Unless derailed soon, 
the evil War Machine will destroy our world. . .

Potential US War on Syria based on a Snuff Movie
By Finian Cunningham
The American war footing towards Syria plumbs a new diabolical depth. Continue

Not only is it an act of criminal aggression against an innocent country – the supreme crime according to Nuremberg Principles – but that transgression would itself be based on another vile crime – the deliberate killing of children for propaganda purposes.

The notorious videos purporting to show the half-clothed bodies of dozens of lifeless Syrian children are the central component of US claims for launching a war against Syria. 

Suspiciously, this footage gained wide circulation on the internet and on international television news bulletins within hours of the alleged toxic gas attack on 21 August near Damascus.

Now it appears that those videos are part of an elaborate, diabolical fabrication, the circumstances of which are very different from what they are meant to assign.

Nobody is questioning the fact that the children are dead. But what transpires is that the children seem to have been murdered by some form of intoxication and that their deaths were then recorded by their killers – with the calculated intention of producing a propaganda video.

That propaganda purports to blame the Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons causing massive civilian casualties. That in turn is aimed at provoking outrage among world public opinion, which would underpin US military intervention on the basis of President Obama’s so-called red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

In other words, the world is being pushed into acquiescing to a US-led criminal war on Syria based on a vile “snuff movie.”

In the world of vice, there can be few acts more criminal and morally depraved than that of making snuff movies. This illegal genre of film is where some unwitting victim is murdered on screen for the perverse gratification of those behind the camera and the eventual underground audience who indulge in such odious entertainment…

On close examination of the alleged gas attack videos that came out of Syria on 21 August, the blunt assessment is that the footage is nothing less than a snuff movie.

This is the shocking conclusion from an independent study carried out by Syrian Christian leader Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib.
 
Under the auspices of the Geneva-based International Institute of Peace, Justice and Human Rights, the study concludes that the infamous gas-attack videos showing dead children is a fabrication. That is, the children were not killed, as alleged, by Syrian government forces firing chemical weapons on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus…

Mother Agnes and her co-authors have submitted their findings to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva. 

But, tellingly, the report, which was published earlier this week, has received negligible coverage in the Western mainstream media…

It also appears that the children are not from the location of Ghouta. It is believed that many of them were abducted by the foreign-backed militants during raids on pro-government villages in the Latakia area of northwest Syria during the weeks prior to 21 August.

That confers on the crime in Ghouta on 21 August the most hideous proportions. For what is deduced is that dozens of children were abducted for the fate of cold-blooded murder, to be videoed with the purpose of fabricating a crime falsely attributed to others for propaganda effect – propaganda to precipitate a war…

When we look at the choreographed way in which the US government and its Western allies have reacted to the incident and the videos, it is suggestive of collusion at some level. 

Several reports have tied the involvement of Saudi, Turk and Israeli intelligence with the supply of toxic chemicals to the foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria for the Western agenda of regime change against the government of President Assad. These intelligence agencies are closely aligned with those of the US, Britain and France…

…US-led wars in the past have notoriously relied on false flags and pretexts, such as the sinking of the USS Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and 9/11. But if the US commits to war on Syria, its lawlessness will have reached a new low. In that event, it will be a war of aggression based on a snuff movie.

Were Videos Depicting Victims Of Sarin Attack Faked?
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
One nun puts entire US intel community to shame over 'stage-managed' Syria footage. Continue

Sarin Gas Missiles 'Were NOT Sold to Syria'
By Robert Fisk
Export papers seem to back Assad's denial over sarin attack. New "evidence" about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold. Continue

…They were apparently manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1967 and sold by Moscow to three Arab countries, Yemen, Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya…

Since Gaddafi's fall in 2011, vast quantities of his abandoned Soviet-made arms have fallen into the hands of rebel groups and al-Qa'ida-affiliated insurgents. Many were later found in Mali, some in Algeria and a vast amount in Sinai. The Syrians have long claimed that a substantial amount of Soviet-made weaponry has made its way from Libya into the hands of rebels in the country's civil war with the help of Qatar – which supported the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi and now pays for arms shipments to Syrian insurgents…

…grave doubts are being expressed by the UN and other international organisations in Damascus that the sarin gas missiles were fired by Assad's army. While these international employees cannot be identified, some of them were in Damascus on 21 August and asked a series of questions to which no one has yet supplied an answer. 

Why, for example, would Syria wait until the UN inspectors were ensconced in Damascus on 18 August before using sarin gas little more than two days later – and only four miles from the hotel in which the UN had just checked in?...

When at least 26 Syrians died of sarin poisoning in Khan al-Assal on 19 March – one of the reasons why the UN inspectors were dispatched to Syria last month – Moscow again accused the rebels of responsibility. The Russians later presented the UN with a 100-page report containing its "evidence"…

…Syrian journalist said last week, "but we are sure the rebels have got sarin. They would need foreigners to teach them how to fire it. Or is there a 'third force' which we don't know about? If the West needed an excuse to attack Syria, they got it right on time, in the right place, and in front of the UN inspectors."



Chemicals to Syrian Militants May Have Come From al-Qaeda: Court Document
By CBS News
A former FBI operative has said that al-Qaeda militants linked to al-Shabab in Somalia have managed to develop chemical weapons. Continue

Lavrov: US Pressuring Russia into Passing UN Resolution on Syria Allowing Military Force
By RT
“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State John Kerry',” Continue

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

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

According to Lavrov, some experts alleged that “someone is attempting to create a guided chaos” in the region for their own benefits…

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

Earlier in September, Moscow said it would submit data to the UNSC proving that the chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb were used by the rebels. …

A UN experts team, who investigated the August 21 attack in Syria, presented a report on their findings, in which they described the ammunition and substances they discovered on the scene, but made no conclusions regarding who was behind the incident. However, the US, along with Britain and France, moved quickly to repeat their accusations against the Syrian government.  

“Such an approach is neither scientific, nor professional but rather politicized and ideology-driven,” the Russian foreign minister stressed…

He reiterated that there is also evidence by eyewitnesses, including nuns from the Christian monastery close to the scene of the deadly attack, and journalists who visited the area. 

Reporters, Lavrov said, talked to militants who told them that they “received from abroad munitions that they had never seen before and did not know how to use them, but they used them in the end.” There was also an open letter by the Pentagon and CIA veterans to President Obama, where they say that the rebels could have used chemical weapons. 

Moscow expects the UN experts to go back to Syria to finish their investigation there, which should include three other incidents later in August when the Syrian army was attacked with poisonous gas, Lavrov said…



Syria: Al-Qaeda as the black operations wing of the US
By John Robles
If the US Government were really engaged in a war on terror they would be providing support for the government of Bashar Al-Assad and cutting all ties with the Saudis.  Continue

The “Indispensable Nation” Threatens Another War Against Children

By Felicity Arbuthnot

 

“I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”  - Howard Zinn, (1922-2010). 

September 18, 2013 Information Clearing House -  

Oh dear. It’s the Hitler thing again. 

Considering the barely imaginable oceans of dollars US war departments spend on selling their newest illegal, manufactured war of aggression, they certainly spend little on wordsmiths. 

In the UK the literacy level of the military has been lowered to seven years old. The juvenile limitation has clearly spread to their US allies massacre-marketing teams.

In justifying the blitz on the population of the former Yugoslavia in 1999, President Bill Clinton, comparing President Slobodan Milosevic to Hitler, said: “What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Hitler earlier? How many lives would have been saved … how many American lives might have been saved?”

In December 2002 on the eve of a NATO summit, George W. Bush addressed students and: “ … compared the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.

“We face … perils we’ve never seen before. They’re just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced.”

And in words near identical to those being currently showered towards Syria’s President Assad, he demanded that Saddam: “declare completely and truthfully his arsenal of terror”, and threatened serious consequences if he failed to meet the December 8 deadline to disclose his weapons of mass destruction.

“Deception this time will not be tolerated; delay and defiance will invite the severest of consequences”, Mr Bush told the students. (i)

Saddam Hussein’s Administration, of course, delivered a 12,000-plus page document on what was no longer possessed to the UN weapons Inspectors in New York, which was instantly stolen by the US delegation to the UN, near decimated and never heard of again.(ii) The subsequent destruction of Iraq is history. Syria needs to be very careful indeed.

For Libya”s Colonel Gaddafi, it was a defecting Minister, Mustapha Abdeljalil who pulled the Hitler card (his alleged Western airline ticket funders must have taught him well) who told Sweden’s Expressen. “Gaddafi’s time is up. He is going to go like Hitler, he is going to commit suicide”, the Hitler comparison was enthusiastically picked up across the world’s mainstream media.

However he did add that Gaddafi would to make good on his pledge to die on Libyan soil rather than opt for exile. As vowed by Saddam Hussein, and as has pledged President Assad. A courage their detractors – baying from the safety of thousands of miles from the killing fields they ferment – fail to exhibit.

On 2nd September, Secretary of State John Kerry compared President Assad to both Hitler and Saddam Hussein. By 7th September, speaking in Paris, apparently emboldened by a “may be”, “sort of”, “perhaps”, backing from President Hollande, Kerry lost the plot, describing Syria as: ‘ “our Munich moment”, comparing possible military intervention to the 1938 Munich Agreement, which ceded control of part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany.’ (BBC, 7th September.)

Did any of his perhaps year seven level advisers inform him that Syria’s population is just 22.4 million, over a third – 33.9% – are aged just 0-14 and that the median age 22.7.

At the time of the attack on Iraq, America’s last imperial Middle East slaughter, broadly half the population of then just 27 million was under fifteen or sixteen, figures vary.

When they moved on to Africa and Libya, they also attacked a country where nearly a third of the miniscule population of just five and a half million, was 0-14 and the median age was 24.7. 

In context, the population of the global bully on the block is 315 million, with a median age of 37 – old enough to know better.

Did Kerry think up the farcical Munich nonsense all on his own? Or perhaps he is trying to out-do his assassination addicted predecessor Hillary Clinton who laughed as she said of Quaddafi’s appalling, US-NATO-implicated lynching: “We came, we saw, he died.”

According to a detailed article (iii) Kerry does have killer credentials.  

During his time in Vietnam as a Swift boat operative:

“Day after day, night after night, the Swift boats plied the waters, harassing and often killing villagers, fishermen and farmers. In this program, aimed at intimidating the peasants into submission, Kerry was notoriously zealous. One of his fellow lieutenants, James R. Wasser, described him admiringly: ‘Kerry was an extremely aggressive officer and so was I. I liked that he took the fight to the enemy … not afraid to spill blood for his country.’ “

In an incident involving the: “kidnapping of two villagers (one of them a young woman) from their hut, they’d seen four people in a sampan and promptly killed them. 

The two prisoners were ‘body-snatched’ as part of a regular schedule of such seizures, the victims would be taken to (a detention centre holding 30,000 people) for interrogation and torture.” 

Shades of Abu Ghraib.

“Kerry’s term … for such outings – and there were many in his brief time in Vietnam – is ‘accidental atrocities’.”

In “Operation Sea Lords”, patrolling the canals and streams of the Mekong Delta:

“The basic plan: “was to terrorize the peasants … the entire area … was a free fire zone, meaning the Americans could shoot at will and count anyone they killed as (the enemy.)”

In America’s assaults on the international community, by land, waterway, missile or drone, nothing changes.

Further, in 1970 the Senate reported: “The US has dumped on Vietnam a quantity of toxic chemical (dioxin) amounting to six pounds per head of population” in ‘Operation Hades’, the source of what Vietnamese doctors call a “cycle of foetal catastrophe”, resulting in ongoing generations of children with monstrous deformities. 

In the manual of sick names for US “Operations”, “Hades” must come high in obscenity ratings.

Between 1962 and 1971 the U.S. Military Dumped 20 Million Gallons of Chemicals on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.(iv) 

According to the Mines Advisory Group, Laos (population at the time less than 3 million) was bombed with 3 million tons of chemicals and ordnance. Over a million tons a head.

For eight years of this chemical carnage (1969-1977) Henry Kissinger, the man now “mentoring” John Kerry on Syria’s alleged chemical weapons, was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.  

Even the usually restrained (London) Independent commented on: “ … a 90-year-old ‘war criminal’ helping to frame” the Syria policy of the Obama administration. (13th September.) In the circumstances, “to frame” should surely be regarded in the criminal context, ie., to set up someone for a crime they did not commit.

In context, in  “ … several serious studies of Syria’s weapons program, have been done over the past few years by American and other experts. As a study published by the European Union’s non-proliferation consortium in July 2012, concluded, ‘Syria’s chemical weapons are not tactical or battlefield weapons, but rather a strategic deterrence against Israel’s conventional superiority and its nuclear weapons arsenal.’ “(v)

Further: “A newly-discovered document of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency revealed on Monday by Foreign Policy magazine shows that the U.S. agency had decisive evidence dating back to at least the 1980s that Israel had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.”

Israel has:  “never ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. Israel has never opened its nuclear facility or its chemical weapons stockpile to international inspections.”(vi)

Moreover, the Conservative Center for Arms Control and Proliferation has issued its 2013 report on Global Nuclear Weapons Inventory. It relies on US intelligence for its report on Israel because Israel uses the identical “don’t confirm, don’t deny” policy the US denounced with menaces, when Syria used it:

“Israel’s policy of opacity regarding its nuclear program means that it has never revealed any details of its nuclear program, or even acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons.

U.S. intelligence believes that Israel possesses an estimated stockpile of 80 nuclear warheads. However, they are believed to possess sufficient fissile material to increase that total to 200, should they desire.”

It also counts Israel and Egypt as the only military allies of the US among  “A relatively small number of countries … still suspected of harboring offensive biological and chemical weapons programs at various stages of development.”

The Center also ignores the delays in eliminating US stockpiles and its opposition to inspections.(vii) The United States is cited as having 5,449 metric tons in its chemical weapons arsenal, which due to the acute hazards of disposal, will not have the relevant disposal facilities in place until 2021.(Japan Times, 12th September 2013.).

Of Syria of course, it is demanded that their alleged stocks are disposed of in just months, whilst a ruthless and vicious insurgency rages – funded by the demanders – or face an Iraq, Libya or Balkans type decimation.

Also, according to a Russian Report, the US is  “undertaking research on smallpox, which is prohibited by the World Health Organization” and is accused of undertaking biological weapons research, in possible contravention of Article 1 of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. (viii)

Double standards rule supreme.

Kerry , of course, talked of  the need for “credible” and “quick” investigations of Chemical Weapons in Syria. The inspectors went to just one site, hopelessly time limited by being pulled out early. The arm twisting can only be imagined. We have been here before. 

As Scott Ritter, former lead weapons inspector in Iraq commented of the December 1998 Iraq bombings, justified by more lies and false pretext: “The U.S. has perverted the U.N. weapons process by using it as a tool to justify military actions, falsely so. … The U.S. was using the inspection process as a trigger for war.” (NBC Today show, December 17, 1998.)

Syria has surely noted that: “The U.S. team includes officials who worked on inspection and removal of unconventional weapons from Libya after 2003 and in Iraq after the first Gulf War.” Both were disarmed. Both became destroyed sitting ducks.

Remembering the theft of Iraq’s accounting of their weapons, or non weapons, Syria’s UN delegation will surely need no reminder to make the handing over of theirs very public – and retain plenty of copies.

Ironically, in December 2003, Syria tabled a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a biological and chemical weapons free Middle East. When the US threatened to veto it, it was consigned to the trash bin.

Oh, the hypocrisy. 

As Stephen Zunes has written in an aptly entitled article, The US and Chemical Weapons: No Leg to Stand On: “U.S. policy regarding chemical weapons has been so inconsistent and politicized that the United States is in no position to take leadership in response to any use of such weaponry by Syria.”(x)

Notes

i. http://rense.com/general32/asd.htm

ii. http://baltimorechronicle.com/media_ommisions_jan03.shtml

iii. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/26/what-john-kerry-really-did-in-vietnam/

iv. http://www.globalresearch.ca/ten-chemical-weapons-attacks-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-talk-about/5348230

v. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-lando/question-why-did-syria-wa_b_3886424.html

vi http://www.imemc.org/article/66095 

vii. http://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/nuclearweapons/articles/fact_sheet_globa.l_nuclear_weapons_inventories_in_2012/ 

viii. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cbwprolif

ix. http://www.mail.com/int/news/us/2328190-kerry-set-to-test-russia-syria-weapons.html#.1258-stage-hero1-8

x. http://fpif.org/the_us_and_chemical_weapons_no_leg_to_stand_on/ 

Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research

Talented Mr Kerry Backslides on Russian Deal over Syrian Chemicals
By Finian Cunningham
The obvious point is that US Secretary of State John Kerry is not a man whose word can be trusted. Continue

New York Times on Syria: All The Propaganda Fit to Print
By Bill Van Auken
The story’s headline, “UN implicates Syria in using chemical weapons,” is a cynical distortion of reality tailored to meet the needs of the US government for war propaganda. Continue

US Sanctions Are Genocidal : Fmr US Attorney General
Video
Former US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, discussing Iraq before the first Gulf War and his opinions on Syria. Continue

Syria claims rebels behind chemical weapon attack, gives evidence to Russia: Evidence supporting the claim has been given to Russia, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday.

 

Russia claims chemical attack in Syria provocation, calls for investigation: “There is a wide variety of evidence that a large-scale provocation was organised in Ghouta on August 21 in order to encourage foreign military intervention in the Syrian conflict,” Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations said 

Turkey confirms Syrian rebels with Al Qaida ties sought chemical weapons: This marked the first time that Turkey confirmed claims by Russia and Syria that Al Qaida-aligned rebel militias were acquiring CW precursors for attacks against the Syrian Army and security forces.

Russia demands ‘immediate return’ of UN inspectors to Syria: Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the UN inspection mission should also investigate “the incident on March 19 near Aleppo as well as incidents of intoxication of Syrian government troops on August 22 and 24-25.”  

  

Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition: President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups.

George Galloway Vs Neville-Jones
Dealing With The Prestitutes: Syria and Chemical Weapons
Video - BBC
George Galloway and Conservative peer Baroness Neville-Jones debated the role of the Russians and claims about who used chemical weapons in Syria. Continue

Why what the mainstream news media keeps telling us about Syria, and everything else, "it ain't necessarily so"~

The CIA, the Press and Black Propaganda
The All-powerful Cult of Death That Rules America

By Doug Valentine

"...Despite the popular portrayal of the CIA as patriotic guys and girls risking everything to do a dirty job, the typical CIA officer is a sociopath..."

... Eric Schmidt at The New York Times reported over a year ago that CIA officers in Turkey were “helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms.”...

Simply stated, black propaganda is one of many criminal but legally deniable things the CIA does.  It often involves committing a heinous crime and blaming it on an enemy by planting false evidence, and then getting a foreign newspaper to print the CIA’s scripted version of events, which sympathetic journalists in America broadcast to the gullible public.

In the case of Syria, the CIA is using cooked Israeli “intelligence” as a catalyst – which is why...the “intelligence” is so “dubious.”...

In his autobiography Soldier, Anthony Herbert told how he reported for duty in 1965 in Saigon at the joint CIA-military Specials Operations Group.  The spooks asked him to join a secret psywar program. “What they wanted me to do was to take charge of execution teams that wiped out entire families and tried to make it look as though the VC themselves had done the killing..." 

...In other words the CIA’s mercenaries (like some the CIA’s mercenaries in Syria) were provocateurs, setting people up for recriminations, for intelligence and publicity purposes...

General Ed Lansdale formalized CIA black propaganda practices in the early 1950s in the Philippines.  To vilify the Communists and win support of Americans, one of his Filipino commando units would dress as rebels and commit atrocities on civilians, and then another unit would magically arrive with cameras to record the staged scenes and chase the “terrorists” away.   Cameras were the key.

The CIA also concocted lurid tales of Vietminh soldiers’ disemboweling pregnant Catholic women, castrating priests, and sticking bamboo slivers in the ears of children so they could not hear the Word of God.  Lansdale’s henchman, CIA agent-cum-journalist Joseph Alsop, gleefully reported this black propaganda.

The American “press” is the vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X in black propaganda.  When it comes to the CIA and the American press, one black hand washes the other.  To gain access to CIA officials, reporters suppress or distort stories.  They sell their black souls for scoops.  In return, CIA officials leak stories to them.  

At its most incestuous, reporters and CIA officers are blood relatives.  

At one point, The New York Times correspondent in Vietnam, James Lemoyne, just happened to be the brother of the CIA’s counter-terror team chief in the Delta, Navy Commander Charles Lemoyne.

In a democratic society the media ought to investigate and report objectively on the government, which is under no obligation to inform the public of its activities and which, when it does, puts a “spin” on the news.  

As part of the Faustian Pact, when government activities are conducted in secret, illegally, reporters look away rather than jeopardize profitable relationships.  The intended result is that the unwitting public is robbed of its freedom of speech – for how can you speak freely if you don’t know what’s going on?...

Likewise, Judith Miller, disgraced facilitator of the war on Iraq and rehabilitated Fox KKK-TV correspondent, brought you the Iraq War through false documents provided by CIA analysts.

We rarely know who the Alsops and Millers are in our midst, until after the fact.  The CIA has a strict policy of keeping its atrocities to itself.  And it is aided, in its eternal quest to deceive the American public, by the fact that black propaganda validates the beliefs of the Kevin Dumbs among us, as it assures their imagined security and sense of being exceptional.

In fact, black propaganda operations, and the CIA itself, are antithetical to democratic institutions...

The most dangerous facet of having former CIA officers slithering around is their uniform message that the CIA is necessary. These are not Phil Agees, revealing the ugly truth and calling for the CIA’s abolition. 

Like all the CIA’s political and psychological warfare experts, they are at the forefront of the war on terror, using psywar to achieve the goals of the Cult of Death that rules America.  The result is a theatre of the absurd, a world of illusion.

Now we are told that the CIA Syrian mercenaries may launch a chemical attack on Israel from government-controlled territories as a “major provocation.” 

What you can be sure of is that some provocation will be launched and that the press, including most of the Left, will cover it up.

Doug Valentine is the author of five books, including The Phoenix Program.  See www.douglasvalentine.com

This article was originally published at Counterpunch

Russia: Western Threats Could "Wreck" Syria Peace Talks
By AFP
Lavrov said Russia opposed proposals by Western powers to swiftly pass a resolution including the use of force under Chapter Seven of the UN charter. Continue

Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?
By Robert Parry
The likely explanation is that U.S. intelligence agencies have indications that at least some rebel groups possess CW and may have used it in the past. Continue

 

Obama, Don't Play Chess With KGB
By Eric Margolis
Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize should be rescinded and given, instead, to Vladimir Putin. Continue

Canada: Hypocrites ‘R Us
By Yves Engler
To have any credibility a country preaching against the use of chemical weapons must be able to declare: “Do as I do.” Continue

  

Preempting The Next Round of Lies Against Syria
By Tony Cartalucci
What the UN report on Syria will say and what the liars will claim it says.   Continue

Liar-in-Chief
By Paul Street
People who command glass houses of a sociopathic, mass-murderous empire should not expect to be taken seriously when throwing “humanitarian” stones at other butchers. Continue

Why Russia Is Defending International Law
By Finn Andreen
Russia adopts this position not because of a high moral standard but out of necessity. There are two reasons for this. Continue

How War on Syria Lost Its Way
By Ray McGovern
The U.S.-Russia agreement in Geneva on Syrian chemical weapons (CW) program sounds the death knell to an attempt by Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to get the U.S. into the war in Syria. Continue

You Can Beat City Hall: How
We Stopped the U.S. Bombing of Syria
By Robert Naiman
More than anything else, engagement with Congress stopped the bombing. Continue

The warmongers have been delayed in their imperial plans, thanks to worldwide public opposition, and Russian President Putin, but they have not yet been stopped...

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It's not over yet! Send a letter right now to Congress and President Obama: "I oppose any new war resolution against Syria" March at the Capitol, September 7 Because of the dedication and tireless work of volunteers, organizers and activists, who were supported by those who made generous donations, the grassroots anti-war opposition scored a major victory when it forced President Obama to go on national TV and announce that he was pulling back from an imminent war with Syria. Members of Congress reported that they were receiving phone calls, emails and faxes that said Vote NO by a margin of 100 to 1. Wherever they went, the politicians were being confronted by people at town hall meetings and organized demonstrations. Even when they went into stores and public shopping areas, they were directly challenged by people who opposed a new war in the Middle East. This was and is a historical moment. It is exceptionally rare that the intervention of an anti-war, grassroots opposition forces the war makers to put the brakes on. This anti-war victory, however, can still be reversed. It is critical that people continue to put pressure on the government. The right-wing militarists in Congress are crafting a new resolution with the White House that would authorize the president to initiate the bombing of Syria if he decides that Syria hasn’t fully complied with UN resolutions. That was precisely the kind of language Congress adopted in 2002 that gave George W. Bush a blank check to launch the bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003. Send an email right now to Congress and to President Obama telling them that you and the vast majority of the people demand that they listen to the people who oppose a new war against Syria. Tell President Obama that you vote NO to war against Syria, and tell Congress to Vote NO to any resolution that authorizes a new war against Syria. Please help amplify this message right now with your generous donation to the anti-war movement. P.S. Also, please make sure to read the analysis by Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, “Understanding the new stage of the Syria Crisis,” which was written on Sept. 10 prior to the president’s speech.

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Understanding the new stage of the Syria Crisis

By Brian Becker, National Coordinator, ANSWER Coalition

Has the United States stepped back from the edge of the precipice?  Has the catastrophe been averted?

The U.S. war threat against Syria has not ended. But the particular path to war has required a shift because of resounding domestic and global opposition.

The U.S. Congress will now be asked to pass a different resolution than the one originally supported by the White House. The new resolution will be constructed to authorize Obama to carry out military strikes if the U.S. government decides that Syria is not in full compliance with a new UN resolution calling for its chemical weapons stockpiles to be totally destroyed.

This was precisely the scenario used by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney when they launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Even though the Iraqi government complied with UN weapons inspections demands and was actively disarming its own military forces, Bush simply declared that Saddam Hussein was not complying with UN resolutions and launched the U.S. war that toppled the government.

In Syria, like with Iraq, Libya and Iran for the past decades, the U.S. government goal of toppling independent, nationalist governments uses an assortment of tactics, including economic and financial sanctions, funding and arming internal domestic opposition, providing international legitimacy and recognition to the internal opposition, cyber attacks, and in some cases direct bombings and invasion.

Progressive and anti-colonial people should reject and oppose not simply one tactic like direct bombing but rather expose all forms of imperial domination against targeted countries.

In the case of Syria today, any push back or delay of the U.S. bombing of Syria is of extreme importance for the people of Syria. But it is certainly not the end of the struggle.

Russia’s proposal in context

The Russian government has offered a face-saving proposal to President Obama that is seen as a “way out” of the wildly unpopular U.S. bombing campaign against Syria.

It seemed likely that President Obama’s war resolution was going to fail in the House of Representatives and even possibly in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The people of the United States, in vast numbers, oppose the planned war against Syria even as the president and Secretary of State have tried to win them over by assuring them that only Syrians will bleed, which is the actual political meaning of the oft-repeated phrase “no boots on the ground.”

Although no details are yet available, the Russian proposal was immediately agreed to by Syria. The gist of the proposal is to put Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile under the control of the United Nations for their eventual elimination.

Syria said it agreed to the Russian proposal as a way “to uproot U.S. aggression.” Syria has denied that it used chemical weapons on August 21 and suggested that the attack was a staged provocation by those who are seeking to draw in U.S. intervention to topple the regime.

UN as a double-edged sword

There will undoubtedly be another UN proposal put forward that also includes language asserting that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical weapons attack and those responsible for the attack must “be held accountable.” This would lead to the possible indictment and arrest of Assad for war crimes. This is a tack that the imperialists have used in several countries where the government is targeted for regime change by U.S. policy makers.

Such a poison-pill resolution would be unlikely to be accepted by Syria. Hopefully, Russia and China would also openly reject such a resolution, which is designed to lay the basis for open imperialist aggression.

The origins of Obama’s political crisis

Despite global and domestic opposition to the planned bombing campaign, Obama had continued his transition during the past weeks into the camp of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and his neo-con Secretary of State. This was the camp that had argued for direct military intervention because Assad could not be toppled through the civil war.

For the last two years, Obama supported the regime change plan through the agency of a foreign-funded civil war. His CIA, working in Jordan, coordinated the massive shipments of weapons to armed groups that were fighting the Syrian government. They used proxies and partners like Saudi Arabia as the source of the weapons, but it was the Obama administration’s strategy. The weapons go to the Free Syrian Army and other armed groups.

The commanders of the Free Syrian Army are on the CIA payroll, as was reported by Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Entous on Democracy Now. (Sept. 6, 2013)

The announcement of the alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians on August 21 was the pretext used by the interventionists to start the direct military war against Syria.

But from the beginning, the adventure ran into huge hurdles. Substantial sectors of the ruling class and Pentagon brass were unconvinced that another war would not be a disaster for U.S. interests in this oil-rich region. They were afraid that global opposition to the U.S. Empire could reignite and spread, as it had under George W. Bush.

Broadly speaking, public opinion in the United States was opposed to another war.

The whole case was riddled with obvious inconsistencies. They could offer no proof of their claim that Assad ordered the attack. They could cite no law that allowed the U.S. to wage a new aggression. They couldn’t openly identify what the real goal of the military operation was. But Obama , feeling politically trapped, pushed ahead toward the precipice.

Even on September 8,  Obama sent his representatives out to the Sunday morning talk shows arguing for war even as they admitted that they had “no irrefutable” proof that Assad had ordered a chemical weapons attack and that their justification was only based on what they called a “common sense test.” That means they have no proof at all.

Obama was ready to blaze away with cruise missiles and bombs against another small country in the Middle East. His feckless, super rich, blue blood Secretary of State was telling the American people not to worry about the coming catastrophe because the Saudi monarchy was standing solidly behind his efforts. When your Secretary of State loudly and proudly proclaims that he has secured the support of the arch-reactionary autocrats in Saudi Arabia, that has to be understood as sign that your war policy is sinking.

Obama, faced with the current circumstances, has been forced to step back, but there will undoubtedly be a Plan B developed using other mechanisms to intensify the war.

Any step back from an imminent bombing of Syria and the certain wider war that would follow should be understood as a result of the global opposition to the planned bombing campaign and the deep division about its possible catastrophic impact on U.S. interests in the Middle East from within the summits of the economic and political establishment.

Syria and Iran have made it clear that if the U.S. undertakes this aggression there will be counter-measures taken. Once such a war is started, it is impossible to know how it ends.

Rather than relying on the United Nations to do the right thing, the most important aspect of the next stage of the struggle against the U.S. imperialist regime change efforts in Syria is for the people of the world to continue to organize all forms of public pressure in favor of a genuine peace that allows the Syrian people the right to determine their own destiny free from threats, sanctions, subversion and war.

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President Obama conceded that his proposal to bomb Syria is unpopular and can’t get through Congress. That was your doing. Members of the House and Senate heard our message loud and clear.

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The U.S. public has seen through the illogic of claiming to uphold “international norms” by bombing another country. But top officials in Washington haven’t given up on launching some version of “shock and awe” at Damascus and other parts of Syria.

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