Anatomy of An Arabian Tragedy—Slanted UN Human Rights Resolution On Al Qusayr

[The following documentation on the Qatari-crafted resolution  laid-out below (after very extensive searching) reveals a level of duplicity usually reserved for desert kingdom camel-trading, hardly something worthy of the adjective, statesmanship.---

FIRST, we have an intentionally slanted BBC article mentioning only Hezbollah, as a source of "foreign fighters" within Syria. 

NEXT, we have the poisonous UN Human Rights Council resolution, condemning ONLY the Syrian government.

LAST, is the original, balanced opening statement of Ms. Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights.  She sought a statement calling for an end to ALL outside meddling in Syria and the supply of arms to both sides.  US Ambassador Rice is to blame for twisting this honest attempt at real diplomacy in the last refuge of human hope into a depraved instrument for an international invasion of Syria, exactly like the rape of Libya. 

Government such as this is criminal and must be brought to its knees. 

REVOLUTION NOW, for the sake of the entire human race.] 

 

UN human rights body condemns foreign fighters in Syria

Funerals have been held in Lebanon for Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria

 

“The deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the recent killings in Al Qusayr”

 

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Human Rights Council’s resolution on Syria/ Qusayr

at 12:23 PM

Human Rights Council

Twenty-third session

Agenda item 1

Organizational and procedural 

Qatar, Turkey*, United States of America: draft resolution

23/…  The deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab      Republic, and the recent killings in Al Qusayr

The Human Rights Council,

Guided by the Charter of the United Nations,

Having held an urgent debate to discuss the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the recent killings in Al Qusayr, which is currently under siege by the Syrian regime,

Recalling General Assembly resolutions 66/176 of 19 December 2011, 66/253 of 16 February 2012, 66/253B of 3 August 2012, 67/183 of 20 December 2012  and 67/262 of 15 May 2013, Human Rights Council resolutions S-16/1 of 29 April 2011, S-17/1 of 22 August 2011, S-18/1 of 2 December 2011, 19/1 of 1 March 2012, 19/22 of 23 March 2012, 20/22 of 6 July 2012, 21/26 of 28 September 2012 and 22/24 of 22 March 2013, and Security Council resolutions 2042 (2012) of 14 April 2012 and 2043 (2012) of 21 April 2012,

Recalling the press release by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 10 May 2013, in which she expressed alarm at reports of major military build-up around the western Syrian town of Al Qusayr, and stated that she feared further atrocities and increasing displacement of the local civilian population,

Reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and to the principles of the Charter,

1. Strongly condemns all violations of international humanitarian law and the widespread and systematic gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities and the Government-affiliated militias, such as those violations involving the regime’s use of ballistic missiles and other heavy weapons against civilians in the Syrian Arab Republic, including against the people of Al Qusayr;

 2. Condemns all violence in the Syrian Arab Republic, irrespective of where it comes from, and calls upon all parties to immediately put an end to all forms of violence, including terrorist acts and acts of violence or intimidation that may foment sectarian tensions, further condemns all human rights violations and abuses and calls upon all parties to comply strictly with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law;

3. Calls upon the Syrian authorities to meet their responsibility to protect the Syrian population and to put an immediate end to all attacks against the civilians of Al Qusayr;

4. Stresses the need to ensure accountability for those responsible for the massacre in Al Qusayr, and further stresses that those responsible for the serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Syrian Arab Republic must be held to account; reaffirms that the Syrian people, on the basis of broad, inclusive and credible consultations should determine, within the framework provided by international law, the process and mechanisms to achieve justice, reconciliation, truth and accountability for gross violations, as well as reparations and effective remedies for victims, while underlining the relevance of referrals to the appropriate international criminal justice mechanism under appropriate circumstances;

5. Condemns the intervention of foreign combatants fighting on behalf of the Syrian regime in Al Qusayr, and expresses deep concern that their involvement further exacerbates the deteriorating human rights and humanitarian situation, which has a serious negative impact on its region;

6. Demands that the Syrian authorities allow free and unimpeded access by the United Nations and humanitarian agencies to all civilians affected by the violence, especially in Al Qusayr, through all effective routes, including by providing authorization for cross-border humanitarian operations as an urgent priority; and urges all parties to protect medical personnel, facilities, and transport as such;

6. Requests the Commission of Inquiry to urgently conduct a comprehensive, independent and unfettered l inquiry into the events in Al Qusayr and also requests the Commission to include  the finding of the inquiry  in its report to the  Human Rights Council at its 24^th session.

7. Decides to remain seized of the matter and to take further action on the situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Follow me on Twitter @NabilAbiSaab

 

Urgent debate on the human rights situation in Syria – Opening Statement by Ms. Navi Pillay, High Commissioner for Human Rights

Geneva, 29 May 2013

Mr. President,
Distinguished Members of the Human Rights Council,
Excellencies,

The situation in Syria reflects a colossal failure to protect civilians. Day after day, children, women and men suffer the brutality of unbridled violence and gross human rights violations by all parties. The increasing number of foreign fighters crossing Syria’s borders to support one side or the other, is further fueling the sectarian violence, and the situation is beginning to show worrying signs of destabilizing the region as a whole.

General situation

Credible reports from my monitoring teams indicate that government forces continue to carry out indiscriminate and disproportionate shelling and aerial attacks resulting in civilian deaths and injuries throughout the country, including in Al-Qusayr.

Government forces and affiliated militias have reportedly carried out acts of collective punishment against civilian populations perceived to be sympathetic to the opposition. The reported massacres in Al Bayda and Ras Al-Nabaa in Baniyas, following similar mass killings in other parts of Syria, show a pattern of extreme acts of collective punishment. Arbitrary arrests and detention, as well as torture, ill-treatment and extra-judicial executions by Government forces have continued unabated.

The flagrant disregard of international law is not limited to the Government side. Many anti-Government armed groups are reportedly engaging in military operations within civilian-populated areas. Some of these groups continue to carry out executions of captured members of pro-Government forces and affiliated militias. The abduction of civilians by anti-Government armed groups, as well as killings, violence and threats of reprisals against civilian populations perceived to be supportive of the Government are also believed to be escalating.

Both parties to the conflict have targeted cultural property and places of worship, including mosques and churches, as part of a wider context of large-scale destruction of housing and other buildings and infrastructure throughout Syria.

Al-Qusayr

Since anti-Government armed groups took control of the city of Al-Qusayr and the surrounding area in 2012, a year-long Government-imposed siege, accompanied by frequent shelling, has resulted in a deteriorating humanitarian situation, with shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies. The situation has greatly worsened over the last month, as efforts to capture Al-Qusayr have intensified, with hundreds more desperate families fleeing the area.

I am deeply concerned about the safety of the civilians still trapped in and around Al-Qusayr. Intense shelling, and clashes between Government forces and supporting militias and anti-Government armed groups have reportedly resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries.

I am also concerned about reports suggesting that some anti-Government armed groups are operating in populated areas and have failed to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians in Al-Qusayr.

I urge both sides to protect civilians from the ongoing violence and to allow safe passage to those who wish to flee. Under international law, all parties are called upon to distinguish themselves from civilians during hostilities and to take all feasible precautions to limit their suffering.

International dimension

Mr. President, the conflict in Syria is spinning out of control.

Immediate action to stop further bloodshed and suffering is needed, and this urgent debate provides an opportunity for the international community to review its approach. It is also an opportunity for individual States and other actors to do some soul-searching. States with influence on both sides must pull together to stop this conflict, instead of pursuing opposing paths that have so far simply contributed to the spiraling devastation of Syria.

The solution must be political. It will not be military. Outside forces, including some States, are reported to be actively fueling the conflict by providing weapons and ammunition to one side or the other. This emboldens the belligerents.

Large-scale forced displacement, including across borders, on the basis of religious or other affiliations, is no longer a prospect we can ignore. If the current situation persists, or deteriorates further, increased inter-communal massacres are a certainty, rather than a risk. Recent virulent instances of incitement to violence on grounds of religion or ethnicity, and the increasing involvement of a variety of extremist foreign fighters, are ominous signs of more violence to come.

Syria has long had a reputation for tolerance, with Sunnis, Shia, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze and many other communities living side-by-side in relative harmony.

The international community must drive home an uncompromising message that all Syrians are entitled to live in their own country, in safety and without fear, regardless of their religion, ethnicity or political affiliation.

Mr. President,

In the run-up to the proposed International Conference on Syria in Geneva, States — especially those with influence on the combatants — must act collectively to stop this dreadful conflict from getting even worse. The collapse of the State of Syria would have devastating consequences, not just for Syrians, but also for the region and the whole world.

The message from all of us should be the same: we will not support this conflict with arms, ammunition, politics or religion.

We must put our differences aside, and States with influence should use it to apply strong pressure to halt all further use of heavy weapons and aerial bombardment of civilian areas. States with influence must make it clear they are unified in not tolerating any further killings, destruction or sectarian incitement, by anti- or pro-Government elements.

States with influence must insist – and ensure – that the Government and opposition groups permit humanitarian agencies to operate without restrictions in order to provide the massive assistance that is so urgently needed across this devastated land.

Mr. President, the Syrian conflict will end one day, one way or another. We must plan for that ending in the hope that it is in a month, not in five, ten or twenty years.

There will be many daunting post-conflict challenges that need to be tackled, and which we need to start reflecting on now.

The urgent needs of Syrians for humanitarian relief and for economic and social reconstruction will require the maintenance or restoration and reform of functional State institutions, including the army, police, judiciary and civil administration.

We must also put our differences aside in respect of upholding international laws and standards. Syria must be referred to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. War crimes and crimes against humanity are being routinely committed and the prevalent culture of impunity is helping to prolong the conflict.

A referral to the ICC is likely to have a deterrent effect that may help to protect lives. Would-be perpetrators should be under no illusion that they will escape justice.  Referral to the ICC will give an incentive to the many people on both sides, who are not responsible for serious crimes, to distance themselves from the extremists driving the country to destruction. It will demonstrate clearly that the only viable future is to hold discussions, seek reconciliation, find solutions and stop the carnage.

Proposed Geneva Conference
Mr President, for all the above reasons, I welcome the efforts to hold the long-awaited international conference in Geneva to find a political solution to the conflict. I call on all involved States to place respect for human rights firmly on its agenda.

This is an extremely important opportunity for States with influence to pull the parties back from the brink of catastrophe. Reflecting on the immense human and economic cost of previous protracted conflicts, we should do our utmost to avoid allowing another one to develop in the heart of such a particularly volatile region.

This Council should send a clear message to all parties to the conflict, and the external actors wittingly and unwittingly fuelling it: the conflict must cease, with an immediate cease-fire as a confidence-building measure leading up to the Geneva conference; the flow of arms must stop; and the process of national dialogue must begin now.

Thank you.

ENDS

For more information or media requests, please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org); Liz Throssell (+41 22 917 9434 / ethrossell@ohchr.org) or Cécile Pouilly (+ 41 22 917 9310 /cpouilly@ohchr.org)

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Zionist Press Taunts British Spooks for Letting Their “Islamist” Slips Show

[This Jewish piece would be ironic if it was not meant as a Zionist upbraiding of their royal patrons for sloppy spywork.  The JPost author finishes his criticism of British mentors by highlighting some of the more well-known examples of previous British foul-ups, most notable among them, "Sheikh Omar," the butcher of Daniel Pearl who also killed the real bin Laden, according to Benazir Bhutto right before her own assassination (SEE:  Benazir Bhutto Says Osama Bin Laden murdered by Omar Sheikh). 

Anytime that your spy works leave a visible trail back to the source, there is now a danger that civilians like us will see through the smokescreen, revealing the British hand in countless terrorist operations, because of the Internet.  Now we can see the patterns clearly emerging, like spider webs, all leading back to London.  In many ways, Lyndon Larouche has been spot-on in some of his assessments of the shameless schemes of London and those carried-out in concert with foreign royals.  It seems that there is still a web of trust between the royal blood lines, especially when it comes to secret operations.  It is no wonder that London and Riyadh work so smoothly together.  Both thrones are historically bloodthirsty, with ambitions that far exceed their small populations or geographical areas. 

Normally the British are more circumspect about leaving blood trails leading back to MI5 or MI6.  They have repeatedly blown their covers in this terror war, starting in Basra (SEE:  So what were two undercover British soldiers up to in Basra?) and in Afghanistan's Helmand Province (SEE: What exactly were Mervyn Patterson and Michael Semple doing in Helmand?), be it soldiers getting captured by local police, or militant operatives revealing themselves to the targeted governments. 

Manufacturing terrorists from radicalized Muslim males is the cheapest way concocted to raise an army since the days of organized slavery.  It is high time that this process of waging war on the cheap, using mercenaries and brainwashed cadres of Wahhabiized "Islamists," is brought to an end. 

It seems that the back story of V for Vendetta was all true.

  

 Britain, will you wait until the 5th of November to bring the evil plot to an end?]

UK’s Islamist problem

By JPOST EDITORIAL

It should come as no surprise that random terrorist attacks have been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, MI5’s greatest security threat.

A police forensics officer investigates a crime scene where one man was killed in Woolwich, London Photo: REUTERS

Since 9/11, the West’s perception of violence perpetrated in the name of a warped interpretation of Islam has changed. No longer can this violence be seen as an exclusively external threat faced by countries located in the Middle East such as Israel. Rather, it is a domestic threat as well.This lesson was driven home yet again for Brits on Wednesday when Michael “Mujaheed” Adebolajo and an accomplice brutally murdered a man in broad daylight on a London street while shouting “Allahu akbar.”

The victim, a British soldier, was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Help-the Heroes,” which is also the name of an organization that supports British forces fighting in Afghanistan and Mali.

The vast majority of Muslims in Britain and in other European countries are law-abiding, upright citizens who are undoubtedly appalled that the two men have claimed to be acting in the name of Islam. The Muslim Council of Britain was quick to denounce the atrocity.

Nevertheless, Britain and other European countries do have a problem with radical Islamists. And they have for some time now.

“Londonistan” apparently originated as an appellation used in the 1990s by French security officials frustrated at British leaders’ failure to confront in their capital the dangers of radical Islam, which, the officials feared, would spill over into France. Steven Simon, a former White House counterterrorism official, referred to London as “the Star Wars bar scene,” that caters to all kinds of Islamist recruiters and fund-raisers for, and practitioners of, holy war.

Abu Hamza al-Masri, the imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque in central London, provided shelter to Richard Reid, a.k.a. “the Shoe Bomber,” and Zacarias Moussaoui, a member of the team that carried out the 9/11 attacks, and other terrorists.

The 2002 video butchering in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was organized by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, another Brit and a former student at the London School of Economics. A year later, Asif Mohammed Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, both born in England, took part in a suicide attack on Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv bar.

British authorities have taken steps to crack down on extremists. Abu Hamza was eventually jailed on charges of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. In March of this year, Jamaican-born Abdullah El-Faisal, a supporter of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was sentenced to nine years in jail for urging his followers to kill nonbelievers in a holy war.

Some radical Muslim clerics have managed to manipulate Britain’s democratic system. At the end of March, police said they were unable to prosecute Anjem Choudary for saying that British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama should be killed. After the British daily The Sun provided authorities with secretly filmed footage, Choudary claimed he had been “joking,” though he maintained that bin Laden was his “hero.”

In the wake of the brutal murder on Wednesday, Choudary said he was acquainted with Adebolajo, who converted to Islam in 2003. According to The Telegraph, Adebolajo appeared publicly alongside other radical members of Islamist group Al-Muhajiroun, the banned forerunner to 4 UK, which was headed by Choudary.

Commenting on Adebolajo’s act of terrorism, Choudary said: “What he did was unusual and it’s not the kind of view that I propagate and I do not condone the use of violence, but those views are out there. Some members of the Muslim community struggle to express themselves and he is making his voice heard in blood.”

Clerics such as Choudary walk a thin line between criminal incitement and freedom of expression. And his messages enjoy a remarkably receptive audience in a country where the fastest growing religion is Islam. In a 2006 survey commissioned by Channel 4, a quarter of British Muslims said the July 7, 2005, bombings in London that left 52 dead were justified because of the British government’s support for the war on terror. Muslims under 24 were twice as likely to agree.

There is no evidence that these sorts of sentiments among some Muslims have significantly changed. In an atmosphere in which murderous terrorist attacks are see as justified, the sort of seemingly random lone wolf attack perpetrated by Adebolajo and his accomplice becomes all the more likely. It should come as no surprise that random terrorist attacks have been, and will remain for the foreseeable future, MI5’s greatest security threat.

EU Continues with US-Led Sanctions against Syrians as It Scraps Arms Embargo

Franklin Lamb

Beirut Under withering pressure from Washington and the UK, the European Union met this week to decide whether to increase the pressure on the Syrian public by repealing the March 2011 arms embargo that was intended to prohibit arms shipments to Syria and whether or not to continue economic sanctions against the Syrian public. On 5/27/13 it decided to open the flood gate of arms flow into Syria and to keep the civilian targeting economic sanctions in place. Lobbying for scrapping the arms embargo, set to expire at midnight on 31 May,  had reached nearly historic intensity at EU HQ in Brussels, London and Washington.  Recently, the US State Department demanded that every one of the 27 European Ambassadors posted in the US appear at the State Department for “consultations to avoid any misunderstandings about what the White House was expecting at the upcoming EU meeting.” US Secretary of State John Kerry had been urging the EU to gut the arms embargo so as to expedite weapon shipments to the rebels. It currently appears that Britain now has the support of France, Italy and Spain, while Germany appears neutral and Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Czech Republic are still opposed.  “Fine for him to say, but what is Washington willing to do?” one European foreign minister opposed to lifting the ban put it to BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet. This week’s EU meeting, which was postponed three months ago, raised again the obligation of the international community to respect the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Convention with respect to protecting the civilian population during armed conflicts and virtually every other international humanitarian law requirement. For the American administration, designing and applying economic sanctions in order to pressure a population to break with its government to achieve regime change or any other political objective, as in the case of both Syria and Iran are fundamentally illegal under US law. Just as soon as a group of Syrian-Americans and/or Iranian-American file a class action lawsuit in US Federal District Court ( the Court will have in persona and subject matter jurisdiction and the Plaintiffs will have standing to sue, given that they are American citizens) and the day after filing when they would no doubt file a Motion  petitioning  the Court for an Interim Measure of Protection (injunction) immediately freezing and lifting the US-led sanctions against the two countries civilian population, pending the final Court (Jury Trial) on the merits,  the Obama administration is going to face serious judicial challenges to its outlawry. William Hague, the UK Defense Minister, was quite active the past several days supporting the various Syrian militias’ arguments including:    “The EU arms embargo must be lifted because the current economic sanctions regime is ineffective.” Presumably the right honorable gentleman means by “ineffective” that these brutal sanctions have not broken with will of the populations to settle their own affairs without transparent foreign interference. This is true if by “effective” Hague means that the US-led sanctions, that target Syria’s civilian population for purely political purposes of regime change, will cause the people of Syria, who unlike their leaders, are the ones directly affected by the sanctions to revolt over the lack of medicines and food stuffs plus inflation at the grocery stores. Mr. Hague surely must be aware that very rarely, if ever at all in history, have civilian targeted sanctions designed to cause hardships among a nation’s population for purely political purposes actually broken the population such that they turned against their governments. Both the Syrian and Iranian sanctions have confirmed history’s instruction that the civilian targeting sanctions imposed from outside tend to have the exact opposite intended effect. This is true particularly modernly with more available information, and that the populations turn not against their national governments but rather against those foreign governments viewed as being responsible for these crimes. The British, French, Turks and the Americans ( the latter, not actually an EU member but then, who would know from its involvements in EU deliberations?) were the zealots in Brussels advocating amendment of the imposed arms embargo so that weapons can be sent to “moderate” forces in these countries largely nurtured and sustained “opposition”. The UK Defense Minister gave his colleagues repeated assurances that weapons would be supplied only “under carefully controlled circumstances” and with clear commitments from the opposition…We have to be open to every way of strengthening moderates and saving lives rather than the current trajectory of extremism and murder” have apparently convinced very few. Unanimity was needed to repeal the embargo and several countries were opposed. So it was allowed to lapse.  One Austrian official told the BBC that allowing lethal weapons to be sent into a war zone “would turn EU policy on its head.” Another European diplomat insisted that “It would be the first conflict where we pretend we could create peace by delivering arms,” the diplomat said. “If you pretend to know where the weapons will end up, then it would be the first war in history where this is possible. We have seen it in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Weapons don’t disappear; they pop up where they are needed.” Oxfam warned before and after the vote of “devastating consequences” if the embargo ends.”There are no easy answers when trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria, but sending more arms and ammunition clearly isn’t one of them,” the aid agency’s head of arms control, Anna Macdonald told the media this week. The result of the predicted 5/27/13 European Union meeting prevented the renewal of the arms embargo on Syria, raising the possibility of a new flow of weapons to various jihadist militias working with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among others, to bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Sustaining a personal rebuke of sorts given that the EU did not affirmatively oppose the embargo as he had hoped, William Hague, the British foreign secretary, told the media after more than 12 hours of stormy talks: “While we have no immediate plans to send arms to Syria, it gives us the flexibility to respond in the future if the situation continues to deteriorate and worsen,” As a claimed safeguard of some kind, according to EU officials, the European Union declared that member states who might wish to send weapons to Syrian rebels “shall assess the export license applications on a case-by-case basis” in line with the organization’s rules on exports of military technology and equipment. Some of the 27 EU countries are now even more concerned that anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons given to “moderate” militiamen (per Libya?) would end up Lord knows where, in the hands of  salafist, jihadist-takfiri militants, including those from the al-Nusra Front, which has pledged fealty to al-Qaeda in Iraq. The current embargo includes the following: Ban on export/import of arms and equipment for internal repression since May 2011 “Non-lethal military equipment”  ( there exists no such thing- all military equipment can become lethal in one way or another-ed) and technical assistance allowed under certain conditions since Feb 2013 All Syrian cargo planes banned from EU airports EU states obliged to inspect Syria-bound ships or planes suspected of carrying arms Assets freeze on 54 groups and 179 people responsible for or involved in repression (many who are not involved in decision making and have no assets abroad are included-ed) Export ban on technical monitoring equipment In February this year, EU foreign ministers agreed to enable any EU member state to provide non-lethal military equipment “for the protection of civilians” or for the opposition forces, “which the Union accepts as legitimate representatives of the Syrian people”. Absence of a centralized command structure and massive human rights abuses by jihadist fighters asserting themselves as legitimate substitutes for the Assad government, are additional reasons for the current alarm As is its habit recently, the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomatic service, has spoken on both sides of this critical issue. On the one hand it has cautioned against “any counterproductive move” that could harm the prospects of the Geneva conference and suggests extending the embargo to allow “more time for reflection”. On the other suggesting that lifting the arms embargo would only prolong the war. The practice of targeting a civilian population by outsiders in order to achieve political objectives such as regime change is fast heading for the dustbin of history given its blatant violation of all norms of international humanitarian law and common decency reflected in the values of most societies. This week revealed on which side of history the European Union has chosen to anchor itself on the issue of targeting civilian populations in a blatant attempt to achieve regime change. It affirmatively voted “to renew all the economic sanctions already in place against the Syrian government.” One imagines, as surely the EU is aware, that officials are not suffering much from the economic sanctions, but rather it is the exactly those the EU claims to want to help, who will continue to suffer rises in the cost of living generally as well as the sanctions causing shortages of medicines and medical equipment as well as specialized cancer treatments and other medicines for seriously ill drug-dependant citizens.

Source: Al-Manar Website

Idiotic EU Decision To Lift Arms Embargo On Syrian Terrorists Sabotages Planned US Peace Conference

End of EU’s Syria arms embargo “directly harms” peace prospects: Russia

Russia said on Tuesday that the European Union’s decision to lift its embargo against arming Syrian rebels but not the regime will “directly harm” the prospects of holding a peace conference on the crisis.

File photo: Syrian government soldiers advancing in the village of Dahret Abed Rabbo in Aleppo province. (AFP/SANA)

MOSCOW: Russia said on Tuesday that the European Union’s decision to lift its embargo against arming Syrian rebels but not the regime will “directly harm” the prospects of holding a peace conference on the crisis.

“This directly harms the prospects of convening an international conference,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the ITAR-TASS news agency.

The European Union agreed to lift its embargo on arming the opposition after much debate and a strong push for the measure by France and Britain.

A French official in Paris stressed that this was a “theoretical” lifting of the embargo that would not go into effect until August 1 at the earliest because the EU did not want to hurt the peace talks promoted by Moscow and Washington.

The proposed “Geneva 2″ meeting is expected to happen sometime next month after US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed in May to try and bring the warring sides together at conference.

Ryabkov said that Russia was “disappointed” by the European Union’s decision.

“We are disappointed that decisions are being reached that not only fail to promote a political solution… but which contradict the policies conducted by the European Union itself,” he was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.

He further accused the 27-nation bloc of setting “double standards” by lifting the embargo against the opposition but not Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops.

- AFP/xq

Sen. McCain Violates International Borders To Shake Hands with Syrian Terrorists In Syria

[Retelling his violation of Syria to Western reporters, McCain celebrates his own support for three failed American interventions that should have never taken place (Bosnia, Libya, Syria).  John McCain is part of the hardcore American War Party, who have supported the creation of radical Islamist terrorist armies to fight these interventions, as steps in a diabolical plan for a thirty-year war, hatched long before 911.  McCain's support for the same radical "Islamists" that the rest of the world calls "al-Qaeda," carves him off a little piece of the responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks which they have been blamed for.  Everyone else who believes that America should conquer the world also shares in the guilt and responsibility for helping to start this war, or the entirely separate war on Iraq, both of which the Pentagon has planned to fight all along.

Captain John McCain has fully supported the Pentagon policy of creating a large secret paramilitary force of radical Islamists, smugglers, gangsters, spies and private security personnel.  He has supported the very operations which have taught dangerous terrorist skills to thousands of Muslim terrorists, the same people who have trained every bomber known to Western media.  They have refined the operation over the years so that it is now a smoothly operating terrorist manufacturing industry, stretching from the Pacific rim to Europe, then south into Central Africa.  This is a fully self-contained criminal Enterprise, financed by the most powerful governments and individuals on the planet. 

McCain is small fish, but he is a highly visible fish---an extremely mouthy little fat guy, who commands the public spotlight.  This is his worth and the real danger that he represents to all decent human beings.  The American War Party is out to kill everyone who refuses to submit to their criminal demands, and officials like McCain are their cheerleaders.  American leaders must awaken to the knowledge that many of the American people already share---Our government is Fascist and it is fighting a war of aggression against the human race.]

Senator McCain met with rebels in Syria on Monday: spokesman

 

 

McCain: Threats to Assad must have “teeth”

 

 

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON | Mon May 27, 2013 3:20pm EDT

(Reuters) – Republican Senator John McCain, a former presidential candidate and one of the loudest voices calling for military aid to the Syrian opposition, met with some of the rebels during a surprise visit to the war-torn country on Monday, his spokesman said.

Spokesman Brian Rogers confirmed McCain’s meeting with the rebels, but declined to give any details about the visit, which came a week after a U.S. Senate panel voted overwhelmingly to send weapons to forces fighting the Syrian government.

General Salem Idris, who leads the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, told the Daily Beast in an interview that McCain’s visit came at a critical time for the rebels, who have stepped up their calls for U.S. support, including heavy weapons, creation of a no-fly zone and air strikes.

“The visit of Senator McCain to Syria is very important and very useful especially at this time,” the publication quoted Idris as saying. “We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation.”

McCain entered Syria from the country’s border with Turkey and stayed there for several hours before returning to Turkey, according to the report. It said McCain met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units in both Turkey and Syria.

McCain, who made a similar visit to Libya early in that conflict, called for U.S. military aid to the forces opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a Time magazine column earlier this month, arguing that the cost of inaction outweighed the cost of intervention.

“The U.S. does not have to act alone, put boots on the ground or destroy every Syrian air-defense system to make a difference,” McCain wrote, arguing that training for the rebels, targeted air strikes and the stationing of Patriot missiles just across the border would help change the current dynamic.

McCain recalled his support for a U.S.-led effort under then President Bill Clinton to stop mass atrocities in Bosnia two decades ago and said the United States was uniquely positioned to help in Syria as well.

“Taking these steps would save innocent lives, give the moderate opposition a better chance to succeed and eventually provide security and responsible governance in Syria after Assad,” he wrote in the Time magazine article. “However, the longer we wait, the worse the situation gets.”

The Obama administration has increased humanitarian aid, but has stopped short of providing lethal assistance to Syrian opposition forces. President Barack Obama has resisted pressure to deepen U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war, wary of getting U.S. forces embroiled in another ground war just as American troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan.

The Pentagon remains concerned about Assad’s ability to shoot down enemy aircraft with surface-to-air missiles, particularly in a sustained campaign.

The Pentagon estimates than Syria has five times more air defenses than those that existed in Libya, where the United States helped establish a no-fly zone in 2011. They are also far more densely packed and sophisticated.

In Libya, there were no Western casualties. But the risks are higher in Syria and it’s unclear whether the war-weary American public – exhausted by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – would tolerate U.S. casualties.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Eric Walsh)

US, Turkey, Qatar Beg for UN Intervention To Preserve Terrorist Smuggler’s Operation In Al Qusayr

A handout photograph released by Syria’s national news agency SANA on March 7, 2012, shows weapons found by Syrian security in Homs

US, Turkey, Qatar seek urgent UN rights debate on Syria 

The United States, Turkey and Qatar called Friday for an urgent debate on Syria at the UN’s top human 

GENEVA: The United States, Turkey and Qatar called Friday for an urgent debate on Syria at the UN’s top human rights body next week, citing the escalating conflict and the regime’s assault on the central town of Qusayr.

“We … request the Human Rights Council to hold an urgent debate on the deteriorating situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the recent killings in Al Qusayr,” the ambassadors of the three countries wrote in their request to council president Remigiusz Henczel.

The UN human rights council is due to open its next three-week session on Monday, and the three countries called for the urgent debate to be held during the first week, lamenting “the escalating grave human rights violations” in Syria.

Council spokesman Rolando Gomez told AFP that president Henczel and other administrators would now examine a possible date for the debate, adding that Tuesday or Wednesday looked likely.

This would not be the first time the UN’s top rights body meets to discuss the spiralling violence in Syria.

The council has previously held one urgent debate on Syria and four special sessions outside its usual four annual meetings and is already set to hear, during the coming session, a report from UN investigators into the human rights situation in the war-torn country.

That report will be presented on June 3.

The request for an urgent debate on the situation in Syria comes after the Friends of Syria group of governments that back the rebels met in Amman this week as part of the diplomatic efforts to convene a peace conference in Geneva next month.

The conference, dubbed Geneva 2, is intended to build on a never-implemented deal agreed in the Swiss city last year that called for a halt to the violence and a transitional government.

Since then, the conflict has spiralled ever more out of control.

More than 90,000 people have been killed and over 1.5 million Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries since the conflict began in March 2011.

Another 6.8 million people are in need of assistance inside Syria, including nearly 4.3 million people who have been displaced from their homes.

Overall, around 38 per cent of the country’s pre-war population of 22.5 million is in need of humanitarian assistance.

The regime assault on the rebel stronghold of Qusayr, in central Homs province, that began Sunday has meanwhile left more than 100 people dead, while thousands of civilians are believed to be trapped in the town.

The town, which lies near the border with Lebanon, is a key prize for the rebels, a conduit through which weapons and fighters can be channelled from Lebanon.

Qusayr is also important for Assad’s forces because of its strategic location between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, the rear base for the regime.

The UN refugee agency said Friday it was hearing reports that all civilians left in the city, that used to count around 25,000 inhabitants, had been moved into one section of the town.

They “are pretty much trapped,” said the UNHCR.

UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the UN agency was bracing for a possible flood of people from the town across the border into Lebanon.

But she added that so far many of those who had fled appeared to be having difficulty making it to the border due to “very high security risks”.

She also said heavy fighting near the Jordanian border was likely the main reason why the number of refugees flooding into that country had plummeted from an average of 2,000 a day to basically zero in the past seven days.

“UNHCR is concerned about reports that many Syrians trying to flee may be backed up at the borders in areas that are extremely dangerous,” she told reporters in Geneva.

- AFP/jc

World Awareness Grows of Massive American War Crime Formerly Known As “Iraq”

[When will American leaders admit the absolute truth about Iraq?

The United States HAD NO REASON TO INVADE IRAQ,

neither did it offer a valid excuse which wasn't entirely fabricated on premeditated lies.  The war against Saddam Hussein had NOTHING to do with the "war on terror," yet Republican Neocons convinced the rest of us to allow them the pleasure of this little side war, even squeezing it until it (somehow) fit within the parameters of the original 911 AUMF war resolution.   The invasion and occupation of Iraq was 100% REVENGE for Saddam Hussein's arrogant refusal to lie-down and die, but mostly, for threatening to kill Bush's father.  All the rest is 100% BULLSHIT, invented either by the Republicans to justify the criminal war of aggression, or by the Democrats, to justify continuing the war.

Until American leaders take the simple first-step of admitting that Iraq was a crime, we can expect all of our wars to continue to fall apart, as more and more people awaken to the Nazi nature of the American regime and join resistance forces which offer some kind of fight against US global tyranny.

The criminal policies of Bush and Cheney and the Republicans have been compounded by the criminal neglect of Obama and Biden and the Democrats.  May the war crimes of America's criminal two-headed war party continue to follow this Nation until the end of our days, or until we confess about our evil war crimes against all of humanity and beg our fellow man for forgiveness for the monstrous divisions that we have unleashed upon the Earth.]

In Syria’s shadow, Iraq violence presents new test for U.S. 

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama (R) hold a joint news conference in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, December 12, 2011.

Credit: Reuters Jonathan Ernst

By Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON

(Reuters) – Saddled with Middle East problems ranging from Iran to Syria and beyond, President Barack Obama now faces one that is both old and new: Iraq.

Unresolved sectarian tensions, inflamed by the raging civil war in neighboring Syria, have combined to send violence in Iraq to its highest level since Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops in December 2011, U.S. officials and Middle East analysts say.

A Sunni Muslim insurgency against the Shi’ite-led Baghdad government has also been reawakened. The insurgents’ defeat had been a major outcome of then-President George W. Bush’s troop “surge” in 2007.

The deteriorating situation – largely overshadowed by a Syrian civil war that has killed 80,000 people – has prompted what U.S. officials describe as an intense, mostly behind-the-scenes effort to curb the violence and get Iraqis back to political negotiations.

The United States spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost nearly 4,500 soldiers during an eight-year war to try to bring a semblance of democracy to strategically placed, energy-rich Iraq.

But Iraqis have failed to agree on a permanent power-sharing agreement, threatening the country’s long-term stability.

Vice President Joe Biden, who has been Obama’s point man on Iraq, called Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and Osama Nujayfi, the head of Iraq’s parliament, in a round of calls on Thursday and Friday, the White House said.

To Maliki, the vice president “expressed concern about the security situation” and “spoke about the importance of outreach to leaders across the political spectrum,” Biden’s office said in a statement on Friday.

U.S. diplomacy is aimed in part at persuading Maliki, a Shi’ite, and his security forces not to overreact to provocations. Maliki’s opponents accuse him of advancing a sectarian agenda aimed at marginalizing Iraq’s minorities and cementing Shi’ite rule.

The latest uptick in violence began in late April at a Sunni protest camp in Hawija, near the disputed city of Kirkuk, where a clash between gunmen and Iraqi security forces killed more than 40 people.

A U.S. official said the Obama administration was “very actively engaged” after the Hawija clash in preventing a further escalation, when Iraqi forces surrounded insurgents who had seized control of a nearby town. Washington urged the Iraqi forces not to go in with massive firepower, and the stand-off was settled through a deal with local tribal leaders.

“I don’t want to exaggerate our influence, but this is the kind of stuff we do behind the scenes,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “When there is a real crisis, they all run to us. … We’re a neutral party.”

Others say Washington’s influence in Iraq, which began waning even when U.S. troops were still there, has plummeted.

“What is lacking is the lack of confidence of trust among the politicians,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told CNN on Tuesday. “And we have lost the service of an honest broker. Before, it used to be the United States.”

‘ZOMBIE INSURGENCY’

Most worrying to U.S. officials and analysts who follow Iraq closely is the rebirth of the Sunni insurgency and of groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, thought to be behind lethal suicide bombings aimed at reigniting civil conflict.

“What you’re really looking at here is a kind of zombie insurgency – it’s been brought back to life,” said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has studied Iraq for years and travels there frequently.

By his count, violent incidents have escalated to about 1,100 a month from 300 monthly at the end of 2010.

After the Hawija clashes, the U.S. official said, “For the first time really in a few years, we saw people with their faces covered and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and heavy weapons, coming into the streets in a very visible way.”

The official called the increase in suicide bombings by al Qaeda in Iraq “very concerning,” adding that such sophisticated insurgent groups could “wreak havoc” on political efforts to solve the conflict.

“I wouldn’t call it a strategically significant increase, yet,” the official said of the violence. “We’re in this post-civil war, pre-reconciliation interregnum, gap, period, in which Iraq can tilt either way.”

The setbacks in Iraq have revived criticism from those who opposed Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country, rather than leave behind a residual force. The White House has said it could not secure political agreement from Iraq’s Sunni, Shia and Kurds for a law allowing a continued troop presence.

At a Senate hearing last month, Senator John McCain, who opposed the troop withdrawal, asked Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet how things turned out in Iraq. McCain, an Arizona Republican, cited Obama’s dictum that “the tide of war is receding.”

“I think Iraq is more stable today than many thought several years ago,” Chollet replied.

“Really? You really think that?” McCain pressed. When Chollet said he did, the senator shot back, “Then you’re uninformed.”

The violence, which includes confrontations stemming from the Sunni protest movement, near-daily car bombings and attacks on mosques, is nowhere near the level of Iraq’s 2006-2008 civil war.

Still, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and White House official now at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy said: “I think we’re going to see great sectarian violence. The question is, how bad does it get?”

SYRIA IS ‘AN ACCELERANT’

Syria’s increasingly sectarian civil war, pitting mostly Sunni rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, is not the prime cause of Iraq’s troubles, officials and analysts said.

Iraq’s failure to find a stable power-sharing deal among the country’s ethnic and sectarian groups is to blame, they said. Iraq’s Sunnis, ascendant during dictator Saddam Hussein’s rule, feel excluded and threatened, and started staging protests in December.

But Syria’s war “is an accelerant” in Iraq, Pollack said.

“We’re seeing both Shia and Sunnis going over to fight” in Syria, the U.S. official said. “It’s kind of encouraging this sectarian polarization in a way.”

Iraqis often experience the Syrian conflict via YouTube video clips, he said.

Sunnis see the violence perpetrated by Assad’s government, dominated by members of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, he said. Iraq’s Shia see often gruesome excesses perpetrated by the rebels.

“They’re seeing two entirely different parallel universes,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney)

“Metropolitan police entered BBC studios and arrested Mr Nusaybah….His arrest was not directly linked to…Adebolajo”

“Metropolitan police entered BBC studios and arrested Mr Nusaybah….His arrest was not directly linked to his 28-year-old friend Adebolajo’s alleged murder of soldier Lee Rigby.”

[Is there anybody in all of Britain who believes this denial?  If it had truly been unrelated to the testimony that he was in the process of giving in the BBC interview, then why was the session disrupted by the police, just as he was testifying to the involvement of British secret services in the pre-attack life of Mr. Adebolajo?  The BBC was inadvertantly stepping on MI5/6 toes, probably causing news bosses to freak-out over what their minions were up to, forcing them to request the emergency shut-down of the dangerous interview by intelligence officials.

England is about to burn, and all of Europe with it, but probably for the exact wrong reasons.  Continent-wide civil war will not help the struggle of the common man, but will merely strengthen the hand of the State (SEE:  Camp of the Saints).]

Woolwich attack: Michael Adebolajo’s friend tells the BBC MI5 tried to recruit his friend

• Charles Miranda in London
• News Limited Network

Michael Adebolajo, front, shouts slogans as Muslims march in London in a protest against the arrest of six people in anti-terror raids in April 2007. Picture: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth

A FRIEND of one of the Woolwich fanatics has been arrested by counter terrorism police moments after he told BBC that M15 attempted to recruit his friend to work for them.

The alleged Woolwich attackers, identified as Michael Adebolajo and Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, are currently both being held by heavily armed police in separate hospitals where they have been recovering from gunshot wounds.

The pair was shot by police on Wednesday after they allegedly hacked to death 25-year-old Lee Rigby and then, armed with knives and a hand gun, charged at police.

In other developments:

• Drummer Lee Rigby’s family have given a heart-wrenching press conference paying tribute to the slain soldier.
• A former girlfriend of Michael Adebolajo says he was just a ‘normal bloke’.
• Britain is bracing for clashes with right-wing extremists and possible copycat terror attacks and has added some 1200 police to potential trouble spots.
• A British newspaper publishes shocking video of the moment the two men accused of killing Drummer Rigby were shot by police following the barbaric attack.
• Gemini Donnelly-Martin and her mother Amanda Donnelly called the ‘Angels of Woolwich’ after it was revealed that they sat with Drummer Rigby in his final moments, comforted him and prayed for him.
• Metropolitan Police said they had made two further arrests – a man and woman, both aged 29 – on suspicion of conspiracy to murder in relation to the Woolwich killing.
• Links are revealed between accused killer Michael Adebolajo and radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, who is accused of having “blood on his hands”.

Abu Nusaybah gave an interview to the BBC at their premises in central London about his childhood friend murder suspect Michael Adebolajo .He said Adebolajo had undergone a “change” after he was detained by security forces in Kenya last year and underwent physical and sexual abused during interrogation.

He said when he returned to the UK M15 asked if he would work for them as an informer. They allegedly harassed him for some months.

“His wording was, “They are bugging me – they won’t leave me alone”,” Mr Nusaybah said.

“He mentioned initially they wanted to ask him if he knew certain individuals. But after him saying that he didn’t know these individuals, what he said was they asked him if he would be interested in working for them. He was explicit in that he refused to work for them, but he did confirm he didn’t know the individuals.”

Then in a twist, Metropolitan police entered BBC studios and arrested Mr Nusaybah in relation to terrorism offences. They also raided his home and another in East London. Police have confirmed the 31-year-old was being held on suspicion of the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism at a south London police station.

His arrest was not directly linked to his 28-year-old friend Adebolajo’s alleged murder of soldier Lee Rigby.

The British Government has yet to comment on the claims made by Mr Nusaybah about Adebolajo or on his own arrest.

It is understood Mr Nusaybah had once been linked to an extremist Islamic group in Britain led by self styled “sheik of east London” and hate preacher Anjew Choudary although claims he moved away from the group sometime ago.

Claims Adebolajo was tortured by Kenyan authorities last year after refusing to speak with them could also not be verified. Mr Nusaybah said however his friends’ experiences in Kenya and alleged “harassment” by M15 changed his personality, made him withdrawn and less talkative.

“His mind was somewhere else but his presence was there,” he said, adding that tears welled in his friend’s eyes when he spoke about Kenya although he was not exactly sure what happened.

“He said ‘ I feel shy to describe what that did to me’,” Mr Nusaybah said of his friends experiences which he suggested was sexual abuse.

Flowers and tributes mount at the place outside Woolwich Barracks where British soldier Lee Rigby was murdered yesterday.

He said Adebolajo had wished to live in a Muslim country with Sharia law and had visited Kenya for this reason.

It has been previously claimed the Adebolajo may have been attempting to make his way to Somalia to join a terrorist group to make jihad.

Attack pair set to be grilled

THE two men accused of a frenzied murder of a soldier in south east London are expected to be interviewed this weekend.

Police shot the pair. Despite their injuries they have been deemed fit to be interviewed.

Woolwich machete hacking attack against soldier Lee Rigby. Both attack suspects were known to MI5 security forces from previous security services investigations.

Investigators from the counter terrorist police unit are particularly keen to establish whether they acted alone or whether the attack was part of a broader orchestrated campaign involving others.

It has been established at least one belonging to an extremist Islamic group and influenced by a banned imam who has since been booted out of the UK.

Two women arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder Drummer Rigby have now been released without charge.

A 29-year-old was arrested yesterday in connection with the killing while a 31 year-old, had been held by police at a home in south London last night and later released.

Detectives are still questioning a 29-year-old man also on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

Fears of more lone wolf style attacks

Meanwhile, Britain potentially faces more “individualist jihad” style killings similar to the attack Drummer Rigby as anti-Muslim sentiments are stirred to dangerous levels.

That’s the view of a number of terrorism experts in Britain as they fear certain radical magazines and social media can remotely spark extremist converts into attacks.

Reading University international terrorism and al Qaeda expert Dr Christina Hellmich said while al Qaeda’s capabilities are largely destroyed individual terrorism could flourish.

“The fear right now is that we have a wave of individual terror ahead of us,” she said.

“The term al-Qaeda always comes up as if it is al-Qaeda that is propagating these attacks. But that gives us the illusion that there is still some monolithic group behind this pulling the strings. This is not the case. We are dealing with individualist jihadist everywhere but they are the fragment of the organisation.”

The concepts of individual attacks are being promoted by radical Islamists, including through the Inspire magazine produced by al-Qaeda, largely blamed for promoting the attack on the Boston Marathon earlier this month.

“Inspire has been trying to propagate the individual jihad as a strategy since 2010 in their magazine but it hasn’t really paid off. If these are the only attacks then it’s not very much.”

Jeffrey DeMarco, lecturer and researcher in criminology at Kingston University, agrees the attack demonstrates an increase in “lone wolf” terrorism which could pose a risk for security services to manage.

“We have been seeing slowly but really most noticeably with Mumbai in 2008, this escalation and this frequent recurrence of the lone wolves who aren’t part of the intricate terrorist cells or organisations,” he said.

According to DeMarco the purpose is to invoke widespread fear. “Mass casualties are not necessarily the endgame, the epidemic of fear can be just as damaging.”

Matthew Henman, senior analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre (JTIC), said: “The fact that the attackers made no attempt to flee the scene, combined with their interaction with bystanders, may indicate an effort to maximise publicity of the attack and to ensure that their message was recorded and publicised.”

Read more:
http://www.news.com.au/world-news/woolwich-attack-michael-adebolajo-michael-adebowale-to-be-quizzed-over-lee-rigby-murder/story-fndir2ev-1226650349675#ixzz2UIX6jEuu

Fat Pig of Qatar Slams American Failure To Finish the War He Started In Syria

[[How is it that this piece of shit can conduct his own international foreign policy, employing the very terrorists that we are fighting a perpetual war against?]

Qatar emir slams ‘international inaction’ over Syria

The international community’s inaction on Syria is “no longer acceptable,” Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, said.

• 

AFP, Doha -

The emir of Qatar, a strong supporter of the Syrian rebels, on Monday slammed what he called inaction by the international community over the conflict there, lamenting the failure to reach a political solution.

“It is no longer acceptable that influential states in the international community do not act to end the horrific tragedy and escalating humanitarian catastrophe” in Syria, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told the Doha Forum.

He appeared to allude to Western countries, which have failed to agree to arm Syrian rebels, as the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime entered its third year in March.

Activists say more than 94,000 people have been killed.

He said that those countries, which he did not name, “want to decide themselves who should be the defender of the Syrian people,” in an apparent reference to concerns about the presence of radical Islamists among Syrian rebels.

Sheikh Hamad lamented the “failure of all international and Arab initiatives to get the Syrian regime to listen to the sound of reason.”

He expressed “sorrow at seeing the revolution of the Syrian people enter its third year without the clear perspective of an end to the bloodshed… because of the regime’s insistence on a military solution.”

The United States and Russia, a strong Assad ally, have proposed a peace conference for June, bringing together representatives of the regime and its opponents, with the aim of reaching a political solution.

TODAY’S SCORE IN IRAQ: Shiites 61, Sunnis 18

[Was this Bush's intention for Iraq, to turn the entire country into some macabre, midieval "Ball Game," where the daily score is kept in lost human lives?  It clearly WAS the intention of American Special Forces, to create a permanent state of civil war within Iraq, with the false flag demolition of the golden dome in Samarra.  This is what happened when we followed Cheney into "the Dark Side."  We sat idly by, while his evil little minions weaponized religion itself and used it against the Muslim people of the entire world, NOT just in Iraq.  This puts us right up there with the Nazi Germans of the previous global war of ambition.   Face It....WE are evil.]

Wave of attacks hits Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq, killing at least 79 people

Associated Press |

Baghdad: A wave of attacks killed at least 79 people in Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq on Monday, officials said, pushing the death toll over the past week to more than 200 and extending one of the most sustained bouts of sectarian violence the country has seen in years.

The bloodshed is still far shy of the pace, scale and brutality of the dark days of 2006-2007, when Sunni and Shiite militias carried out retaliatory attacks against each other in a cycle of violence that left the country awash in blood. Still, Monday’s attacks, some of which hit markets and crowded bus stops during the morning rush hour, have heightened fears that the country could be turning back down the path toward civil war.

Sectarian tensions have been worsening since Iraq’s minority Sunnis began protesting what they say is mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government. The mass demonstrations, which began in December, have largely been peaceful, but the number of attacks rose sharply after a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in northern Iraq on April 23.

Iraq’s Shiite majority, which was oppressed under the late dictator Saddam Hussein, now holds the levers of power in the country. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks.

But the renewed violence in both Shiite and Sunni areas since late last month has fueled concerns of a return to sectarian warfare. Since last Wednesday alone, at least 224 people have been killed in attacks, according to an AP count.

The worst of Monday’s violence took place in Baghdad, where ten car bombs ripped through open-air markets and other areas of Shiite neighborhoods, killing at least 47 people and wounding more than 150, police officials said. In the bloodiest attack, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24, police and health officials said.

The surge in bloodshed has exasperated Iraqis, who have lived for years with the fear and uncertainty bred of random violence.

“How long do we have to continue living like this, with all the lies from the government?” asked 23-year-old Baghdad resident Malik Ibrahim. “Whenever they say they have reached a solution, the bombings come back stronger than before.”

“We’re fed up with them and we can’t tolerate this anymore,” he added.

The predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq was also hit Monday, with two car bombs there – one outside a restaurant and another at the city’s main bus station – killing at least 13 and wounded 40, according to provincial police spokesman Col. Abdul-Karim al-Zaidi and the head of city’s health directorate, Riadh Abdul-Amir.

In the town of Balad, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing six Iranians and one Iraq and wounding nine people, a police officer said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but the fact that they all occurred in Shiite areas raised the suspicion that Sunni militants were involved. Also, Sunni insurgents, particularly al-Qaida in Iraq, are known to employ such large-scale bombings bear.

Monday’s violence also struck Sunni areas, hitting the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar, a Sunni stronghold and the birthplace of the protest movement.

A parked car bomb in Samarra went off near a gathering of pro-government Sunni militia who were waiting outside a military base to receive salaries, killing three and wounding 13, while in Anbar gunmen ambushed two police patrols near the town of Haditha, killing eight policemen, police and army officials said.

Also in Anbar, authorities found 13 dead bodies in a remote desert area, officials said. The bodies, which included eight policemen who were kidnapped by gunmen on Friday, had been killed with a gunshot to the head.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

“Al-Qaeda” Is Anybody the President Chooses To Call Al-Qaeda

Obama War Powers Under 2001 Law ‘Astoundingly Disturbing,’ Senators Say

 

WASHINGTON — The war authorization that Congress passed after 9/11 will be needed for at least 10 to 20 more years, and can be used to put the United States military on the ground anywhere, from Syria to the Congo to Boston, military officials argued Thursday.

 

The revelations came during a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee and surprised even experts in America’s use of force stemming from the terrorist attacks in 2001.

 

“This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told four senior U.S. military officials who testified about the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and what it allows the White House to do.

 

King and others were stunned by answers to specific questions about where President Barack Obama could use force under the key provision of the AUMF — a 60-word paragraph that targeted those responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

 

“I learned more in this hearing about the scope of the AUMF than in all of my study in the last four or five years,” said Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith, who was called by the committee to offer independent comments on the issue. “I thought I knew what the application [of the AUMF] meant, but I’m less confident now,” he added later.

 

Concerns emerged largely from questions by senators who approve of an aggressive strategy to combat terrorism, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who asked if the AUMF gave Obama the authority to put “boots on the ground” in Yemen or the Congo.

 

 
Robert Taylor, the acting general counsel for the Department of Defense said yes, as long as the purpose was targeting a group associated with al Qaeda that intended to harm the United States or its coalition partners.

 

“Would you agree with me, the battlefield is anywhere the enemy chooses to make it?” asked Graham.

 

“Yes sir, from Boston to FATA [Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas],” answered Michael Sheehan, the assistant secretary of defense who oversees special operations.

 

Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) later raised the specter of the AUMF being used to intervene in Syria, where the group Al Nusra, believed to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, is active. Al Nusra has not been linked to 9/11.

 

Sheehan said yes, if defense officials determined the group was becoming a threat. The same criteria applied to other groups, even if they were locally focused and operating in other nations. Taylor confirmed that AUMF also would cover individuals, even those who had not been born by 9/11, if, as Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked, they someday were to “become associated with a group that associates with Al Qaeda.”

 

When asked about an expiration date for the war authorization, Sheehan said it would be when al Qaeda had been consigned to the “ash heap of history.” “I think it’s at least 10 to 20 years.”

 

While none of the senators suggested dialing back efforts to stop terrorists, they were clearly disturbed at the power being asserted by the military.

 

“I’m just a little old lawyer from Brunswick, Maine, but I don’t see how you can possibly read this to be in comport with the Constitution,” King said, arguing that the defense officials’ interpretation of the AUMF makes the war power of Congress “a nullity.” “Under your reading, we’ve granted unbelievable powers to the president and it’s a very dangerous precedent.”

 

Kaine found the suggestion that the AUMF could be used to go into Syria especially disturbing. “The testimony I hear today suggests the administration believes that they would have the authority to do that,” Kaine said. “But I don’t want us to walk out of the room leaving an impression that members of Congress also share the understanding that that would be acceptable.”

 

The DOD officials repeatedly defended the authority they’ve claimed, noting that al Qaeda is not a traditional enemy, and that it shifts locations and changes its tactics. The broad interpretation of the AUMF, they argued, gives them the flexibility to deal with the changing threat in a lawful, effective manner.

 

But even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who generally agrees with Graham in pursuing a vigorous war on terror, said the AUMF has been stretched past the breaking point.

 

“This authority … has grown way out of proportion and is no longer applicable to the conditions that prevailed, that motivated the United States Congress to pass the authorization for the use of military force that we did in 2001,” McCain said.

 

“For you to come here and say we don’t need to change it or revise or update it, I think is, well, disturbing,” McCain said, noting that the AUMF also is used to justify things like drone strikes that were never contemplated by Congress. “I don’t blame you because basically you’ve got carte blanche as to what you are doing around the world.”

 

No one suggested specific solutions, but did say the Senate will deal with the problem later this year when the committee takes on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2014.

 

The broad assertion of authority by the military is likely to disturb civil libertarians on the left and right who have complained that the AUMF and a previous version of the NDAA give the military power to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens. Obama has issued orders banning such practices, but DOD officials apparently believe the law grants them the power to act anywhere.

Israel Preparing New Syrian Airstrikes, Warns Assad Against Retaliation of Any Kind

[If, after all the stink that has been raised over the previous Israeli aggressions upon Syria in the midst of the US/Saudi war to destroy Syria, Israeli bombers attack again, and Assad fails to retaliate again, then it will prove some level of Israeli control over Assad (SEE: When the Hummus Hits the Fan, Israel Will Choose Bashar al-Assad Over Radical Islamists).  Such a Zionist revelation, coupled with recent news of an Israeli/Saudi alliance, will also reveal the true Patron/Client relationship between the Fascist Shit-hole and the Arab royal dictatorships, who have been the traditional alleged "protectors" of the rights of the Palestinian people.  The Mideast monarchies have given hope that one day they would avenge the "Nakba" ethnic-cleansing of Palestine by returning millions of refugees back to their rightful homes. 

Such is the nature of the "Bizarro world" that we live in. 

Good always turns-out to be evil in the end.  The power of weakness is a Christian delusion.  When we are meek before the enemies of the human race, then the most bloodthirsty criminals will determine the vile nature of the next step in the spiritual/psychological evolution of mankind.]

 

Report: Israel warns Assad not to retaliate to airstrikes

Israeli senior official tells New York Times Israel considering further military strikes on Syria to stop transfer of weapons to Hezbollah. ‘If Assad reacts, he will risk forfeiting his regime,’ he says

A senior Israeli official signaled on Wednesday that Israel was considering further military strikes on Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants, and warned Syrian president Bashar Assad, that his government would face crippling consequences if it retaliated against Israel, the New York Times reported.

“Israel is determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah . The transfer of such weapons to Hezbollah will destabilize and endanger the entire region,” the official said in an interview.

“If Syrian President Assad reacts by attacking Israel, or tries to strike Israel through his terrorist proxies,” the official said, “he will risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”

The newspaper noted that the Israeli official has been briefed by high-level officials on the Syria situation in the past two days and had contacted The New York Times on Wednesday.

The paper considered the timing of the statements. “The precise motives for Israel’s warning were uncertain: Israel could be trying to restrain Syria’s behavior without undertaking further military action, or alerting other countries to another strike. That would ratchet up the tension in an already fraught situation in Syria,” the report said.

Foreign reports claim Israel carried out a total of three airstrikes in Syria since the civil war there began two years ago. The first allegedly took place in January when a convoy was bombed near the Syria-Lebanon border.

The target was reported to have been an arms shipment to Hezbollah that included Russian-made SA-17 missiles – possibly “game changing” weapons in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. Damascus later conceded there had been an attack claiming the target was a military research center in Jamraya.

The second airstrike allegedly occurred in early May and was reported by US media. The target was an arms shipment from Iran to Hezbollah. Another strike was reported 48 hours later. According to Syria, the Jamraya military center had been bombed again.

Israel did not comment on the reports.

One of the Terrorists That America Has Contracted To Fight Our “Humanitarian War” Against Syria

When the Hummus Hits the Fan, Israel Will Choose Bashar al-Assad Over Radical Islamists

Peter Chamberlin

Once again (just as in the recent US Embassy bombing in Ankara) a spectacular terrorist attack takes place in Turkey and the government immediately blames another obscure Marxist terrorist group, that they have conveniently resurrected from Turkey’s distant past.  The individual faction of this group has also allegedly been identified, as “Mirhac Ural,” who has recently been named by the Syrian opposition as the man behind the latest alleged “ethnic cleansing” in a town called Banias, along the Syrian coast (SEE:  Syria: Enter the ethnic cleanser of Banias).

Ural was originally a founding member of TPLP-C (Acilciler), a Marxist/Leftist/revolutionary group which was formed to fight US imperialism within Turkey, specifically, to act as a counter-force to US “Gladio”/”Gray Wolves” operations.  The TPLP-C supported its sister organization, the DHKP/C, which was blamed for the recent bombing outside the American Embassy in Ankara.

Ural is also a close friend of terrorist PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.  He allegedly introduced Bashar al-Assad to Ocalan.  It was allegedly Ural who persuaded Assad to play the “Kurdish” card against Erdogan.  Erdogan thought that he had trumped this move when he negotiated the latest peace agreement with the PKK, until Iraq’s government refused to accept the expatriated Kurdish guerillas.  The Kurds cannot be blamed for using Syrian-based assets against Turkey in this terror bombing in Reyhanli over the denial of new sanctuary in northern Iraq, because the attack was clearly intended to help the Turkish Prime Minister to persuade Obama to intervene in Syria on Turkey’s behalf, and this would not help the Kurds in any conceivable way.

It is claimed in the Saudi/Arab press that Bashar Assad has become desperate in his resistance to the Imperial terrorist invasion, choosing at this time to gather his forces to him in the center of his Alawite home turf, as he ethnically cleansing Syria of the majority Sunnis.  They have reinforced this ethnic cleansing theme in the reports emerging from the Imperial press Turkish outfit, Zaman, about an alleged “Banias massacre.”  This massacre supposedly took place the day after Ural was quoted on YouTube, saying, “We need to cleanse Banias of traitors at the earliest.”

From the video, if it is genuine, it seems that Ural could be a legitimate leader of a Syrian counter-terrorist cell.  If that is true, then he would certainly have plenty of reasons to want to close the supply lines from Turkey.  But there is much more to this incident than this simple explanation.  If Ural is an anti-Islamist fighter, then why would he be immortalized in the Islamist press?  The story about an “Alevi rump state” along the coast of Syria, builds upon Sunni fears that they are about to also be ethnically cleansed from around Hatay, Turkey–Giving them a good reason to fight a sectarian war.  This benefits the Saudi-Israeli alliance, up unto the point where the destabilization plot it increases ethnic tensions on the wrong side of the border.  Proper conflict management prevents the various sub-plots from getting out of control and, as a consequence, over-driving the main destabilization plot and thereby, unintentionally causing the opposite effects, instead of the planned reactions.

Always, in these destabilization plots, there are two primary parties working the target–the destabilizing power and a patsy partner within the target entity (corporation, organization, state) that is to be destabilized.  Since the Saudis and Israel are obviously working together to carry-out the Imperial diktat for the Middle East, then it is clear that it is the Saudis who will eventually be the losing party.  Whether they will lose more than they can afford to pay is the risk that they are willing to take to eject Assad.  It is not in Israel’s interests to see an Islamist victory in Syria, but the Saudis and friends erroneously believe that it is in theirs.  It is unlikely that the Saudis would support an effort to divide Syria if it would harm Turkey, or make it harder to get weapons over the Syrian border to the terrorist front.

If the bombing of Turkey is clearly not in the Islamists’ interests, but does no harm to Israeli interests, then it may mean that Israel is using another PKK-related terror group to rein-in Prince Bandar’s Islamist attack dogs, in order to save Assad, in order to maintain the quagmire in Syria.  Consider the points raised in this piece from Zaman (SEE:  Opposition commander: Assad defeated, we are fighting Iran, Hezbollah).  The Gulenist mouthpiece Zaman interviews an alleged Syrian rebel commander,  of the al-Tawhid Brigade, Commander Abdulkader Saleh.  He makes the extraordinary claim that Israel and Iran are secretly working together against the Syrian terrorists:

“Bashar al-Assad’s regime does not have the strength to carry on its battle against opposition fighters, adding that Iran and Hezbollah are the forces behind the protracted war….Iran and Hezbollah are the ones who are continuing the war in Syria,”  

“Furthermore, Iran and Hezbollah are cooperating with Israel to be able to support Assad. Assad has protected Israel’s border for 40 years,”

“The opposition was going to take over arms, so Israel attacked. There is evidence pointing to this. There were some high-ranking officers with whom [the opposition forces] got into contact. [Those officers] were going to defect from [the Assad administration], handing over arms to the opposition. Israel hit these posts in fear that the opposition would take over the arms. The arms included heavy artillery as well as air defense systems. This assault, of course, was intended to support the Assad administration,” Saleh explained.

The first time I read the Saleh interview, I laughed it all off as nonsense, until I read the article in Foreign Affairs magazine, written by former head of Mossad, Efraim Halevy (1998 to 2002).  He affirmed to the world that Bashar Assad is Israel’s Man in Damascus (or “Why Jerusalem Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall”).

It is obviously in Israel’s interests to preserve the Assad dynasty, as opposed to the radical, unpredictable Islamists.  It may be impossible to determine the truth about Israeli conniving with Arab leaders until someone makes a big messy mistake.  If there were any honest news sources in the Middle East, then maybe we could figure-out just exactly who has benefitted from Israel’s latest bombings of Syria.  Would the Zionist state really have committed an “act of war” against Syria and Lebanon, just to prevent Hezbollah forces from upgrading a few of their missiles?  Was the Syrian military or government informant/traitor warning Israel about the imminent acquisition of “game-changing weapons” by Hezbollah, or by the Free Syrian Army?

If all of this proves to be true, that Israeli bombers were destroying heavy weapons and killing a lot of Syrian soldiers, in order to keep the weapons out of the hands of Syria’s terrorists, or that Mossad manipulated PKK-related killers to murder more than 40 innocent people in Reyhanli, then what does that say to the rest of the world, which is drowning in despair over the Syrian conflict?   What advantage is there in a Saud/Israeli alliance, when the Israelis are there to play the part of “spoiler” to all of the Islamist plans?  Above all else, Mossad/Israeli objectives are constant and unwavering, to establish Jewish dominance over every square inch of the Middle East, as a stepping stone to Jewish world dominance.  This justifies the spoiler role for Israel, support the Goyim’s plans, until the advantage shifts to Jewish interests, at which time all partners are double-crossed.  

the Saudi Gazette (SEE: Israel’s strategy in Syria ).

“But the bigger threat to Israel is the growth of democracy in the Arab world. If the Arab world were ever to become a democracy, it would expose Israel as the democracy fraud that it is.

Israel fears the Arab Spring because the Arab Spring augments the voices of freedom and calls for freedom throughout the region, not just in the Arab world, but in Israel too. And Israel is one of the most oppressive country’s in the Middle East. Although most Jewish citizens of Israel enjoy unprecedented freedoms and benefits from the state, non-Jews suffer simply because they are non-Jews. Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs are victimized by Israel both as so-called “citizens” and as imprisoned victims in the occupied lands.”

If the Syrian terrorist forces have suffered devastating losses because of Israeli actions, then they will know the truth–That they have just been attacked by “friendly” forces allied to the Arabs and to the West….This can be expected to be reflected in the spirit of the anti-Assad forces and in their communiques to the outside world.  If they have been demoralized by these betrayals, then they can be expected to show that in subtle ways.  Their positive response to Western calls for an international Syrian peace conference, to be organized jointly by the US and Russia, may be just such a sign.

“Syria’s opposition will consult with backers Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey before it decides whether to take part in a peace conference proposed by the United States and Russia, its acting chief said Monday.”  Syria opposition to consult backers on peace talks.  This is a complete reversal to all previous dismissals of negotiations with Assad out of hand.  Such a conference confirms Obama’s complete reticence in expanding the Syrian conflict into a regional war.  If Erdogan was hoping that the terror bombings in Turkey would sway Obama’s opinion about bringing-in American or NATO support against Syria, then he is likely to be disappointed when they meet in DC this week.

As far as the possibility that Turkey will escalate the confrontation with Syria on its own (SEE: Turkey says it won’t be drawn into Syria conflct), there is very little chance that Erdogan will make this misstep, especially when he cannot really be certain exactly who is on his side.

therearenosunglasses@hotmail.com

NAZI AMERICA

 

NAZI AMERICA IMPRISONS CHRISTIANS

aangirfan

 

Sister Megan Rice

On 8 May 2013, “an 83-year-old nun, Sister Megan Rice, who broke into a Tennessee depleted uranium storage facility in 2012 …. exposing a massive security hole at the nation’s only facility used to store radioactive conventional munitions, was convicted and sentenced to a term of up to 20 years in prison.”

83-year-old-nun-gets-20-year-sentence-for-symbolic-nuclear-facility-break-in

Victim of the US government’s depleted uranium.

Victim of the US government’s depleted uranium.

Victim of the US government’s depleted uranium.

Victim of the US government’s depleted uranium.

Victim of the US government’s depleted uranium.

The USA is a Nazi state.

The USA has very bad karma.

If there is a Hell, it will be mainly filled with Americans, especially those from Tennessee.

Tennessee is filled with Nazis.

Lynching of an innocent black kid in the USA. aangirfan: DUMB WHITE PEOPLE

In 1889 the husband of Jessie Woolen confessed that he had killed his wife.

Earlier, in 1886, Eliza Woods, an African-American woman, was lynched in Jackson, Tennessee, after being wrongly accused of poisoning and killing Jessie Woolen.

A crowd of 1,000 was reportedly present when Woods was hanged naked.

Reportedly, the Nazi CIA tortures innocent Moslems to turn them into mind-controlled al Qaeda operatives to fight in Syria.

Israel’s Secret Alliance with The Persian Gulf’s Arab States Against Iran

• ayatoilet1

Since Saddam Hussein’s Invasion of Kuwait, GCC states have collectively established a strong alliance with Israel. This alliance is currently focused on the destruction of Iran and the elimination of Iranian influence throughout the Middle East (and Central Asia). Both Israel and GCC countries are scared livid of the Iranian regime, its influence in their states and are therefore necessarily committed to this common goal. But this is a strategic mistake – for both GCC states and Israel. They have confused Iran’s regime with ordinary Iranians. Their beef is with the Mullahs NOT Iranians. This is a strategic blunder.

The Palestinian Factor

For decades Israel and the ‘whole’ Arab world were blood enemies.  Arab league members provided over $250 Million in funds to support the Palestinians since the ‘60s, and successfully organized an embargo with their oil supplies in the 1970’s to place pressure on Israel (and its allies: US and Europe).

But, in 1990, there was a tidal shift in alliances. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Yasser Arafat (then PLO Chairman) came out and publicly supported Hussein; and Kuwait’s Palestinian population rose in support of the Iraqis during the invasion.  And not long after the U.S. led liberation, the Kuwaitis expelled 450,000 Palestinians.  The Palestinian population in these booming Persian “Gulf Arab” states has now dwindled by about 90% since 1990, replaced by Pakistanis and Filipinos.

Kuwait’s allies: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and other Persian Gulf Monarchs or Sheikhdoms or dictators (depending on your point of view) have rationalized that Palestinians were and still are a national security risk and should not be trusted – nor supported.

Payback against Saddam Hussein did not take long. Ironically, Saddam Hussein who was once supported to the tune of billions of dollars by these same states in his war with Iran was also in their cross hairs. And within a decade, or so the U.S. stationed itself in Qatar, and transported troops through Kuwait to decimate his regime. Hussein had not only failed to follow to destroy Iran, but had turned against them!

In politics it seems – the enemy of my enemy is my friend!  In fact, the opening with Israel came on the heels of the Madrid Conference in 1991 that contributed to the countries’ official, rapprochement with Israel. Most of the ‘brokerage’ in these relationships has developed through close relations with Jewish organizations in the United States. There is now an odd sense of solidarity arising out of the knowledge that Iraqi Scud missiles had fallen on both Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

In 1994, the GCC canceled its boycott of companies and countries that maintained economic ties with Israel. In 2005 the same Gulf States announced normalization measures with Israel. The Bahraini foreign minister confirmed that his country had decided to cancel the boycott of Israeli goods, and the Qatari foreign minister called on Arab nations “to respond positively to the step taken by Israel.” He noted that “full diplomatic relations between Qatar and Israel may be possible even before a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from the territories.”

And while this decade long strategic shift was occurring, the British government sold its stake in BP basically to a combination of Jewish Bankers (Rothschilds Holdings 39%) and Gulf State Investment Organizations like for example the Kuwait Investment Organization  (21.6% by 2005). BP now, is basically an arm of these states, while employing and banking primarily British executives and banks.

And Israel’s government, for its part is enabling Israeli companies to indirectly contribute to the security of these dictatorships through training of local armed forces and by offering advanced (homeland security-related) advanced products, as long as they are perceived not to harm Israel’s strategic competitive advantage. Israel already has access to markets in the Gulf; the boycott is not applied if the products do not carry an Israeli label.

Israel’s covert relations with the United Arab Emirates were partially exposed by the late-November 2010 leak of diplomatic cables by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks that uncovered the “secret and persistent dialogue” between the two countries.

There are numerous formal and informal visits between the nations (and with Turkey among the crowd). Whether or not there are formal relations, i.e. embassies, it’s very clear that there is a strong alliance in place. Israelis and Sheikhdoms are ONE.

The Iran Factor

Iran’s Mullahs have long been an adversary to these Arab dictators. It is not clear why? It is true that Shiites comprise the majority of the populations in most of this region – including Saudi Arabia’s oil rich Eastern provinces. Democratic reforms, in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain …you name it…would result in Shiite led majorities, just like Iraq. There is real fear in these ruling Arab elites when it comes to ‘democratic reforms’.  But what exactly the Mullahs did to deserve this status is unclear? Yes, Iran did bomb Kuwaiti tankers – but that was during the war when Kuwait was exporting Iraqi oil…and Iraq had just bombed Iranian oil installations. And okay, there is a territorial dispute over islands in the Persian Gulf. So what??

What is strange for me is that there is frequent intermarriage, migration, bilingualism, and commerce between Iranians and many of these GCC states and citizens. Indeed besides the indigenous Shiite populations in the states around the Persian Gulf, there are over 400,000 Iranians residing in places like Dubai, roughly one third of its urban population…performing core functions in the area. Iranians, (the people of Iran), are a huge regional asset.

Despite all this, in recent years what has tied the Gulf states to Israel more than anything else is their ever-growing mutual fear of Iran. Israel today, represents the enemy of not only the Palestinians but also Iran’s Mullahs. An alliance between these “(Persian) Gulf Arab” states and Israel has been established with a clear objective of undermining Iranian influence and “suppressing” Palestinian ambitions.

According to Wikileaks published US State Department cable, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, repeatedly implored Washington to target the Iranian nuclear sites—in his words: to “cut off the head of the snake while there was still time.”

It is an open secret that these Gulf countries maintain contacts with Israel—mainly through the sharing of intelligence. In the summer of 2010 it was again reported (although the reliability of these claims is uncertain) that Saudi Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs V : 1 (2011)   Arabia would allow Israeli warplanes to use its airspace in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. Israeli military gear was even delivered to Saudi Arabia in preparation for an eventual attack on Iran.

Sami al Faraj, president of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies and a consultant to Kuwait and other GCC states, said recently that the “GCC states have been engaged in consultations and intelligence exchange with Israel, particularly regarding the Iranian threat.” Indeed, in the eyes of Arab rulers of the Gulf, it may seem that Israel can be vital to Gulf security, as the US is now leaving Iraq and Afghanistan.

Containing Iran’s quest for what is viewed as a ‘hegemonic role’ in the Persian Gulf is the main concern of the Arab monarchies, committed as they are to the preservation of their regimes. After the Islamic Revolution, terror and subversion became Tehran’s primary means of enforcing its regional policy and boosting its influence. In most cases, as with the covert Iranian “sleeper cell” uncovered in Kuwait (with links to Bahrain) in April 2010, it was hard to prove Iranian involvement; thus, Iran can deny any connection to such activity, while maintaining open diplomatic relations with the Gulf states it is covertly targeting.

On the one hand, the Mullahs have conveyed that they see themselves as partners for all Gulf States. On the other, their actions have been hardly reassuring on the western side of the Gulf. Iran has questioned the legitimacy of regimes, explicitly threatened to shut the straits of Hormuz, and to target strategic facilities in the Gulf States. It has conducted ominous military maneuvers and played a negative role in events in Iraq and Yemen. Moreover, Iran has occupied what the GCC consider to be their land (Abu Musa and the Tunb Islands). The Mullahs even went so far as to declare Bahrain as the fourteenth district of Iran (reminiscent of Saddam Hussein’s rhetoric regarding Kuwait).

For their part, the GCC governments recognize the difficulties facing the international community in stopping Iran on its way to nuclear weapons capability and want to avoid angering their increasingly powerful neighbor—and prefer to do what is necessary behind the scenes – indirectly if you will. Netenyahu’s brazen verbal attack on Iran is heralded by its ‘tacit allies’ and further amplified on Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV throughout the Middle East during peak viewing periods.

There is a genuine concern that an Iranian bomb will enable the Mullahs to set the future political, economic, and strategic agenda in the region. Similar concerns stem from the possible outcome of an Israeli and/or American military operation aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear capability, namely, a massive and widespread Iranian retaliation. Although GCC countries support a ‘comprehensive’ diplomatic solution to the crisis with Iran, they fear it will be at the expense of their interests and result in American recognition of Iran’s dominance in the Gulf.

Today’s Proxy Wars

In the absence of an overt war, Israel and its Arab allies have decided to fight Iran’s mullahs by proxy. The overall plan is to ‘contain’ Iran – i.e. surround Iran while ensuring Iran’s economy is held back with sanctioning. This is a systematic policy of weakening Iran and sucking Iranian blood. Meanwhile, of course they (and their surrogates) are running off with Iran’s treasure in the Caspian Sea and limiting Iranian oil and gas exports in favor of their own exports. In addition, sanctions have served to enable GCC countries to act as trading points for ‘sanction busting’ – reselling sanctioned goods to Iran at inflated prices and essentially profiting from Iran’s demise.

Interestingly, Israel and GCC states enjoy excellent relations with Azerbaijan. And BP, their joint prime investment vehicle, owns (and operates) the key oil pipeline across Azerbaijan and is the major operator of oil and gas platforms in the Caspian Sea (in what is actually Iranian water).

It is reported that Israel has a number of air bases inside Azerbaijan, with fighter jets ready for orders to attack Iran at any time. Azerbaijan now also is tacitly supporting Azeri separatists inside Iran.

GCC states have begun funding Al-Ahwazi separatists and Jundallah (Baluchi) separatists. While Israel too, has been funding Kurdish separatists.

But the clearest expression of this proxy effort is in Syria. I will grant you that the Syrian affair is much more than a proxy fight with Iran. Yes, both Israel and GCC states (like Qatar) have a clear objective of running major gas pipelines across Syria (and Lebanon too) to the Turkey to export their newly discovered resources. And yes, Turkey too has partnered with them and built the Nabucco pipeline to Europe with 40% excess capacity with this objective in mind.

What apparently started as a legitimate attempt to join the Arab spring and fight for democratic rights in Syria has transpired into a mercenary led ‘civil war’, with considerable entry of ‘foreign fighters’ in the fray. The Syrian government recently handed a list of names of citizens from 19 countries accused of joining Syria’s rebels: Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Chad, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, Yemen and Chechnya. Since Chechnya is not a country, but a republic of the Russian Federation, the list likely contains names of Russian citizens…too. According to CNN reports, the strangest part of all of these fighters is that Jabhat al-Nusra — the radical Islamic group that has become the opposition’s best fighting force. The lead author of a new analysis of the group, which is backed by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), told CNN that al-Nusra now has 5,000 fighters and is willing to watch Syria burn to secure an al-Qaeda foothold in the region!

In July, Dutch photo journalist Jeroen Oerlemans and British photographer John Cantlie were captured and held hostage in Syria for a week by rebel militants. They claimed that several of their captors spoke English with recognizable regional British accents, like Birmingham and London. And in August, Syrian rebel commanders reportedly became concerned over the numbers of hardline Islamists entering Syria from other Muslim-majority countries.

Beyond these proxy wars, there is clear indication that a direct war may in fact be in the cards. This past year, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have opened new pipelines bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.  The new links more than double the total pipeline capacity bypassing the strait to 6.5m barrels a day, or about 40 per cent of the 17m b/d that transits Hormuz. GCC states are clearly preparing for a conflict, although their preparations are NOT yet complete. Interestingly, Iraq too has a pipeline across Saudi Arabia to al Muajiz on the Red Sea to deliver its oil and by pass the Persian Gulf. One fascinating fact is that Saudi Arabia’s Al Muajiz Port on the Red Sea was developed for a total shipping capacity of 10 Million barrels a day!

A Major Strategic Blunder

The problem with this complete strategic realignment is that core populations of these GCC states are inherently pan-Arabist. Which means that once the ‘people’ of these states figure out that there is an ‘overt’ realignment between their leaders and Israel, there is the potential for a massive back-clash domestically. This could be further fueled by natural ‘Arab Spring” type democratic yearnings among the populations of these GCC states – and not only might there be a massive shift in government in the GCC states, but Israel too risks losing partners that it has invested heavily in.

Secondly, an overt war with Iran would only accelerate the demise of these regimes – not sustain them. The deal so far with their suppressed populations has been to exchange economic gains for political gains. If war breaks out there will naturally be rationing and military drafts. This sort of instability will only make them further vulnerable.

Thirdly, I believe a calculation that makes Iran their enemy is fundamentally flawed. The Mullahs in Tehran do not represent Iran or Iranians. In fact the Mullahs in Iran are enemies of Iranians too. In fact most Iranians see the Mullahs as ‘Arabs’ i.e. imposed on Iran; and indeed many senior regime leaders were born in Iraq – not even Iran.

These sheikhs need to remember that Iran’s current role in the region is a derivative of wars ‘started’ by GCC states – not Iranian aggression.  Remember, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran – with support, encouragement and financial backing from GCC states. The minutes of his meetings with King Fahd in Egypt is now public record. The loan balances Iraq had to GCC states is also public record that came out as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. You can’t hide it. And any insecurity these monarchs feel from the legitimate demands of their populations should NOT be confused with Iranian meddling.  Iranians have become a scapegoat – when the real problems are elsewhere. Iranians did NOT put the Mullahs in power – the West did. That is public record too.

Fourthly, Iran (especially after the war with Iraq and two neighboring wars) has now developed a formidable defense establishment, and its own (in house) weapon systems. This strategic posture cold provoke an outright war, and just like the war with Iraq – there is a real possibility that the GCC states could come out on the short end of their own stick. After two years of a proxy war versus Iran in Syria, there is no clear conclusion. Assad remains in power. The joint Israeli/GCC/Turkey plan is to then extend the war to Lebanon and then Iran. But what if the GCC states get ‘stuck’ in Syria? Have they succeeded? Will the west come to the rescue again? Or let’s put it another way, is there a vital strategic interest in Syria that the U.S. must defend? Will the U.S. risk bankruptcy for Syria? I doubt it.

The truth is, that while this all seemed like a good idea (and everyone was angry at Saddam Hussein the Palestinians) it may not be a great idea today. Once one domino starts to fall through a public uprising for democracy – with ‘no’ push from Iran (May I add, there are many radical actors in the Middle East – Hamas, Hizbullah, al Qaeda, you name it…) – in any single one of these GCC countries, all these Sheikhs, or Monarchs or Dictators could all fall. This is something they need to learn from the former “Shah of Iran” – who had grandiose strategic ideas but did not establish a strong domestic political infrastructure that was vitally necessary to carry out his ambitions.  The Sheikhs need to understand that they can do NOTHING without the heartfelt support of their citizens.

These GCC countries need to understand what their core strategic interest is. Does Iran represent a strategic threat? If so, why? And does that mean that GCC states need to align with Israel?

I would argue that it is in the “world’s” national interest to topple the regime in Iran – but not do anything to alienate the people of Iran or cause division among Iranians. That to the extent GCC states can be aligned with Israel or indeed any other country (Indonesia, Brazil etc.) to topple the regime in Tehran – that this would a fundamental strategic win for everyone. But beyond that any permanent alliance with Israel will be counterproductive to their interests and stability. This is not meant as a negative statement about Israel, it’s just a strategic reality. Israel has nothing to offer these regimes except exposure to radical forces. (Look at who they are partnering with in Syria?) And in fact Qatar could have pumped its natural gas across Syria – even without a proxy war in Syria or the balkanization of Syria, or the death of 60,000 Syrians. When the dust settles on all this, it will not be pretty. There were other ways to bring democracy to Syria without arming these sorts of rebels and radicals.

In fact, the most vital strategic ally every GCC state can have is a transformed Iranian government – their neighbor – that can police the neighborhood with them and help them make democratic transitions without a great deal of pain. Petty fights over small deserted islands, or sectarian considerations should not distract quality strategic thinking. Iran can offer them a huge market, can offer them regional stability, and also access to even bigger markets in Central Asia. Israel on the other hand is a strategic liability. So what if the Jewish lobby in Europe or the U.S. is helping them get access to cable TV distribution, and helping them buy soccer (football) teams – how is that of value to the people (the actual citizens) of GCC states? The Sheikhs are being shaked down for cash, buying over-priced assets.  There is no real strategic, sustainable gain in getting VIP seats to major games.

It is true that before the West toppled the Shah, Britain persuaded America to align strategically with it and invest in Alaskan Oil while Britain exploited North Sea oil – both of which were expensive to extract, AND needed sustained high oil prices. Toppling the Shah also meant shutting off Iran’s exports for over 10 years! Today, America is being ‘pushed’ into becoming an energy ‘power house’ with net energy exports for the first time in over 30 years. But it is a mistake to believe that this will result in a strategic realignment. The Obama administration so far has refused to ‘play’ in Syria in concert with Israel, Turkey or the GCC. And the Obama administration is focused on ‘reducing imports’ NOT maximizing exports i.e. reducing America’s oil dependency. The GCC is mistaken if they believe “Saudi-Americanization” will shift U.S. policy. And if the GCC are really shrewd, they will notice that in fact the U.S. has been protecting Iran’s Mullahs – not undermining them…and vice-a-versa. Iran today lists Iraq and Afghanistan as major export clients (both dominated by the U.S. military, while apparently there are global sanctions on Iran). The Mullahs are an expression of U.S. foreign policy.

What do these Sheikhs really have to show for all the money they have invested in the West? Indeed, governments in the West view them as great candidates for hosing, and use all these opportunities to sell the Sheikhs billions of dollars of inflated priced arms – and junk government bonds to undermine their own domestic spending. They are being hosed. They are the ones being used…by Israel and the West!

And they have to face it, democratic yearnings in the region are unstoppable. The Mullahs will fall, and their dictatorships are at risk (and it is not because of Iran). These dictators can become Monarchs like the Queen of England – even if there are a ton of Catholics in Britain!

There is a better path to peace, stability and prosperity – they need to see it – but their strategic calculations are completely wrong.

4 Saudi Arabians Arrested After “Al-Qaeda” Bombing Of Catholic Church In Tanzania

[All terrorism linked to Saudis is "al-Qaeda," since the international Islamist terror front would not exist without the Saudis, to instigate the terrorist nightmare of Wahhabi "Shariah" attacks.]

Tanzania police: 4 Saudi Arabian nationals arrested after bomb attack on Catholic church

Associated Press

• 
• 

ZANZIBAR, Tanzania –  A police commander in Tanzania says four Saudi Arabian citizens have been arrested following a bomb attack on a Catholic church.Magesa Mulogo said Monday that the four Saudi nationals were among six people arrested.

Mulongo said two people died in Sunday’s bombing of a newly opened church in the northern city of Arusha. Nearly four dozen people were wounded in the blast just before the church’s inaugural Mass, which was attended by the pope’s envoy to Tanzania.

Mulogo said eyewitnesses reported that the bomb was thrown from a motorcycle into the church. Mulogo said the driver of the motorcycle is among those arrested.

Turkey vs Iraq–We Are Witnessing the Next Regional War Setting-Up In The Middle East

[Obama and all previous American presidents like to lead, until plans go sour, then it becomes advantageous to let our underlings take the heat for us.  We are now letting Turkey "take one for the team" all over the Middle East and in parts of Central Asia, as they become the focal point for the anti-Iranian ambitions of the Gulf/Israeli coalition, who carry the ball for Western interests in the Mideast.  The Sunni Gulf States help provide the black ops financing to the Saudi Islamist project (otherwise known as "al-Qaeda"), which supplies the foot soldiers for Israel's terrorist operations throughout the Muslim world.  The Mossad, helps the CIA and the Pentagon to locate and acquire the weapons needed by this Sunni "Islamist" army, which facilitates CIA plans for a regional war, stretching from Central Africa into Pakistan.  In both Iraq and in Syria, Turkey is fully prepared to accept global oppobrium for having led the charge straight into a grand civil war within Islam itself. 

opprobrium \uh-PRO-bree-uhm\ , noun:
1. Disgrace; infamy; reproach mingled with contempt.
2. A cause or object of reproach or disgrace.

Perhaps the saddest part of this grand tragedy is that the tragic civil war unfolding in Iraq was always part of a cleverly crafted plan, a plan designed to amplify the great conflict within Islam, the never-ending argument between the Sunni and Shia faiths.  One side teaches that the Quran's authority and the mantle of The Prophet (PBUH) rests upon the actual bloodline of Mohammad (PBUH), the Shia opinion, the other side teaches that the Muslim elite should choose the most popular scholar of the Quran (Sunni).  The Sunnis even elevate the teachings of these Islamic scholars to a level of prominence equal to that of the Sacred Book itself. 

The American/British/Israeli "Zionist" plan to throw all of our weight behind the Sunnis in this conflict (intending to force a violent resolution of the issue) is obviously immoral, thus necessitating the American need for cover, whenever this ugly fact threatens to be revealed, that Christian/Judaic powers are waging a covert "Crusade" against Islam.  This Judeo-Christian Crusade to destroy Islam would never have been possible without the Sunni collaborators from the Middle East who have actually executed the plan.  Turkey stands at the top of this long list of Islamic traitor nations, who have collaborated intimately with the West to destroy the faith of 1.3 billion Muslims.  As long as the great Muslim majority can be kept in the dark about the Arab/Israeli union at the center of this Crusade they can be expected to allow all of this to continue indefinitely, enabling Turkey to escape that well-deserved popular revulsion for its acts of treachery.]

Saadun al-Dulaimi: Turkey controls Sunni protests against Maliki

BAGHDAD – Acting Defence Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi on Sunday accused Turkey of controlling Sunni anti-government protests in Iraq, saying the demonstrations are a haven for “terrorists and killers.”

“There are foreign agendas controlling these sites,” Dulaimi said of the protests.

“It is like Anbar, or Mosul or Samarra are part of the Ottoman Empire,” he said, referring to Sunni areas in Iraq.

Areas of what is now Iraq were part of the Ottoman Empire, which was governed from Istanbul in what is now Turkey, before the empire’s dissolution after World War I.

Ties between Baghdad and Ankara have been strained by issues including Turkey hosting Tareq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s fugitive former vice president who has been sentenced to death on charges including murder.

Dulaimi also had harsh words for the protesters themselves.

“Shame… on those sites that are opening their doors to Istanbul or any other country,” he said.

“Protest sites have become a safe haven for terrorists and killers and those who call for strife, sectarianism and hate.”

The protests broke out in Sunni areas of Shiite-majority Iraq more than four months ago.

Demonstrators have called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, and criticised authorities for allegedly targeting their community with wrongful detentions and accusations of involvement in terrorism.

On April 23, security forces moved on protesters near the town of Hawijah in Kirkuk province, sparking clashes that killed 53 people.

Dozens more died in subsequent unrest that included revenge attacks targeting security forces, raising fears of a return to the all-out sectarian conflict that claimed tens of thousands of lives between 2006 and 2008.

 

 

Irregular Army –the Poisonous Legacy of Donald Rumsfeld’s Privatization Plans

Irregular Army: A Conversation With Matt Kennard

Michael Busch, Lecturer, Departments of Political Science and International Studies, The City College of New York

This past March marked the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a decade of fighting, which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, destroyed an entire country, and destabilized the broader Middle East. As journalist Matt Kennard argues in his new book, Irregular Army, the war in Iraq — as well as that in Afghanistan — also had deleterious consequences for the U.S. military itself. Faced with declining enlistment numbers as fighting dragged on year after year with no clear end in sight, Kennard shows that the American armed forces looked for alternatives to populate its ranks. In the process, regulations were weakened, rewritten and in some cases, not enforced.

The results are disturbing. According to Kennard, the military was suddenly tolerating the open presence of white power extremists and street gang members in the rolls, and actively recruiting physically and psychologically unfit Americans to fill enlistment gaps. While evidence suggests that these lax recruitment standards have already resulted in death and murder on the battlefield, the consequences could prove equally upsetting here at home. If the Sikh temple massacre is any indication of what may be in store, Kennard’s argument that the United States faces an uncertain future as these veterans return from home from war couldn’t be more urgent.

I recently spoke with Kennard about his research into these issues, how government brass has responded to these threats to the integrity of its armed forces, and what the irregular American army might mean for Americans in the years to come.

The 10th anniversary of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq just passed this week. Give us a sense of how the American military has changed in the last decade, and what it looks like today.

What happened to the American military, and I’m not the only one to point this out, during the War on Terror and up to this day constitutes in some ways the biggest change the American military has ever gone through, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. What was implemented during the War on Terror was a massive restructuring of the Pentagon under the aegis of Donald Rumsfeld, who had this plan to eviscerate the civilian U.S. military and replace it with private contractors. This has come to be called “transformation” in specialist circles. He made this famous speech the day before 9/11 where he said that he wanted to “modernize” the military, corporate speak for privatization of the military. “We have to update our enlistment techniques, our training techniques,” and the like. Under all the rhetoric was a plan to really scale down the Department of Defense, and replace it with companies like Blackwater and other groups.

There was also a strategic shift that was part of this transformation that recognized that as the cold war wound down the United States no longer needed large land armies. Many of the so-called neo-conservatives had grown apoplectic during the 1990s with Clinton’s “humanitarian intervention” in Kosovo, and earlier Somalia. They believed that the U.S. military should be used only to secure U.S. national interests, without even the patina of altruism. (Ironically, of course, Clinton’s wars were not the beneficent operations that the neocons made out.) The new threats facing the United States were asymmetrical, they were no longer state-based in nature but came instead from non-state terrorist groups.

Anyway, there were significant disagreements with this new proposed posture. Colin Powell, who had previously been the highest ranking officer in the military, argued that Washington needed to maintain a serious, large land army that could be deployed quickly in the case of emergency. In the end, Rumsfeld won out and the invasion of Iraq happened with many less troops than Powell and Eric Shinseki, chief of staff the army at the time, wanted.

Eventually, after Iraq failed to go as planned, Powell and Shinseki were proved right — that the American army really couldn’t just go into a place like Iraq, smash the place up, and then get out within a couple of years. They were in a quagmire there, and this was shown to be the case again in Afghanistan. As the wars got worse over time, and in the absence of conscription, the military found itself needing more and more personnel — precisely the opposite of what Donald Rumsfeld had wanted or foreseen. In order to do this, to pump up its numbers, the military began to change its regulations. They did this with some groups quite openly. For example, they raised the ceiling age for enlistment, from 35 to 40, and then again to 42, because they didn’t get the numbers they needed the first time.

The stuff that I looked into were the groups that the military was a little more embarrassed about — from white supremacists to street gang members to criminals. For some reason, I’m the only journalist who’s done serious work on the presence of gangs and neo-Nazis in the American military. There’s been quite a lot of work done on criminals in the army. Henry Waxman investigated the presence of serious criminals in the military, and prized important information from the Pentagon that they had been trying to hide. Over the last 10 years, you’ve seen a complete realignment of who can qualify as a soldier in the United States military.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of the military adventures of the United States, but everyone knows that the standards in the U.S. military were always quite high. This was especially the case after Vietnam — 25 years were spent basically rejigging the military so that the standards were high. During the War on Terror, all of this was completely jettisoned. So what we have now is a military that is not held up as an exemplar of professionalism around the world, but as an example of what happens to a military when there aren’t enough troops and the government is too scared to institute conscription.

There are questions, of course, about how this will play out moving forward. Take the Libya intervention by NATO, for example: the whole debate was rehashed again. Barack Obama and his Defense Secretary Robert Gates actually endorsed the Rumsfeldian idea that the United States needed to slim down, while George Casey, the chief of staff of the Army, warned against “hollowing out” the U.S. military. If some state-based enemy rises again and the U.S. military has to deal with it, you’ll probably see the exact same issues crop up once more. And in fact, if you look into it, you’ll find that many of the standards haven’t been restored to their former levels even though recruiting quality troops has gotten easier with the current economic crisis. The military is unrecognizable now from what it was when the War on Terror started. And that’s not a mistake. It’s basically become exactly how Rumsfeld envisioned it: a hallowed out military replaced by private contractors working alongside special forces. Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars, documents how JSOC, assorted elite units are now carrying out many of the tasks that were previously the responsibility of the American military, often with “black budgets” out of sight of Congress and U.S. citizens. Everyone says that the war on Iraq was a massive personal failure for Rumsfeld, but in fact, in many ways, his vision has won out.

The most disturbing finding of your research is the extent to which white power extremists have penetrated the United States military, something which first came to light as far back as the mid-1970s. How do they get in? What happens when they get discovered? What have been the most immediate consequences of their presence in war zones?

It is important to note that there are a raft of regulations that govern the presence of white supremacists, both during the recruitment phase, and then afterwards if they are discovered within the ranks. But the trouble with these regulations is that they’ve always been reactive. So you have cases where white supremacist cells have been exposed on different bases, dating back to the 1970s. And every time this happens, whether that is a neo-Nazi killing another soldier, or killing someone in a nearby town to a base, every time there is a short-term outpouring of anger, the military responds by saying that they have tightened regulations. The first time something like this happened, in 1976, the military said being in a white supremacist organization was inconsistent with service. That can be interpreted any way you want. To my mind, the ambiguity related to the regulation of white supremacists is deliberate, i.e., the military doesn’t want these people in the military, but in times when they can’t afford to kick troops out, the regulations allow them enough leeway to ignore it, or have enough plausible deniability, to leave these people in.

During the War on Terror, regulations were not adhered at all. So, for example, you had people who were able to get into the military with swastikas tattooed on their skin. I spoke with the head of recruitment for the United States army about this, he said, “well, there’s first amendment rights.” If someone says they like the way swastikas look, or claim that they are Indian symbols which look very similar, then the commander can basically blow it off. So, there are regulations on tattoos — which are frequently the best indicators for recruiters of extremism — that were broadly ignored.

And then you had the other side, when these people are discovered after they are already in, there are other regulations to deal with that. So, if you are caught posting messages on websites like StormFront, or writing racist messages on places like the New Saxon, a sort of neo-Nazi Facebook, you can be disciplined, and maybe even kicked out of the military altogether. But that didn’t happen, either. In fact, I received reports from the Criminal Investigative Command (CID), which is the criminal investigative arm of the Army, about what happened to white supremacists when they were caught. Some of it is really shocking. In one instance, a soldier passed a military explosives manual to the leader of a white supremacist group. In the report I received from the CID, the military terminated the investigation because the soldier in question had been shipped off to Iraq. This is somebody who may have been planning a domestic terrorist attack! Jaw-dropping.

There are obviously first amendment rights. But if you are training, equipping and then sending white supremacists to a country of brown people, I think that really does trump first amendment rights. I focus on the War on Terror, but there is also the case of Michael Wade Page, who carried out the Sikh Temple Massacre last August. He was serving in the 1990s, a period during which there was supposedly a harsh crackdown on white supremacists in the military, by the military, following the Oklahoma City bombing. Well, Stars and Stripes interviewed friends of Page, who told the paper that he was completely open about his Neo-Nazism while in the Army.

But it’s not just white power groups that are populating the military. Other gangs have also colonized the American armed forces. Can you talk about what other gang activity exists within the military?

It’s tempting to focus on the problem of white supremacists in the military when thinking about undesirable elements in the armed forces. It makes sense — these people often have goals which are terrorist goals. They want to kill people to further the cause of racial holy war. But in terms of numbers, and everyday violence, the street gangs problem in the military is much more serious. I have spoken with security experts who estimate that up to 10 percent of the American military is made up of gang-affiliated troops.

During the height of the War on Terror, we saw it all along the border, where active duty soldiers carried out the murders of other soldiers, not to mention of the enemies of local drug traffickers nearby to the bases. Gangs see the military as a good way to traffic drugs — when soldiers are on a base, they are not subject to the same rigorous law enforcement as you are when you are civilian. Cartels look to recruit soldiers who are on bases, or recruit soldiers especially those stationed at Fort Bliss and Fort Hood, both in Texas and hotbeds of this kind of activity.

We’ve seen evidence of this up to this day. Recently, there was a case in which the DEA carried out a sting operation on a group of soldiers. DEA officers posed as a representative of a Mexican drug cartel, and offered the soldiers money in return for carrying out hits against rival factions. The soldiers agreed. The DEA knew this was a good tack to take, because they’re very aware that trafficking groups are in constant contact with active duty personnel.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on, you show that the military increasingly focused on recruiting kids and older adults to serve in the armed forces. How did they go about doing this, and what have been the consequences?

The most serious consequences have been the number of people who have died. I focus on older people and the young in my book. The military has regulation on the issue of age. It used to be that no one over the age of 35 could be recruited into the military. That changed during the War on Terror when the age was raised, first to 40 and then to 42 years of age, because they were struggling to find troops. That regulation wasn’t arbitrary. When soldiers are older than 35, they face higher risks on the battlefield related to psychology and physical fitness. I discuss a couple of soldiers in the book who died during their service, likely as a result of their relatively advanced age. For example, Staff Sergeant William Chaney, a Vietnam War died of a blood clot aged 59 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, after surgery for a medical condition and appendix problem that had necessitated his evacuation from Iraq. Another soldier, Steven Hutchison, who was a veteran of Vietnam and had experienced the Tet Offensive — died in an IED attack in Iraq after being recruited on the “retiree recall” program. He was killed a month shy of his 61st birthday. So that’s the most serious consequence — people have died as a result of these changes.

The other consequence has to do with the moral issue of colonizing the high schools of America. It’s not well-known about, but No Child Left Behind Act — which was passed with great bipartisan fanfare in 2001 — has a small caveat which mandates that schools turn over the phone numbers and addresses of all their students to military recruiters or face funding cuts if they refused. At first, this wasn’t used much because the War on Terror hadn’t yet started. But when troop deficits became a chronic issue, it began to be used all the time. Recruiters spent a decade terrorizing high school students — cold calling them, turning up at their houses, turning up at their schools — trying to persuade them to go to war.

There was one famous case where a high school student recorded a recruiter telling him that his life would be finished if he exited the Delayed Enlistment Program (DEP). Under the DEP, students can sign up for the military while still in high school — basically promising to join the military upon graduation. But it is not binding. But many students aren’t told it isn’t binding. In this case, the student recorded the recruiter telling him that if he failed to honor the DEP, he wouldn’t be able to get loans for college, wouldn’t ever be able to find a job, and the like. It didn’t work on this one kid, because he was smart and decided to record his conversations with the recruiter. But you can imagine how often these sorts of tactics, and this kind of manipulation, do work on young people. And you can imagine how many of these young people were sent to Afghanistan and Iraq, and in all likelihood some of them have died. In combination, then, these two sides of the age issue highlight an overriding moral issue, and that is the fact that tons of people who should have never been sent to war, were — many to their deaths.

You suggest that the full consequences of the irregular army cobbled together by the United States haven’t yet been fully realized. Are we in for an irregular future? If so, how?

In my opinion, the War on Terror — which was fought mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in other places as well — is now coming home. All of the extremists that the Pentagon allowed into the military during the War on Terror are coming back to the United States, and not to become priests. These people have their own goals, and they will spend the next decade or two attempting to bring these goals forward. We see this in smaller scale following the first Gulf War. Take the Oklahoma City bombing, which took place a few years after the United States withdrew from Iraq the first time. These things have a fairly long incubation period. My sense is that because the military has trained so many crazy people in advanced weaponry and tactics over the past ten years, there will be cases — hopefully not as serious as the Oklahoma City bombing — like the Sikh Temple Massacre, cases where the violence of disgruntled veterans with a racial bone to pick, or any other really, will be taken out on random civilians.

We are seeing that slowly. Recently, there was a case in which a group of soldiers had formed their own militia at Fort Stewart in Georgia and were planning to assassinate President Obama and poison Washington State’s apple crop. According to prosecutors the soldiers had spent nearly $90,000 on guns and bomb components. Thankfully, this plan was busted, but we have to ask ourselves: how many similar cells like this are in the United States, and how long will it take for us to see them act out their fantasies? I’m not particularly optimistic about the future on this front. There’s another point that must be made, as well. It is sometimes said that a country’s military is a reflection of the population from which it is drawn. Many problems we witnessed in military during the War on Terror were reflections of a society that was changing under the stress of fear that was inflicted on the American population. We can point to the rising numbers of convicted felons allowed into the military, but that was merely a reflection of the increasing number of people being locked up across the country. We can point to the increasing numbers of overweight soldiers allowed to serve in the military, but again, this is just a reflection of an increasingly obese American society. So in a sense, many of the troubles experienced by the U.S. military right now are a reflection of a society which is going backwards in key respects, not forwards. Hopefully this will change. But there are very few indicators right now to suggest this is likely to happen.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-busch/irregular-army-book_b_3135051.html?utm_hp_ref=books

Israel Becomes “Al-Qaeda’s Air Force” In Syria–Joins Arab Coalition, Then Bombs Syrian Govt. Targets

“The new Israeli aggression is a clear attempt to raise the gunmen morale after the painful blows they received at the hands of our valiant army in several places and after the achievements which were realized on the ground by our armed forces to restore security and stability to Syria.

The new Israeli aggression shows the direct involvement of the Zionist entity in the conspiracy against Syria and the relationship that links the armed terrorist groups with the Israeli hostile schemes backed by the Western, regional and some Gulf states.”– Sana

[SEE:  Al-Qaeda’s Air Force]

Israeli strikes on Syria ‘co-ordinated with terrorists’

Israeli strikes on Syrian army targets show co-ordination with “terrorists” including al-Qaeda linked militants, the Syrian foreign ministry has said.

The strikes had led to a number of casualties and widespread damage, it reported in a letter sent to the UN.

State media said a research centre and other sites had been hit overnight. Israeli sources said weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon were the target.

The strike, the second in two days, drew condemnation from the Arab League.

Syria’s government refers to rebels fighting against it as “terrorists”.

On Friday, Israeli aircraft hit a shipment of missiles near the Lebanon border, according to unnamed US and Israeli officials.

The BBC’s Yolande Knell in Jerusalem says the latest developments are a significant escalation in Israel’s involvement in the conflict.

The Syrian foreign ministry statement said three military sites had been hit – a research centre at Jamraya, a paragliding airport in the al-Dimas area of Damascus and a site in Maysaloun.

“The flagrant Israeli attack on armed forces sites in Syria underlines the co-ordination between ‘Israel’, terrorist groups and… the al-Nusra Front,” the statement said, referring to al-Qaeda militants fighting with the rebels.

“The Israeli attack led to the fall of a number of martyrs and wounded from the ranks of Syrian citizens, and led to widespread destruction in these sites and in the civilian districts near to them.”

The statement added: “This leaves no room for doubt Israel is the beneficiary, the mover and sometime the executor of the terrorist acts which Syria is witnessing and which target it as a state and people directly or through its tools inside.”

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi said Israeli air strikes have “opened the door to all possibilities”

The Syrian cabinet held an emergency meeting on the attacks, after which Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi read a statement at a news conference.

He said the attack made the Middle East “more dangerous” and “opens the door wide to all possibilities”.

Syria had the right and the duty “to defend its people by all available means,” he added.

‘Biggest explosion’

In the latest attack, Damascus was shaken by repeated explosions coming from the north-western suburbs.

Amateur video footage and eyewitness testimony suggested rocket attacks had hit weapons dumps, triggering dramatic orange-flamed blasts.

The area houses numerous military facilities, including the Jamraya research centre, designated by Syria as a scientific research centre “in charge of raising our level of resistance and self-defence”.

Damascus-based journalist Alaa Ebrahim told the BBC it was “the biggest explosion” the city had seen since the conflict began two years ago.

He said residents living near Jamraya reported feeling a “mild earthquake” just before the blast, indicating that the rockets may have hit an underground facility.

Our correspondent says the Israeli attack is a high-risk strategy, and it has drawn strong reaction from the rest of the Arab world.

The Egyptian presidency said they “violated international law and principles that will further complicate the situation”.

“Despite its strong opposition to bloodshed in Syria and the Syrian army’s use of weapons against its people… Egypt rejects at the same time the assault on Syria’s capabilities, violation of its sovereignty, and exploitation of its internal crisis under any pretext,” the presidency’s statement said.

And the Arab League, which has given its Syria seat to the rebels, called on the UN Security Council to “act immediately” to end the attacks.

The Jamraya facility was also apparently hit in an Israeli air strike in January.

Israeli officials confirmed the January strike, but insisted trucks carrying missiles to Hezbollah were the target.

After the latest attack, unnamed Western intelligence sources said the target was a weapons cache heading for Lebanon.

Israel has repeatedly said it would act if it felt advanced weapons were being transferred to militant groups in the region, especially Hezbollah.

Imran In Scathing Attack On Convenient “Islamist” Fazl–CHANGE PAKISTAN ON MAY 11

[Fazl and those like him, who treat the Islamic faith as a "convenient" political ladder to self-elevation are the bane of those with True Faith.  The Convenience of Political Islam for those slothful, evil men, who know neither morality nor honesty, is at the root of the global conflict within Islam itself.  The Saudis and those who feed at their trough have spread this corrupted message all over the Muslim world, while reinforcing its message with the largesse of treasure.  This has misled many.  Pakistani politicians have faithfully travelled this path for many decades.  It is time to change this equation, so that true democracy might really turn-out to be Pakistan's salvation. 

VOTE MAY 11.]

Imran in scathing attack on Fazl

PTI chief Imran Khan pictured outside his helicopter after speaking at a rally in Charsada on Saturday.

PESHAWAR: In sharp contrast to his Sharif-bashing in Punjab, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan on Saturday turned his guns towards JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, accusing him of exploiting the sacred name of Islam to reach the corridors of power.

Speaking at election rallies in a whirlwind tour of what is known as the Peshawar Valley, the PTI chief said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman was shedding crocodile’s tears and was befooling the people again in the name of Islam. The Maulana had always politicised Islam to serve his own interests, he alleged.

The towns Imran Khan visited were Charsadda, Mardan, Swabi and Buner.

He charged that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Awami National Party, Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari were responsible for destruction of the country. The time, he said, had come to hold looters accountable. “The nation will reject the plunderers of national wealth on May 11.”

Addressing a public meeting in Nowshera, Imran Khan said that no corrupt leader or party would be able to face PTI’s tsunami on the election day. He said the enthusiasm of youth would change the country and make a new Pakistan.

Lashing out at the JUI-F chief, he said that for five years, Maulana Fazl had kept mum over the bloodshed of thousands of innocent Pakhtuns and remained hand in glove with President Asif Zardari to stick to power.

The PTI chief claimed that his forewarning against joining the US-led “war on terror” had come true. “I never said it was our war as it neither was nor ever will be.

Pakistan drew fire to the peril of its people by readily becoming America’s lieutenant in this war for no reason”, he said.

In Charsadda, Imran Khan said that after coming to power, the PTI would restore the dignity of Pakistan in international community, which he said was badly damaged by the previous governments.

He continued to target Maulana Fazlur Rehman, saying that the JUI-(F leader was responsible for the killings of thousands of people during the Afghan war. Maulana Fazl never spoke against US drone strikes and military operations in the country, Imran said, adding that the JUI-F leader had adopted a dubious policy to deceive the masses.

Addressing a rally in Swabi, Imran Khan said the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party had dominated the country’s politics since 1988, but they had utterly failed to deliver the goods.

He said that the two major parties and their allies would taste a crushing defeat and the PTI tsunami would sweep them away from power corridors. “We are poised to say goodbye to all former political actors on May 11 and those who labelled us as Jew and Qadiani will not be able to re-enter the parliament to devour public money,” he said.

He bitterly criticised JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, President Asif Ali Zardari, Mian Nawaz Sharif and ANP president Asfandyar Wali Khan, calling them political actors and US stooges.

“They always look to the Americans’ nod and wink in all affairs,” he said. “If we are voted to power on May 11, we will neither remain under American influence nor work according to their agenda. “We oppose US drone strikes. If we are voted to power, there will be no drone attacks in Pakistan. The PTI will formulate an independent foreign policy,” he said.

He said that the former rulers indulged in corruption, looting national exchequer and inflicting a colossal loss to the country and its people. “This practice is not acceptable to PTI and the youth of the country have been awakened. Those who ruined the country could not rebuild it”, he said. “The PTI will make a new Pakistan where justice, peace and prosperity will prevail,” said Mr Khan.

YOUTH AND DREAM: In Buner, the PTI chief said the enthusiastic youths would make the dream of a new Pakistan come true on May 11.

He said that after coming to power the PTI would explore the local natural resources to end loadshedding and would create employment opportunities for the youth.

He pointed to the cheering crowd, saying that “these change-makers” will ensure a positive change on May 11.

In Mardan, Imran Khan said American drones would be shot down if his party was elected to power in the coming general elections.

All nominated candidates on three National Assembly and eight PK constituencies of Mardan were present on the occasion.

He said the PTI supporters had struggled and waited for the last 17 years to lay foundation of a new Pakistan and now the dawn was nigh as the people would witness the start of a new Pakistan on May 11.

He said the ANP promoted the culture of easy load and plundered both the people and the public money ruthlessly.

He hit out at the JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman for making propaganda against him (Imran Khan) that he had been backed by Jews and Qadyani.

“I am a true Muslim and believe that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the last prophet,” he said, asking Maulana Fazl to stop telling lies to the people. He accused Maulana Fazl of making money through corrupt practices and diesel permits.

The Maulana supported Pervez Musharraf and President Asif Ali Zardari “during their regimes of corruption”.

THATCHER (AND REAGAN) GOT IT ALL WRONG

[SEE: The Supply-Side Fraud: Republican Economics Don’t Work ]

THATCHER GOT IT ALL WRONG

AANGIRFAN

Bill Roache (left) has been arrested on suspicion of raping a young girl in 1967. Thatcher, on the right, always seemed to be surrounded by alleged child abusers.

In May 2013, Margaret Thatcher’s party, the Conservatives, performed rather badly in local elections.

The Thatcher funeral, in April 2013, reminded lots of voters that Thatcher got it all wrong, especially on the economy.

Thatcher with Conservative Member of Parliament Nigel Evans who has just been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting two teenage males. Deputy Speaker Arrested On Suspicion Of Rape

Oxford historian David Priestland recently wrote about Thatcher:

History Magazine

“Since 2008, it has become increasingly evident that she did not lay the foundations for a prosperous Britain…

“It was only in 2008 that the true economic state of affairs became evident : the model built by Thatcher was being sustained by debt.”

Thatcher. (Geoffrey White / Daily Mail / Rex Features)

David Priestland, referring to the economic problems of the 1970s, writes:

“Some governments – like the Germans and the Swedish – sought to create a social consensus behind a programme of gradual restructuring…

“But Thatcher, like her fellow militant Ronald Reagan, … accelerated … the ‘deindustrial revolution’.”

Thatcher and Reagan.

Britain’s growth rate in the 1960s, before Thatcher, averaged well over 3%, in spite of strikes.

The average growth rate between 1979 and 1990, under Thatcher, was well below 3%, and, according to Priestland: “would probably have been lower without the North Sea oil windfall.”

Thatcher

Because of high unemployment under Thatcher, productivity rose temporarily.

But, in Germany, productivity rose more than twice as much, and they didn’t have the high unemployment!

Child abuser Savile was invited to stay with Thatcher many Christmases in a row. 

Historian Dominic Sandbrook writes of Thatcher:

History Magazine

“She promised to restore law and order, yet she presided over the worst riots Britain has ever seen.

Thatcher’s gay friend DEREK LAUD

“She talked of bringing back Victorian values, yet her decade in office saw divorce, abortion and illegitimacy reach unprecedented heights…

“She unleashed casino capitalism…”

“Public spending actually rose in all but two of her years in office.”

Austerity is not necessarily the answer when an economy is in touble.

Howe and Thatcher

“In late 1979, Thatcher’s economic minister Sir Geoffrey Howe told Thatcher that inflation was unlikely to fall below about 15 per cent.

“What actually happened in 1979-1981 was that the monetary targets were always overshot and inflation raced away regardless.

“The most obvious effect of the high interest rates that were supposed to tame M3 was, instead, to push up the sterling exchange rate, pricing British manufacturing exports out of world markets.”

Sir Geoffrey Howe then introduced a policy of severe austerity.

http://www.ft.com/

Alleged child abuser Sir Peter Morrison (left) was Thatcher’s closest aide.

Economists Paul de Grauwe and Yuemei Ji have pointed out that Eurozone countries that have introduced the most severe austerity since 2010 have experienced the largest falls in GDP and hence the greatest increases in debt to GDP ratios.

Panic-driven austerity in the Eurozone and its implications | vox

THATCHER’S FATHER LIKE JIMMY SAVILE?…

The Thatcher government pocketed “one-off gains from the sale of public assets as current income.

“Together with the tax receipts from North Sea oil (again a temporary bonanza), this pushed the budget briefly into surplus at the peak of the boom under chancellor Nigel Lawson in the late 1980s.

“After the resignation of Lawson in 1989, and of Thatcher a year later, later chancellors were left to repair their financial legacy.”

Pakistani and Afghan Taliban Execute Two of Karzai’s Emissaries, Proving They Are ONE

[Two days ago, the Pakistani Taliban killed the son of another High Peace Council member, providing further evidence that the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban ARE ONE.  They are both waging war against Karzai's peace emissaries at the same time, proving that their actions are coordinated and their objectives are the same.  Both swear allegiance to Mullah Omar.  Mullah Omar and all of his armies owe allegiance to the Pak Army, since they are products of the Pakistani ISI. 

The purpose of terrorism is not to terrorize, but to motivate the victimized civilian populace into submission to unpleasant political conditions.  Those conditions can best be described as Wahhabi "Shariah."  Having the same goals since the beginning, the revived Taliban ("neo-Taliban") are there to give Pakistan control over Afghanistan,  If Obama actually intends to hand the Afghanistan transition to Pakistan, as rumored, he will be handing Afghanistan to the Taliban, completing his total "Islamization" of all Middle Eastern countries from Morroco to Islamabad.  Obama is pushing the radicalized faith upon the Muslim masses, just as surely if he has been the one issuing all of the jihadi "fatwas."]

“Hilal Ahmad Waqad was organizing a conference of Afghan and Pakistani religious scholars to oppose militancy.                                                                                                                                                                                    [He] was the son of Afghan cleric Amin Waqad, a member of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, which is trying to engage the Afghan Taliban in peace talks.”

Afghan peace council official killed in south

KABUL, Afghanistan—Insurgents ambushed an Afghan government peace negotiator on Wednesday, killing him and two bodyguards as they headed to a meeting in the south to discuss plans for local troops to take over responsibility from the U.S-led coalition, Afghan officials said.

Malim Shah Wali Khan, 53, who sat on a council tasked with starting talks with the Taliban in hopes of ending the nearly 12-year-old war, was killed when attackers hit his convoy with a bomb and automatic rifle fire, Helmand provincial spokesman Omer Zawak said.

The province’s deputy governor, Masoud Bakhtawer, was also wounded in the attack, which took place in the same district where Afghan forces will shortly be in control. Helmand has been one the war’s bloodiest battlefields and a traditional Taliban stronghold.

Khan was the provincial director of the High Peace Council, a group formed by President Hamid Karzai to try and find ways to initiate peace talks with the insurgents. The council has so far failed to start any form of negotiations with the Taliban since U.S.-initiated peace talks collapsed last year.

In a statement, Karzai “strongly condemned” the attack that killed Khan and said that “the enemies of Afghanistan are trying to attack and martyr those individuals who are doing their best to bring peace and stability to the country.”

The U.S.-led coalition has been handing over responsibility for security in the province, and around the country, to Afghan forces as foreign combat troops prepare to withdraw by end-2014. So far, the Afghan government is in charge of areas representing 80 percent of the country’s population. It hopes to assume full control by the early summer.

The British Ministry of Defense on Wednesday also said three of its soldiers were killed in Helmand by a roadside bomb. NATO had announced the deaths on Tuesday but had not identified the nationalities of the soldiers.

The soldiers were on patrol when their armored vehicle struck the bomb. Insurgents have increased their attacks in recent weeks and since they announced the start of their spring offensive on April 27.

In other developments, health officials were investigating why nearly 70 students at a high school near the capital became ill on Wednesday.

Amanullah Eman, a spokesman for the Education Ministry, said some students were briefly hospitalized but all were doing well. He said a number of factors were being investigated, including the use of fertilizers in nearby farm land.

There have been numerous cases of dozens of school children falling ill during the spring, when Afghan students return to school. Although some officials in the past have blamed the Taliban for attempting to poison students, the insurgents have repeatedly denied any involvement and no proof has ever been found of deliberate poisoning. Experts have instead blamed mass hysteria for many of the cases.

—

Mirwais Khan contributed from Kandahar and Patrick Quinn from Kabul.

hanistan—Insurgents ambushed an Afghan government peace negotiator on Wednesday, killing him and two bodyguards as they headed to a meeting in the south to discuss plans for local troops to take over responsibility from the U.S-led coalition, Afghan officials said.

Malim Shah Wali Khan, 53, who sat on a council tasked with starting talks with the Taliban in hopes of ending the nearly 12-year-old war, was killed when attackers hit his convoy with a bomb and automatic rifle fire, Helmand provincial spokesman Omer Zawak sai

Saudis Appear Frantic As They Attempt To Deflect Blame for Boston Bombing

[In a typical Saudi misdirection, the royals are anxiously trying to turn the investigation away from the one Saudi name that has been tied to the case, Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi.  The more they protest, and the louder their denials become, the more obvious it becomes that the masters of Sunni world terrorism have a lot to hide in this latest militant "Islamist" terror attack upon the citizens of the United States of America.  If our own FBI was not totally compromised by them and the never-ending cover-up of Saudi/CIA atrocities and an assortment of crimes against humanity, then they might pursue the Saudi connection to its logical conclusion, not to another predetermined dead-end.

FRY THE ROYALS!]

  Saudi foreign ministry, Prince Saud bin al-Faisal (R), had an unscheduled meeting with Obama in the Oval Office just two days after the Boston bombings

Saudi Arabia reportedly sent written warning to US about Boston Marathon bombing accused Tamerlan Tsarnaev

SAUDI Arabia reportedly sent a written warning to the US about Boston Marathon suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev last year and refused him entry to the country over security concerns.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wrote to the US Department of Homeland Security about the older Tsarnaev brother in 2012, a senior Saudi official says.

The official told the Daily Mail the warning was based on intelligence from Yemen and was separate to concerns raised by Russian intelligence.

He also revealed Tamerlan was refused an entry visa into Saudi Arabia for the Mecca pilgrimage in December 2011.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 and his younger brother Dzhokhar are accused of carrying out the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon, which killed three and wounded more than 264 at one of the world’s premier sporting events.

The Saudi official said the warning, which was also shared with the UK Government, was “very specific” and warned “something was going to happen in a major US city”.

The “government-to-government” letter “did name Tamerlan specifically”, the official told the Daily Mail.

An official from Homeland Security denied the department had received any such warning from Saudi Arabia.

“DHS has no knowledge of any communication from the Saudi government regarding information on the suspects in the Boston Marathon Bombing prior to the attack,” an unnamed offical told the Daily Mail.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police as he tried to flee the Boston area three days after the bombing.

Dzhokhar was wounded and captured, and now faces terror charges carrying a possible death sentence.

The Saudi official said the letter was sent by the Saudi Ministry of Interior in part so the US could inspect packages being sent to Tamerlan in the post.

“With Saudi Arabia it’s always code red,” he said.

“There’s no code orange, or code yellow. Always red.”

Zionist Wahhabis

[SEE:  Saudi Arabia working with Mossad against Iran, WikiLeaks suggests ;  Saudi Arabia is Israel’s last hope: report ]

The Saudi/Israeli Alliance

deLiberation

by Dean Henderson
Monday, April 9th, 2012

(Excerpted from Chapter 5: Persian Gulf Rent-a-Sheik: Big Oil & Their Bankers…)

Iran’s Press TV reported yesterday that both the US and the Saudis began funding Syrian rebels eight months ago. After funding Libyan Islamist rebels to overthrow Qaddafi, the Saudis and their fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) despots have moved on in an effort to bring down Syria’s Assad government on their road to Tehran.

Both the Muslim Brotherhood House of Saud and Cabalist Israel share a long history with their Freemason brethren at British intelligence dating back to the Egyptian Mystery Schools.

The inbred Illuminati banker oligarchy runs all three secret societies and controls the global economy via central bank monopoly and hegemony over oil, arms and drug trades.

This Rothschild-led cabal of trillionaire Satanists manufacture fanatics within the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths to divide the people and maximize war profits.

Since Chevron discovered oil in Saudi Arabia in 1938, the House of Saud monarchy has increasingly served as paymaster for Rothschild covert military adventures.  It’s part of an oil for arms quid pro quo.

The Saudis sent over $3.8 billion to the CIA-trained Afghan mujahadeen.  Their emissary to the Americans was Osama bin Laden.

They gave $35 million to the Nicaraguan contras. Northrup/Lockheed bribe recipient Adnan Khashoggi played a key role in supplying Richard Secord’s Enterprise with House of Saud funding.  But while contra and mujahadeen efforts got the most newsprint, the House of Saud was busy bankrolling counterinsurgency around the world.

In Africa the Saudis provided support decades ago for the National Front for Salvation (NFS), which operated from bases in Chad in its attempts to overthrow Libyan President Mohamar Qaddafi.

Chad has long been an important country in Exxon Mobil’s North Africa oil production schemes.  In 1990- following a successful Libyan-backed counter-coup against the Chad government which was sponsoring NFS- the US evacuated 350 NFS leaders with Saudi financing.  The US restored $5 million in aid to the dictatorial Kenyan government of Daniel Arap Moi so Kenya would house the NFS leaders, whom other African governments refused to take in.  Arap Moi later aided CIA covert operations in Somalia, which the Saudis financed.

The Saudis bankrolled Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebels in Angola in their brutal effort to topple the socialist government of MPLA President Jose dos Santos.  Upon CIA request, the Saudis sent millions to Morocco to pay for that country’s training of UNITA.  Angola has huge oil reserves.  In 1985 Chevron Texaco accounted for 75% of Angola’s oil revenue.  In 1990 29% of Exxon Mobil’s US-bound crude came from Angola. An annual report of De Beers- the Oppenheimer-family tentacle which monopolizes the world diamond trade- bragged of buying up UNITA diamonds.  Savimbi was welcomed at the White House by President Reagan.

The Saudis funded RENAMO in their CIA-backed Pink Plan terror campaign against the nationalist government of Mozambique.  In the mid-1980s both the Saudis and Oman sent weapons to RENAMO through the Comoros Islands on behalf of Israel and apartheid South Africa.  Two Comoros Presidents- Ali Soilah and Ahmed Abdullah Abderemane- were assassinated by mercenaries who were protecting the arms traffic.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – formerly Zaire- Illuminati puppet Mobutu Sese-Seiko ruled with an iron fist for nearly four decades. He served as City of London guard dog of Zaire’s rich cobalt, uranium and molybdenum reserves- all of which are vital to the US nuclear weapons program.  Zaire is also rich in copper, chromium, zinc, cadmium, tin, gold and platinum.  While Mobutu amassed over $5 billion in Swiss, Belgian and French bank accounts, Zaire’s people lived in squalor.

Mobutu was installed in the early 1960’s after CIA agent Frank Carlucci- later Reagan and Bush Defense Secretary and now chairman of bin Laden family investment advisor Carlyle Group- worked with gangsters to assassinate the first prime minister of the Congo Patrice Lumumba.  Under Mobutu’s reign the US had military bases at Kitona and Kamina- from where the CIA prosecuted covert wars against Angola, Mozambique and Namibia with House of Saud funding.  Mobutu’s DSP palace guard was trained by the Israeli Mossad.  In the late 1970’s the Saudis paid for imported Moroccan troops to save Mobutu from Katanganese secessionists led by Laurant Kabila.

Mobutu was deposed in 1998 by forces loyal to Kabila- a friend of Fidel Castro.  The Saudis began financing military forays into the Congo by the governments of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. This destabilization of the Lake’s region led to the Rwandan genocide.  Kabila was assassinated in 2000, after he refused to play Illuminati ball.  Over four million people have died in the DRC over the past decade.

Lumumba and Kabila weren’t the first African nationalists targeted for elimination by the inbreds.  During the 1950′s and 1960′s the CIA and French intelligence assassinated Moroccan nationalist Mehdi Ben Barka- whose Union Nationale de Forces Populaire threatened US puppet monarch King Hassan II.  Giunea’s leftist President Sekou Toure and Tunisian socialist Habib Bourgiba were also assassinated by Western intelligence agencies.

In 1993 Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir accused the Saudis of providing arms to Johnny Garung’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).  The southern part of Sudan- which the SPLA is trying to partition- is rich in oil.  Mossad has supplied the SPLA for years through Kenya.  In 1996 the Clinton Administration announced military aid to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda. The aid was funneled into an SPLA offensive on Khartoum.  The crisis in Darfur is a direct result of Saudi/Israeli/US meddling on behalf of Big Oil.

Algerian President Chadli Benjladid accused the Saudis of bankrolling the barbarous Armed Islamic Group (AIG) who- after Algeria protested US ignition of the Gulf War- launched a reign of terror targeted at the Algerian people. Benjladid was forced to resign. This was followed by hasty passage of the Hydrocarbon Law- which opened the historically socialist country’s oilfields to the Four Horsemen.  The CIA then helped AIG terrorists travel to Bosnia, where they helped destroy socialist Yugoslavia.

Algeria has a long history of defying Big Oil. President Houari Boumedienne- one of the great Arab socialist leaders of all time- initiated calls for a more just international economic order in fiery speeches at the UN. He encouraged producer cartels as a means to Third World emancipation from the London bankers.  Independent Italian oilman Enrico Mattei began negotiating with Algeria and other nationalistic OPEC states who wanted to sell their oil internationally without having to deal with the Four Horsemen.  In 1962 Mattei died in a mysterious plane crash.  Former French intelligence agent Thyraud de Vosjoli says his agency was involved.  William McHale of Time magazine, who covered Mattei’s attempt to break the Big Oil cartel, also died under strange circumstances.

In 1975 the US sent $138 million in military aid through Saudi Arabia to Yemen, in hopes of heading off a Marxist revolution there.  The effort failed and the country split into North and South Yemen for two decades before merging again in the 1990’s. US/Saudi aid to both Yemen and Oman continues to this day in an effort to stamp out nationalist movements in those countries, which border the Kingdom and its vast Four Horsemen-controlled oilfields.

During the US-led effort to partition Bosnia from Yugoslavia, Saudi King Faud led calls for an end to the UN arms embargo.  When the embargo was lifted, the Saudis funded Bosnian Muslim arms purchases.  Later the Saudis bankrolled the heroin-kingpin Kosovo Liberation Army, as well as NLA Albanian separatists attacking the nationalist government of Macedonia. The Saudis even funded CIA covert operations in Italy, where they plunked down $10 million in 1985 to help destroy the Communist Party.

Recently Saudi Prince Bandar donated $1 million to the Bush Sr. Presidential Library and another $1 million to a Barbara Bush literacy campaign. On the evening of September, 11, 2001- Prince Bandar smoked cigars in the White House with President Bush, while members of the bin Laden family were evacuated from the US in airspace shut down to all other traffic.

Were the Saudis simply playing their historic paymaster role in the prosecution of 911?

The largest shareholder in News Corporation – parent of both the banker mouthpiece Wall Street Journal and the Fox News psyop – is Rupert Murdoch. The 2nd largest owner is Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal.

Is Fox News a covert Rothschild mind control operation against the American people?

Sources:

1. “Mercenary Mischief in Zaire”. Jane Hunter. Covert Action Information Bulletin. Spring 1991.
2. Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. R.T. Naylor. The Linden Press/Simon & Schuster. New York. 1987. p.238
3. Hunter
4. Earth First! Journal. Vol. 26, #1. Samhain/Yule. 2005
5. “US to Aid Regimes to Oust Government”. David B. Ottaway. Washington Post. 11-10-96
6. The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism. Henrik Kruger. South End Press. Boston. 1980. p.43
7. The Gulf: Scramble for Security. Raj Choudry. Sreedhar Press. New Dehli.
8. 1983. p.14
9. Dude, Where’s My Country. Michael Moore. Warner Books. New York. 2003.
10. ABC News Online. 10-19-04

Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network, The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries and Das Kartell der Federal Reserve. Subscriptions to his Left Hook blog are FREE at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

World View: Obama’s Meeting with Jordan’s Abdullah may Signal Troop Deployment

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[Mossad source Debkafile reports that Obama has ordered 20,000 US troops w/equipment to King Hussein Air Base Mafraq, near the border with Syria.  Mafraq is also the location of several refugee camps, holding hundreds of thousands of Syrians.  With the help of the little Jordanian king Obama may be about to try to tilt the scales of the Syrian civil war in favor of the so-called "moderate" faction.  If this is the case, then he probably informed the pig of Qatar of his decision this week, telling him to hold back on any further terrorist support until called upon to resume.  If Obama is foolish enough to pour his final conventional military resources "down a rat hole," into a futile attempt to prevent the total "Islamist" takeover of Syria, then he will not only turn Syria into another quagmire "ala Bush," but he will very likely enable the Saudis and Qatar to establish the dreaded "Caliphate" that the right-wing is constantly crying about. 

I don't know about you, but I don't think that I can peacefully withstand another round of Imperialist war.]

by John J. Xenakis 

• Demonstrators in Jordan protest American troop presence
• Jordan’s King Abdullah and Obama meet to discuss Syria
• Sunni Jihadists pour into Syria

Demonstrators in Jordan protest American troop presence

Anti-American protesters in Amman, Jordan on Friday (Al-Monitor)

Last week, we reported that the U.S. announced the formal deployment of 200 troops to Jordan. The troops will be “ready for military action” if President Barack Obama were to order it. On Friday, Jordanians rallied against the deployment of the U.S. forces in Jordan. Demonstrators also burned a mock American flag. At the end of the demonstration, they gathered in a circle and danced, chanting about Ali Baba and the forty thieves. Al-Monitor

Jordan’s King Abdullah and Obama meet to discuss Syria

The question of the use of chemical weapons by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad continued to draw worldwide attention on Friday. President Barack Obama met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the White House and said that “a line has been crossed” in Syria.

He said, “To use weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line in terms of international norms and laws… That’s going to be a game changer.” However, he declined to intervene militarily until a “vigorous investigation” had been completed to find more “direct evidence.”

However, Debka, which sometimes gets things wrong, is quoting its military intelligence sources as saying that the purpose of Obama’s meeting with Abdullah is to firm up an agreement for the U.S. to deploy a 20,000 troop “surge” into Jordan. The 200 troops announced last week are to lay the groundwork for the main body to take up quarters in the King Hussein Air Base Mafraq, near the borders of Iraq and Syria.

The purpose of the “surge” is to protect Jordan’s royal family both from jihadists from Syria and from an “Arab Spring” type revolt — a step that the Obama administration did not take with Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Yemen. The “surge” will be heavily coordinated with Israeli forces, and buffer zones will be set up on Syria’s borders to prevent attacks on both Jordan and Israel.

This “surge” comes at a time when thousands of fighters from Iran-backed Shia militias from Iraq and Hizbollah are aiding the al-Assad regime forces and are threatening to defeat the opposition rebels. The Hill and Debka

Sunni Jihadists pour into Syria

With thousands of fighters from Iran-backed Shia militias arriving in Syria to support al-Assad’s regime, it’s not surprising that thousands of Sunni jihadists are also arriving in Syria to fight the Shia militias. In particular, disaffected Muslims from Germany and elsewhere in Europe have been heading for Syria to receive training in weapons and terrorist techniques. German analysts are concerned that these fighters are gaining experience in Syria, making contacts, and will return to Germany and conduct terrorist attacks there. Spiegel

The West Masterminded Chechen War to Destroy USSR and Russia

[Armenia's unique history make it highly unlikely that an Armenian would convert to radical Wahhabi "Islam" (SEE: Did 'Misha' influence Tsarnaevs? In Watertown, doubts ).]

The West Masterminded Chechen War to Destroy USSR and Russia – June, 2010

 

It is now known that the twenty year old Islamic insurgency in the Caucasus (according to many experts an Al-Qaeda operation) and the arming of Georgia had been an integral part of a long-term Western plan to wrestle the northern Caucasus region away from Russian control and place it under what some experts refer to as an Islamic Caliphate. Ankara, Baku and Tbilisi, as well as a steady stream of Islamic militants trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, were the active participants in this agenda throughout much of the 1990s. Its funding and organization was carried out by a consortium of special interests in Washington and London and, most probably, in Tel Aviv and Riyadh as well. It is also now known that Western intelligence agencies also conspired to force Russia out of the Balkans (Yugoslavia in particular) and Central Asia by targeting pro-Russian bastions in those regions.

As it has been since the early 1980s, radical Islam was always the readily accessible tool the West exploited to carryout its geopolitical agenda.

Why should this seemingly Russian problem concern us Armenians? Armenians in general, diasporans in particular, seem to be having a hard time accepting that a weakened Russia in the Caucasus poses a serious long-term threat for Armenia. Those amongst us that do not possess clearness of thought regarding this matter, I would just like to say that the Caucasus without an effective Russian presence would prove disastrous not only for Armenia but for the entire Eurasian continent. Joining three important geopolitical zones – Europe, Asia and the Middle East – the Caucasus region is the gateway to Russia’s vulnerable south, its soft underbelly. The region is also a major hub for the strategic transfer of Eurasian energy and trade. Strategic planners have long realized that those who are able to control this region could potentially impact much of Eurasia and beyond.

As we all know, the Caucasus is not a bastion of Christianity or western civilization. The heavily Turkic and Islamic cultural and ethnic makeup of the region in question would not tolerate a non-aligned, a non-Turkic or a non-Islamic power in their midst – without a major outside power acting as a guarantor or as a counter weight. Against this Islamic and Turkic center-of-gravity, the Russian presence has been the only counter-influence in the region for the past two hundred years. And it is precisely because of this geopolitical reality in the Caucasus that we Armenians have been able to establish nation-state.

It is quite frightening that unbeknownst to most Armenians, because our collective attention has naturally been drawn to the Caucasus region’s east-west geopolitical plane, the northern Caucasus was actually on the verge of a radical Islamic/Turkic transformation throughout much of the 1990s. There is no doubt today that had the northern Caucasus fell victim to this agenda it would have been the south’s turn not much long thereafter.

In short, without a Russian presence in the Caucasus, the region in question will eventually transform itself into a Turkic/Islamic cesspool; and not even a million of our “fedayees” would be able to stop it from happening.

Had Western intentions for the Caucasus succeeded not only would we Armenians be lamenting the lose of Nagorno Karabakh today we would most probably be lamenting the lose of our fledgling republic as well. Under such a geopolitical scenario for the region, a best case scenario for Armenia would have been if it simply become politically and economically subordinate to Ankara, Baku and Tbilisi.

Those who complain about Armenia’s current dependence on Moscow need to take this geopolitical prospect into serious consideration.

Although Vladimir Putin’s Russia succeeded in crushing the Islamic terror onslaught in the northern Caucasus in the early 2000s and managed to defeat the Western backed regime in Georgia in 2008, Moscow nevertheless realizes that a potential threat continues to remain in the region. As a result, as long as ethnic Russians run the show in the Kremlin, Moscow will do everything in its power to have a strong presence in the Caucasus. And needless to say, Armenia is pivotal to the Kremlin’s regional agenda. As a result of the major setbacks suffered by Islamists and the West, Ankara has more-or-less abandoned its pan-Turkic agenda in the Caucasus and Central Asia and is currently seeking to move closer to Moscow.

Nevertheless, despite Ankara’s best efforts to befriend the Bear, Turks continue to fear Russia’s resurgence.

The following video presentations and articles deal with this topic. Those interested in learning more about the Islamic insurgency in the Caucasus and the grave threat it posed to the entire Caucasus region should read the following book – Chechen Jihad:

Chechen Jihad: Al Qaeda's Training Ground and the Next Wave of Terror

Arevordi

US Afraid That Little Pig of Qatar Is Running Hog-Wild with the Islamists of “Al-CIA-da”

The emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, waits in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

U.S. Wary As Qatar Ramps Up Support Of Syrian Rebels

 

President Obama has been hosting a series of visitors from the Middle East, and all of them have been urging the U.S. to get more involved in Syria.

 

They have included the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, whose country has been arming rebel forces in Syria. Obama wants to see such aid go to moderates — but that requires more cooperation with partners like Qatar. Problem is, they don’t always see eye to eye.

 

Qatar was already an important U.S. partner in the region when the Arab uprisings began, and the small, wealthy Gulf nation saw a new opportunity to gain influence when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled, says Tamara Wittes, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.

 

“One of the consequences of the fall of Mubarak is that the U.S. lost in a way its central diplomatic partner in the Arab world,” Wittes says. “In many ways, the Qataris stepped up to play that role, in the Arab League, for example, on Libya and then on Syria.”

 

Impression Of Qatar ‘Taking Sides’

 

This was a time when the U.S. wanted others to take the lead. But there were risks in that approach, says Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of the center’s Gulf and Energy Policy Program.

 

Anti-Syrian regime protesters hold up a banner in Arabic reading, “Thank you Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait,” during a demonstration in Idlib province, northern Syria, in this March 2, 2012, file photo provided by Local Coordination Committees in Syria.

AP/Local Coordination Committees in Syria

 

“We stood to one side and let things happen in Libya, and the result was that most of the fighting was done by jihadis, who are very much in influence now,” he says. “In Syria we are standing further to one side, and the problem with jihadis persists.”

 

Henderson believes that’s because Gulf states like Qatar are taking the lead in arming Syrian rebels. He says Qatar is competing with Saudi Arabia for influence in Syria’s future, and they are backing different extremist groups.

 

“Qatar is punching above its weight at the moment and is prepared to have a pretty open competition in Syria,” Henderson says. “This is a battle, a contest, in which they are using both diplomatic influence and … military support, for the opposition.”

 

Qatar has also been pouring money into Egypt, to help the Muslim Brotherhood government avoid a financial collapse. At a dinner hosted by the Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk, the group’s vice president and a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, asked Qatar’s prime minister why his government seems to be supporting Islamists throughout the region.

 

“Whether it’s your bailing out the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt or your support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria or , there’s the impression that you’re taking sides,” Indyk said.

 

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani called it a rumor spread by his rivals in the region. He said Qatar has been on the side of the people in the Arab uprisings. And on Syria, the prime minister said Qatar didn’t seek the limelight.

 

“We did not want to take the lead. We begged a lot of countries to start to take the lead and we will be in the back seat,” he said. “But we find ourselves in the front seat.”

 

U.S. Urged To Do More

 

The Qatari prime minister also said Syrian President Bashar Assad is testing the international community and crossing red lines, starting with Scud missile attacks on his people.

 

“You know we put a lot of red lines. Scud, he used Scud. Chemicals, he used chemicals. And there is evidence,” Thani said. “But he used it in pockets, small pockets. He wants to try your reaction. No reaction? He will escalate.”

 

And the longer the conflict in Syria drags on, the Qatari prime minister warned, the more the extremists will gain ground.

 

“The United States has to do more,” he said. “I believe that if we stopped this one year ago, we will not see the bad people you are talking about.”

 

But while Qatar is asking the Obama administration to do more, Wittes of the Brookings Institution says the White House had its own concerns to raise about various funding streams for the Syrian opposition.

 

“There seems to be a tendency by different actors to back different factions on the ground in a way that exacerbates conflict between the elements of the Syrian opposition, when what the United States is very focused on right now is trying to bring that opposition together,” she says.

 

That’s the only way, Wittes says, opponents of the Syrian government can show there is a real alternative to Assad.

West/Saudis Pushing “al-CIA-da” Into Losing Battle With Hezbollah

[SEE:  Al-Qaida threatens Hezbollah over its support of the Syrian regime]

Pushing Al Qaeda to Take on Hezbollah

by FRANKLIN LAMB

Beirut

(Beirut) – “This is one damn fine idea, what took us so long to see a simple solution that was right in front of our eyes for Christ’s sake”, Senator John McCain of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” and “no-fly zones for Syria” notoriety, reportedly demanded to know from Dennis Ross during a recent Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) brain storming session in Washington DC.

(Daniel Pipes, Photo:  left)

Ross, a founder of WINEP with Israeli government start up cash (presumably reimbursed unknowingly by American taxpayers) and currently WINEP’s “Counselor”, reportedly responded to the idea of facilitating Al Qeada to wage jihad against Hezbollah with the comment: “Shiites aren’t the only ones seeking death to demonstrate their ‘resistance’ to whatever. Plenty of other Muslims also want to die as we saw last week in Boston. Let ‘em all go at it and Israel can sweep out their s— when it’s over.”

One Congressional staffer attending the WINEP event emailed me, “Dennis spoke in jest — well I assumed he did — but who knows anymore? Things are getting ever crazier inside some of these pro-Israel think-tanks around here.”

Featured on the front page of its April 25 edition, the Zionist-compliant New York Times writes that the Assad regime is apparently recovering but, “it must be understood that for all of the justified worries about the (al Qaeda affiliated) rebels “Assad remains an ally of Iran and Hezbollah. “

The Times adopts the views of Islamophobe, Daniel Pipes, who recommends that the US try to keep the two sides in Syria fighting as long as possible until they destroy each other.  Pipes, now serving as an advisor to John McClain, wrote in the Washington Times on April 11, “Evil forces pose less danger to us when they make war on each other. This keeps them focused locally, and it prevents either one from emerging victorious and thereby posing a greater danger. Western powers should guide enemies to a stalemate by helping whichever side is losing, so as to prolong their debilitating conflict.”

Both Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs and Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N, have at a minimum impliedly joined in the intriguing idea of siccing Jabhat al Nusra on the Party of God. This scheme, if launched, would be Feltman’s 14th attempt to topple Hezbollah and defeat the Lebanese National Resistance to the occupation of Palestine since he first arrived in Beirut from Tel Aviv in 2005 to become US Ambassador to Lebanon.  This observer, among others in this region sense that given the aura still enveloping the American Embassy here,  that Jeffrey never really left his Lebanese ambassadorial post and continues to occupy this position from his new UN office.

This week Feltman warned that the spillover of Syria’s war continues to be felt in Lebanon as Susan Rice, echoed him and condemned Hezbollah for “undermining the country’s “dissociation policy.” The latter being a bit obscure in meaning but connoting something like sitting around doing nothing while this country is being shelled by jihadists from among the 23 countries currently fighting in Syria.  Feltman informed the media on 4/22/13 that “The Secretary-General is concerned by reports that Lebanese are fighting in Syria both on the side of the regime and on the side of the opposition, hopes that the new government will find ways to promote better compliance by all sides in Lebanon with the “disassociation policy.”

Given current divisions in Lebanon that will not happen anymore than Lebanon’s June 9th Parliamentary elections will be held on time.

For her part, Susan lectured the UN Security Council that “Hezbollah actively enables Assad to wage war on the Syrian people by providing money, weapons, and expertise to the regime in close coordination with Iran.” This position was expressed also through a statement by US. State Department spokesman , Patrick Ventrell, who said that Washington “has always been clear concerning Hezbollah’s shameful role and the support it is providing for the Syrian regime and the violence it is inducing in Syria.” Ventrell added: “We were clear from the start concerning the destructive role played by Iran as well as the Iranian role.”

Several Israeli agents in Congress are today promoting a Jabhat el Nusra-Hezbollah war even as the Obama administration terror-lists the jihadist group. Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), McCain’s neocon Islamaphobe acolyte, goes a bit further and explains to Fox News, once Assad falls and Hezbollah is out of the picture “We can deal with these (jihadist) fellas.”

Recent history in Libya instructs otherwise. As Turkish commentator Cihan Celik recently noted: “A divorce with al-Nusra will not be easy in Syria”

The past two years in Libya, that shadow of a country, reveals countless examples, three witnessed firsthand by this observer, during the long hot summer of 2011. What we saw was Gulf sponsors and funders offering young men, often unemployed, $ 100 per month, free cigarettes, and a Kalashnikov to do jihad.  Plenty down and out lads still accept these offers in Libya, as they do in Syria. One reason why the militias proliferated so quickly in Libya and never melted away was the phenomenon of a wannabe jihadists deciding to be a leader and recruiting perhaps a brother or two, maybe a few cousins or tribe members, and presto, they have created a militia with power they never dreamed of.

Their new life can offer many perceived benefits  from running rough shod over the civilian populations and setting up myriad mini but potent criminal enterprises specializing in kidnappings, robberies, drugs, trafficking in women, and assassinations for cash.  How many of these young men have turned in their weapons in Libya and returned to their former lives?   Or will do so when instructed by the likes of McCain or Graham?

On 4/24/13 Jabhat Al-Nusra Front intensified its threats to officials here including the Lebanese president by releasing a challenge from its media office: “…we inform you – and you may think of that as a warning or an ultimatum – that you must take immediate measures to restrain Hezbollah, otherwise, the fire will reach Beirut. If you do not abide by this within 24 hours, we will consider that you are taking part in the massacres committed by the Hezbollah members and we will unfortunately have to burn everything in Beirut.” In addition they are calling for Jihad and the establishment of the “Resistance Factions for Jihad against the Regime in Syria” and also in Saida and Tripoli, Lebanon.

Israeli officials appear to be in agreement with the Ross/Pipes proposal to arrange for Al Qeada to launch a war against Hezbollah.  The Director for External Affairs at “The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, repeatedly claimed that the Shia are the real threat to Israel, not the Sunni and with the least threat coming from the Gulf monarchs.  He offered the view recently that “Israel is now a partner of the Sunni Arab states.”  Indeed, Israel hopes that Hezbollah will forget Israel when tasked with trying repel Al Nusra and other al Qaeda affiliate attacks.

According to various Israel officials who have issued statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan and several other members of the Arab League constitute an “alliance of anxiety for Israel” because they claim that “Sunni Arabs are not as competent as the Shia and Iran and as a result they express doubts that Israel can rely on the Sunni states in the same way that the Sunni states can rely on Israel.”

In a documentary about the Iraq war, an American soldier explains:  “Actually, we don’t really have much of a problem with the Sunnis.  It’s the Shias who we are afraid of.  The problem has something to do with their leader who was killed centuries ago and these fellas are willing to lay their life down for the guy.  Anyhow, that is what they told us in Special Ops class.”

Al Nusra fighters currently occupying parts the south west areas of Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in south Damascus, recently expressed eagerness to fight Hezbollah which they claim would give them credibility with Sunni Muslims and, oddly, in this observers view, “credibility with western countries”, who supposedly are al Qaeda’s sworn enemies. It’s sometimes hard to know who precisely is whose enemy these days in Syria as the rebels continue using areas east and southwest of Damascus as rear bases and as gateways into the capital.

Despite boasts to the contrary from Jihadist types in Syria and Lebanon, it is not clear to this observer if Jihadist and al Qaeda-affiliated groups living among Hezbollah communities in Lebanon like Fatah al Islam, Jund al Sham or Osbat al Ansar which have been here for years would actually join the Zionist promoted anti-Hezbollah jihad.

But it is evident that some Lebanese Islamists and jihadists directly connected to al Qaeda do have the ability to target Hezbollah.   Elements from each of these groups are startling to associate and identify with Jabhat al Nusra, inspired partly by their successful military operations in Syria.

Again, we saw the same thing in Libya.  Enthusiastic, ambitious young men who want to improve their lot in life try to go with a winner.  According to sources in the Ain al Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, jihadist leaders such as Haytham and Mohammed al Saadi, Tawfic Taha, Oussama al Shehabi and Majed al Majed are recruiting followers and fighters in Lebanon and offer a ticket out the the squalid army-surrounded, Syrian-refugee-inflated camp.

Homs-based media activist Mohammad Radwan Raad claims that “the embattled residents of the rebel-controlled Homs province town of Al-Qusayr welcome Saida, Lebanon-based Sunni Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir’s call for Jihad in Syria. Claims Raad, “Al-Qusayr residents welcome Assir’s call and hope the Lebanese people help kick out Hezbollah members in the area…We need anyone who can get rid of them.” This week Assir urged his followers to join Syrian rebels fighting troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. Al-Qusayr has been under rebel control for more than a year and on the scene reports indicate that it is about to be returned to central government control.

In response, two Salafist Sunni Lebanese sheikhs urged their followers to go to Syria to fight a jihad (religious war) in defense of Qusayr’s Sunni residents. “There is a religious duty on every Muslim who is able to do so… to enter into Syria in order to defend its people, its mosques and religious shrines, especially in Qusayr and Homs,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir told his followers. For now, experts say, such calls on the part of Lebanon’s Salafists are largely bluster because the movement is far from able to wield either the arsenal or the fighting forces of Hezbollah.

Local analysts like Qassem Kassir argue that Jabhat al Nusra and friends are not organized enough to fight against Hezbollah in a conventional war, but they could cause great damage by organizing bomb attacks against the Party of God’s bases and militants. The latter would be enough initially for Ross and WINEP and their Zionist handlers. Creating chaos in Lebanon being one of their goals but more importantly weakening the National Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah and also challenging Syria and Iran.

In a recent speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah offered his party’s view about a Western-promoted Sunni-Shia clash, with Al-Nusra, AlQaida and all the groups which flocked to Syria, saying that what was wanted of them was to kill and get killed in Syria, in a massacre which will only serve the enemies of the Arabs and Muslims.

The coming months will reveal to us if  the several pro-Zionist Arab regimes as well as Islamophobes, including those at WINEP and other Israel-first think-tanks, are delusional in believing that John McCain’s “simple solution” to those resisting the Zionist occupation of Palestine, would be to assist  Jabhat el Nusra type jihadists to make war against Hezbollah.

Whether they could defeat Hezbollah is uncertain but whether Jabhat al Nusra and friends are capable of igniting yet another catastrophe in this region is the looming question.
   Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and Syria and is reachable c/o
fplamb@gmail.com

Obama Keeps Resisting Zionist “Red Lines,” Tripwires, Forcing His Hand On Syria

[Both Zionist Central in London and that shitty little Zionist cesspool in the Middle East urge Obama to accept whatever "evidence" that they produce of any chemical weapons's use within Syria as proof that the "red lines" have been crossed, even if the lines were violated by the terrorist rebels, instead of by Assad (SEE:  'Growing evidence' of chemical weapons use in Syria - UK).  They have managed to recreate the same scenario within Syria that they almost pulled-off in Iran, with the help of different terrorist friends of America, the anti-Shia MEK/Jundullah.  Just as he refused to cave-in to previous Zionist pressure to launch an airborne aggression against Iran, he is apparently resisting pressure to cross the line which he has drawn in the sand with his own hand.  This doesn't mean to imply that he is secretly a good guy, but that he does not like it when other people try to force him to take unpleasant, ill-advised actions.  Don't read this as hope on my part that Obama will choose to do the right thing when the time comes, because I still firmly believe that he will not hesitate to push the "big red button" when the time comes, probably with a big smile on his lips.  He will be smiling  when he follows his master's order to unleash Armegeddon, pleased with himself for having ignored the hyped screams of the Apocalyptic cheerleaders like McCain, Cameron and Netanyahu.  Mistakes have been made by all of the team players who have misjudged the resiliency of Assad and the core strengths of the Lebanese resistance forces, but jumping the gun on WWIII will not improve the Empire's chances of success.  The time for the Greater Middle East War has passed, since the momentum for that war has been missed by both Bush and Obama.  Bush missed it on several occasions, after Afghanistan, after Iraq and after Israel failed in Lebanon in 2006, failing yet one more time, after the failed Georgian tangent in 2008.  Obama's big failure was in his hesitation in the early days of the anti-Syrian war.   Failure to jump on the war wagon there gave Russia time to turn the tables.  Odds are, the American/world economies will be fully depleted before Obama can organize another attempt, meaning that nothing has changed except for the American ability to control the flow of future events.  World War III will probably happen by accident, the way it should all go down.  Taking steps to avoid such an extinction-level event should by the number one priority with all earthly governments.]

White House: Obama’s red line not crossed on Syria chemical weapons

(CBS News) For the first time, the White House says chemical weapons have been used in Syria’s civil war. The Obama administration said it believes President Bashar Al-Assad used sarin gas on people last month. That report is leading some to ask if the U.S. is ready to consider military action.

The White House said the evidence of Syrian chemical weapons attacks is still too thin and President Obama’s red line has not been crossed, and that means military intervention by the United States in the Syrian civil war is not imminent and not guaranteed but more study and investigation is needed.

Syria has likely used chemical weapons on a “small scale,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.Hagel was the first to confirm the startling news. He read from a prepared statement: “The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.”

But Hagel, consistent with administration policy, laced his announcement with carefully crafted caveats. Hagel said, “We still have uncertainties about what was used, what kind of chemicals was used, where it was used, who used it.”

Secretary of State John Kerry told lawmakers that Syria used chemical weapons twice last month, once near Damascus and once in Aleppo. Victims appeared to have been gassed.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a red line and could move the U.S. closer to military intervention in the Syrian civil war.

Mr. Obama said on Aug. 20, 2012, “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus.”

But top White House advisers insist the red line has not been crossed. In letters to Congress, the administration said it needs more proof — in its words, “credible and corroborated facts.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has continuously pressed Mr. Obama to intervene, said the president is ducking his own standard. “The president of the United States said that this would be a red line if they used chemical weapons. The president of the United States has now told us that they used chemical weapons,” McCain said. “We must give the opposition the capability to drive out Bashar Assad once and for all.”

U.S. intelligence says it has “varying degrees of confidence” Syria used chemical weapons. But the U.S. isn’t the only nation hedging its bets. British intelligence says it has “persuasive information chemical weapons were used.” French intelligence says it has clues but no proof. However, CBS News’ Major Garrett reported, “Definitive proof may be very hard to find amid the raging Syrian civil war.”

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