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The International Translation Team of AE911Truth Speaks Out - Japanese

2012-05-31T05:47:00.003-04:00

Attack on Assange: 'Whistleblowers warned as war criminals walk free'

2012-05-31T05:47:00.001-04:00

Mental Health Movement Resists Chicago Austerity Measures

2012-05-31T05:46:00.001-04:00

Bill Black: Uninvited for "Bank Bashing"

2012-05-30T20:13:00.001-04:00

MSM: Birtherism Trumps Yemen; Kill List

2012-05-30T20:12:00.001-04:00

The Face of Collateral Damage

2012-05-30T19:44:00.000-04:00

Photos of missile debris help trace the path of a CIA drone missile that killed a young girl

By Jefferson MorleySalon.com

Al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu Yazid; debris from a Hellfire missile; and Fatima, shortly before her death.

May 30, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- Around midnight on May 21, 2010, a girl named Fatima was killed when a succession of U.S.-made Hellfire missiles, each of them five-feet long and traveling at close to 1,000 miles per hour, smashed a compound of houses in a mountain village of Mohammed Khel in North Waziristan along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Wounded in the explosions, which killed a half dozen men, Fatima and two other children were taken to a nearby hospital, where they died a few hours later.

Behram Noor, a Pakistani journalist, went to the hospital and took a picture of Fatima shortly before her death. Then, he went back to the scene of the explosions looking for evidence that might show who was responsible for the attack. In the rubble, he found a mechanism from a U.S.-made Hellfire missile and gave it to Reprieve, a British organization opposed to capital punishment, which shared photographs of the material with Salon. Reprieve executive director Clive Stafford Smith alluded to the missile fragments in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times last fall. They have also been displayed in England.

“Forensically, it is important to show how the crime of murder happened (which is what it is here),” said Stafford Smith in an email. “One almost always uses the murder weapon in a case. But perhaps more important, I think this physical proof — this missile killed this child — is important to have people take it seriously.”

In the religious rhetoric used by al-Qaida’s online allies, Fatima was a “martyr.” In a statement quoted byLong War Journal, the al-Ansara forum said the senior al-Qaida commander Mustafa Abu Yazid had been killed in a “convoy of martyrs on the road with his wife and three daughters and his granddaughter; men, women and children; neighbors and loved ones.” But Fatima was not Yazid’s daughter, according to Noor, who reported from the scene. She was the daughter of another man who lost two wives and three children in the barrage.

In the euphemistic jargon of Washington, Fatima was “collateral damage” in the successful effort to assassinate Yazid, an Egyptian jihadist also known as Saeed al-Masri. In disregard for the official secrecy that envelops the drone war, U.S. intelligence officials leaked the classified details of the attack, telling the New York Times that they considered Yazid to be al-Qaida’s “No. 3 leader.” Relying on similar sources, the Washington Post said that al-Masri was the group’s “chief organizational manager.” Unlike other news organizations reporting on the attack, neither the Post nor the Times mentioned that women and children had been killed in the attack.

(In news reports published before the Post and Times stories, CNN cited Pakistani intelligence officials as saying that two children and two women had been killed in the attack. Dawn, a leading Pakistani news site, reported three children and two women had died. Reuters quoted residents as saying four women and two children were killed.)

Some might say that Yazid invited the killing of his wife and children by traveling with them while allegedly plotting attacks on U.S. targets. But Fatima was not his child. She was just a girl in the neighborhood who came into the crosshairs of the CIA.

“It seems easy to say it was the children of a terrorist rather just the children of anyone else,” said Shahzad Akber, a Pakistani lawyer who represents families of the drone victims. “For us it is difficult to say otherwise. How do we question that, because the CIA, who is [doing the] killing, is not sure either.”

Whether Fatima was murdered, as Stafford Smith alleges, has yet to be determined. But the responsibility for the chain of events that culminated in her death are becoming clearer as the mechanics of the drone war continue to emerge.

The Hellfire Romeo

The laser-guided missile that killed Yazid, Fatima and the others was probably made at Lockheed Martin’s“Mission and Fire Control” facility in Troy, Alabama. The Hellfire missile, the most frequently cited weapon used in drone attacks, is produced in a factory located 30 miles south of Montgomery. The plant, which employs 271 people and is a mainstay of the local economy, produces a wide variety of missiles for the U.S. Armed Forces. The latest version of the missile, known as the Hellfire Romeo, “defeats a broad range of targets,” according to Lockheed Martin.

The missile destined to land in Mohammed Khel was then shipped by plane to a base in Afghanistan, where U.S. airmen fitted the missile onto the fuselage of another technological miracle, the Predator B drone (also known as the MQ-9 Reaper), which is built by Pentagon contractor General Atomics. Assembled at three different General Atomics factories in San Diego, this mammoth unmanned aircraft with a 66-foot wingspan was first deployed to Afghanistan for combat sorties in October 2007, according to the company.

But in as early as 2002, the CIA had obtained its own Predator for use in armed attacks in Pakistan, according to news reports. Because of the need to officially deny U.S involvement in Pakistan, the CIA — not the U.S. Air Force — runs the drone program in Pakistan. The CIA now controls a fleet of up to 30 drones worldwide, according to a Washington Post story last year. The Federation of American Scientists says the CIA fleet includes several Predators/Reaper drones.

The CIA flight crew that sent the armed Reaper aloft in May 2010 was probably operating out of a U.S. air base in Afghanistan. Once in the air, the drone was most likely controlled by a two-man crew sitting at an ergonomically adjusted ground control station in a CIA office in northern Virginia. Former CIA counsel John Rizzo told Daily Beast reporter Tara McKelvey last year that he had witnessed drone attacks at such an office. The drone operators acted on the orders of senior Agency officials, he said.

In the first officially sanctioned public description of how the drone attacks work, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said last month that individuals targeted for assassination must actively be involved in a plot to attack American forces, facilities or other targets. “The intelligence is vetted at high levels, and the decision to fire a missile is made with extraordinary care and thoughtfulness,” he said.

In his interview with McKelvey, Rizzo said that he had signed off on CIA cables requesting “approval for targeting for lethal operation.” Rizzo, who resigned as general counsel in June 2009, said the cables provided a space for his signature, along with the word “concurred.” A typical cable targeted 30 people, he said. “The agency was very punctilious about this,” Rizzo said. “They tried to minimize collateral damage, especially women and children.”

The CIA general counsel at the time of the attack that killed Yazid and Fatima was Rizzo’s successor, Stephen Preston, appointed by President Obama. In a talk at Columbia University Law School last October, Preston insisted that all decisions in cases of lethal force complied with “the four basic principles in the law of armed conflict governing the use of force: Necessity, Distinction, Proportionality, and Humanity.”

“Great care would be taken in the planning and execution of actions to satisfy these four principles and, in the process, to minimize civilian casualties,” he said in remarks that were cleared for release by the CIA.

“To enforce the law”

The specific actions U.S. officials believed Yazid was planning in May 2010 have not been disclosed, but Yazid was public in his desire to retaliate for U.S. drone strikes. He had praised the “supreme bravery” of the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at the U.S. airbase in Khost in December 2009 to avenge the death of a Pakistani militant leader in a previous CIA drone strike.

Whether CIA officials watching Yazid’s convoy on live video feed on the afternoon of May 21, 2010, were aware that it carried women and children is not known. So it is impossible to know if “great care” was taken to prevent the death of Fatima and the other children in the convoy. The presence of non-combatants in the immediate vicinity of targeted individuals has not prevented other CIA drone attacks in the past, most notoriously in the case of a June 2009 drone attack on a funeral ceremony that killed an estimated 60 people.

In the face of persistent complaints from the Pakistani government and near universal opposition in Pakistani society, the U.S. has since reduced the number of drone attacks. After a peak of 118 reported attacks in 2010, attacks declined to 70 in 2011, according to the New America Foundation in Washington. So far in 2012 there have been 14 drone attacks in Pakistan. The most recent one was on Monday, in which eight people were reported killed, none them named or identified.

Civilian casualties from U.S. drone attack are “exceedingly rare,” Brennan said in his public comments, a characterization that critics hotly dispute with hard data and eyewitness testimony. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which monitors news reports of drone strikes, says 175 children have been killed in CIA drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004. Using a different methodology, the New America Foundationestimates that 11 percent percent of all victims in 2011 were civilians. Akbar’s Foundation for Fundamental Rights says U.S. attacks “frequently hit civilians.”

Stafford Smith says Reprieve hopes to end the drone attacks by publicizing evidence from the scene of the strikes and taking legal action.

“Not all drone use is a war crime,” he said in his email, “but what is happening in Waziristan most definitely is — as was Nixon’s illegal war in Laos and Cambodia 40 years ago — so we will be pressing to enforce the law.”

In response to questions about the Hellfire missile debris found at the scene of May 2010 attack , a Lockheed Martin spokesperson referred Salon to a U.S. Army Public Affairs office in Alabama near the factory where the missiles are built. Salon has asked the Army if the serial numbers found near the place where Yazid was killed and Fatima was fatally injured came from missiles built in Troy. The Army has yet to reply.

In response to questions from Salon, a CIA spokesman cited Stephen Preston’s remarks, added some “off the record” observations about Yazid, but otherwise declined to comment.

Jefferson Morley is a staff writer for Salon in Washington and author of the forthcoming book, Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835 (Nan Talese/Doubleday). More Jefferson Morley.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31466.htm

Muslim Brotherhood are Western Proxies Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood Joins US-Euro-Israeli Chorus for War in Syria.

2012-05-30T19:41:00.000-04:00

By Tony Cartalucci

May 30, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- One would expect allegedly "outspoken" critics of the US and Israel to represent the antithesis of any joint US-Israeli foreign policy, especially when it involves mass-murdering large numbers of fellow Arabs to expand Western hegemony across the Middle East. Yet the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has done the exact opposite, after a long campaign of feigned anti-American, anti-Israel propaganda during the Egyptian presidential run-up, the Muslim Brotherhood has joined US, European, and Israeli calls for an "international" intervention in Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently called for international intervention in Syria citing the alleged Houla massacre, echoed by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan who stated the same. The Syrian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood has been involved heavily, leading in fact, the US, Israeli, Saudi, and Qatari-backed sectarian violence that has been ravaging Syria for over a year. In a May 6, 2012 Reuters article it stated:

"Working quietly, the Brotherhood has been financing Free Syrian Army defectors based in Turkey and channeling money and supplies to Syria, reviving their base among small Sunni farmers and middle class Syrians, opposition sources say."

While Reuters categorically fails to explain the "how" behind the Brotherhood's resurrection, it was revealed in a 2007 New Yorker article titled, "The Redirection" by Seymour Hersh, as being directly backed by the US and Israel who were funneling support through the Saudis so as to not compromise the "credibility" of the so-called "Islamic" movement. Hersh revealed that members of the Lebanese Saad Hariri clique, then led by Fouad Siniora, had been the go-between for US planners and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Hersh reports the Lebanese Hariri faction had met Dick Cheney in Washington and relayed personally the importance of using the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in any move against the ruling government:

"[Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be “the ones to talk to,” Jumblatt said." -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007, US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood:

"There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, “The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.” He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents." -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

It was warned that such backing would benefit the Brotherhood as a whole, not just in Syria, and could effect public opinion even as far as in Egypt where a long battle against the hardliners was fought in order to keep Egyptian governance secular. Clearly the Brotherhood did not spontaneously rise back to power in Syria, it was resurrected by US, Israeli, and Saudi cash, weapons and directives.

PR Roll-out of Orchestrated Regional War

To the general public, the violence in Lebanon seems to have "spilled over" from Syria, with characters like Saad Hariri, a leading figure in an effort at fueling regional bifurcation between Sunni and Shi'ia Muslims, being suddenly "involved" in the ongoing violence. To the general public, because of a willfully deceitful mass media, the Muslim Brotherhood's sudden backing of US-Euro-Israeli and Gulf State calls for foreign intervention seems like a spontaneous reaction to the so-called Houla massacre.

In reality, for those who are informed regarding the true back story of the geopolitical reordering of the Arab World, it is nothing more than the public roll-out of an orchestrated conspiracy years in the making, with each actor having long practiced their roles backstage together before coming out on stage and being introduced to the audience. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood and Saad Hariri have been working together with the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia for years. The Muslim Brotherhood's political resurrection was solely owed to the US-engineered "Arab Spring" and torrents of cash and backroom diplomatic support. The US State Department on record had been preparing since at least as early as 2008, with Egyptian protest leaders flown to New York, trained, equipped, and funded courtesy of US taxpayers before being sent back to destabilize Egypt beginning in 2010 and culminating in the 2011 "Arab Spring."

And while the Muslim Brotherhood is busy feigning hatred and belligerence toward the US and Israel, they in turn have feigned fear and displeasure at the Brotherhood's rise amidst political destabilization the West itself created and perpetuated solely to place the Brotherhood back in power. This gambit is perhaps best exposed with the rise and fall of another Western-backed proxy, Egypt's Mohamed ElBaradei.

Those who "hate" most...

In fact, the more unreasonable and frothing one's anti-American, anti-Israeli rhetoric becomes, the more likely they are in fact working directly with the West and using such rhetoric as a smoke screen. Mohamed ElBaradei, for example, attempted to ride the wave of anti-Western sentiment by regularly pointing out the odds he was at with America over Iraq and Iran. Israel and the US in turn accused him of being an "Iranian" agent, and ElBaradei would regularly threaten to make war with Israel, should he be elected president of Egypt. We will see just how absurd this entire charade really is.

Photo: From left to right, ICG members Shlomo Ben-Ami, Stanley Fischer, Shimon Peres, and Mohamed ElBaradei. Despite claims that Mohomed ElBaradei is "anti-Israeli" or "anti-West," it is a documented fact that he is indeed an agent of the Wall Street-London corporate-fascist global oligarchy, and a member of the International Crisis Group which includes several current and former senior Israeli officials.

In reality, ElBaradei sits as a trustee of a US corporate-financier funded think-tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG) along side convicted criminal and billionaire Wall Street speculator, George Soros, geopolitical adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, suspected financial criminal Lawrence "Larry" Summers, and Neo-Conservative Richard Armitage. Additionally, sitting around the same table with ElBaradei is the President of Israel, Shimon Peres, Stanley Fischer who serves as governor of the Bank of Israel, and former-Foreign Minister of Israel Shlomo Ben-Ami.

Beyond even this evidence, and before the "Arab Spring" even unfolded, another US corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out the necessity of manipulating public perception to maneuver client regimes into power. In a March 2010 article titled, "Is ElBaradei Egypt's Hero?" published in CFR's "Foreign Affairs," it stated:

"Further, Egypt’s close relationship with the United States has become a critical and negative factor in Egyptian politics. The opposition has used these ties to delegitimize the regime, while the government has engaged in its own displays of anti-Americanism to insulate itself from such charges. If ElBaradei actually has a reasonable chance of fostering political reform in Egypt, then U.S. policymakers would best serve his cause by not acting strongly."

Clearly, both Western and Israeli press not only refrained from "acting strongly," they feigned immense displeasure at ElBaradei's rise in Egyptian politics, while simultaneously showering his enemies and opponents with support to taint them in the eyes of an emotional, and apparently easily manipulated global public.

In this light it is hard to take ElBaradei's feigned anti-Western sentiments as anything more than an absolute coordinated deception, to mask the fact that he indeed is a direct representative of these very insidious manipulators. Likewise the Muslim Brotherhood is playing a double game, capitalizing on carefully cultivated hatred verses America and Israel, while in reality leading sectarian extremists toward fulfilling rather than balking Western machinations. Not only is this apparent in the propaganda game played by both the Brotherhood and their counterparts in Washington, London, Doha, and Tel Aviv, but demonstratively as the Brotherhood's agenda now overtly converges with that of the US and Israel verses Syria, as stated would happen in 2007 by Seymour Hersh.

It seems almost unimaginable that any Arab, regardless of their opinion of Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, could believe that eliminating this countervailing force vis-a-vis the West and Israel will be to their advantage, especially as it becomes clear their "new" "Arab Spring-installed" leaders are in fact working with, not against Western hegemonic expansion across the Arab World.

Arab Spring Brings Western Client Regimes.

In addition to the Muslim Brotherhood's rise in Egypt and Syria, in Tunisia serving Western interests is the recently installed Moncef Marzouki, formally of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, a US National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros Open Society-funded International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) member organization. Marzouki, who spent two decades in exile in Paris, France, was also founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy (WMD) including for a "Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile" and a participant in the WMD "third assembly" alongside Marzouki's Tunisian League for Human Rights,sponsored by NED, Soros' Open Society, and USAID.

In neighboring Libya, Marzouki's counterpart, NATO-installed Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib is listedas a "Professor and Chairman" of the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored byBritish Petroleum (BP), Shell, France's Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Both Marzouki of Tunsia and el-Keib of Libya have vocally supported Western efforts at regime change in Syria, with Libya additionally supplying cash, weapons, and fighters drawn from the US State Department-listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

Clearly with regime change on the table since the first Gulf War during the 1990's, specific calls for regime change as early as 2002, and an articulated conspiracy to use sectarian militants to overthrow Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and in turn, undermine and destabilize Iran, on record since 2007, all hinged on the creation of a front of Western client-regimes across the Arab World. The US-engineered "Arab Spring" has demonstratively created such a front, which in turn has demonstratively contributed to the goal of isolating, undermining, and violently overthrowing Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.

For the Arab World, it should be clear that the "enemy of my enemy" is most certainly not "my friend," especially when that "enemy" is the result of an artificial strategy of tension created by those posing as "allies." Sunni Muslims share a common enemy not only with their Shi'ia neighbors, but with all peoples, races, and religions from Africa to Asia. That enemy is Anglo-American imperialism which has perpetuated itself for centuries by nothing else other than its ability to divide, destroy, and conquer nations pitted against nations, north verses south, one religion verses another, one tribe against another. This is how they subjugated huge swaths of Africa, Central and Southeast Asia, and this is exactly how they are now conquering the Arab World.

Tony Cartalucci Blogs at Land Destroyer

Why The Assange Case Is Important

2012-05-30T19:37:00.004-04:00

John Pilger

May 30, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- On 30 May, Britain's Supreme Court turned down the final appeal of Julian Assange against his extradition to Sweden. In an unprecedented move, the court gave the defence team of the WikiLeaks editor permission to 're-apply' to the court in two weeks' time. On the eve of the judgement, Sweden's leading morning newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, known as DN, interviewed investigative journalist John Pilger, who has closely followed the Assange case. The following is the complete text of the interview, of which only a fraction was published in Sweden.

DN Julian Assange has been fighting extradition to Sweden at a number of British courts. Why do you think it is important he wins?

JP Because the attempt to extradite Assange is unjust and political. I have read almost every scrap of evidence in this case and it's clear, in terms of natural justice, that no crime was committed. The case would not have got this far had it not been for the intervention of Claes Borgstrom, a politician who saw an opportunity when the Stockholm prosecutor threw out almost all the police allegations. Borgstrom was then in the middle of an election campaign. When asked why the case was proceeding when both women had said that the sex had been consensual with Assange, he replied, "Ah, but they're not lawyers." If the Supreme Court in London rejects Assange's appeal, the one hope is the independence of the Swedish courts. However, as the London Independent has revealed, Sweden and the US have already begun talks on Assange's "temporary surrender" to the US -- where he faces concocted charges and the prospect of unlimited solitary confinement. And for what? For telling epic truths. Every Swede who cares about justice and the reputation of his or her society should care deeply about this.

DN You have said that Julian Assange's human rights have been breached. In what way?

JP One of the most fundamental human rights -- that of the presumption of innocence -- has been been breached over and over again in Assange's case. Convicted of no crime, he has been the object of character assassination --perfidious and inhuman -- and highly political smear, of which the evidence is voluminous. This is what Britain's most distinguished and experienced human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, has written: "Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions ... it is very hard to preserve for [Assange] any presumption of innocence. He has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country. [and] his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged."

DN You, as well as Julian Assange, don't seem to have confidence in the Swedish judicial system. Why not?

JP It's difficult to have confidence in a prosecutorial system that is so contradictory and flagrantly uses the media to achieve its aims. Whether or not the Supreme Court in London find for or against Assange, the fact that this case has reached the highest court in this country is itself a condemnation of the competence and motivation of those so eager to incarcerate him, having already had plenty of opportunity to to question him properly. What a waste all this is.

DN If Julian Assange is innocent, as he says, would it not have been better if he had gone to Stockholm to sort things out?

JP Assange tried to "sort things out", as you put it. Right from the beginning, he offered repeatedly to be questioned -- first in Sweden, then in the UK. He sought and received permission to leave Sweden - which makes a nonsense of the claim that he has avoided questioning. The prosecutor who has since pursued him has refused to give any explanation about why she will not use standard procedures, which Sweden and the UK have signed up to.

DN IF the Supreme Court decides that Julain Assange can be extradited to Sweden, what consequenses/risks do you see for him?

JP First, I would draw on my regard for ordinary Swedes' sense of fairness and justice. Alas, overshadowing that is a Swedish elite that has forged sinister and obsequious links with Washington. These powerful people have every reason to see Julian Assange as a threat. For one thing, their vaunted reputation for neutrality has been repeatedly exposed as a sham in US cables leaked by WikiLeaks. One cable revealed that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] co-operation [with Nato] is not widely known" and unless kept secret "would open up the government to domestic criticism". Another was entitled "WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the dustbin of history". Don't the Swedish public have a right to know what the powerful say in private in their name?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31464.htm

Capital Account TV Exclusive Interview of CBO Mortgage Fraud Whistleblower!

2012-05-30T19:33:00.001-04:00

Romney pledges to expand military

2012-05-30T19:32:00.001-04:00

Bilderberg 2012: Secretive summit kicks-off in Virginia

2012-05-30T19:31:00.001-04:00

Mideast Journalist Charles Glass on Syria's Violence & the Prospect of M...

2012-05-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

CrossTalk: War Unlimited

2012-05-30T14:38:00.000-04:00

Making sense out of Syria

2012-05-30T11:50:00.001-04:00

The conflicting stories coming out of Western sources over Houla get more suspicious by the day. Given that the West in general, and the FUKUS Axis in particular, has tried to pull false flag events before, and given that they are itching to find an excuse to enter Syria, no surprises. What is going on? A disgusting manipulation, using kids.

The west (FUKUS Three and NATO) and its terrorist minions in Syria is perpetrating the most appalling and shocking barefaced attempt to dupe the world's governments and people in an attempt to create a casus belli in Syria.

For a start, let us use common sense on the Syria story because it is a story that could easily start a major international conflagration and before we start, let us remember as we discuss who did what that the murder of innocent civilians and in particular children, goes against the grain of common human civilization and violates any norms of decency. These children are the victims and they should be in the forefront of our memories...but let us apportion the blame to who committed the act and not wrongly blame other innocent parties for the crime.

Regular armies do not commit massacres, mercenaries and terrorists do

Massacring children also goes against the grain of what regular armies do, anywhere on the planet. It is by now evident that the "Houla massacre" was not caused by long-range artillery shelling of civilian homes because the bodies are intact and appear to have been killed by knife wounds, close-range shooting or RPG fire. This does not however go against the grain of mercenaries or special forces, whose trademark is slitting throats, as we saw in Libya, where the FUKUS Axis special forces and their terrorist friends ran amok slicing breasts off women, raping girls, impaling boys with sticks, torturing old men and women and murdering, torching and looting. We have seen it before.

They have tried it before in Syria

And given that many of the so-called "Syrian" terrorists are in fact these same Libyan terrorists, we now start to read the book and the story with other eyes. It is patently obvious to those of us with international contacts that the FUKUS Axis is itching to get its claws into Syria and will try to do so first by creating false flag events, as it did in Libya, as it did in Iraq, as it did in Kosovo. The chemical weapons attack (chemical weapons allegedly smuggled to the Turkish border from Libya) outed by me in this column several months ago before they had the chance to carry it out did not materialize, and now we have the massacre of Houla just as Kofi Annan appears, on cue to start a massive media campaign.

Now when Russia told the story as it is, there were at first howls of derision from some of the same media outlets, but now silence as they see their story failed. So what next? An Iraq-style attack outside the UNSC, hoping that public opinion would carry them through on the backs of the children they massacred or had massacred?? Is this after all another western mail-order massacre? If so, how callous and evil can you get?

The facts

Firstly, regular armies do not go around slaughtering children. Secondly, there is plenty of evidence of excellent relations between the Syrian Armed Forces and the children they protect from this western-backed scourge. Thirdly, we saw what the western-backed terrorists are capable of in Libya.

Fourthly, the immediate allegations were of sustained artillery barrages. Why then are the bodies intact? Why has the story now changed? Fifthly, would anyone put it past the terrorists to dress up in Syrian Army uniforms and try to incriminate the authorities? Sixth, what about the claims by the Syrian government that it had nothing to do with the massacre, after admitting there were terrorist elements in the area? Why are they ignored?

Point number seven: How can the west argue that "even if the massacre was not committed by the Syrian government, the fact is that it failed to protect the people" a day after it accused the said government of the same? Point number eight: Who is financing and arming the Syrian terrorists?

Point number nine: Who profits? Are the Syrian Armed Forces going to massacre children under the noses of the UN inspectors? Would the Syrian Armed Forces or any Army formation do such a thing? Of course not. It was a staged mail-order massacre, ordered by the west, perpetrated by their terrorists in Syria and peddled on their media outlets. What a cynical and disgusting manipulation of the truth, using tens of children as victims.

Those who have tried to make footage from this should be disgusted with themselves and may their souls burn in Hell for the rest of eternity. How disgusting, how despicable and how shameful, Messrs. Cameron, Hague, Clinton, Obama and Hollande.

Eye-witness accounts tell a different story

"Large numbers of militia from Ar-Rastan attacked on May 25 at 20.00 two villages in the Province of Homs - Tal-Dow and Al-Hula. Now, the village Tal-Dow under the control of government forces. There, as well as in Al-Hula, militants killed young children. In particular, in the same family killed three children - two boys and a girl, the eldest of whom went to the fifth grade. Their mother was raped and shot. All killed in his house shot in the head".

"Apparently, the purpose of this operation was the adoption of UN Security Council resolution for the start of NATO military operations in Syria. To do this, the international community planned to provide eerie footage of dead children allegedly killed by aircraft and artillery Bashar Assad".

To exert pressure on public opinion and changes in the right direction positions of Russia and China have been prepared in advance texts and subtitles in Russian and Chinese languages, to read: "Syria - Homs - the city of Hula. A terrible massacre perpetrated by the Syrian regime of force against civilians in the town of Hula. Dozens of victims and their number is growing, mainly women and children were brutally killed by indiscriminate bombing CITY".

"Coordinated terrorist attack squads began the evening of May 25, in the dark. Filming of the corpses of children were made in daylight on May 26, while the titles to these videos in Russian dating back May 25".

Grandmother of the Al-Hula (ANNA News Agency):

"We here took place the massacre, and we want to see Al Jazeera took off that there has actually happened, not what they passed by unknown people.

Block positions were attacked by police. All the soldiers were killed, then they attacked our villages, torched a hospital in Al-Hula.

Bandits killed our pharmacy next to the pharmacy for a fact that he has treated a wounded soldier.

Nobody but the army will not help us. In anticipation of the arrival of Kofi Annan, went escalation of violence, and increased the number of terrorist attacks. Our children can not go to school, we can not go to our fields, our gardens and on the job.

That was yesterday - it's unbelievable cruelty. Thousands of militants from the Al - Rastan attacked the town, killed all the soldiers at checkpoints. Burned the city hospital."

Syed Abdul Wahab, a resident of Tal - Dau (ANNA News Agency):

"The terrorists who want to come here ostensibly free to take power. We have always lived in peace. We cannot leave the house. Twenty-six hours we were hiding in their homes because of the bandits.

Grandma to UN monitors:

" They say airstrikes have been!. Lies, lies, lies. Liars, all of them come from Ar-Rastan."

A local woman:

" We are from the villages of Al-Gaunt, which is located next to the Al-Hul. Nine terrorists killed my relatives in the field. The bandits set fire to our houses and we fled into the Al Gore, but there were bandits who kill us, we have a martyr, who was burned alive.

Why, by what law did they die? Is this Islam? Is this justice? All this from Hammad from Qatar. Hamad (emir of Qatar) is you now satisfied?"

Marinella Correggia, ecopeace activist and journalist

Marinella Correggia sent her evidence to Pravda.Ru.

1. Interview with RT: "The children don't seem to be the victims of shelling or artillery, but of direct killings from a short distance," she told RT. "Therefore it doesn't seem possible to make a connection between the accusations by the opposition that the army attacked Houla with heavy weapons and the way the children were murdered."

"One of the videos on YouTube in Spanish says 'Assad bands killed children in Hula,' but in fact shows images of children in houses that SANA and Press TV say were killed by armed groups of the opposition in other villages."

2. The videos in youtube concerning the martyred children show different locations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=7B2_iY9ALpg&feature=endscreen) and

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=bLab9mIl750&feature=endscreen&skipcontrinter=1)

One wonders where those children were killed and where they are.

3. Here another video shows children and says "the hands were tied before the execution": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DhJoeorfDY&feature=related. Very strange. Nonsense to tie the hands before killing them! So it means the hands were tied after: therefore those showing the children fabricated it...

Comment: So the hands are tied and they die in massive shelling? They tried this nonsense before elsewhere in other mail-order massacres

4. I don't see any videos showing true bombings and artillery firing. Typing on Google "Hula massacre" one can see a video (on Hula?) showing men in the street who run after the sound of firings, leaving some bodies on the ground, but some of the running men have Syrian official flag not the one of the opposition...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o84kc_Y1Gfo

Source: Marinella Correggia

Italian Eco-peace activist and journalist

www.sibialiria.org

Once again, another western lie, a cynical and revolting lie, using the deaths of children as a pretext for invasion. Ladies and gentlemen, it does not get much lower than that. Who is going to stop the FUKUS-NATO onslaught against humanity?

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY

Pravda.Ru

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/30-05-2012/121276-syria-0/

India: Nationwide protests against fuel price hikes

2012-05-30T06:40:00.001-04:00

By Deepal Jayasekera

30 May 2012

Workers, youth and the rural poor will join mass protests tomorrow throughout India against the recent fuel price hikes imposed by the central United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Government-owned oil companies announced an increase of 7.54 rupees per litre in petrol prices on May 23. This is the third rise over the past year and the largest one-time increase. Government officials have hinted that prices for diesel and kerosene are also likely to increase. The price rises will push up inflation placing further intolerable burdens on working people and rural toilers.

The protests will take place amid a growing wave of class struggles in India and internationally. These include militant strikes and factory occupations by Maruti Suzuki workers in Haryana in northern India last year and strikes at the Foxconn, BYD Electronics, Sanmina, Hyundai plants in Tamil Nadu. About 14,000 contract workers at the Neyveli Lignite Corporation are currently engaged in a protracted strike for equal pay and conditions with permanent staff.

Despite the widespread opposition to the price rises, the UPA government is insisting that they must proceed in order to rein in the budget deficit. Oil minister Jaipal Reddy declared last Friday that the oil companies had exhausted all options. “All political parties, including my own party [Congress], are populist ... [but] we cannot run the country on populist sentiments.”

The government is under pressure from big business to accelerate pro-market restructuring amid growing signs of economic crisis. The rupee has hit its lowest-ever level against the US dollar and inflation is in double digits. Growth has fallen to 6.9 percent in 2011-12—down by 1.5 percent from the previous year. The budget deficit has risen to 5.9 percent of the GDP, well above the government’s own limit of 4.6 percent.

C. Rangarajan, the chairman of the prime minister’s economic advisory council, said last Friday that by raising petrol prices, “the government has indicated that it is committed on fiscal consolidation.” He indicated that price rises for diesel and cooking gas were also needed to demonstrate to foreign investors that the government would continue to cut the budget deficit.

The main opposition parties calling tomorrow’s protests have no fundamental disagreement with the government’s austerity agenda. The Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) and the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM are both seeking to exploit the anger of the masses to boost their own political fortunes.

Neither the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) nor the CPM-led Left Front has called strikes for tomorrow. Both alliances are seeking to ensure that the opposition to the price hikes is limited to a one-day protest and confined politically to putting pressure on the government.

Speaking at the party’s national executive meeting in Mumbai last week, BJP president Nitin Gadkari declared that the time had come for the “BJP to come back to clear the mess created by the Congress.” As reported to the media, Gadkari demagogically declared: “The Congress is the problem … and the BJP will be the solution.”

The BJP lost office at the national level in 2004 after implementing a program of pro-market restructuring that impacted heavily on working people. It failed to win the 2009 election despite growing popular alienation and anger with the Congress-led UPA government over its regressive policies.

The BJP is only able to posture as a defender of working people with the aid of the Stalinist parties. The CPM and its Left Front do not challenge the right-wing Hindu chauvinist party and its empty populist pretensions. To do so, would invite criticism of the CPM’s own record in propping up the Congress-led government in parliament between 2004 and 2008 and supporting its attacks on working people.

The CPM is based on the same capitalist program of open market “reform” as Congress and the BJP. In power in West Bengal and Kerala, CPM-led governments sought to transform those states into cheap labour platforms for foreign investors and ruthlessly suppressed the resistance of workers and peasants. As a result it lost office last year in both states.

The CPM, along with the Communist Party of India (CPI), collaborated with the BJP and Congress trade unions in an all-India general strike on February 28 against the UPA government’s economic policies. CPM and CPI leaders repeatedly hailed their collaboration with BJP and Congress trade union leaders as a “historical” event, signalling their willingness for broader political collaboration.

In a brief statement about tomorrow’s protest, the Left Front announced that it had set the target of building “a sustained movement to demand a rollback of the price hike.” In reality, the Stalinists, while exploiting popular anger over the price rises for their own political purposes, are working might and main to block a mass movement of the working class against capitalism. In doing so, the CPM is hoping to prove its worth to big business in pushing through the austerity agenda.

Millions of people will no doubt take part in tomorrow’s protests, but their demands will not be realised by trying to put pressure on the ruling UPA. The government has already made absolutely clear that it intends not only to proceed with the petrol price rises but to implement further price increases as part of a broad assault on the social position of working people. Like governments around the world, the UPA regime is seeking to impose the burden of the worsening global crisis of capitalism onto the backs of the working class and rural poor.

The government’s attacks can only be successfully defeated through the independent political mobilisation of the working class, rallying behind it the oppressed masses, on the basis of a struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government to implement socialist policies. That requires a fundamental break with all of the parties of the Indian political establishment, especially the CPI and CPM that block any genuine struggle against the profit system.

Above all what is needed is the building of an Indian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International based on all of the strategic lessons of the international Trotskyist movement against the betrayals of Stalinism and its apologists over the past century.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/indi-m30.shtml

Obama uses Memorial Day speech to rehabilitate Vietnam War

2012-05-30T06:33:00.000-04:00

By Bill Van Auken

30 May 2012

President Barack Obama chose the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC as the site for a Memorial Day speech in which he sought to rehabilitate the Vietnam War.

The speech was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first time US forces were deployed in a major combat operation inside the country in 1962, and served to kick off what is projected as a 13-year-long commemoration of that war. The commemoration, mandated by the US Congress, is being orchestrated by the Defense Department.

The appearance dovetailed with the Obama campaign’s efforts to identify the Democratic president with the armed forces and militarism in order to outflank his Republican rival from the right. It served a deeper purpose, however. Exorcising the ghosts of Vietnam has been a burning objective of America’s ruling class for nearly four decades.

At the heart of Obama’s speech was the hoary and reactionary myth that the approximately 1.5 million troops who saw combat in Vietnam were treated as pariahs and excoriated as war criminals and “baby killers” by the broad sections of the population that opposed the war.

“You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor,” Obama told the crowd, which included a number of Vietnam veterans, assembled in front of the wall bearing the names of nearly 60,000 US troops killed in the war.

“You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that’s why here today we resolve that it will not happen again,” the president continued.

The “national shame” and “disgrace” that earned the United States the hatred of hundreds of millions of people around the world was the war itself, a genocidal enterprise that took the lives of some 4 million Vietnamese.

In a flight of rhetorical fancy, Obama insisted that America must “celebrate” key battles of Vietnam on a par with the Normandy invasion or the battle for Iwo Jima during World War II. Among the specific episodes he cited was “Rolling Thunder,” the 1965 to 1968 bombing campaign against North Vietnam that dropped 864,000 tons of high explosives on the impoverished former colonial country. It killed, according to the CIA’s undoubtedly conservative estimates, 90,000 Vietnamese, 72,000 of whom were civilians. This savage bombardment, which destroyed schools, hospitals and villages, was one of the many war crimes perpetrated by US imperialism in over a decade of war.

Obama’s narrative ignored the reality that large numbers of US troops in Vietnam opposed the war. Among those who returned, not a small number joined the massive demonstrations demanding the withdrawal of US troops. Deep-going dissension among the troops in Vietnam led to widespread incidents of “fragging” [grenade attacks] on overly zealous commanding officers and other act of overt rebellion that hastened the war’s end, as Washington feared losing control of its own army.

The lie that the mistreatment of veterans was the fault of a misguided public, or more pointedly of the antiwar movement, serves to cover up the reality that the government itself was to blame. Having subjected troops sent into combat to horrific conditions, it received the hundreds of thousands who returned suffering physical and mental wounds with callous indifference and inadequate support.

Obama insisted that “because of the hard lessons of Vietnam” we “take care of our veterans better.” However, the principal lesson learned by the US ruling establishment was that a conscript army posed unacceptable dangers of popular democratic and antiwar sentiments seeping into America’s war machine. It therefore moved to an “all volunteer” military. Volunteer or conscript, however, both then and now, troops have been treated as cannon fodder and disposable commodities.

Among the indices of the supposedly “better” conditions for US military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan is an unemployment rate last year of 12.1 percent, with the jobless rate of those recently returned at nearly 30 percent. Some 75,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, while 1.5 million live in poverty. An estimated 300,000 veterans of America’s two most recent wars are returning home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or traumatic brain injuries. On average, 18 veterans a day are taking their own lives.

Obama said the 50th anniversary commemorations he was inaugurating with his speech would give Washington “another chance to set the record straight” on Vietnam. “This is one more way we keep perfecting our Union—setting the record straight.”

On the contrary, Obama’s aim is to facilitate the falsification of history so as to whitewash the crimes of American imperialism.

The official campaign will not provide some new insight into the past or a more truthful account of the Vietnam War and its horrors. It will instead seek to exploit sympathy for veterans to exonerate the criminals in the White House, the CIA and the Pentagon responsible for slaughtering millions. For nearly 40 years, the US ruling class has sought to bury and sanitize a history that ties it to the worst war crimes since the fall of the Nazis.

It is also an attempt to shatter the deep-seated hostility to wars of aggression that was the key domestic legacy of US imperialism’s debacle in Vietnam. This has been an objective of US presidents from Richard Nixon on: to erase the memory of a US imperialist defeat under conditions of mass opposition and social struggles at home. It was George H.W. Bush who, at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, triumphantly proclaimed, “By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"

The two wars launched in the aftermath of 9/11, however, proved such triumphalism to be unjustified. Hostility to both wars grew steadily, and today polls show popular opposition to the war in Afghanistan at 66 percent, just above the record high of 65 percent against the Vietnam War in 1971.

Toward the end of his remarks, Obama declared that “honoring Vietnam veterans” means “never forgetting the lessons of that war.”

What are those lessons? According to Obama, they are the need for “a clear mission,” a “sound strategy,” giving the military “the equipment they need to get the job done,” and the resolve that when sending troops to fight, “We will have their backs.”

These are the conclusion of a Democratic president who was swept into office largely on a wave of hostility to the wars begun by his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. They suggest that had the US military been equipped with the proper mission, strategy and equipment—nuclear weapons?—it could have prevailed in Vietnam. There is the clear implication that the US defeat resulted from a “stab in the back” by an unworthy population and defeatist politicians—an echo of the infamous theory promoted by the Nazis after Germany’s defeat in World War I.

For decades, the Democratic Party has beat a cowardly retreat in the face of Republican accusations that its anti-war wing was responsible for the defeat in Vietnam. Obama, it appears, is determined to adopt the Republican indictment as his own.

Obama’s Memorial Day speech makes it clear once again that his administration is an instrument of Wall Street and the US military and intelligence apparatus. The deeply reactionary and dishonest speech must be taken as a warning. If America’s ruling establishment is determined to rehabilitate the Vietnam War it is because it wants to prepare public opinion for even bloodier wars and more horrific crimes.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/viet-m30.shtml

Germany’s six-point plan for sweatshop Europe

2012-05-30T06:21:00.001-04:00

30 May 2012

It is now common practice to smash up wages and workers’ rights by initiating bankruptcy proceedings. The best known case is the American auto giant General Motors, which laid off 30,000 workers, slashed wages in half for new-hires, and cut retiree benefits. If the German government gets its way, this procedure will be applied to entire countries.

According to a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel, the chancellery in Berlin has drawn up a six-point plan for far-reaching “structural reforms” in Greece and other highly indebted European Union countries. The plan includes the sale of state enterprises, the gutting of employment protection rights, the promotion of a low-wage labor sector, the removal of constraints on businesses, and the establishment of special economic zones and privatization agencies modeled on the German Treuhand.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert has not confirmed the plan, but neither has he denied it. According to Der Spiegel, it will form the basis for negotiations at the European Union’s so-called “growth summit” in late June. Der Spiegel writes that Chancellor Angela Merkel will seize on the call for a growth policy by newly elected French President Francois Hollande, “applying the principle of judo fighters: employing the momentum of the opponent to mount one’s own attack.”

If Merkel gets her way, “growth” will be achieved entirely through the intensified exploitation of workers and not through any plan for economic revival or increased social expenditures. She assumes Hollande will be open to these proposals since the EU summit will take place after the June 17 French parliamentary elections and the new French president will no longer be constrained by voters’ opinions or his own campaign promises.

The German government is striving to impose levels of exploitation similar to those currently existing only in Eastern Europe and Asian cheap-labor havens such as China and Vietnam. Special economic zones have played a crucial role in the emergence of China as the world’s biggest sweatshop. These zones free companies from paying taxes or adhering to environmental regulations and labor standards, reducing workers to the status of impoverished industrial slaves.

The model for the privatization agencies recommended by the experts in the chancellor’s office is the Treuhand, which obliterated the industrial landscape of East Germany following the collapse of the Stalinist regime in 1989. Run by hand-picked confidants of big business and the banks and not answerable to any democratic bodies, the Treuhand decided the fate of millions. It sold off 8,500 companies with 45,000 facilities at fire-sale prices or simply shut them down. Only a small fraction of the original 4 million industrial jobs remained.

The six-point plan drawn up by the chancellery is incompatible with national self-determination or democracy. The newspaper Tagesspiegel interviewed several German economic experts who were brutally frank in expressing their views on the future prospects for Greece.

Thomas Straubhaar, director of the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, called for the establishment of a “European protectorate” over Greece. He said that whatever the outcome of the upcoming June 17 elections in Greece, the country remained a “failed state,” lacking “the strength to make a fresh start on its own.”

The term “protectorate” evokes ghastly memories. British imperialism referred to its former colonies as protectorates when it permitted local puppets, as in Egypt and several Gulf sheikdoms, to play at being heads of state. In run-up to World War II the term became infamous following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

The fact that this term is re-introduced into the official vocabulary reveals what the ruling circles of Germany and Europe have in mind. The debate on special economic zones and protectorates takes place against the backdrop of a worsening economic crisis.

As a result of the austerity program dictated by the troika—EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB)—the Greek economy is in free-fall. The country is now in its fifth year of recession. Small and medium-sized companies are collapsing. This year alone their business association expects 61,000 firms to close, wiping out 240,000 jobs. The tourism industry, which accounts for one in five Greek jobs, has seen its revenues decline by 45 percent in the past year.

The country’s banks face collapse because borrowers can no longer repay their loans and both investors and depositors are withdrawing their money. Experts speak of a “slow motion” run on the banks that threatens to spill over to Spain and Italy. Since the beginning of the crisis, private citizens and businesses have withdrawn 63 billion euros from Greek accounts, i.e., one third of total deposits. Since the middle of last year, 100 billion euros have been withdrawn from Spanish banks and 160 billion euros from banks in Italy.

Under these circumstances, the ruling class is concluding that it can no longer afford the luxury of democracy. Leading officials such as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and IMF chief Christine Lagarde are threatening the Greek people with immediate state bankruptcy if they vote on June 17 in favor of parties calling for a softening of the austerity policies dictated by the banks via the troika.

At the same time, the European Union is preparing for Greek national bankruptcy and the exit of Greece from the euro. The Euro Working Group, a committee of the finance ministries of all 17 euro countries, has instructed all governments to prepare emergency plans for a Greek euro exit. In Greece itself, the ruling class is secretly drawing up plans to use the military to crush popular opposition to the austerity measures.

Greece makes clear what confronts the working class throughout Europe. Nearly four years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, democratic structures are collapsing and the representatives of the financial and corporate elite are defending their rule by endless attacks on wages, jobs and social programs.

The working class can counter this offensive only by closing ranks internationally and fighting for a socialist program. The task is not to reform the European Union but to mobilize the working class for its overthrow and replacement by the United Socialist States of Europe.

Peter Schwarz

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/pers-m30.shtml

Protests erupt against presidential elections in Egypt

2012-05-30T06:18:00.001-04:00

By Johannes Stern

30 May 2012

Protests broke out in various Egyptian cities after the Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) announced the official results of the initial round of the presidential elections. According to SPEC, Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak, and Mohamed Mursi, the candidate of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB), will face each other in the run-off election scheduled for June 16-17.

The final results put Mursi in first place with 24.78 percent of the vote, followed by Shafiq, with 23.66 percent. In third place was the Nasserite candidate Hamdeen Sabahi who received 20.72 percent. The moderate Islamist candidate Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh came in fourth place with 17.47 percent, and Amr Moussa, the former head of the Arab League and a minister under Mubarak, came in fifth, with 11.13 percent. The official voter turnout was low, with only 46.42 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.

The protests were directed alike against Shafiq, considered to be the preferred candidate of the military, and the Islamist Mursi. In Cairo, thousands of protesters blocked traffic on Tahrir Square, the iconic epicentre of the Egyptian revolution, shouting: “Down With Military Rule! Down With the Supreme Guide [of the Brotherhood] Rule!”

In the early evening, some 400 protesters, chanting against feloul (remnants of the former regime) stormed Shafiq’s campaign office and burnt it down. Security forces intervened, arresting protesters, and fire trucks arrived to bring the blaze under control.

Throughout the night demonstrators continued marching in downtown Cairo, shouting, “Smash Shafiq on His Head,” and holding his campaign posters upside down. Others chanted, “Down With the Dogs of the Military Regime.”

Ali, a 24-year-old pharmacist who worked in makeshift field hospitals on Tahrir Square during clashes with the military and security forces, stated: “We are sending a message to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) that we will never accept Ahmed Shafiq as our next president. He is the second Mubarak and was even in the Air Force, like the ousted leader.”

In the coastal city of Alexandria, thousands of protesters marched and tore down posters of Shafiq and Mursi. Protests also were staged in the Delta city of Daqahlia, where demonstrators chanted: “Against Mubarak, Father and Son! Against the Shoe and the Spare!” (“Spare” is a reference to Mursi, who was dubbed the “spare tire” after the junta disqualified the first candidate of the Brotherhood, Kheirat al-Shater, and Mursi was inserted as al-Shater’s replacement). Protesters also questioned the validity of the results, chanting: “Oh Bagato [the secretary general of SPEC], Tell the Truth! Was the Election Fraudulent or Not?”

Numerous violations were reported during the election process and there is a widespread feeling amongst Egyptian workers and youth that the whole framework of the elections is illegitimate. “The elections were clearly controlled by the state,” Alaa Shafani, a ceramic worker from Mansoura, told the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram Online. His son lost his leg during clashes with the police last year. “I boycotted the elections in the first place because they are illegal,” he added. “How can you have presidential elections without a constitution?”

The elections were held under the dictatorial auspices of the US-backed SCAF, with emergency laws but no constitution in place. The army was deployed all across the country and armed soldiers controlled the polling stations. Various cases of voters who tried to document electoral violations being arrested have been reported.

All the candidates were handpicked by the military junta and are strong defenders of the Egyptian bourgeois state and the predominance of capitalist and imperialist rule in Egypt and throughout the region.

The renewed protests immediately after the first round of the elections are a blow to the US-backed “transition to democracy” organized by the Egyptian ruling elite and supported by all official political forces in Egypt—be they Islamist, liberal, or petty-bourgeois pseudo-left. All of these forces fear another eruption of the militant strikes and protests that brought down Mubarak in February of 2011. They are anxious to devise new political mechanisms to control the working class and intensify the counterrevolution.

On Monday, various liberal and “left” political parties—including the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, the Tagammu Party, the Popular Socialist Alliance, El-Adl, the Arab Nasserite Party and the Democratic Front—met to discuss the formation of a so-called “united front.” The meeting was attended by presidential candidate Amr Moussa. Sabahi had also been invited. The participants claimed their aim was to “protect the revolution and the civil state” and not to support either of the candidates in the second round.

In fact, the meeting made perfectly clear that the aim of the proposed front is the precise opposite. It drafted a document to be presented to both Shafiq and Mursi and a representative announced that the group could support one of the candidates if he endorsed the document. The main demand is the formation of a constituent assembly consisting of “all forces of society” and tasked with drafting a new constitution.

The Revolutionary Socialists (RS) issued a statement openly embracing the Muslim Brotherhood and calling for a vote for Mursi. As with the parties of the “united front,” the RS called on the Brotherhood to pledge to form a government of national unity including Sabahi and Fotouh.

Mursi has already sent signals that he is willing to cooperate with liberal and petty-bourgeois “left” forces. In a statement Tuesday he pledged to form a “coalition government” if elected. “This government would consist of politicians from a variety of groups, not just Islamists or Brotherhood members… and the prime minister will not be from the Brotherhood or the Freedom and Justice Party,” he said.

In the same statement, Mursi made clear that such a government would intensify the counterrevolutionary offensive against the working class in collaboration with the military and the police. He praised the police and the army for securing the presidential elections, adding that “the status of policemen and officers will remain the same.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/egyp-m30.shtml

Obama the Warrior

2012-05-30T06:10:00.001-04:00

A new NYT article sheds considerable light on the character of the Democratic Commander-in-Chief

By Glenn Greenwald

“I am not going to play in this dirty game. This is not democracy. These elections are a joke” — Abdel Fattah, Egyptian subway worker, explaining why he cannot support either Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, or Ahmed Shafik, President Hosni Mubarak’s final prime minister, in the two-candidate election runoff to determine Egypt’s next President (NYT, “Some Disdain Both Options in Egypt’s Narrowed Race,” May 26, 2012).

May 29, 2012 "Salon" -- Last week, the journal Foreign Policy published an extraordinary article – not extraordinary because of what it says, but because of who said it. It was written by Aaron David Miller, a lifelong D.C. foreign policy bureaucrat who served as a Middle East adviser to six different Secetaries of State in Democratic and GOP administrations. Miller’s article, which compared Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on foreign policy, was entitled “Barack O’Romney,” and the sub-headline said it all: “Ignore what the candidates say they’ll do differently on foreign policy. They’re basically the same man.” It began this way: “If Barack Obama is reelected, he ought to consider making Mitt Romney his new secretary of state” because “despite his campaign rhetoric, Romney would be quite comfortable carrying out President Obama’s foreign policy because it accords so closely with his own.”

Miller devotes himself to debunking one of the worst myths in Washington, propagated out of self-interest by conservatives and progressives alike: namely, that there is a vast and radical difference between the parties on most key issues and that bipartisanship is so tragically scarce. In the foreign policy context which is his expertise, Miller explains that — despite campaign rhetoric designed to exaggerate (or even invent) differences in order to motivate base voters — the reality is exactly the opposite:

That brings up an extraordinary fact. What has emerged in the second decade after 9/11 is a remarkable consensus among Democrats and Republicans on a core approach to the nation’s foreign policy. It’s certainly not a perfect alignment. But rarely since the end of the Cold War has there been this level of consensus. Indeed, while Americans may be divided, polarized and dysfunctional about issues closer to home, we are really quite united in how we see the world and what we should do about it.

Ever wondered why foreign policy hasn’t figured all that prominently in the 2012 election campaign? Sure, the country is focused on the economy and domestic priorities. And yes, Obama has so far avoided the kind of foreign-policy disasters that would give the Republicans easy free shots. But there’s more to it than that: Romney has had a hard time identifying Obama’s foreign-policy vulnerabilities because there’s just not that much difference between the two.

A post 9/11 consensus is emerging that has bridged the ideological divide of the Bush 43 years. And it’s going to be pretty durable. . . . As shown through his stepped-up drone campaign,Barack Obama has become George W. Bush on steroids.

None of this is new to anyone paying attention (people like former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith long ago gleefully pointed out that Obama was doing more to entrench Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies than anything his GOP predecessors could have dreamed of achieving on their own). But what’s remarkable here is that it’s coming from someone like Aaron David Miller, a long-time member in good standing of America’s Foreign Policy Community. A proven devotee of Israeli interests, Miller is not lamenting this bipartisan consensus but celebrating it: “ I, for one, am ecstatic about it.” And he does so by repudiating a standard D.C. trope — that bipartisanship is woefully lacking and the parties are so very far apart — because, in the age of Obama, that trope, at least when it comes to foreign policy, Terrorism and civil liberties, has become so glaringly false as to be unsustainable (Matt Taibbi, among others, has made similar arguments in the domestic policy context: namely, that the two parties adopt wildly disparate Election Year rhetoric and campaign vows but end up serving the same interests).

Today, the New York Times has a long, detailed article about the personal role played by President Obama in the massive amount of death and destruction the U.S. has brought to the Muslim world at his direction. The article, by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, is based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers” and thus uses sources who — with a couple of exceptions — attempt to cast the Commander-in-Chief in the best and most glorious possible light. Nonetheless, the article provides as clear a picture of the character of this individual politician as any stand-alone article in some time. Earlier today, I wrote aboutone specific revelation from the article that I most wanted to highlight — the way in which Obama, in order to conceal the civilian casualties he causes and justify the raining down of death he orders, has re-defined “militant” to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone” – but there are numerous other revealing passages in this article meriting attention.

* * * * *

The article describes in detail how “Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical” — an actual presidential-led death panel (as always in American media parlance, “Terrorist” means:individuals alleged by the U.S. Government — with no evidence, transparencey or due process — to be Terrorists). Specifically, Obama himself “insisted on approving every new name on an expanding ‘kill list,’ poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre ‘baseball cards’ of an unconventional war.” In total secrecy — with no transparency or oversight of any kind — he then selects who will live and who will die. The ugliest detail about this may be the presence of one of the attendees at these death sentence meetings:

It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die. . . . David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements.

In other words, the person in charge of Obama’s political fortunes attends the meetings where the Leader decrees who lives and dies. Just think about how warped that is, or what progressives would be saying if Karl Rove did that with George Bush. Here are some of the fabulous results of Obama’s sophisticated wisdom and progressive judgment that come from his death panel, including one incident that took place a mere two months after he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize:

The very first strike under his watch in Yemen, on Dec. 17, 2009, offered a stark example of the difficulties of operating in what General Jones described as an “embryonic theater that we weren’t really familiar with.”

It killed not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and left behind a trail of cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents. It was hardly the kind of precise operation that Mr. Obama favored. Videos of children’s bodies and angry tribesmen holding up American missile parts flooded You Tube, fueling a ferocious backlash that Yemeni officials said bolstered Al Qaeda.

Beyond telling a fun joke about his drone strikes, here’s how Obama responded to the carnage he caused in Yemen:

In Pakistan, Mr. Obama had approved not only “personality” strikes aimed at named, high-value terrorists, but “signature” strikes that targeted training camps and suspicious compounds in areas controlled by militants.

But some State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.

Now, in the wake of the bad first strike in Yemen, Mr. Obama overruled military and intelligence commanders who were pushing to use signature strikes there as well. . . .

Mr. Obama had drawn a line. But within two years, he stepped across it. Signature strikes in Pakistan were killing a large number of terrorist suspects, even when C.I.A. analysts were not certain beforehand of their presence. And in Yemen, roiled by the Arab Spring unrest, the Qaeda affiliate was seizing territory.

Today, the Defense Department can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. Officials say the criteria are tighter than those for signature strikes, requiring evidence of a threat to the United States, and they have even given them a new name — TADS, for Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes. But the details are a closely guarded secret — part of a pattern for a president who came into office promising transparency.

In the wake of massacres like the December, 2009 slaughter of dozens of women and children in Yemen, Obama has steadily escalated his drone attacks in multiple countries — not just numerically, but in terms of how indiscriminate they can be.

Many Obama fans claimed during the 2008 election that his background as a constitutional lawyer would ensure reversal of the most extremist Bush/Cheney policies, but he has instead used that background for the opposite goal:

When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.” . . . .

Asked what surprised him most about Mr. Obama, Mr. Donilon, the national security adviser, answered immediately: “He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.”

No late-night wrestling with conscience for this Nobel Peace laureate. Even his most radical decision — ordering an American citizen assassinated without a whiff of due process or transparency — is “easy” for him, and he’s so very “comfortable” with ordering people killed, say his aides who believe this to be a compliment.

No article about Obama’s Terrorism policies would be complete without noting the extensive continuity between Bush/Cheney and the progressive Democratic leader:

A few sharp-eyed observers inside and outside the government understood what the public did not. Without showing his hand, Mr. Obama had preserved three major policies — rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention — that have been targets of human rights groups since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Nor would it be complete without the most extremist right-wing Bush officials lavishing praise on Obama for this continuity:

Mr. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director and now an adviser to Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, commended the president’s aggressive counterterrorism record, which he said had a “Nixon to China” quality. . . .

No one would have imagined four years ago that his counterterrorism policies would come under far more fierce attack from the American Civil Liberties Union than from Mr. Romney.

One of the most glaring myths progressives like to tell themselves and others is that the GOP refuses to praise Obama no matter what he does. This is patently false. Virtually every one of the most far-right neocon Bush officials — including Dick Cheney himself — has spent years now praising Obama for continuing their Terrorism policies which Obama the Senator and Presidential Candidate once so harshly denounced. Every leading GOP candidate except Ron Paul wildly praised Obama for killing U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki without a shred of due process and for continuing to drop unaccountable bombs on multiple Muslim countries.

But the most amazing thing about the quotes from Gen. Hayden — who implemented George Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program while NSA chief and then became Bush’s CIA Director — is that he actually thinks Obama has gone much too far in his secrecy obsessions:

But, [Hayden] said, “secrecy has its costs” and Mr. Obama should open the strike strategy up to public scrutiny.

“This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s not sustainable,” Mr. Hayden said. “I have lived the life of someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain’t a good life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a D.O.J. safe.” . . .

As the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer put it today: “That Hayden, of all people, is complaining about secrecy is one measure of how far Obama has strayed from his commitment to transparency.” Of course, that Hayden — George Bush’s handpicked NSA and CIA chief — has spent two years lavishing Obama with praise on the substance of his Terrorism policies demonstrates even more about who Obama is.

And then finally we have this, the most consequential aspect of the Obama legacy:

Moreover, Mr. Obama’s record has not drawn anything like the sweeping criticism from allies that his predecessor faced. John B. Bellinger III, a top national security lawyer under the Bush administration, said that was because Mr. Obama’s liberal reputation and “softer packaging” have protected him. “After the global outrage over Guantánamo, it’s remarkable that the rest of the world has looked the other way while the Obama administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several different countries, including killing at least some civilians,” said Mr. Bellinger, who supports the strikes.

As I’ve written about many times before, Obama by leading blind-partisan Democrats and progressives to cheer for these policies rather than denounce them — has converted what were just recently highly divisive and controversial right-wing Assaults on Our Values into fully entrenched bipartisan consensus. But worse than that, he has put a prettier and more palatable face on extremely ugly policies.

Recall the 2010 CIA Report, leaked to WikiLeaks, which discussed how Barack Obama was the key asset for preventing Western European populations from abandoning war policies in Afghanistan. That’s because with Obama, rather than the swaggering cowboy George Bush, as the face of these wars, they would be more effectively marketed. That is precisely what Obama has done to the American citizenry with regard to what was recently known in Democratic Party circles as the Radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism agenda.

Just to underscore the level of right-wing extremism which Obama has normalized, consider his deceitful re-definition of the term “militant” to encompass ”all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,”which I wrote about earlier today. In 2006, the pro-Israel activist Alan Dershowitz created a serious scandal when he argued – mostly in order to justify Israeli aggression — that “civilian causalties” are a “gray area” because many people in close proximity to Terrorists — even if not Terrorists themselves — are less than innocent (“A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: ‘the continuum of civilianality’ . . . . Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others”).

Even more repellent was John Podhoretz’s argument in 2006 that “the tactical mistake” which “we made in Iraq was that we didn’t kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything,” specifically that the real error was that the U.S. permitted “the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35.” In other words, “all military-age males” in Sunni areas should have been deemed “combatants” and thus killed. Podhoretz’s argument created all sorts ofoutrage in progressive circles: John Podhoretz is advocating genocide!

But this is precisely the premise that President Obama himself has now adopted in order to justify civilian deaths and re-classify them as “militants.” Here is the rationale of Obama officials as described by the NYT: “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.” Probably up to no good. That’s a direct replica of Dershowitz’s argument, and is closely related to Podhoretz’s. They count someone as a “militant” — worthy of death — based purely on the happenstance of where they are and the proximity they’re in to someone else they suspect is a Bad Person. If such a person is killed by a U.S. missile, then, by definition, they are “militants,” not “civilians” — even if we don’t know the first thing about them, including their name.

That’s official Obama policy. It won’t even be reported on most MSNBC shows, and won’t even be acknowledged, let alone denounced, by the vast majority of Democrats, including progressives. That’s the Obama legacy.

And it’s all justified by this definitively warped premise: we have to keep doing things we know will result in large-scale civilian deaths in order to stop the Terrorists, who are really terrible because they keep killing civilians. Besdies, continuously killing a bunch of foreigners is hardly some reflection on our President’s character, especially in an Election Year.

* * * * *

Note how the Obama administration clearly wanted this discussion to appear in the New York Times —believing that depictions of Obama as Brave Warrior would result in political gain – even as they continue to insist to federal courts that their actions cannot be subject to judicial review because national security would be jeopardized if they were forced to acknowledge these programs in a judicial proceeding.

How Bill Kristol Purged the Arabists

2012-05-30T06:07:00.001-04:00

By Patrick J. Buchanan

May 29, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- After taping John Stossel’s show on March 16 in New York, the Mrs. and I took the 10 a.m. Acela back to Washington. Once we had boarded the train, who should come waddling up the aisle but Bill Kristol.

The Weekly Standard editor seemed cheerful, and we chatted about the surge in Mitt Romney’s popularity and prospects.

I did not ask what he had been doing in New York, but thanks to the website Mondoweiss, I found out. Kristol was there for a March 16 “debate” with Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the pro-Israel organization, at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue on the Upper West Side.

After listening to Kristol, writes Phil Weiss, “I am still reeling.”

“Kristol was treated like royalty and came off as … a Republican Party warlord,” bragging “about how all the hostile elements to Israel inside the Republican Party were purged over the last 30 years — (and) no one (now) dared to question the power of the Israeli lobby.”

“The big story in the Republican Party over the last 30 years, and I’m very happy about this,” said Kristol, is the “eclipsing” of the George H.W. Bush-James Baker-Brent Scowcroft realists, “an Arabist old-fashionedRepublican Party … very concerned about relations with Arab states that were not friendly with Israel … .”

That Bush crowd is yesterday, said Kristol. And not only had the “Arabists” like President Bush been shoved aside by the neocons, the “Pat Buchanan/Ron Paul type” of Republican has been purged.

“At B’nai Jeshurun,” writes Weiss, “Kristol admitted to playing a role in expelling members of theRepublican Party he does not agree with.” These are Republicans you had to “repudiate,” said Kristol, people “of whom I disapprove so much that I won’t appear with them.”

“I’ve encouraged that they be expelled or not welcomed into the Republican Party. I’d be happy if Ron Paul left. I was very happy when Pat Buchanan was allowed — really encouraged … by George Bush … to go off and run as a third-party candidate.”

Kristol’s point: Refuse to toe the neo-con line on Israel, and you have no future in the Republican Party.

Ben Ami seemed equally exultant: “We’ve won the war; we won the war,” he told the audience. Ninety-nine percent of Congress now votes almost 100 percent pro-Israel.

But Ben Ami appeared nervous about how this unanimity in the Congress behind Israel had been achieved:

“I very seriously and absolutely do believe that a significant percentage of American members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are intimidated on this issue (of Israel). … They worry about the ramifications of speaking out. … They are worried about the attacks that they will receive.”

Ben Ami said the 50 members who have criticized Israel are courageous, but, “Another 200 are scared to do it.” Haaretz.com reports Ben Ami as saying congressmen “live in fear” of the Israeli lobby.

Kristol laughed at this and dared Ben Ami to name them.

When Ben Ami brought up the destruction of Palestinian rights on the West Bank and said Hillary Clintonrepeatedly raises this issue with Israel, writes Weiss, “Kristol sniggered.”

It’s a “myth,” said Kristol, that Arabs care about Palestinians. The Israeli occupation on the West Bank can last for 45 or 60 years more. Bill Kristol on Palestinian rights sounds like Bull Connor talking about Negro rights in Birmingham in 1965.

Another source says Kristol predicted that Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose voting record is closer to Socialist Bernie Sanders’ than to conservative Jim DeMint’s, will be secretary of state in the Romney administration.

A former head of the Israel lobby AIPAC describes Lieberman as “the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in the Congress.”

Joe led the cheers for our last three Middle East wars — and has pushed for two more, against Syria and Iran.

About Kristol’s comments, a point of personal privilege.

George W. Bush never “encouraged” me to go third party. At the Iowa straw poll in 1999, he asked me to stay in the party, and party chair Jim Nicholson came to my home to make the same request.

At the synagogue, Kristol was never asked about his role in the Iraq War that he and his collaborators pressured Bush to wage as “Israel’s fight against terrorism is our fight.”

Some 4,500 Americans died in that war, 35,000 were wounded, and 100,000 Iraqis perished, leaving half a million widows and orphans.

Result: U.S. influence in the Middle East is at a nadir. Al-Qaida has spread into Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Syria and North Africa.

Now the neocons are worming their way into the Romney camp, dropping us hints on whether John Bolton or Joe Lieberman will be the next secretary of state.

Has Gov. Romney imbibed the Kristol Kool-Aid that caused the war and cost the party Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008?

Hard to believe, but we should find out before November.

Patrick Buchanan has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31445.htm

Bilderberg Treason 2012: Alex Jones Banned from Chantilly Marriot!

2012-05-30T06:03:00.000-04:00

‘Military Option’ for Syria: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

2012-05-29T23:52:00.001-04:00

By MACKENZIE WEINGER

May 29, 2012 "Information Clearing House" -- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said Monday “the military option should be considered” as the violence in Syria escalates.

Gen. Dempsey told CNN’s “Starting Point” that while he would prefer for the international community to find ways to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to leave power, the use of military force is always on the table. On Friday, 108 people were killed and 300 were injured in a massacre in Syria that sparked international outrage.

“I think the military option should be considered and I think that, but my preference of course always as the senior military leader would be that the international community can find ways of increasing the pressure on Assad to do the right thing and step aside,” he said on CNN. “But of course, we always have to provide military options, and they should be considered.”

Dempsey, the president’s top military adviser, also told CBS’s “This Morning” on Monday that he found the events in Syria “just horrific. Atrocious, really. I expect that the international community, that pressure will mount.”

“I think that diplomatic pressure should always precede any discussions about military options. And that is my job, by the way, is options, not policy. And so, we will be prepared to provide options if asked to do so,” Dempsey added.

Dempsey said he hopes that a “combination of economic and diplomatic measures” will push “Assad to make the right decision.”

“I don’t know whether in Syria’s particular case, a combination of economic and diplomatic measures will achieve that. But I certainly encourage our leaders, the international leaders to take that course and try to come together in a way that would cause Assad to make the right decision,” Dempsey told CBS.

This this article was first published at Politico

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31451.htm

Syrian Houla Massacres: Divide & Conquer Strategy Exposed

2012-05-29T23:44:00.000-04:00

Engineering Consent For An Attack On Syria

Video By Syrian Girl

The mainstream media is blaming the Houla massacre on the syrian military. However facts on the ground do not match this statement. The massacres in Syria are purposeful, to fuel a civil war in my country and pave the way for foreign interventions.

WARNING

This video contains images that depict the reality and horror of war.

It should only be viewed by a mature audience

Posted May 29, 2012

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31450.htm

West's Houla Syria Narrative Crumbles, Expels Syrian Diplomats Anyway

2012-05-29T23:40:00.000-04:00

West's Houla Syria Narrative Crumbles, Expels Syrian Diplomats Anyway

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31449.htm

Making Freedom Popular Again

2012-05-29T23:35:00.000-04:00