyze a variety of evidence collected at certain scenes before passing any kind of final judgment.
One of the concerns I have is if we look over the periods starting in March 19th with the major allegation of chemcial weapons use near Aleppo, Syria, everything is being reinterpreted as sarin.
When I look at video images that have been going around, what I see is a large number of people suffering from aspyhixia, but only a minority (if the photos are representative of the total picture) display symptoms that would correspond to exposures to neurotoxicants.
John Kerry used the term “signatures of sarin”. But signatures of sarin are things one can have from other organophosphorus compounds.
Q: You’re talking about the fact that pesticides or other nerve agents can give “false positives” for sarin? [Background]
Zanders: Yes, but not just that.
Somebody could have been – and this is purely hypothetical – exposed to an organophosphorus compound neurotoxicant which is produced in large volumes in industry. For example, for agricultural purposes.
On the low end of the spectrum, we have insecticide sprays which we can buy in the supermarkets. On the middle of the spectrum, we have organophosphorus compounds which are intermediaries of other products, or that are used in agriculture for pest and rodent control. I know specifically that the use of such compounds for pest and rodent control is common in the Middle East.
So, if someone were exposed to that in the right volume, there would be clear signatures of neurotoxicant exposure.
So it’s not just a question of false signatures in the sense of chemical tests giving a false positive, but also physiological symptoms that someone might show due to exposure to these commonly-used chemicals.
[The area where the chemical incident occurred was in a heavily-contested battle zone and had been heavily bombed. So that could have released industrial or agricultural chemicals.]
Q: Do you have any knowledge about whether the chain of custody of alleged U.S. tests which Kerry talked about are proper?
Zanders: No, and that’s part of my criticism that Western governments have overstated their case.
We do not know where the samples come from. And we do not know how representative they are for a certain area.
Certain samples could have been selectively given to Western sources for analysis. Assume that you do not know where a sample comes from … your whole chain of custody is compromised.
That’s why UN inspectors can only use samples they have collected themselves.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago saying that Prince Bandar got one alleged victim of chemical warfare out of the country, sent him to the UK, and that person is the basis of which the British made their claims about Syrian chemical weapons use. [Article.]
That goes to a single person. This is quite remarkable, if true.
Q: What other indications weaken the American, British and French argument that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack?
Zanders: The extreme focus on sarin – as if only government forces would be able to have sarin – doesn’t make sense. If the UN team were to come up with evidence that toxic chemicals other than sarin were used, does that prove that it was not the Syrian government which is responsible?
I personally don’t think that we have all the facts in right now to be absolutely certain. And I think this is reflected in the U.S. document with the terminology “high confidence” and David Cameron saying it’s his “judgment” or the government’s “judgment”, which reflects an interpretation of the facts.
In the U.S. document, there is not a single reference to physiological samples.
Postscript: Zanders says we must wait for the results from the U.N. weapons inspection before reaching any conclusions about who is responsible for the August 21st tragedy. [Background.]
ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported President Obama’s plan for a Syrian strike could be “significantly larger” than most anticipated Thursday on “World News Tonight.”
Karl quoted an unnamed national security official who claimed the attack could do more damage to Assad in 48 hours than the Syrian rebels have done in two years:
JONATHAN KARL: […] ABC News has learned the president’s national security team is preparing for a significantly larger military attack than most had anticipated. The air campaign which is expected to last at least two days will potentially include an aerial bombardment of missiles and long range bombs fired from B-2 and B-52 bombers flying from the United States. That in addition to a relentless assault of Tomahawk missiles fired from those four Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean. Those ships are loaded with nearly 200 missiles, plans call for firing the vast majority of them. As one senior national security official told ABC News, this military strike could do more damage to Assad’s forces in 48 hours than the Syrian rebels have done in nearly two years of civil war. That’s more than President Obama seemed to be suggesting just days ago.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: What we are envisioning is something limited […] We send a shot across the bow saying stop doing this.
Pictured: John McCain caught playing POKER on his iPhone during crucial Senate hearing on whether to take military action in Syria
He makes light of the situation by joking he ‘lost thousands of dollars’
He was spotted playing the game by newspaper photographer
While America’s most senior foreign policy and military officials made President Obama’s case for using military force against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain was busy playing poker on his iPhone.
A Washington Post photographer snapped an over-the-shoulder picture of McCain casually betting play money on his electronic cards, while Syria’s fate was the subject of passionate statements and often carefully manicured rhetoric.
Scroll down for video
Upping the ante: An eagle-eyed photographer captured a picture of Senator McCain playing poker on his phone during the critical hearing on Tuesday
Did I just fold the nuts? McCain did what millions of us do during boring meetings at work, but his meeting concerned something more weighty than the latest sales forecast for widgets
Call, raise, or fold? McCain shuffled his chips while the Secretaries of State and Defense discussed the destruction of a Middle Eastern regime
Minutes after the Post published the photo online, McCain cracked a joke in the hope of limiting what is bound to be an embarrassing news cycle.
‘Scandal!’ read his sardonic tweet. ‘Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing – worst of all I lost!’
As the news broke, McCain was waiting to appear on CNN to discuss the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
‘Occasionally I get a little bored,’ he admitted on the air, ‘and so I resorted.’
CNN associate producer Ashley Killough tweeted afterward that McCain ‘said he lost "thousands" of fake dollars’ during the marathon Capitol Hill session.
Funny or die: The senior senator from Arizona chuckled through his keyboard, but not everyone will think it’s so hilarious
McCain was set to go on the air as the story broke about his funny-money poker habit
McCain may have been distracted by the presentations from Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. He had, after all, already made up his mind to side with the president and his request for authorization to bomb Syria.
‘If the Congress were to reject a resolution like this, after the president of the United States has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic,’ McCain said after her emerged from a closed-door meeting with Obama on Tuesday morning, ‘in that the credibility of this country with friends and adversaries alike would be shredded.’
‘And there would be not only implications for this president, but for future presidencies as well.’
The next time McCain meets with he president, the two might have more to discuss than just foreign policy: Obama played a game of spades – with physical cards, not a hand-held phone – while Seal Team Six killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Check your iPhone at the door: McCain was paying full attention earlier in the day, as he got a presidential briefing on Syria along with National Security Advisor Susan Rice (L) and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R)
For the benefit of poker fanatics,the Post’s photoshowed McCain calling a $200 bet while holding a little more than $16,000 in fake chips. His username? ‘J’s iPhone.’
The poker interlude isn’t the only memorable moment for the Senator from Arizona today, as he also came down hard on his Republican journalist counterparts on Fox News.
As part of his public appearances where he has been promoting an American military action in Syria, he was interviewed on Fox and Friends Tuesday morning.
Host Brian Kilmeade showed a clip of rebel fighters in Syria shouting out ‘Allahu Akbar’ after a missile hits a government target.
On the offensive: Senator John McCain scolded Fox News host Brian Kilmeade (right) for saying that he wouldn’t support the Syrian rebels because they say ‘Allahu akbar’ after hitting government targets
‘I have a problem helping those people out if they shout that out after a hit,’ Kilmeade said.
‘Would you have a problem with an American Christian saying "Thank God! Thank God!"? That’s what they’re saying. Come on!
‘Of course they are Muslims but they are moderates. I guarantee you that they are moderates. I know them and I’ve been with them. For someone to say "Allahu Akbar" is about as offensive as someone saying "Thank God."’
Woman whose cousin was killed by US-backed rebels pleads with Senator
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 6, 2013
Senator John McCain was confronted on several occasions by Americans opposed to an attack on Syria during an angry town hall meeting that underscored polls which show massive resistance to military intervention.
Fresh off the back of public criticism for being photographed playing poker on his phone during a crucial Senate hearing on Syria, McCain was told in no uncertain terms during a town hall meeting in Arizona that his advocacy for using US military might to topple Bashar Al-Assad was not shared by his constituents.
“We didn’t send you to make war for us. We sent you to stop the war,” one man said as the audience applauded.
“Why are you not listening to the people and staying out of Syria? It’s not our fight,” added another man, complaining that lawmakers were not representing the will of voters.
During the event another man stood next to McCain before revealing a sign which read, “”Don’t Bomb Syria!!!”
The most passionate confrontation undoubtedly involved a woman whose 18-year-old cousin was killed ten days ago in Syria by US-backed rebels.
“They’re not Syrian, they’re coming to Syria from all over the world to fight….we cannot afford to turn Syria into another Iraq or Afghanistan,” she said.
“You can do it by diplomacy, not bombs, Sen. McCain. We cannot afford to shed more Syrian blood,” added the woman.
“I beg you – my family is there, there’s so many good Syrians, the majority of the Syrian people want to save their country and you also need to listen to the majority of the American people who do not want you to go there….enough is enough….we don’t want Al-Qaeda to take over,” she said as the crowd cheered. She went on to highlight the attacks on Christians in Syria, saying she could trace her family back to the bible.
“We refused to be forced to leave and flee and be considered collateral damage,” the woman concluded.
McCain responded by asserting he knew the rebels in Syria and that they were moderates. However, the rebels McCain met with in Syria earlier this year were “a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims,” according to reports.
The deputy leader of the so-called “moderate” FSA also recently made it clear that, “the mujahideen rebels’ supreme council will disband unless the West drops its demands to steer clear of violent jihadists,” reported National Review.
Perhaps the most well known if not the most brutal atrocity committed by US-backed rebels, where an opposition militant is seen cutting out and eating the heart of a Syrian soldier, was committed by FSA commander Abu Sakkar, hardly the action of a “moderate”.
Public fury with McCain’s advocacy of an attack on Syria is unsurprising given polls which show a clear majority of Americans oppose military intervention. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that just 9 per cent thought the US should intervene in Syria’s civil war, with 60 per cent opposed.
Watch the full video of a woman whose cousin was killed by US-backed rebels in Syria confronting McCain below.
Now watch Marine Infantry Combat Veteran Bryan Bates outline his opposition to an attack on Syria before walking out on McCain.
The United States is prepared to do battle with Iran and Hezbollah when it takes out Syria in response to its alleged weapons of mass destruction, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Late Thursday, the newspaper reported the U.S. government “intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria,” one of “an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region.”
The intercepted message purportedly came from Qasem Soleimani, the head of Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force, and was delivered to Shiite militia groups in Iraq, according to U.S. Officials. “In it, Mr. Soleimani said Shiite groups must be prepared to respond with force after a U.S. strike on Syria. Iranian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment,” the Journal reports.
The U.S. predicts Iran will mobilize its fleet of fast boats in the Persian Gulf where U.S. warships are stationed.
In early 2012, the U.S. military claimed it was harassed by Iranian boats. At the time, Israeli intelligence officer Avi Perry predicted a “surprise” Pearl Harbor-style Iranian attack on an American warship in the Persian Gulf as a pretext for the U.S. to launch an all-out attack on Iran. No such attack occurred.
Amid escalating tension, in July, 2012, a security team aboard the oil supply ship U.S.N.S. Rappahannockfired on a boat in the Persian Gulf, killing one and injuring three others.
In addition to predicting attacks in the Persian Gulf, the newspaper reported the government’s belief Hezbollah will attack the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in response to a Syrian attack.
The Pentagon has deployed a number of warships in the region, a move that has heightened fears that an attack on Syria will rapidly escalate into a larger war.
Deployments include a strike group attached to the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and three destroyers positioned in the Red Sea. An amphibious ship, the USS San Antonio, is currently stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The U.S. military has also activated Marines and “other assets” to be used during the strike, ostensibly to evacuate embassies and diplomatic compounds in the region. The State Department made preparations last week for the possibility of retaliation against U.S. embassies and other interests in the Middle East and North Africa, the Journal reports.
In addition, the State Department issued an alert on Thursday warning against nonessential travel to Iraq and cited terrorist activity “at levels unseen since 2008.”
MOSCOW, September 6 (RIA Novosti) – Launching an attack on Syria would make US President, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Barack Obama “a war president” a senior Russian lawmaker wrote on Twitter Friday.
“They said Obama does not want to go to war in Syria. This myth was demolished by Obama himself. He has eventually turned into a “war president,” a second [George W.] Bush,” said Alexei Pushkov, who heads the international affairs committee in the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, and who has earned himself a reputation as a prolific Tweeter.
Obama recently asked the US Congress to support a limited military intervention in Syria because of the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons, which the US claims killed over a thousand civilians in one attack last month.
The Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee approved a motion backing a military strike Wednesday, with a final vote expected next week after Congress reconvenes Monday.
In another comment on Twitter last week, Pushkov said President Obama should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize if the United States carries out a military strike on Syria.
Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” according to a statement on the prize’s website.
Church Leaders: Syrian Christians Need Help, Not Military Intervention
A destroyed church in the Syrian city of Homs (Photo: Barnabas Fund)
(CNSNews.com) – Ahead of a day of prayer and fasting for Syria on Saturday, called for by Pope Francis, a Christian charity working in the country said church leaders there are appealing for help, not military intervention.
“As U.S. President Barack Obama rallies support for a military strike on Syria, Christian leaders from the country have called on Western nations to focus their efforts instead on providing aid to help meet the ‘dire need’ of the suffering people,” said Barnabas Fund.
In a letter Thursday to G20 leaders meeting in Russia, Pope Francis urged them to “lay aside the futile pursuit of a military solution” in Syria.
“Rather, let there be a renewed commitment to seek, with courage and determination, a peaceful solution through dialogue and negotiation of the parties, unanimously supported by the international community,” he wrote.
“Moreover, all governments have the moral duty to do everything possible to ensure humanitarian assistance to those suffering because of the conflict, both within and beyond the country’s borders.”
Asked for the White House response to the pope’s appeal, deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters in St. Petersburg he had not seen the letter, but “clearly, we always welcome the views of the Catholic Church, which has a longstanding commitment to the promotion of peace.”
The pope has called for “a special day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria” on Saturday, inviting “men and women of goodwill” of whatever faith to join wherever and however they may, and for Catholics in Rome to take part in an evening prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Square.
Also Thursday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sent letters to every member of Congress, urging them not to support military action in Syria.
The letter from USCCB president Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and the chairman of its committee on international justice and peace, Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, said Pope Francis and bishops in the Middle East “have made it clear that a military attack will be counterproductive, will exacerbate an already deadly situation, and will have unintended negative consequences.”
“Their concerns strongly resonate in American public opinion that questions the wisdom of intervention and in the lack of international consensus.”
A religious mosiac, its protective glass broken, is seen in a church damaged by mortar fire in a Christian village in Idlib province, captured by rebels in January 2013. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
‘What guarantees can you give Christians?’
Barnabas Fund, an international organization supporting Christians in Muslim-majority countries, quoted one of its partners in Syria, Aleppo Baptist leader Jany Haddad, as saying, “We urge Western authorities to take the measures necessary to protect our Christian civilians in the country. We ask them to shift their thoughts towards increasing financial support to our Christian societies and communities because of their dire need at this time.”
“On behalf of Syrian Christians and other minority communities, we entreat Western governments to alleviate the suffering of our people by providing urgent humanitarian aid, as our communities are in dire need,” said Rosangela Jarjour, the Homs-based general-secretary of the Fellowship of Middle East Evangelical Churches.
“The majority have been displaced from their homes with hardly anything to subsist on; most are jobless, homeless, and in danger of abduction and assaults by radical militants,” she said.
Barnabas Fund international director Patrick Sookhdeo said “the plight of Syria’s Christians has been tragically overlooked by Western governments. I pray that they will heed the cries of these Christian leaders from the country as they consider what action to take.”
Since the Syrian civil war began Barnabas Fund says it has provided practical aid to an estimated 139,000 Syrian Christians, many of whom are internally displaced, “having had to flee their homes as a result of targeted violence against them by Islamist rebels.”
“Christians are being singled out for violent attack, kidnap, torture, sexual assault and murder; their homes have been taken over in violent raids. Christian leaders have been particularly targeted, and numerous church buildings have been deliberately destroyed.”
The organization’s honorary U.S. director, Anglican Bishop Julian Dobbs, has written to Obama, urging him to consider the consequences for Christians as he mulls military action against the Assad regime in response to an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack.
“Military action that results in the demise of President Assad’s forces would almost certainly allow a strengthened al-Qaeda presence in Syria that would result in significant and increased persecution of Syrian Christians,” he wrote.
Citing “the destruction of the Iraqi Christian community” in the aftermath of the U.S.-led war there, Dobbs asked Obama, “What guarantees of security and religious freedom can you and your administration give to the already suffering Christian community in Syria if a military intervention is initiated by the United States?”
Dobbs concluded by noting that Muslim extremists view minority Christians as allies of the West on account of their faith, and that Christians will therefore be “at greater risk than other minorities in the aftermath of a U.S. strike on their country.”
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby (AP Photo, File)
‘Open season on Christians’
The titular leader of the world’s 77 million Anglicans (Episcopalians), Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who earlier urged caution as the British government weighed arming Syrian rebels, is also leery about military intervention.
During a recent speech in the House of Lords in London, he said a senior Christian leader in the region had told him that “intervention from abroad will declare open season on the Christian communities.”
“They will surely suffer terribly (as they already are) if action goes ahead,” Welby continued. “And that consequence has to be weighed against the consequences of inaction.”
“If we take action that diminishes the chance of peace and reconciliation, when inevitably a political solution has to be found, whether it’s near term or in the long term future, then we will have contributed to more killing and this war will be deeply unjust,” he said.
Barnabas Fund director Sookhdeo, an expert on radical Islam who is also director of the non-profit Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, said in a new analysis on the Syrian civil war that because of the positions being taken by various parties “the Christians find themselves increasingly being supported by China and Russia whereas their historic supporters in terms of religious liberty and human rights are turning out to be the ones who are supporting the radical Islamists and denying their fundamental freedoms.”
“The West, in supporting the rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, may well find that they are closely supporting radical Islamists allied to al-Qaeda, which could not only prove to be the death knell of a moderate, tolerant, multi-religious Syria in the aftermath of Assad but also result in a radical Islamist government riven with sectarianism and extremism that may ultimately destroy the Church,” he argued.
“So as Barack Obama this week tries to rally support for his plans to conduct a military strike on Syria, he and other Western leaders need to consider the wider background to this conflict. I am greatly concerned that any military intervention will only further escalate hostilities in an already highly charged environment.”
Not even Obama’s aides know what he’s planning Steve Watson Infowars.com Sept 6, 2013
The White House and the President have obviously not managed to get their story straight with each other on Syria, as aides today ruled out a military strike without Congressional approval, while Obama himself refused to do the same.
White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told reporters on Friday that if Congress rejects President Obama’s request to authorize a military strike against Syria, it is “neither his desire nor his intention” to carry out the attack regardless.
However, at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, Obama was less clear when asked whether he would take military action without Congressional approval.
“I put this before Congress for a reason,” Obama told reporters. “I believe action is more effective and stronger if we are united. I’m not engaging in parlor games with respect to how Congress responds to their constituents’ concerns.”
Obama added that he would have already taken action without consulting Congress had there been a direct threat to the United States or its allies.
Secretary of State John Kerry has clearly suggested that the President WILL go ahead with military action regardless of the outcome of the Congressional vote, a move that could prompt a constitutional crisis.
The comments come at the same time as reports indicating that the chances of the House approving for military action in Syria are so bad that congressional aides are doubting whether a vote will even take place.
“I just don’t believe that if defeat is certain, the House leadership will want to see a president utterly humiliated on the House floor in a public vote,” one top aide to the Republican leadership told National Review. “The weakness it would demonstrate wouldn’t be good for the country.” the aide said.
The Senate narrowly passed a modified version of Obama’s resolution on Wednesday, and the full Senate is likely to begin voting next Wednesday. Both chambers must approve the measure for it to pass.
Meanwhile Obama has announced that he will make a plea to the American people for military action in a White House address on Tuesday.
Lawmakers know better than 99% of the voters, Obama implied.
Kit Daniels Infowars.com September 6, 2013
In a speech today at the G20 Summit in Russia, President Barack Obama stated that members of Congress should listen to their voters but ultimately should act on their own, against their constituency, in order to make a decision that is “right for America.”
Video Blocked by Youtube WHY???
Segment begins at the 27:45 minute mark.
Obama made this revealing statement after a journalist asked, “One of your closest allies in the House said yesterday, ‘When you’ve got 97 percent of your constituents saying no, it’s kind of hard to say yes.’ Why should members of Congress go against the will of their constituents and support your decision on this?”
“Now, with respect to Congress and how they should respond to constituency concerns, you know, I do consider it part of my job to help make the case and to explain to the American people exactly why I think this is the right thing to do,” Obama said. “It’s conceivable that at the end of the day, I don’t persuade a majority of the American people that it’s the right thing to do and then each member of Congress is gonna have to decide, if I think it’s the right thing to do for America’s national security and the world’s national security, then how do I vote?”
“And you know what? That’s — that’s what you’re supposed to do as a member of Congress. Ultimately, you listen to your constituents, but you’ve also got to make some decisions about what you believe is right for America.”
In short, Obama will try to influence Americans into supporting his war, but failing that, Congress is supposed to just ignore the vast majority of voters against the war and approve military action in Syria.
As Obama implied, members of Congress should represent themselves rather than the voters who placed them in office, especially when Obama’s aims run contrary to the demands of the American people.
This is right in line with a senior State Department official’s earlier statement that “the president’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.”
As we reported yesterday, Congress members across the nation are being overwhelmed by unprecedented opposition towards a war in Syria.
“I’m told the phone calls are 9 out of 10 against a strike in Syria, from my constituents in Kentucky,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Az.) told the National Review that out of the 500 voters who called his office recently, 498 of them adamantly wanted to stay out of Syria.
Anti-war sentiments are prevailing in both major parties.
“I can tell you 99 percent of the calls coming to my office are against it,” Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings said to MSNBC.
It is interesting to note that in 2012, 76% of his district voted for Obama.
Other representatives have tweeted similar statements:
As we have exhaustively documented in the past, American troops may find themselves fighting alongside al-Qaeda if they are deployed to Syria.
“We should be focused on defending the United States of America,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said recently. “That’s why young men and women sign up to join the military, not to, as you know, serve as Al Qaeda’s air force.”
For 12 years strong, US running “counterinsurgency air force” for allies
Julie Wilson Infowars.com September 6, 2013
While the world’s focus is centered on the G-20 Summit and Obama attempting to make his case to justify a war with Syria, the US military is still covertly fighting a 12-year old war in the Middle East and now parts of Africa.
According to the BBC, an estimated six more militants were killed overnight in Pakistan after two missiles were fired at a house in North Waziristan, near Afghanistan. While the strike managed to take out a senior commander of the Taliban-linked Haqqani militant network, reports also confirm an undisclosed number of civilian casualties.
Photo: Official US Navy Page via Flickr.
The strike is the second this week in Pakistan, adding to the list of 322 drone strikes authorized by Obama.Statistics from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveal an estimated 2,513-3,595 were killed, including 407-926 civilians and 168-200 children from 2004-13.
From 2002-13, nearly 60 drone strikes have been confirmed, killing an estimated 268-393 people, including 21-58 civilians and five children. Remember, these are the number of confirmed strikes and deaths, the death toll is projected to be much higher.
In Somalia, approximately ten drone strikes have been confirmed, killing an estimated 30 people. Covert operations have killed an estimated 7-14 people, including 7-42 civilians and 1-3 children.
Reviewing these numbers illustrates the US’s attitude towards murder and assassination. It highlights the absolute hypocrisy of the US wanting to initiate another war in another country on the basis of avenging the deaths of a few hundred Syrians killed via a chemical weapons attack.
Reports have continually pointed towards the Syrian rebels as the culprits for the chemical weapons attack in Syria on Aug. 21, but even if Assad had done this to his own people, how can the US justify punishing a leader who murders civilians when the US is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Middle Eastern men, women and children?
The US covert drone program has managed to stay incredibly secretive, and only recently has the Obama administration come under criticism for the program, with the public and US officials calling more transparency and oversight.
Experts argue the reason the program has been kept secret is because it would be in violation of an executive order signed in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford which banned “American intelligence forces from engaging in assassination,” reported the New Yorker.
Critics say the program has progressed beyond it’s original intention. The use of the unmanned drone program was initially intended to target an individual based on a specific set of intelligence based on his or her identity, and who posed an imminent threat to the US. Now suspects are targeted based on suspicious behavior or a series of actions that might be suspicious. Sometimes the identify of that individual is unknown.
While the drone program came to prominence under Bush, Obama has drastically expanded it. A US military attack on Syria would earn Obama the title of “war president,” according to a senior Russian lawmaker. It would make him a “second George W. Bush,” said a member of the Russian Parliament.
Obama’s drone program shows no evidence of slowing down, with strikes expanding into parts of Africa to reportedly target the al-Qaeda affiliated group al Shabaab. According to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, US operations in Somalia remain “largely a mystery” with only two confirmed strikes in 2012.
“In Yemen and Somalia, there is debate about whether the militants targeted by the U.S. are in fact plotting against the U.S. or instead fighting against their own country,” reported ProPublica. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the US is running “a counterinsurgency air force” for allied countries.
The US government is responsible for a massive death toll post 9/11, and instead of decelerating the wars, the Obama administrations intends to exacerbate more money and more military aid in an attempt to send Syrian leader al-Assad a message. An act that could push the planet into WW3.
(NaturalNews) Natural News can now reveal that the Syria chemical weapons narrative being pushed by the White House is an outlandish hoax. To understand why, you have to start with the story published in The Independent entitled Revealed: Government let British company export nerve gas chemicals to Syria. Sounds scary, right? As The Independent reports: The Government was accused of "breathtaking laxity" in its arms controls last night after it emerged that officials authorised the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such as sarin a year ago. What, exactly, are those two dangerous chemicals that need to be controlled via "arms control" regulations? You won’t believe me when I tell you. They are: • sodium fluoride • potassium fluoride You can see this yourself in the screen capture of The Independent breaking news story. Note the headline and the subhead. The headline describes "nerve gas chemicals" and the subhead explains them as "sodium fluoride" and "potassium fluoride." click here to watch my video explaining all this at TV.naturalnews.com.
U.S. water fluoridation chemical is Syria’s "chemical weapon"
If these chemical names sound familiar, that’s because sodium fluoride is the same toxic chemical that’s routinely dumped into municipal water supplies all across the USA under the guise of "water fluoridation." In fact, the forced feeding of sodium fluoride to the U.S. population is called a "public health" victory by the CDC, FDA and dentists everywhere. Yet this same chemical, when sold to Syria, is openly and repeatedly referred to as a "chemical weapon." This is true across the BBC, the Guardian, Daily Record and Sunday Mail, France24.com and literally thousands of other news websites. According to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, any government "regime" that uses chemical weapons against its own people should be bombed / invaded / overthrown by a coalition of other United Nations members. By his own definition, then, the United States of America should now be invaded by the UN because the government uses a deadly chemical weapon — sodium fluoride — on its own people. By implication, then, John Kerry is now calling for the UN to bomb the USA. As the international media now confirms, sodium fluoride is a chemical weapon, and this chemical weapon is used against the American people every single day in the water supply, a favorite attack vector for terrorists.
"Evidence" of chemical weapons nothing more than hair samples of people who drank sodium fluoride
As you might have guessed, Secretary of State John Kerry is running around "pulling a George Bush" by claiming Syria has used weapons of mass destruction on its own population. Here’s a sample of his claims: "In the last 24 hours, we have learned through samples that were provided to the United States that have now been tested from first responders in east Damascus and hair samples and blood samples have tested positive for signatures of sarin." Kerry said this on NBC’s Meet The Press. But what, exactly, is he saying? That hair samples have tested positive for "signatures" of sarin, not sarin itself. What is a "signature" of sarin? The fluorine element, which is of course the basis for sodium fluoride. In other words, this "evidence" of chemical weapons in Syria may be nothing more than a collection of hair samples taken from people who drank fluoride. As this study shows on SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, hair analysis is a commonly-used practice for assessing exposure to fluoride. It concludes, "hair may be regarded as biomaterial of high informative potential in evaluating prolonged exposure to fluorides…" Typically, this analysis is conducted with ICP-MS instrumentation, using a plasma torch that disintegrates all organic molecules, leaving only the resulting elements (fluorine). Tests done on Syrian citizens using ICP-MS would not be able to distinguish between sodium fluoride and sarin exposure in terms of the detection of elemental fluorine. Read that again, because it’s crucial to understanding the hoax being perpetrated by the White House: Tests on hair or other tissues, if done using ICP-MS (the most common elemental analysis technology used today), would not be able to distinguish between sodium fluoride and sarin. Sarin has the chemical formula: [(CH3)2CHO]CH3P(O)F You will notice that the only elements in this formula are: Fluorine Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen Phosphorous Out of those five elements, four of them (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous) occur naturally in the human body in large quantities. Fluorine is the only element that strongly stands out against the rest in terms of elemental analysis. And fluorine is the same element that forms the basis of sodium fluoride. Sarin can, of course, also be detected as a complete molecule using liquid chromatography systems (HPLC), but this is highly unlikely to have taken place given the inherent instability of the molecule, which breaks apart upon exposure to simple moisture in the air or in the body. Thus, ICP-MS testing could be used to intentionally "blur" the evidence, making sodium fluoride appear to be "signatures" of sarin, precisely as Kerry is now claiming in the media. As the whole point of all this is to fabricate evidence to justify a political war in the first place, there isn’t any real scientific scrutiny being applied to all this. Obama, Kerry and others are spouting whatever they think the people will swallow, and since most of the U.S. public is scientifically illiterate, it turns out they will swallow some real whoppers.
Same sodium fluoride chemical added to water for infants
Sodium fluoride, by the way, is also added to drinking water for babies and infants. It’s a key ingredient, actually, in a product called Nursery Water that’s "enriched" with extra sodium fluoride, the same chemical now being called a "chemical weapon" by the international media. You can see this for yourself at www.NurseryWater.com or just check out the photo below: As you can see, this sodium fluoride infant water — which the White House effectively calls a "chemical weapon" — is sold at Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Albertson’s, Safeway, K-Mart, Rite Aid and even Toys "R" Us. Bet you never knew you could buy chemical weapons at Toys "R" Us, did ya? The Nursery Water label, shown below, lists "sodium fluoride" as a key ingredient: You’ll also notice that the label includes instructions for using this sodium fluoride baby water: "…ready to mix with formula and cereal, dilute juice or drink – just open and pour!" Yep, you read it: the same "chemical weapon" that’s about to start World War III is part of your baby’s formula recipe. When sodium fluoride is in the hands of Syria’s Assad, it’s called a "chemical weapon," but when it’s part of your baby’s diet, it’s called "nutrition." How’s that for Orwellian doublespeak?
Syria’s "chemical weapon" also added to Colgate toothpaste
Just in case adding Syria’s "chemical weapon" to baby water isn’t enough for you, it’s also a key ingredient in Colgate toothpaste. Yep, according to dentists, chemical weapons also "fight tooth decay," so they should be added to toothpaste. Check out the label on this Colgate toothpaste and see for yourself: Keep this in mind the next time you carry toothpaste with you when you attempt to travel by air. The TSA can pull you aside and legitimately accuse you of working for the Assad regime as a chemical weapons terrorist while charging you with the federal crime of "transporting chemical weapons."
Mainstream media admits U.S. food companies use chemical weapons against their own customers
Unless the mainstream media retracts all its thousands of stories about sodium fluoride being a "chemical weapon" sold to Syria, it must come to terms with the fact that it is also accusing the U.S. food industry of using chemical weapons on consumers. Sodium fluoride, after all, is added to countless consumer products, from toothpaste and mouthwash to drinking water. Sodium fluoride does not magically change from a "chemical weapon" in Syria to a "nutritive mineral" by crossing the ocean. Sodium fluoride is sodium fluoride, and it’s dangerous no matter who consumes it. Keep this in mind the next time you hear a dentist recommending dumping sodium fluoride into the local water supply. You can correctly counter their absurd request by threatening to call Homeland Security to report them as a terrorist for engaging in the indiscriminate deployment of a chemical weapon in the water supply — a favorite target for terrorists worldwide. By the way, I’m not joking on this: I actually encourage you to call Homeland Security and report your local city council members as terrorists who are mirroring the Assad "regime" in Syria by using sodium fluoride "chemical weapons" on the public. You might even call the United Nations and ask them to intervene in the USA’s use of chemical weapons against its own people… right? Isn’t that what John Kerry is asking the world to do in the case of Syria? Why does the USA have immunity from using chemical weapons on its own people when Syria is threatened with war for using the exact same chemical weapons on its population?
Same "nerve gas chemicals" exported to Syria are imported from China by nearly every U.S. city
By the way, the same sodium fluoride that was exported to Syria as a "chemical weapon" is routinely imported by U.S. cities to dump into the municipal water supply. They call it "water fluoridation" and dentists push it like candy because it actually causes wildly increased tooth decay, mottling and discoloration (all of which adds up to increased repeat business for dentists). As documented by Natural News, sodium fluoride is touted by China’s exporters as a multi-purpose chemical that functions as a deadly pesticide, absorbs chemicals in the nuclear industry and more. See these two photos for more proof. These were created as marketing materials by China’s fluoride export industry: From Alibaba.com: Uses: It’s mainly used as a flux in the aluminum smelting by fused-salt electrolysis; also an opalizer in the manufacture of enamel; an opacifier and auxiliary solvent of glass and enamel; an insecticide of crops; a flux in aluminum alloy casting; and in the production of ferrous alloy and effervescing steel; as well as a wear-resistant filler for resin and rubber-boned abrasive wheels. As I first said back in 2012, "Fluoride is a chemical weapon!" Now it turns out John Kerry agrees with me, and he’s using fluoride as an excuse to bomb a sovereign nation. Quick question: If Russia begins bombing the USA, can they use the same excuse that Obama and Kerry are using on Syria? "We had to save the American people from the chemical weapons used by the Obama regime!" Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/041883_Syria_chemical_weapons_sodium_fluoride.html#ixzz2dqWa6FSu
But as shown below, the case is extremely weak (government’s claim in quotes, followed by rebuttal evidence).
“A preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children, though this assessment will certainly evolve as we obtain more information.“
Neither Kerry’s remarks nor the unclassified version of the U.S. intelligence he referenced explained how the U.S. reached a tally of 1,429, including 426 children. The only attribution was “a preliminary government assessment.”
Anthony Cordesman, a former senior defense official who’s now with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, took aim at the death toll discrepancies in an essay published Sunday.
He criticized Kerry as being “sandbagged into using an absurdly over-precise number” of 1,429, and noted that the number didn’t agree with either the British assessment of “at least 350 fatalities” or other Syrian opposition sources, namely the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has confirmed 502 dead, including about 100 children and “tens” of rebel fighters, and has demanded that Kerry provide the names of the victims included in the U.S. tally.
“President Obama was then forced to round off the number at ‘well over 1,000 people’ – creating a mix of contradictions over the most basic facts,” Cordesman wrote. He added that the blunder was reminiscent of “the mistakes the U.S. made in preparing Secretary (Colin) Powell’s speech to the U.N. on Iraq in 2003.”
An unclassified version of a French intelligence report on Syria that was released Monday hardly cleared things up; France confirmed only 281 fatalities, though it more broadly agreed with the United States that the regime had used chemical weapons in the Aug. 21 attack.
Next, the government says:
“In addition to U.S. intelligence information, there are accounts from international and Syrian medical personnel; videos; witness accounts; thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area; journalist accounts; and reports from highly credible nongovernmental organizations.”
Reports on the ground are contradictory, with some claiming that the rebels used the chemical weapons. See this and this. Indeed, government officials have admitted that they’re not sure who used chemical weapons.
More importantly the U.S. government claimed it had unimpeachable sources regarding Iraq’s WMDs … and that turned out to be wholly fabricated.
“We assess with high confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year, including in the Damascus suburbs. This assessment is based on multiple streams of information including reporting of Syrian officials planning and executing chemical weapons attacks and laboratory analysis of physiologicalsamples obtained from a number of individuals, which revealed exposure to sarin.”
Chemical weapons experts are still skeptical. The chain of custody is suspect, given that the U.S. hasn’t revealed where the samples came from, and who delivered them to the U.S. McClatchy reports:
Among chemical weapons experts and other analysts who’ve closely studied the Syrian battlefield, the main reservation about the U.S. claims is that there’s no understanding of the methodology behind the intelligence-gathering. They say that the evidence presented points to the use of some type of chemical agent, but say that there are still questions as to how the evidence was collected, the integrity of the chain of custody of such samples, and which laboratories were involved.
Eliot Higgins, a British chronicler of the Syrian civil war who writes the Brown Moses blog, a widely cited repository of information on the weapons observed on the Syrian battlefield, wrote a detailed post Monday listing photographs and videos that would seem to support U.S. claims that the Assad regime has possession of munitions that could be used to deliver chemical weapons. But he wouldn’t make the leap.
On the blog, Higgins asked: “How do we know these are chemical weapons? That’s the thing, we don’t. As I’ve said all along, these are munitions linked to alleged chemical attacks, not chemical munitions used in chemical attacks. It’s ultimately up to the U.N. to confirm if chemical weapons were used.”
Moreover, Dan Kaszeta – a former Chemical Officer in the United States Army, and one of the foremost experts in chemical and biological weapons – said in a recent interview that there can be false positives for Sarin, especially, when tests are done in the field (pesticides or other chemical agents can trigger a false positive for sarin.)
The bottom lines is that – even though the U.S. has done everything it can to derail a UN weapons inspection – we have to wait to see what the UN tests reveal.
“We assess that the opposition has not used chemical weapons.”
“The Syrian regime has the types of munitions that we assess were used to carry out the attack on August 21, and has the ability to strike simultaneously in multiple locations.”
The types of munitions which were apparently used to deliver the chemical weapon attack are an odd,do-it-yourself type of rocket. The rebels could have made these.
“We assess that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons over the last year primarily to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate in areas where it has struggled to seize and hold strategically valuable territory. In this regard, we continue to judge that the Syrian regime views chemical weapons as one of many tools in its arsenal, including air power and ballistic missiles, which they indiscriminately use against the opposition.
The Syrian regime has initiated an effort to rid the Damascus suburbs of opposition forces using the area as a base to stage attacks against regime targets in the capital. The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighborhoods of opposition elements, including neighborhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21.”
This is not evidence. This is a conclusory opinion without any support. (To give an analogy, this would be like claiming Saddam was using weapons of mass destruction right before the Iraq war started because he didn’t like short people … without refuting the actual fact that Saddam didn’t have any WMDs.)
“We have intelligence that leads us to assess that Syrian chemical weapons personnel – including personnel assessed to be associated with the SSRC – were preparing chemical munitions prior to the attack. In the three days prior to the attack, we collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence that reveal regime activities that we assess were associated with preparations for a chemical weapons attack.
Syrian chemical weapons personnel were operating in the Damascus suburb of ‘Adra from Sunday, August 18 until early in the morning on Wednesday, August 21 near an area that the regime uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin.”
“On August 21, a Syrian regime element prepared for a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus area, including through the utilization of gas masks.”
This is an oddly-worded – and carefully crafted – statement. Assad has repeatedly warned that the rebels might steal chemical weapons and use them on civilians. The utilization of gas masks could have been a preventative measure because the Syrian government had received word that the rebels might carry out a chemical attack. More information is necessary.
“Multiple streams of intelligence indicate that the regime executed a rocket and artillery attack against the Damascus suburbs in the early hours of August 21. Satellite detections corroborate that attacks from a regime-controlled area struck neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred – including Kafr Batna, Jawbar, ‘Ayn Tarma, Darayya, and Mu’addamiyah. This includes the detection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media. The lack of flight activity or missile launches also leads us to conclude that the regime used rockets in the attack.”
The area in which attacks occurred was heavily contested by the both government and the rebels, and both sides were in and out of the area. 90 minutes before the first attack is an eternity when fighting a war on a heavily-contested battlefield … and could have been plenty of time for rebels to slip in and fire off chemical weapons.
It’s unclear why this is supposed to be persuasive. Do rockets take 90 minutes to reach their targets? Does nerve gas escape from rockets 90 minutes after impact, or, once released, take 90 minutes to cause symptoms?
In a conflict as conscious of the importance of communication as the Syrian Civil War, do citizen journalists wait an hour and a half before reporting an enormous development–the point at which, as Kerry put it, “all hell broke loose in the social media”? Unless there’s some reason to expect this kind of a delay, it’s very unclear why we should think there’s any connection at all between the allegedly observed rocket launches and the later reports of mass poisoning.
The government next turns to social media:
“Local social media reports of a chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs began at 2:30 a.m. local time on August 21. Within the next four hours there were thousands of social media reports on this attack from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area. Multiple accounts described chemical-filled rockets impacting opposition-controlled areas.
Three hospitals in the Damascus area received approximately 3,600 patients displaying symptoms consistent with nerve agent exposure in less than three hours on the morning of August 21, according to a highly credible international humanitarian organization. The reported symptoms, and the epidemiological pattern of events – characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers – were consistent with mass exposure to a nerve agent. We also received reports from international and Syrian medical personnel on the ground.
We have identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack, many of which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure. The reported symptoms of victims included unconsciousness, foaming from the nose and mouth, constricted pupils, rapid heartbeat, and difficulty breathing. Several of the videos show what appear to be numerous fatalities with no visible injuries, which is consistent with death from chemical weapons, and inconsistent with death from small-arms, high-explosive munitions or blister agents. At least 12 locations are portrayed in the publicly available videos, and a sampling of those videos confirmed that some were shot at the general times and locations described in the footage.”
No one contests that some kind of chemical agent was used. The question is exactly what type of chemical it was and – more importantly – who used it.
Moreover, the rebels were making propaganda videos for years … and they’ve gotten more sophisticated recently. More information is needed.
“We assess the Syrian opposition does not have the capability to fabricate all of the videos, physical symptoms verified by medical personnel and NGOs, and other information associated with this chemical attack.”
Another conclusory opinion without evidence. More importantly, it is a red herring. No one is saying that the tragic and horrific deaths were faked.
The question is when and where they occurred, and who caused them. For example, one of the world’s leading experts on chemical weapons points out that it is difficult to know where the videos were taken:
Zanders, the former EU chemical weapons expert, went even further, arguing thatoutsiders cannot conclude with confidence the extent or geographic location of the chemical weapons attack widely being blamed on the Assad regime.
He singled out the images of victims convulsing in agony that have circulated widely on the Web, including on YouTube.
“You do not know where they were taken,” he said. “You do not know when they were taken or even by whom they were taken. Or, whether they [are from] the same incident or from different incidents.”
Zanders added: “It doesn’t tell me who would be responsible for it. It doesn’t tell me where the films were taken. It just tells me that something has happened, somewhere, at some point.”
The government then expands on allegedly intercepted intelligence:
“We have a body of information, including past Syrian practice, that leads us to conclude that regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on August 21. We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence. On the afternoon of August 21, we have intelligence that Syrian chemical weapons personnel were directed to cease operations.”
The Washington Post points out that alleged intelligence intercepts are “the core of the Obama administration’s evidentiary case….” America’s war intelligence has been spotty. For example:
It is also now well-accepted that the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which led to the Vietnam war was a fiction (confirmed here).
And the U.S. and Israel have admitted that they have carried out false flag deceptions (as have Muslim countries such as Indonesia; but to our knowledge, Syria has never been busted in a false flag.)
Recall that Powell played tapes of Iraqi officials supposedly talking about concealing evidence of banned weapons from inspectors–which turned out to show nothing of the kind. But Powell at least played tapes of the intercepted communication, even as he spun and misrepresented their contents–allowing for the possibility of an independent interpretation of these messages. Perhaps “mindful of the Iraq experience,” Kerry allows for no such interpretation.
David Swanson notes that American officials mischaracterized the communications to justify the Iraq war:
Powell was writing fictional dialogue. He put those extra lines in there and pretended somebody had said them. Here’s what Bob Woodward said about this in his book “Plan of Attack.”
“[Powell] had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light. Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of ‘forbidden ammo,’ Powell took the interpretation further: ‘Clean out all of the areas. . . . Make sure there is nothing there.’ None of this was in the intercept.”
[In addition] Powell … was presenting as facts numerous claims that his own staff had warned him were weak and indefensible.
The government then makes a throw-away argument:
“At the same time, the regime intensified the artillery barrage targeting many of the neighborhoods where chemical attacks occurred. In the 24 hour period after the attack, we detected indications of artillery and rocket fire at a rate approximately four times higher than the ten preceding days. We continued to see indications of sustained shelling in the neighborhoods up until the morning of August 26.”
This is another red herring. If the Syrian government believed that the rebels had used chemical weapons on civilians, they may have increased artillery fire to flush out the rebels to prevent further chemical attacks. Again, further information is needed.
“To conclude, there is a substantial body of information that implicates the Syrian government’s responsibility in the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21.As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners.”
This sounds impressive at first glance. But Congress members who have seen the classified information – such as Tom Harkin – are not impressed.
What do members of the U.S. military think about the possibility of a war with Syria? So far, they appear to be overwhelmingly against it just like the rest of the general public. In fact, a new Twitter hashtag (#IdidntJoin) has been flooded with messages from service members expressing their displeasure with the idea of being forced to fight for al-Qaeda in Syria. This is consistent with what we have been hearing from other sources as well. For example, U.S. Representative Justin Amash recently sent out a tweet with the following message: “I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our Armed Forces. The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against #Syria.” Of course there are probably a few members of the military that would love a war with Syria, but they appear to be very much in the minority. Hopefully the Obama administration and members of the U.S. Congress are listening.
Posted below are photos taken from Twitter of American service members publicly declaring that they do not want war with Syria. In these photos they are wearing their uniforms, but they are obscuring their faces because they could potentially get in a lot of trouble for publicly defying the Obama administration.
We should applaud these brave service members for being willing to publicly take a stand like this…
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Business Insider asked members of the military to write to them and tell them what they thought about a potential conflict with Syria. 52 members of the military responded, and 50 of them were against war with Syria. The following is one example…
“I’m a U.S. Air Force vet who spent a solid 6 years shuttling between Afghanistan and Iraq, doing everything from combat airdrops to medevacs to hauling flag-draped coffins,” wrote one servicemember in an email, who also mentioned travel to 38 countries in that time. “What we do not need is another war, and we certainly do not need any further involvement in a civil war where our objective isn’t clear, and our allies aren’t really our allies.”
And it is not just the rank and file that are against war with Syria. According to the Washington Post, many among the top military brass are expressing “serious reservations” about taking action in Syria…
The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.
Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.
This is not about being “anti-war”. This is about not wanting to shed American blood in an Islamic civil war where neither side is our friend.
Anyone that believes that the Syrian rebels are the “good guys” is being absolutely delusional.
In fact, even the U.S. State Department has admitted that the al-Nusra Front is a terror organization that is affiliated with al-Qaeda. According to the State Department, they have been responsible for close to 600 terror attacks since November 2011…
“There is also a threat from terrorism, including groups like al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) affiliated al-Nusrah Front,” says the current State Department travel warning on Syria. “Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks–ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations—in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. Public places such as government buildings, shopping areas, and open spaces have been targeted.”
The bolded language in this travel warning–emphasizing that the al Qaeda affiliate fighting in the Syrian opposition has been targeting places such as “shopping areas” was put there by the State Department in the online posting of its warning.
“During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed,” then-State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said at the department’s press briefing last Dec. 11.
In a statement published May 16, the State Department said that Muhammad al-Jawlani, the leader of the al-Nusrah Front, had recently “pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qa’ida’s leader.”
And even the head of al-Qaeda says that the Syrian rebels are working for his side…
In an audio recording on Thursday, Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahri announced his support for the beleaguered Syrian rebels.
He framed the Syrian revolution, and the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, as necessary steps towards the defeat of Israel.
“Supporting jihad in Syria to establish a Muslim state is a basic step towards Jerusalem,” he said.
So why would members of the U.S. military want to go put their lives on the line to help al-Qaeda take over Syria?
Service members would have to be insane to want to go into battle allied with al-Qaeda.
Not a single drop of precious American blood should ever be shed for al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems absolutely determined to make this war happen, and so very soon members of the U.S. military will be forced against their will to fight for the benefit of al-Qaeda in Syria.
Al-Qaeda militants kill 24 civilians near Ras al-Ain
Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups operating in Syria, including the al-Nusra Front, are trying to capture Kurdish territories and make them part of a state they want to create in the region.
Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days old infant.
Gunmen from the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant stopped the bus on the road in Talkalakh and killed everyone before setting the bus on fire.
According to media reports, the attack was carried out because the passengers who were from three different villages in Ras al-Ain, supported anti-terrorist Kurdish groups which were formed recently to defend Kurdish population against anti-Syria terrorists.
Bodies of a mother and her 40-days infant were also seen among the dead, which were recognized by their relatives.
Syrian Kurdish leader Saleh Muslim warned on Friday that the Kurd minority is facing an ethnic cleansing by al-Qaeda terrorists.
While there is no end in sight to the bloody foreign-fueled conflict in Syria, another front has been formed between the Kurdish militia and extremist militants in Northern Syria.
Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups operating in the country, including the al-Nusra Front, are trying to capture Kurdish territories and make them part of a state they want to create in the region.
Following deadly attacks on Kurdish regions in recent months, groups of Kurdish militia were formed to protect their people.
Anti-Syria armed groups continue to target civilians amid US threats against Syrian army and government which have made militants find it easier to widen their attacks.
Following worldwide criticism, US President Barack Obama delayed an imminent military strike against Syria on August 31, sending the matter to the Congress to get more support.
Plan for military intervention greases skids for war throughout the region, says Harvard professor
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 3, 2013
The Obama administration’s draft resolution for military intervention which Congress is set to vote on next week is so broad that it would authorize boots on the ground as well as regime change and open ended war throughout the entire region, according to Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Goldsmith served as Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel from 2003–2004, and Special Counsel to the Department of Defense from 2002–2003.
In an article for the Lawfare Blog, Goldsmith reveals how the White House’s proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) would give Obama the power to deploy ground troops in Syria, despite the administration’s claims that it is only seeking to carry out “limited” strikes that have no connection to regime change.
“The phrase “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” would include authorization for ground troops, should the President decide they were “necessary and appropriate,” writes Goldsmith.
Goldsmith points out that although the resolution authorizes the President to use the US military to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by (chemical weapons),” it does not limit the countries or groups against which this mandate applies.
“The proposed AUMF focuses on Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad. It authorizes the President to use any element of the U.S. Armed Forces and any method of force. It does not contain specific limits on targets – either in terms of the identity of the targets (e.g. the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Hezbollah, Iran) or the geography of the targets,” writes Goldsmith, emphasizing that the language does not limit military force to the territory of Syria, merely that it must be connected to WMD use in the Syrian conflict.
The AUMF also contains no time limit for when this mandate expires without further congressional approval, meaning it creates the pretext for an open ended war that would “permit the President to use military force against any target anywhere in the world (including Iran or Lebanon) as long as the President, in his discretion, determines that the the target has a connection to WMD in the Syrian civil war.”
In response to complaints that the authorization is far too broad and would possibly be rejected by Congress on this basis, the Washington Post reports the the administration may be preparing to, “rewrite the proposed resolution to clarify that any operation would be limited in scope and duration and would not include the use of ground troops.”
Former vice chief of staff of the US Army General Jack Keane told BBC Radio 4 today that Obama’s claim that the planned missile strike on Syria will merely be an act of punishment for the use of chemical weapons and not intended to sway the course of the conflict or damage Assad’s military capacity is not the case.
“What he has told the two senators is that he also intends to assist the opposition forces, so he is going to degrade Assad’s military capacity and he is going to assist and upgrade the opposition forces with training assistance,” said Keane, adding that the attack plan has “much more substance than we were led to believe”.
Secretary of State John Kerry and another unnamed senior State Department official have both made it clear that the Obama administration will proceed with an attack on Syria whether Congress gives the green light or not.
Rest of corporate media refuses to cover viral Twitter backlash against attack on Syria
Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com September 3, 2013
Image: Twitter
The mainstream media has responded to the military revolt against Barack Obama’s plan to attack Syria by claiming that the viral #IdidntJoin Twitter trend is a hoax invented by pro-Assad hackers.
Despite numerous images of soldiers and veterans holding up signs expressing their vehement opposition to military intervention in Syria going viral, in addition to a plethora of other tweets that were sent to Congressman Justin Amash expressing the same sentiment, the International Business Times website claims that the photos and tweets are the workof Syrian hackers “impersonating” US military personnel.
The article postulates that the original picture of a Petty Naval Officer declaring his opposition to fighting on the same side of Al-Qaeda is an image of a man “simply dressing up.” The article erroneously implies that the Syrian Electronic Army, which posted the image along with several others during its hack of the official US Marines website, was responsible for creating the hoax.
In reality, the image is completely genuine. It was first sent to radio host Angel Clark who posted it on social networking websites, prompting a wave of other veterans and active duty military personnel to follow suit. Former Marine Corporal Michael Büssing labeled the IBTimes article “disgraceful,” pointing out that it didn’t even correctly identify the Naval Officer’s war medals and ludicrously referred to him as a “Navy marine”.
“I looked into the person’s background, and found that they were indeed located in the United States and a part of the Navy. I thanked them for their service, and told them I would make sure their message was heard. It’s against the law to make a political statement in uniform, so this person is risking their livelihood,” writes Angel Clark, who was responsible for circulating the first #Ididntjoin image.
Despite attracting thousands of posts on Twitter, the rest of the mainstream media in the United States has completely ignored the story, which if it received significant attention would undoubtedly put a huge dent in the administration’s case for military intervention.
Last week’s astounding story by Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh, which features admissions by rebels stationed in Ghouta that they were responsible for last month’s chemical weapons attack, has also been completely blacklisted by the corporate media.
View a selection of images below of both active duty and military veterans showing their support for the #IdidntJoin movement.
On Sunday, anti-war protestors protested the anti-war protestor, and with that, as Shakespeare once said, “the wheel is come full circle.”
In the aftermath of Secretary of State John Kerry making a forceful case on Friday for U.S. military intervention in Syria, protesters assembled outside his townhouse on Beacon Hill.
Yes, the Vietnam veteran who became a leading anti-war activist after serving is now advocating for war.
According to Twitter users, as Twitchy reported, protesters pounded on Kerry’s front door and windows, but he wasn’t home. Of course, past precedent tells us if there is a crisis at hand, Kerry’s likely to be found aboard his 76-foot yacht, the “Isabel.”
Some images from Sunday’s protest, courtesy of Twitchy:
Remember that John Kerry is a Skull&Bonesmen of the Brotherhood of Death Cult He could give two shits about the people who died in the Syrian gas attack Its all a big ACT and He is the one who probably ordered the attack as well as head of the State Department it would come under his orders
WAKE UP PEOPLE
to these criminal scumballs who have hijacked the US government
Kerry said the Syrian leader “now joins a list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who’ve used these weapons in a time of war,” a reference to the as of yet unproven accusation that the government of Syria used chemical weapons on its own people. Despite a lack of evidence, Kerry insists “the case gets stronger by the day” for a military attack aimed at al-Assad and his regime.
John Kerry dines with Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry twisted historical fact to fit the Obama administration’s pre-war rhetoric. Hitler and the Nazi Army didn’t use chemical weapons in battle during the Second World War. In fact, Hitler was a victim of a chemical weapon attack. He was gassed at the Ypres Salient in 1918 during the First World War. Hitler was temporarily blinded by a British mustard gas shell. Winston Churchill and the British were great admirers of chemical weapons. “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas,” Churchill wrote in 1919 as then colonial secretary. “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes” in British occupied Iraq.
It is true Saddam Hussein used chemicals weapons. The Reagan administration and the U.S. Department Commerce made sure Iraq received all the biological and chemical weapons it required. Phillips Petroleum, Unilever, Alcolac, Allied Signal, the American Type Culture Collection, and Teledyne sold the materials with the blessing of the United States government. I wrote about this in late 2002 as the Bush administration ran its Iraq weapons of mass destruction scam as a pretext to invade the country, an endeavor that eventually killed more than a million Iraqis (piled atop more than a million previously killed under sanctions) and that ultimately resulted in the execution of the CIA dupe Saddam Hussein.
John Kerry apparently prefers to dine with characters he now disingenuouslycompares to Saddam and Hitler. In 2009, as a member of a peace delegation sent to Syria, then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz, dined with the Assads at the Naranj restaurant in Damascus.
“President Barack Obama’s administration considers Syria a key player in Washington’s efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process, US Senator John Kerry said in Damascus on Thursday. ‘Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region,’ Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a speech after meeting President Bashar al-Assad. ‘Both the United States and Syria have a very deep interest… in having a very frank exchange on any differences (and) agreements that we have about the possibilities of peace in this region,’ he said in the statement.”
Video capture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.
The Kerry meeting is reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Baghdad in December of 1983. Rumsfeld was dispatched to establish “direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,” while emphasizing “his close relationship” with the president. Rumsfeld declared the Reagan administration’s “willingness to do more” regarding the Iran-Iraq war, but “made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights.” A duplicitous remark, at best, considering the CIA’s behavior mentioned above.
Rumsfeld would later, as Secretary of Defense, work with George W. Bush to invade Iraq and make sure Saddam Hussein went to the gallows.
Now the globalists are running the same trick in Syria. Over the course of several years, Syria – like Iraq before it – has gone from “a key player in Washington’s efforts to revive the stalled Middle East peace process” to a rogue nation ruled by a Hitler-like character who mercilessly gasses his own people.
This is hardly unusual – as Saddam Hussein’s fate revealed, the U.S. government routinely turns former friends into Hitleresque enemies for the sake of geopolitical expediency. Kerry’s dinner with Bashar is merely another bizarre sideshow in an ongoing drama that will result in organized mass murder and the untold suffering of millions of innocents – like a few million Libyans last year – after Obama finally unleashes the dogs of war and the hounds “famine, sword and fire” in Syria.
The photos below demonstrate more government duplicity:
Obama meets Muammar Gaddafi a couple years before he had the Libyan leader murdered Mafia style.
Former British Prime Minister Blair was flown to Libya twice at Gaddafi’s expense before the Libyan leader was murdered.
Gaddafi funded French president Sarkozy’s campaign before France joined effort to invade Libya and kill Sarkozy’s benefactor.
President Ronald Reagan met with the Taliban in 1983. He compared them to America’s founding fathers.
Senator John McCain meets with the CIA’s Syrian terrorists.
President Nixon meets the world’s most notorious mass murderer, China’s Chairman Mao.
(above pics) DIFFERENT FACES OF REAL AMERICAN HITLER Type CRIMINALS throughout history smiling and deceiving
A military veteran was arrested by Federal Parks Police in Philadelphia Friday for allegedly playing a banjo in the wrong place during a “No War With Syria” rally.
While performing to fellow protesters under a tree at Independence Mall, Emily Yates, an Iraq combat veteran and organizer with Iraq Veterans Against the War, was approached by several parks police officers and told to leave the area immediately. Yates, confused by the request, repeatedly attempted to engage the officers as to why she was being asked to leave. The officers felt that Yates wasn’t entitled to a response and answered her with a violent arrest instead.
See the video below:
“They’re manhandling me and I haven’t done anything wrong! All I wanted to do was know why I was being asked to leave!” Yates shouted as police forced her arms behind her back. “We live in a police state! We live in a f*cking police state! They’re damaging my body and my personal property! I went to war for this country!”
A defense fund set up by friends of Yates confirmed that she was taken to a Federal Detention Center on unknown charges. A friend and bystander who witnessed the incident unfold from across the street, who had also recently been arrested alongside Adam Kokesh by parks police for protesting, called it “the latest in a series of aggressive and unnecessary arrests by Federal Park Rangers in Philadelphia.”
“The Panic Hour is using all available resources to lend assistance and call attention to this blatant disregard for civil liberties at, of all places, the birthplace of liberty,” said N.A. Poe.
In light of continued scandals and the unfolding situation in Syria, which is now opposed by more than91 percent of the public, people across the country have taken to the streets in protest of President Obama’s disregard for constitutional law. Just last month, two “Impeach Obama” protestors weretackled and arrested for refusing to leave an overpass in Missouri. Officers claimed their first amendment was infringing on the safety of the public.
Unfortunately for the president, a backlash from the military has begun to grow. Viral pictures of military soldiers holding up signs reading “I will not fight for Al Qaeda in Syria” have been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter. Even with a growing number of military and Congress members coming out against a strike, the State Department has reportedly told Fox News that Obama will act regardless.
Friends and family of Yates have been unable to make contact but expect her to see a judge sometime this week.
The New York Times reports that a 50 man cell of “rebels” trained and armed by the CIA and US special forces is to sneak over the border from Jordan into Syria this week to begin fighting government forces there, a move that should prompt concern given that moderate rebel forces are now fully infiltrated by extremist al Qaeda linked terrorists.
The details were revealed in a report detailing a meeting between the president and Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, during which Obama assured them that covert action would be stepped up in an attempt to do more damage to the Syrian army.
Obama told the two that in addition to a limited strike, “we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition.”
The Times reports that “the C.I.A.’s program to arm the rebels would be deliberately limited at first to allow a trial run for American officials to monitor it before ramping up to a larger, more aggressive campaign.”
“There seems to be emerging from this administration a pretty solid plan to upgrade the opposition,” Graham said after the meeting.
Both Graham and McCain now say they are willing to vote to authorize military action by the US on Syria. During a press conference (full video here) McCain stated that a congressional vote against the administration’s request “would be catastrophic in its consequences” for US credibility internationally.
“It is all in the details, but I left the meeting feeling better than I felt before about what happens the day after and that the purpose of the attack is going to be a little more robust than I thought,” Graham said.
McCain has been pushing to arm Syrian rebels for some time, saying this week that it is “shameful” that the US had three months ago promised arms for the opposition, and failed to do so.
The Arizona Senator said in an interview that he had strongly urged the president on Monday to provide anti-tank and antiaircraft systems to the opposition and to attack the Syrian Air Force.
Graham added that he hoped the opposition would be given “a chance to speak directly to the American people” to allay fears that rebel forces are dominated by al Qaeda linked extremists.
“They’re not trying to replace one dictator, Assad, who has been brutal… to only have al-Qaeda run Syria,” Graham said.
However, as we have repeatedly pointed out, this is the exact scenario that is unfolding in Syria, according to intelligence sources and military experts.
The New York Times has reported that “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups.”
Military experts and former intelligence officials are on record as stating that the Syrian fighters who defected from the Assad military in order to protect civilians and innocent protesters have been almost completely sidelined, with all of the US support and logistics going to the Muslim Brotherhood/Salafist-led Syrian Military Council backed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
These Syrian rebels have been responsible for a plethora of atrocities, from terrorist attacks and massacres, to forcing people to become suicide bombers, to attacks on Christian churches and making children carry out grisly beheadings of unarmed prisoners.
“The true FSA has not received any of the support from the international community, instead they have been marginalized, even though they are the majority of the support on the ground.” Officials at intelligence gathering group Stand Up America have noted, citing sources in contact with FSA Commanders.
The bottom line is that the CIA, with the blessing of the Obama administration, is once again training and arming extremists that have pledged to kill Americans.
It isn’t just Internet and phone companies that are giving your personal information to the U.S. government. According to an astounding reportby Bloomberg, “four people familiar with the process” say that “makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies” and a whole host of other sources are handing over your personal data to federal agencies. The truth is that there is so much more to this NSA snooping scandal than the American people know so far. When U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez said that what Edward Snowden had revealed was “just the tip of the iceberg“, she wasn’t kidding. The U.S. government is trying to collect as much information about everyone on the planet as it possibly can. And this incredibly powerful intelligence machine is not going to go away just because a few activists get upset about it. The United States government spendsmore than 80 billion dollars a year on intelligence programs. Those that have spent their careersconstructing this monolithic intelligence apparatus are doing to defend it to the bitter end, as will the corporate partners in the private sector that rake in enormous profits thanks to big fat government contracts. But if the American people don’t stand up and demand change now, it is going to be a signal to those doing the snooping that they can push the envelope even more because nobody is going to stop them.
So why are thousands of companies handing over your personal data to the NSA? Well, according to Bloomberg they are getting things in return…
Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.
These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents’ telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order.
Thanks to the recent revelations by Edward Snowden, much of the focus so far has been on the information that the NSA gets from Internet and telecommunications companies, but apparently government agencies collect information about all of us from a vast array of sources…
Makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies and many other companies also participate in the government programs. In some cases, the information gathered may be used not just to defend the nation but to help infiltrate computersof its adversaries.
Along with the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency (0112917D), the Federal Bureau of Investigation and branches of the U.S. military have agreements with such companies to gather data that might seem innocuous but could be highly useful in the hands of U.S. intelligence or cyber warfare units, according to the people, who have either worked for the government or are in companies that have these accords.
We have become a “surveillance society”, and this is exactly the sort of thing that the Fourth Amendment was supposed to protect us against. The government is only supposed to invade our privacy and investigate us when there is probable cause to do so.
But now the government is trying to collect as much information about all of us as it possibly can even though the vast majority of us will never be charged with any crime.
There seems to be no limit when it comes to how much personal data the government wants to gather on all of us. As I have written about previously, the chief technology officer at the CIA says that they “fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.”
And this does not just apply to American citizens. The U.S. government is compiling data on everyone on the planet. And since such a high percentage of Internet traffic flows through U.S. networks and U.S. companies, that gives the U.S. intelligence community a tremendous “home-field advantage”. The following is from a recent piece authored by Ronald Deibert, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto…
While cyberspace may be global, its infrastructure most definitely is not.
For example, a huge proportion of global Internet traffic flows through networks controlled by the United States, simply because eight of 15 global tier 1 telecommunications companies are American — companies like AT&T, CenturyLink, XO Communications and, significantly, Verizon.
The social media services that many of us take for granted are also mostly provided by giants headquartered in the United States, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and Twitter. All of these companies are subject to U.S. law, including the provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act, no matter where their services are offered or their servers located. Having the world’s Internet traffic routed through the U.S. and having those companies under its jurisdiction give U.S. national security agencies an enormous home-field advantage that few other countries enjoy.
But what is really the point of all of this intelligence gathering?
Is it to make us a little bit safer?
If so, we are making a massive mistake.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote the following: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Are you willing to give up your Fourth Amendment rights in order to feel a little more safe?
I hope not.
The U.S. Constitution never guaranteed us safety. But it is supposed to guarantee our privacy.
Fortunately, it appears that at this point public opinion is very much against all of the snooping that the government has been doing. According to the Guardian, most of the recent surveys that have been done are coming up with very consistent results…
We found 50% of American voters believe the NSA should not be collecting telephone or internet records, compared to the 44% who think they should. The results hold even when respondents were told that the data the government is collecting is “metadata” (and not necessarily actual content of communications).
These results are consistent with a CBS News poll,Fox News poll, and YouGov survey that showed only 38%, 32%, and 35% of Americans respectively approved of phone record collection in order to reduce the chance of a terrorist attack. A Gallup poll was consistent with these, showing only 37% approved monitoring of Americans’ phone and internet use.
And Americans also seem to be very suspicious about what the government will do with our personal data once they have it.
In fact, according to a new Rasmussen survey, 57 percent of Americans believe that the government will use the information that it collects “to harass political opponents”.
And of course many of the recent scandals that have erupted this year involve the government harassing political opponents. We have seen this with the IRS scandal, and we have seen this with the spying on reporters scandal.
Just this week it was reported that CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson has had her computers hacked repeatedly. If you are not familiar with Attkisson, she is the one reporter in the mainstream media that has been relentless when it has come to pursuing the Operation Fast and Furious and Benghazi stories. Now we are learning that a “sophisticated” intruder hacked into her computer “on multiple occasions” in late 2012…
CBS News announced Friday that correspondent Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions,” confirming Attkisson’s previous revelation of the hacking.
CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said that a cybersecurity firm hired by CBS News “has determined through forensic analysis” that “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”
“Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data. This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion. CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”
Meanwhile, in a desperate attempt to deflect attention away from all of these scandals, Barack Obama is starting a war with Syria.
In this war, we are actually going to be helping al-Qaeda rebels that arebeheading Christians to take over Syria.
If you aren’t aware of the deep connection between al-Qaeda and the Syrian rebels, just read the recent USA Today article entitled “Syrian rebels pledge loyalty to al-Qaeda” or any of the dozens of other articles that you can find on the Internet that document this very clearly.
And the sick thing is that a large number of Republicans are actually applauding Barack Obama for teaming up with al-Qaeda.
Has it suddenly become “conservative” to help al-Qaeda?
What in the world is going on?
And you know what?
The truth was that our troops were in position long before Barack Obama made his “stunning announcement” on Thursday. In fact, it hasbeen confirmed that U.S. troops are already in Jordan along the Syrian border.
And could this conflict with Syria actually set the stage for a much larger conflict?
Yes, the Assad government is horrible, but what Obama is doing in Syria is a terrible, terrible mistake.
If the U.S. takes down the Assad government, forces loyal to al-Qaeda and other radical jihadists are going to take over and we will have made Russia and China very angry. If the U.S. is unsuccessful in removing the Assad government, it will be considered a crushing defeat for the United States.
On Friday Rasmussen Reports released a poll finding that nearly 60 percent of Americans think the government will use data illegally collected by the NSA to go after political opponents. It also found that there “is little public support for the sweeping and unaccountable nature of the National Security Agency surveillance program along with concerns about how the data will be used.”
If we accept the validity of this latest poll – or any establishment poll – it would be fair to say most Americans understand that surveillance is not used to protect us from foreign enemies in the fake war on terrorism.
Earlier in the week this is exactly what Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, and the Republican senator from Georgia Saxby Chambliss, told us. Rogers said that converting the United States into a high-tech version of Stasi Germany has resulted in “changes we can already see being made by the folks who wish to do us harm, and our allies harm.” Rogers added that recent revelations by Booz Allen Hamilton analyst Edward Snowden “make it harder to track bad guys trying to harm U.S. citizens in the United States.”
The American people might be opposed to the NSA surveillance program, but there is overwhelming consensus in favor of it in Washington. The Democrat intelligentsia in the Mockingbird media, especially the Obama partisans, have lined up in favor of trampling on the rights of American citizens.
“I’ve been amazed and disappointed for a long time at how the most slavishly partisan media Democrats who pretended to care so much about these issues when doing so helped undermine George Bush are now the loudest apologists and cheerleaders for these very same policies,” Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA story, said on Tuesday. “If they started a club called Liberal Pundits to Defend the National Security State, no auditorium in the country would be large enough to accommodate them.”
This was underscored on Monday when another poll showed that Democrats love the Stasi state. Support for tyranny depends on what side of the establishment party is in the White House. “With President Obama in the White House, Democrats stand in support of the NSA’s methods, 49% to 40% in the Gallupsurvey. Republicans were opposed 63% to 32%. When President George W. Bush was in office, Republicans were supportive of government surveillance efforts and Democrats opposed,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
This is not surprising, writes Justin Raimondo. “Now it is the liberals’ turn to justify the demolition of the Constitution, and especially to give the final push to take down that once-mighty and now greatly eroded bulwark against tyranny, the Bill of Rights. Anyone who is surprised by the alacrity with which they have taken up this task is unfamiliar with the history of American liberalism and the left in general.”
This takes us back to the Rasmussen Reports poll cited above. Most Americans know the surveillance state is used against political enemies, not phantasmal terrorists in caves. They understand that whatever side of the party is in power, it will use surveillance and dirty tricks to undermine the competition. In regard to enemies beyond the walls and out in the political hinterland, it will use the surveillance apparatus like a cudgel to destroy them. History is replete with examples of this from the FBI’s COINTELPRO and the CIA’s Operation CHAOS back to the dawning days of the nation when Federalist John Adams attempted to sabotage the Bill of Rights by signing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 into law. (See Timeline of US Govt. Surveillance and Spying for more information on how the surveillance state has been used to harass and persecute political opponents.)
Rush Limbaugh may say the real danger is Obama, but that is a diversion. In early 2006, Limbaugh characterized illegal surveillance under Bush as “intercepts of the enemy” and said opponents were supporting an “al-Qaeda bill of rights.” Democrats and Republicans will continue to play political football in a larger game shaped by the establishment’s false left-right paradigm. Both support what the NSA is doing and the Stasi state will grow and flourish so long as Democrats and Republicans share power.
We are now very close to witnessing the final extinction of the Bill of Rights. This has been the goal of one-world totalitarians for some time. Over the last few years, we have documented the effort by the globalist intelligentsia – led by globalist operative Fareed Zakaria – to destroy the Constitution.
The NSA spy grid is designed to monitor and undermine the political activity of those of us who want to preserve the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It has absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaeda, a largely imaginary terrorist group that only surfaces in the United States due to a concerted patsy and public propaganda program led by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
NSA spying whistleblower Edward Snowden’s statements have been verified. Reporter Glenn Greenwald has promised numerous additional disclosures from Snowden.
A new article by investigative reporter Christopher Ketcham reveals, a governmental unit operating in secret and with no oversight whatsoever is gathering massive amounts of data on every American and running artificial intelligence software to predict each American’s behavior, including “what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help”.
The same governmental unit is responsible for suspending the Constitution and implementing martial law in the event that anything is deemed by the White House in its sole discretion to constitute a threat to the United States. (this is formally known as implementing “Continuity of Government” plans). [Background here.]
As Ketcham’s article makes clear, these same folks and their predecessors have been been busy dreaming up plans to imprison countless “trouble-making” Americans without trial in case of any real or imagined emergency. What kind of Americans? Ketcham describes it this way:
“Dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protestors, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.”
Do we want the same small group of folks who have the power to suspend the Constitution, implement martial law, and imprison normal citizens to also be gathering information on all Americans and running AI programs to be able to predict where American citizens will go for help and what they will do in case of an emergency? Don’t we want the government to — um, I don’t know — help us in case of an emergency?
Bear in mind that the Pentagon is also running an AI program to see how people will react to propaganda and to government-inflicted terror. The program is called Sentient World Simulation:
“U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of ‘learned helplessness’ in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)
Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.
The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet.”
The continuity of government folks’ AI program and the Pentagon’s AI program may or may not be linked, but they both indicate massive spying and artificial intelligence in order to manipulate the American public, to concentrate power, to take away the liberties and freedoms of average Americans, and — worst of all — to induce chaos in order to achieve these ends.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell’s Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.
With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.
The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.
Known as Aquaint, which stands for “Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence” [which is run by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)], part of the new M Square Research Park in College Park, Maryland. A mammoth two million-square-foot, 128-acre complex, it is operated in collaboration with the University of Maryland. “Their budget is classified, but I understand it’s very well funded,” said Brian Darmody, the University of Maryland’s assistant vice president of research and economic development, referring to IARPA. “They’ll be in their own building here, and they’re going to grow. Their mission is expanding.”
***
In a 2004 pilot project, a mass of data was gathered from news stories taken from theNew York Times, the AP news wire, and the English portion of the Chinese Xinhua news wire covering 1998 to 2000. Then, 13 U.S. military intelligence analysts searched the data and came up with a number of scenarios based on the material. Finally, using those scenarios, an NSA analyst developed 50 topics, and in each of those topics created a series of questions for Aquaint’s computerized brain to answer. “Will the Japanese use force to defend the Senkakus?” was one. “What types of disputes or conflict between the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] and Hong Kong residents have been reported?” was another. And “Who were the participants in this spy ring, and how are they related to each other?” was a third. Since then, the NSA has attempted to build both on the complexity of the system—more essay-like answers rather than yes or no—and on attacking greater volumes of data.
“The technology behaves like a robot, understanding and answering complex questions,” said a former Aquaint researcher. “Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL.” A naturalized U.S. citizen who received her Ph.D. from Columbia, the researcher worked on the program for several years but eventually left due to moral concerns. “The system can answer the question, ‘What does X think about Y?’” she said. “Working for the government is great, but I don’t like looking into other people’s secrets.
A supersmart search engine, capable of answering complex questions such as “What were the major issues in the last 10 presidential elections?” would be very useful for the public. But that same capability in the hands of an agency like the NSA—absolutely secret, often above the law, resistant to oversight, and with access to petabytes of private information about Americans—could be a privacy and civil liberties nightmare. “We must not forget that the ultimate goal is to transfer research results into operational use,” said Aquaint project leader John Prange, in charge of information exploitation for IARPA.
Once up and running, the database of old newspapers could quickly be expanded to include an inland sea of personal information scooped up by the agency’s warrantless data suction hoses. Unregulated, they could ask it to determine which Americans might likely pose a security risk—or have sympathies toward a particular cause, such as the antiwar movement, as was done during the 1960s and 1970s. The Aquaint robospy might then base its decision on the type of books a person purchased online, or chat room talk, or websites visited—or a similar combination of data. Such a system would have an enormous chilling effect on everyone’s everyday activities—what will the Aquaint computer think if I buy this book, or go to that website, or make this comment? Will I be suspected of being a terrorist or a spy or a subversive?
World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein reported earlier this month:
In February, the Sydney Morning Herald reported the Massachusetts-based multinational corporation, Raytheon – the world’s fifth largest defense contractor – had developed a “Google for Spies” operation.
Herald reporter Ryan Gallagher wrote that Raytheon had “secretly developed software capable of tracking people’s movements and predicting future behavior by mining data from social networking websites” like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.
The software is called RIOT, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology.
Raytheon told the Herald it has not sold RIOT to any clients but admitted that, in 2010, it had shared the program’s software technology with the U.S. government as part of a “joint research and development effort … to help build a national security system capable of analyzing ‘trillions of entities’ from cyberspace.”
In April, RIOT was reportedly showcased at a U.S. government and industry national security conference for secretive, classified innovations, where it was listed under the category “big data – analytics, algorithms.”
Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project,argued … that among the many problems with government large-scale analytics of social network information “is the prospect that government agencies will blunderingly use these techniques to tag, target and watchlist people coughed up by programs such as RIOT, or to target them for further invasions of privacy based on incorrect inferences.”
“The chilling effects of such activities,” he concluded, “while perhaps gradual, would be tremendous.”
Ginger McCall, attorney and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Open Government program, told NBC in February, “This sort of software allows the government to surveil everyone.
“It scoops up a bunch of information about totally innocent people. There seems to be no legitimate reason to get this, other than that they can.”
As for RIOT’s ability to help catch terrorists, McCall called it “a lot of white noise.” [True … Big data doesn’t work to keep us safe.]
The London Guardian further obtained a four-minute video that shows how the RIOT software uses photographs on social networks. The images, sometimes containing latitude and longitude details, are “automatically embedded by smartphones within so-called ‘exif header data.’
RIOT pulls out this information, analyzing not only the photographs posted by individuals, but also the location where these images were taken,” the Guardian reported. Such sweeping data collection and analysis to predict future activity may further explain some of what the government is doing with the phone records of millions of Verizon customers. [Background here.]
***
“In the increasingly popular language of network theory, individuals are “nodes,” and relationships and interactions form the “links” binding them together; by mapping those connections, network scientists try to expose patterns that might not otherwise be apparent,” reported the Times.[Background here.]
In February 2006, more than a year after Obama was sworn as a U.S. senator, it was revealed the “supposedly defunct” Total Information Awareness data-mining and profiling program had been acquired by the NSA.
The Total Information Awareness program was first announced in 2002 as an early effort to mine large volumes of data for hidden connections.
Aaron Klein reported last week that Snowden might have worked at the NSA’s artificial intelligence unit at the University of Maryland:
Edward Snowden, the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations, told the London Guardian newspaper that he previously worked as a security guard for what the publication carefully described as “one of the agency’s covert facilities at the University of Maryland.”
***
Brian Ullmann, the university’s assistant vice president for marketing and communications, was asked for comment. He would not address the query, posed twice to his department by KleinOnline, about whether the NSA operates covert facilities in conjunction with the university.
Ullmann’s only comment was to affirm that Snowden was employed as a security guard at the university’s Center for the Advanced Study of Languages in 2005.
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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
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