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Photos by: joanneleon. August 15, 2013.
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Guardian liveblog on Syria. It sure looks like we're getting into another war. If we take the lead on this, it's hard to see how we aren't risking getting stuck there for decades and how this doesn't escalate into a regional war for us. Just in time as our troops are leaving Afghanistan, another Middle East war?
Syria: UN inspectors attacked by snipers - latest news
• UN convoy comes under sniper fire en route to attack site
• William Hague hints military could take place without UN backing
• Bashar al-Assad denies involvement in chemical attack and says any foreign intervention will fail
• A UN inspection team came under sniper fire as it approached the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus. The convoy retreated after its first vehicle was shot at multiple times. There were no injuries and the team managed later to reach the affected area. According to people in the rebel-held location the UN team is now speaking to injured people and taking samples.
• The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, has called for urgent action on Syria, saying "every hour counts".
• There is a growing mood in the governments of the UK, US and some other allies towards military intervention in Syria. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, has said diplomatic efforts have failed. Support for action has come so far from France, Turkey and, to a more cautious extent, Germany.
• David Cameron has cut short a holiday to return to London and coordinate the British response.
I'm going to post a number of things here on Syria for your consideration just to get them out there before I'm off for a couple of weeks. Some are new and some are older. Some of them are video clips of interviews involving
ZbigniewBrzezinski because his recent musings in TV interviews are important, IMHO. I just want to say that my sentiments about him, for what it's worth, are conflicted. On Syria, he is speaking in clear language about things that most others are not speaking about but I want to be clear that I don't see him as a dove in any way, shape or form. After all, for more than a decade, he has been urging the U.S. to take advantage of it's singular superpower status after the fall of the USSR and he does not hesitate to advise messing with other countries and regions in major ways. But what he's saying about Syria is spot on, in my opinion, and he is not, as far as I can tell, and never was one to allow Israel's and other allies' foreign policy demands to exert too much influence on the U.S.
However, he supported the attack on Libya and overthrow of their govt. at the time. In his current musings, he doesn't mention that, or not that I heard. He did oppose Bush on the invasion of Iraq, which is important, and it does seem like he makes U.S. interests the top priority more clearly than a lot of others seem to when all the allies and coalitions and neocons muck up the works. So I'm not sure how revisionist his statements are on other things. I don't follow him that closely but I do tend to loosely keep up with what he's saying about foreign policy every so often and while I can't relate to his ruthless, hawkish attitude, when he says things he seems genuine and clear.
On Syria, I think it's really important to listen to what he's saying. One of the things he says, that I agree with and don't hear from others in interviews, is that he says that our govt. is spouting propaganda on Syria. This is really important because so much of the reports on Syria are mired in propaganda and have been from the start. Note that one really important point that he brings up is that when the humanitarian interventionists talk about how 100K Syrian people have been killed in this war, they fail to tell the world that those people have been killed by both sides in a sectarian proxy war, not just by the Assad government, as the pro intervention crowd propaganda would have you believe. Anyway, I just wanted to preface all of this with a few of those thoughts. I'm no foreign policy expert, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but I think I have a fairly basic handle on what's going on over there and I'm not seeing much of anything that's clear and truthful in the current wave of reporting on Syria in our media. The media and the experts on the topics in interviews rarely help us understand who is driving all of this (UK, France, who can't overtly exert influence in remaking the Middle East again because they are the architects of the current Middle East from post WWII) and the Gulf states, primarily Saudi Arabia and Qatar) and how and why this is a manufactured proxy war, with the underlying oil and resources and arms industry, nor do they talk about the neocon policy of overthrowing the governments of former USSR client states which may or may not be the same one that the European and Gulf states I mentioned have in mind.
Germany is pushing back.
Germany v. France: Berlin Flexes Diplomatic Muscles on Syria
Germany has urged caution in response to French calls for the use of force in Syria. Its stance is more than a mere aversion to military intervention, however. The country is quietly asserting itself and fleshing out its foreign policy.
Raising the ante in the confrontation with the Assad regime and its international supporters, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius this week called for the use of force in Syria. Across the Rhine Valley in Berlin, however, his German equivalent Guido Westerwelle urged caution: "Before speaking of consequences we must first have clarification." French daily newspaper Le Monde ran the outsized headline "Toxic Gas Massacre in Damascus". Most German newspapers that day led with the Bradley Manning verdict.
[...]
With fewer German ghosts in the Mediterranean basin, Germany can sell its successful national brand with less historical baggage and distinguish itself from France. This had begun shortly before the Arab Awakening, at a time when Berlin resented exclusionary moves like Sarkozy's Union for the Mediterranean and took pride in the "small differences" of its own policies.
[...]
Germany still sold plenty of arms to the same regimes: The same report noted the "especially negative consequences of France's special position on the German economy" and openly complained that "when it's time to sign contracts, it's the French firms that always come in ahead."
[...]
But Germany's goals differ markedly and signal a counter-revolutionary stance against French activist zeal. None of the Merkel-led coalitions to come out of September's elections are likely to judge things differently. In addition to the 50 years of the Elysée Treaty, this October also marks the 200th anniversary of the war liberating Prussia from Napoleonic occupation.
Some video segments on Syria (some recent, some from May and June).
June.
June.
May.
Current.
der Spiegel.
Codename 'Apalachee': How America Spies on Europe and the UN
President Obama promised that NSA surveillance activities were aimed exclusively at preventing terrorist attacks. But secret documents from the intelligence agency show that the Americans spy on Europe, the UN and other countries.
The European Union building on New York's Third Avenue is an office tower with a glittering facade and an impressive view of the East River. Chris Matthews, the press officer for the EU delegation to the United Nations, opens the ambassadors' room on the 31st floor, gestures toward a long conference table and says: "This is where all ambassadors from our 28 members meet every Tuesday at 9 a.m." It is the place where Europe seeks to forge a common policy on the UN.
[...]
For the National Security Agency (NSA), America's powerful intelligence organization, the move was above all a technical challenge. A new office means freshly painted walls, untouched wiring and newly installed computer networks -- in other words, loads of work for the agents. While the Europeans were still getting used to their glittering new offices, NSA staff had already acquired the building's floor plans. The drawings completed by New York real estate company Tishman Speyer show precisely to scale how the offices are laid out. Intelligence agents made enlarged copies of the areas were the data servers are located. At the NSA, the European mission near the East River is referred to by the codename "Apalachee".
[...]
Just over two weeks ago, Obama made a promise to the world. "The main thing I want to emphasize is that I don't have an interest and the people at the NSA don't have an interest in doing anything other than making sure that (...) we can prevent a terrorist attack," Obama said during a hastily arranged press conference at the White House on August 9. He said the sole purpose of the program was to "get information ahead of time (...) so we are able to carry out that critical task," adding: "We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that." Afterward, the president flew to the Atlantic island of Martha's Vineyard for his summer vacation.
Wide Range of New Surveillance Programs
Obama's appearance before the press was an attempt to morally justify the work of the intelligence agencies; to declare it as a type of emergency defense. His message was clear: Intelligence is only gathered because there is terror -- and anything that saves people's lives can't be bad. Ever since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, this logic has been the basis for a wide range of new surveillance programs.
[...]
The classified documents, which SPIEGEL has seen, demonstrate how systematically the Americans target other countries and institutions like the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the UN. They show how the NSA infiltrated the Europeans' internal computer network between New York and Washington, used US embassies abroad to intercept communications and eavesdropped on video conferences of UN diplomats. The surveillance is intensive and well-organized -- and it has little or nothing to do with counter-terrorism.
Laura Poitras for der Spiegel.
Miranda Detention: 'Blatant Attack on Press Freedom'
Reporting on this story means some things can only be said in person, and still it is hard to know you can escape surveillance. David was traveling to me meet on behalf of the Guardian newspaper, which has taken the lead on publishing the NSA stories. We now know that David's detention was ordered at the highest levels of the British government, including the Prime Minister. We also know the US government was given advance warning that David would be detained and interrogated.
[...]
At the moment I live in what used to be East Berlin. It feels strange to come to the former home of the Stasi to expose the dangers of government surveillance, but being here gives me hope. There is a deep historical memory among Germans of what happens to societies when its government targets and spies on its own citizens. The public outcry in Germany to the NSA disclosures has been enormous.
[...]
The governments of the United States, Britain, Germany, and others would like this debate to go away. It won't. [...]
Glenn and I, with the full support of David and others, will continue to work on the disclosures made by Snowden, as will the Guardian, SPIEGEL, the Washington Post, their reporters and their loved ones, and many other news organizations who believe vast unchecked secret government surveillance powers are a threat to democracy.
Front page of NY Times site. Seems like somebody doesn't want that inspection. Read the article for all of the warmongering statements from various countries who want the U.S. to attack Syria and the rationalizations of why it should be done with no UN Security Council resolution and no justification of self defense. This feels like some grotesque hybrid of the Iraq and Libyan wars all over again.
Snipers Fire on Weapons Inspectors in Syria, U.N. Says
LONDON — United Nations inspectors heading toward the site of a claimed chemical attack in Syria came under fire “multiple times by unidentified snipers” as they sought to cross into rebel-held territory on Monday, the United Nations said, and the first car in their convoy was hit.
While there were no immediate reports of injuries, “the car was no longer serviceable,” so the inspectors “returned safely back to the government checkpoint,” the United Nations said in a statement in New York, urging the combatants to cooperate with their effort to establish what happened in the claimed poison gas attack last Wednesday. “The team will return to the area after replacing the vehicle,” the statement said.
[...]
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia, published on Monday, Mr. Assad said accusations that his forces used chemical weapons were illogical and an “outrage against common sense.” He warned the United States that military intervention in his country would bring “failure just like in all the previous wars they waged, starting with Vietnam and up to the present day.”
[...]
While Mr. Assad has said he would give weapons inspectors access to the site, the gesture has been greeted with widespread skepticism in the West, with critics saying that the offer came too late for inspectors to make an accurate assessment of what happened. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, complained on Monday that access was not “unimpeded” since it was limited to a “certain number of hours.”
[...]
In Israel, a senior government official said Monday it was “crystal clear” that Mr. Assad’s forces used chemical weapons last week and called the United Nations investigation effort a “joke.” The official said that Iran, a close ally of the Syrian leader, should also be held responsible.
Syria To Allow Inspection Of Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack; US Rebuffs, Says "Too Late'
Update: and there you have it - the US "demand" was nothing but a farce, and the second Syria complied the US says it was never interested in the first place.
More on this perfectly expected turn of events:
Syria said Sunday it would allow United Nations inspectors currently present in Damascus immediate access to areas around the capital where the opposition accused the regime of using chemical weapons against fighters and civilians five days ago.
But the U.S. rebuffed Syria's decision, saying the offer came too late to be credible.
"If the Syrian government had nothing to hide and wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have ceased its attacks on the area and granted immediate access to the U.N.— five days ago," a senior administration official said.
"At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the U.N. team is too late to be credible, including because the evidence available has been significantly corrupted as a result of the regime's persistent shelling and other intentional actions over the last five days," the official added.
Earlier, the U.N. said its inspection team was preparing to start its fact-finding mission on Monday after a presenter on Syrian state television, reading a statement attributed to an unnamed official at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said agreement was reached following a meeting between Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and Angela Kane, the U.N. disarmament chief, who arrived in Damascus on Saturday
[...]
Joking aside, the reason why the US "demands", but doesn't actually want the UN inspectors on the ground, is because it is terrified we will have a repeat of May, when the UN did inspect... only it found precisely the opposite of what the Nobel Peace Prize winner wanted.
Syrian Kurds trek to Iraq over parched hills
The mainly Kurdish refugees are fleeing groups of fighters that have been seizing control of villages over the border, Khalil said, at a reception camp in the Iraqi frontier village of Suhilla, around 400km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
"We don't know them. They just come, take power and give themselves a name," she said, as her 18-month-old son slept spread-eagled on a cloth in front of her. "We don't know who we are supposed to support. The people, we are just left to be trampled underfoot," the 28-year-old Kurd said.
The sudden influx of Syrian refugees has brought Iraq's prosperous and well-armed northern region closer to the conflict which has already killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions. The leader of the autonomous region has promised to protect Kurds over the border from attacks.
[...]
The mass flight of into northern Iraq started just over a week ago when Iraqi Kurdish authorities opened a rickety pontoon bridge over the Tigris River. Officials said they were forced to act because there were reports that their kinsmen were being slaughtered by al Qaeda-linked fighters over the border, in a part of Syria the Iraqi regional government refers to as Western Kurdistan.
I don't know if Russia will use their resources to overtly get involved in a Syrian war, but they sure as hell will use their resources to let the rest of the world know what's going on. Check out the photo in this article of a bombed out courthouse in Benghazi, from several weeks ago.
‘Violent chaos’: Libya in deep crisis 2 years since rebels took over
On this day two years ago, Libyan rebels were transferring their government to Tripoli. However, the anniversary is marred by an acute parliamentary crisis, a severe economic slump and the country becoming the main base for Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.
August could have been a month of festivities in Libya, marking the watershed in the rebels’ fight against Muammar Gaddafi, who had to flee Tripoli. Even though it would still be two months before the fugitive dictator was captured and brutally killed, the insurgents celebrated their victory and had their government transferred from the cradle of the revolution, Benghazi, to the capital.
The euphoria of the revolution has all but gone now, as Libya finds itself mired in deep political crisis as well as economic turmoil.
“We do not feel the taste of happiness, security and stability,” a resident of Tripoli is cited as saying by Libya Herald, “nor did we have any benefit from the government. People are now feeling insecure and live in fear because of killings that are being witnessed all over Libya.”
RT again. Having grown up in the Cold War era, it's a very strange feeling when the Russians are on the right side of things and speaking out about it, and when we're so wrong. This sickens me.
Hysteria around chemical attack suits those who want military intervention in Syria - Lavrov
Following last week’s chemical attack, the West has engineered a media campaign to facilitate a military incursion, says Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The diplomat also cast doubts on the veracity of US and European claims about the incident.
“Official Washington, London and Paris say they have incontrovertible evidence that the Syrian government is behind the chemical attack in Damascus, but they have not yet presented this evidence. Yet, they keep saying that the ‘red line’ has been crossed,” Lavrov said during an emergency press conference in Moscow.
“Now, we are hearing calls for a military campaign against Bashar Assad.”
Lavrov said that the US, Britain and other countries have assembled a “powerful force” and are “readying their ships and planes” for a possible invasion.
The minister said that development set the world on a "perilous path" and warned that “repeating the Iraqi and Lybian scenario” and bringing in outside forces, would be a “terrible mistake that will lead to more blood being spilt”.
Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history -- and still gave him a hand.
The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.
In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.
[...]
U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.
"The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew," he told Foreign Policy.
NY Times Op-Ed.
We’re All Still Hostages to the Big Banks
STANFORD, Calif. — NEARLY five years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers touched off a global financial crisis, we are no safer. Huge, complex and opaque banks continue to take enormous risks that endanger the economy. From Washington to Berlin, banking lobbyists have blocked essential reforms at every turn. Their efforts at obfuscation and influence-buying are no surprise. What’s shameful is how easily our leaders have caved in, and how quickly the lessons of the crisis have been forgotten.
We will never have a safe and healthy global financial system until banks are forced to rely much more on money from their owners and shareholders to finance their loans and investments. Forget all the jargon, and just focus on this simple rule.
Mindful, perhaps, of the coming five-year anniversary, regulators have recently taken some actions along these lines. In June, a committee of global banking regulators based in Basel, Switzerland, proposed changes to how banks calculate their leverage ratios, a measure of how much borrowed money they can use to conduct their business.
While shielded by Pres. Obama from accountability for their bankrupting of the country, this is what they've been doing. It's a massive sell out of the people. Almost unimaginable scale. I wonder if, in later years, if he will think it was all worth it. Since he'll join the elite ranks of the 0.1%, and presumably he's known that all along, I suppose he will find it to have been worth selling out the people of this country because he and his family and his cronies will be able to go wherever it's safest and most prosperous for themselves. It's hard to imagine how he'll sleep at night though.
The Leveraged Buyout of America
Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money?
In a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dated June 27, 2013, US Representative Alan Grayson and three co-signers expressed concern about the expansion of large banks into what have traditionally been non-financial commercial spheres. Specifically:
W]e are concerned about how large banks have recently expanded their businesses into such fields as electric power production, oil refining and distribution, owning and operating of public assets such as ports and airports, and even uranium mining.
According to legal scholar Saule Omarova, over the past five years, there has been a “quiet transformation of U.S. financial holding companies.” These financial services companies have become global merchants that seek to extract rent from any commercial or financial business activity within their reach. They have used legal authority in Graham-Leach-Bliley to subvert the “foundational principle of separation of banking from commerce”. . . .
It seems like there is a significant macro-economic risk in having a massive entity like, say JP Morgan, both issuing credit cards and mortgages, managing municipal bond offerings, selling gasoline and electric power, running large oil tankers, trading derivatives, and owning and operating airports, in multiple countries.
Groundwater Contamination May End the Gas-Fracking Boom
In Pennsylvania, the closer you live to a well used to hydraulically fracture underground shale for natural gas, the more likely it is that your drinking water is contaminated with methane. This conclusion, in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA in July, is a first step in determining whether fracking in the Marcellus Shale underlying much of Pennsylvania is responsible for tainted drinking water in that region.
[...]
Most groundwater supplies are only a few hundred feet deep, but if the protective metal casing and concrete around a fracking well are leaky, methane can escape into them. The study does not prove that fracking has contaminated specific drinking-water wells, however. “I have no agenda to stop fracking,” Jackson says. He notes that drilling companies often construct wells properly. But by denying even the possibility that some wells may leak, the drilling companies have undermined their own credibility.
Colombia Nationwide Strike Against 'Free Trade,' Privatization, Poverty
Ignored by English-language media, rural uprisings spread across industries as hundreds of thousands protest US-backed govt
A nationwide strike in Colombia—which started as a rural peasant uprising and spread to miners, teachers, medical professionals, truckers, and students—reached its 7th day Sunday as at least 200,000 people blocked roads and launched protests against a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and devastating policies of poverty and privatization pushed by US-backed right-wing President Juan Manuel Santos.
"[The strike is a condemnation] of the situation in which the Santos administration has put the country, as a consequence of its terrible, anti-union and dissatisfactory policies," declared the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), the country's largest union, in a statement.
The protests and strikes, largely ignored in the English-language media, have been met with heavy crackdown from Colombia's feared police, with human rights organization Bayaca reporting shootings, torture, sexual assault, severe tear-gassing, arbitrary arrests, and other abuses on the part of state agents. Colombia’s Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon recently claimed that the striking workers are being controlled by the "terrorist" Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in a country known for using unverified claims of FARC connections as an excuse to launch severe violence against social movements.
Matt Taibbi.
Obama's New Education Proposal: Change, or Changed Subject?
By Tuesday, shameless pro-administration flacks like Jeffrey Toobin were going on TV and doing the dreary work of dirtying up Miranda in the press, comparing him to a drug mule and blasting critics who think the whole freedom-of-the-press thing confers "magic immunity sauce." Add in the indefensible 35-year sentence for Chelsea Manning, and there were progressives following this revolting national-security story a few days ago who probably found themselves pining for the civil liberties panacea that was the Bush administration.
Think about it: on Monday and Tuesday, the Democratic Party was the face of a repressive new global security state which improbably had forced Vladimir Putin's Russia into the role of earth's symbolic defender of individual liberty, and in a mirroring irony had turned journalists like Greenwald into the dissidenti of our age, with Brazil the new Vermont and Greenwald's Guardian articles the new samizdat.
But now it's Friday, and what do we see in the news? Lots and lots of coverage of the President's suddenly-urgent new road show around America's college campuses, where he's stumping for his "bold" new plan to reduce tuition costs. Obama on Monday and Tuesday was Darth Vader; today, he's being feted in the New York Times for his ostentatiously progressive-sounding new plan to help the student demographic.
[...]
That this "bus tour" is political groundwork for the upcoming fiscal battle was pretty clear from Obama's speech at the University of Buffalo earlier this week, which incidentally got rave reviews inside the Beltway. In his opening remarks, the President set the tone for his education proposal by talking about the general challenge of turning around the fucked/dead manufacturing economy (it can't be a coincidence that they picked towns like Buffalo and Scranton to present this education plan):
Journalism is terrorism.
David Miranda row: New law 'needed to protect secrets'
Anti-terror laws should be strengthened to prevent leaks of official secrets, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Blair has told the BBC.
He was speaking after police seized what they said were thousands of classified documents from David Miranda - the partner of a Guardian journalist.
Lord Blair said publication of such material could put lives at risk.
He suggested new laws were needed to cover those who obtained secret material without proper authority.
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