#Greek #Bailout

Does the Greek Bailout Pave the Way for the United States Of Europe?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Illusions are at play in the modern tragedy that is the Greek economic system, particularly when it comes to notions of who benefits most from the latest bailout.

SAINT-JEROME, Quebec –— Modern Greek tragedy is at play, and so are illusions.

The big myth is that Greece overspent and the Greek government was reckless with its budgets, ultimately indebting Athens. It is true that Greek officials tried to gain influence and political support through spending. It’s also true that they signed lucrative contracts with local businesses.

Athens, however, is no exception here; this type of conduct has been displayed by politicians throughout the European Union and around the world.

The fact is that this is not what created the economic crisis in Greece. What is really taking place in Greece and the eurozone is something altogether different. The Greek bailouts appear to be part of a rigid restructuring of the EU that is placing other members under the control of Germany.

Red spray paint covers a French-language Bank of Greece sign to read ‘Bank of Merkel’ in reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens, Monday, July 6, 2015.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

------------------------------------------------------

Financial Meltdown, Protracted Negotiations: Will the Greek Bailout Deal Work?

By Kavaljit Singh

On Monday (3rd August) when the Athens Stock Exchange reopened after a five-week shutdown, the share price index plunged by more than 23 percent in early trading. The banking index covering Greece’s biggest banks witnessed the largest decline, down to its 30 percent daily limit. This was the worst stock market bloodbath in decades despite an ongoing ban on short selling in Greek markets. Only in 1987, its share index collapsed by 15 percent in the wake of Wall Street stock market crash, popularly known as “Black Monday.”

The massive sell-off on Monday was partially triggered by the release of three surveys which revealed that Greek manufacturing output has plummeted to its lowest level in July 2015. The surveys have indicated that Greece will suffer a further contraction in its economy this year. The investors are wary about the dismal outlook of the Greek economy which was in recession during 2008-14. In addition, there is general uncertainty over the country’s membership of the eurozone.

FULL ARTICLE HERE 

#Saudi #Cables #WikiLeaks

The Ridiculous Nature of Saudi Intelligence: 

What the Saudi Cables Released by WikiLeaks Say and Don’t Say

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

WikiLeaks released the first batch of the so-called “Saudi cables” on June 19, 2015. By June 22, a total of 61,214 of the documents were released online. More than half a million of these cables are in the hands of WikiLeaks.

The documents are believed to have been hacked from the Saudi Foreign Ministry in May 2015 by a group calling itself the Yemen Cyber Army as retaliation to the House of Saud’s war against Yemen. The Yemen Cyber Army probably is not Yemeni and almost certainly is an outward show for another actor wishing to either penalize Riyadh or even possibly manipulate it.

In the Arab World there is great interest about the documents. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akbar has also partnered itself with WikiLeaks to release the so-called Saudi cables, as it has with previous leaks. The Saudi cables, however, do not tell the world and Wikileaks readers anything new about Saudi Arabia.

The Buying Influence of Riyadh’s Petro-Dollar

The House of Saud has characteristically tried to buy influence. It wrongly believes that loyalty can be bought. Call them subsidies, grants, bursaries, or business contracts: they are all forms of bribery.

#Canada and the #WaronTerror

The Ottawa Shootings, What Really Happened?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian federal government are using the shooting rampage on Parliament Hill as a justification for imposing surveillance and detainment measures that they were already implementing and going forward with.

On October 22, 2014 a solitary gunman named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (originally Michael Joseph Hall) from the city of Laval, Quebec went on a shooting spree in downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

Firstly, it was reported that there were shootings in the Rideau Centre which from the northern side of the Mackenzie King Bridge faces National Defence Headquarters (NDHQ), the nerve of Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND). This proved to be false or wrong. The gunman had killed a reservist guard in front of the National War Memorial and then made his way northward to Parliament Hill.

Secondly, it was reported that there were multiple gunmen. As a result all government employees were not allowed to enter or leave their respective buildings throughout the interprovincial National Capital Region, which includes the city of Gatineau. Although the police did the right thing in taking precautions to make sure that there were no other gunmen and declined to give explanations, the public was led to believe that there were multiple shooters. This justified the lockdown and suspension of mobility that took place for hours.

A lot of important questions also remain unanswered. NBC News reported on October 8, 2014 that US intelligence officials told it «that Canadian authorities have heard would-be terrorists discussing potential ISIS-inspired ‘knife and gun’ attacks» inside Canada. Canadian officials, however, dismissed the report. Did US intelligence know something that its Canadian counterparts did not know? Why the contradictions?

A Panoramic Look at America’s Case Against Syria

Obscuring the Details: A Panoramic Look at America’s Case Against Syria

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

The US federal government and the various agencies, media organizations, individuals, foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, lobbies, forces, and other entities that are tied to it have done everything in their power to obscure the details involving the chemical attacks that took place in Syria on August 21, 2013. The aim has been to justify the US-led foreign campaign that was launched against Syria in 2011 by making the Syrian government appear culpable of grievous crimes. The chemical attack on Ghouta has now come to represent the crux of the matter.

From the very start there was double-speaking coming from Washington and its cohorts about what happened in Ghouta. The Obama Administration and America’s allies deliberately ignored that chemical weapons were used in Syria prior to August 21, 2013. They have pretended that the United Nations investigation team that had arrived in Syria when chemical weapons were used in Ghouta had just stumbled there coincidentaly or with the purpose of «inspecting» the Syrian government’s chemical weapon depots.

Ignoring the Original Mandate of the UN Investigators 

In reality, the UN team that arrived in Syria in August was not a team of weapons inspectors. It was a team of «investigators.» Even more importantly, the Syrian government had invited the UN investigation team to Syria in March 2013. This was because the insurgents had launched chemical attacks on March 19, 2013. The US and its allies tried to blame Syria, but they were embarrassingly contradicted by Carla Del Ponte, one of the UN investigators responsible for Syria, that said all the evidence pointed to the insurgents and not the Syrian government. Although she backed her conclusion with facts, Del Ponte was dismissed by the US, and NATO even abnormally took the time to make a statement against here. Moreover, the insurgents were even caught trying to sneak sarin gas into Syria from Turkey by Turkish security forces in May 2013.

Because the insurgents were behind the chemical attacks in March 2013, Syria’s government originally wanted the UN investigators to have the authority and mandate to officially assign blame on which party used the chemical weapons. The US, however, put all types of obstacles in place to prevent the UN from issuing a report that the US-supported insurgents were using chemical weapons. It was the US, Britain, and France that prevented an UN investigation that could assign responsibility for any chemical weapon attacks from taking place. Instead they wanted a politicized inspection team that would try to demonize Syria and write reports against Damascus. This led to a deadlock in the United Nations over the type of team that the UN would send to work in Syria. A settlement was eventually reached. The US and its allies eventually reduced the mandate of the UN inspectors to one of only determining if chemical weapons were used.

The United Nation’s team even spells out the fact that they had originally entered Syria to investigate the March 2013 chemical attacks all in their September 2013 report’s Letter of Transmittal signed by Ake Sellstrom, the head of the UN mission, Scott Cairns, the head of the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) component of the UN mission, and Maurizio Barbeschi, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) component of the UN mission. The UN team states the following on the report’s third page: «Having arrived in the Syrian Arab Republic on 18 August 2013, we were in Damascus on the 21 August preparing to conduct on-site inspections in connection with our investigation into the allegations concerning the use of chemical weapons in Khan al-Asal and in Sheik Maqsood and Saraqueb. Based on several reports of allegations on the use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August 2013, you instructed us to focus our investigation efforts on the Ghouta allegations. We, therefore, proceeded to conduct on-site inspections in Moadamiyah in West Ghouta and Ein Tarma and Zamalka in East Ghouta».

Cooked US Intelligence and Implausible White House Stories

The narrative that the US government and its allies present about Ghouta is contradictory to logic and highly implausible. Added to the fact that the US has a track record of lying to create pretexts for aggression, Washington’s claims should be heavily scrutinized. So should the same group of non-governmental organizations that have consistently backed American wars and conjured instant reports to justify US foreign policy and war.

President Obama and John Kerry claimed that the Syrian military used chemical weapons while it was advancing militarily in Ghouta. This is contrary to any procedure that would be followed by an organized military force. An advancing military would not gas an area when it was entering it with its forces. Obama and Kerry might as well have claimed that the Syrian military had decided to reduce the number of its own troops by killing them.

Furthermore, there was no tactical need to use chemical weapons in Ghouta whatsoever. Ghouta did not have a large amount of anti-government fighters. Nor was Ghouta under the full control of the insurgents. Despite being in worse situations, the Syrian military never bothered using chemical weapons earlier in the conflict when things were dire for the Syrian government.

On the contrary, using chemical weapons would be a self-defeating and suicidal move by the Syrian government. Why would the Syrian government use chemical weapons when the combined UN team of OPCW and WHO investigators arrived in Syria to investigate the use of chemical attacks? Moreover, why would the Syrian military decide to use chemical weapons unnecessarily?

No evidence has been provided that the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attack on Ghouta. On the contrary the US has only made claims and a series of contradictory statements. Using cooked Israeli evidence, Washington has claimed that the orders to use chemical weapons were intercepted, but has failed to provide the transcripts or to give any names of Syrian officials. In its own intelligence report the US government has also said that it knew in advance that the chemical attacks were going to happen. If the US government is to be believed, this would mean that the Obama Administration did not mention it and did nothing to prevent the use of chemical weapons from happening.

It turns out that the US government was given some type of advanced warning by the Iranian government about a chemical attack in Syria. The warning, however, was that the insurgents planned on using chemical weapons. This has been matched by statements from insurgents themselves that Saudi Arabia had provided the chemical weapons to the insurgents. Russian officials have also assessed that the chemical attacks in Ghouta were part of an intelligence operation conducted by Saudi Arabia.

Chemical Weapon Hypocrisy

It is not true either that the Syrian government lied about not having chemical weapons. Even though it was widely known, Damascus never denied or acknowledged that it had chemical weapons. The Syrian government always strategically applied a policy of deliberate ambiguity that neither confirmed nor denied that Syria had chemical weapons in its military arsenal. Anyhow, there was acknowledgement from Syrian officials that Syria possessed chemical weapons when Syrian officials said that they were worried that the insurgents would try to get their hands on the chemical weapon stocks inside Syria or use chemical weapons to frame the government.

Aside from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons in 2006, the deliberate ambiguity of Syria is the same policy that Israel has tried to apply in regards to its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Despite the same policy being used by both Damascus and Tel Aviv, the US government and media apply double standards by falsely accusing Syria of lying about its possession of chemical weapons while they say nothing about Israel. Instead both the US government and media refuse to admit or recognize the fact that Syria was applying a policy of ambiguity.

President Obama even had the audacity to call the August 2013 use of chemical weapons in Syria the worst chemical weapon attack of the 21st Century. He ignored the use of chemical weapons against Iraqi combatants and civilians in Fallujah and Israeli chemical weapon attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. As heinous a crime as the chemical attacks on Ghouta were, more Iraqis were killed by the United States in its chemical attacks on Fallujah.

Even looking back at the last century, it was the United States and its British allies that armed Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons by knowingly providing him the materials and technology needed to gas both the Iraqi Kurds and Iran. Not once did the US condemn the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi government in the 1980s while Baghdad was aligned with Washington. The British Defence Ministry was even directly helping Saddam Hussein’s government develop his chemical and biological weapons in Iraq while the Pentagon helped the Iraqis organize their attacks on Iran and sent US military officers to examine the success of Iraqi chemical warfare against the Iranians. Instead the US deliberately went out of its way to blame the Iranian victims of being responsible for the chemical weapon attacks.

Making Self-Serving Interpretations of the UN Report

It is clear from the radically different interpretations that the US and Russia have about the Final Communiqué of the Action Group for Syria that was made in Geneva on September 30, 2012 that Washington deliberately makes self-serving interpretations of anything from its agreements to international law and multilateral deals. While the consensus that was reached in the final communiqué at Geneva in 2012 called for a peaceful and democratic solution to the conflict in Syria, the US and its allies deliberately choose to pretend that their agenda was adopted by Russia, China, and the rest of the world. By this Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the league of foreign ministers supporting regime change in Damascus falsely claimed the Action Group for Syria called for a transitional government that would not include any role for President Bashar Al-Assad.

The case has been the same in regards to the UN team’s September 2013 report about the nature of the chemical weapon attacks in Ghouta. The initial UN report has been interpreted in self-serving ways by the US and its cohorts. The fact that an old Soviet-manufactured projectile was used on August 21 is being highlighted as an indicator of the Syrian government’s guilt, because the Syrian military uses Soviet-made and Russian-made weapons.

Just because a Soviet weapon was used does not mean that the Syrian military was behind the attack. Old Soviet weapons are in wide use, including by the insurgents in Syria. Even more importantly, the Soviet-made BM-14 series projectile is not in use in the Syrian military’s arsenal. Moreover, the Soviet Union never exported this model to Syria nor did Soviet officials ever supply any sarin gas warheads to any country. It has also been reported that the three Arab countries that received this projectile were Egypt, South Yemen, and Libya.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has been actively lobbying for a war against Syria, has even produced a map to indict the Syrian government as being responsible for the attack. The map, which is featured in a report published by HRW in September 2013, points the finger at 104 Brigade of the Syrian Republic Guard for the chemical attacks. This has been refuted, because only special military units can use or launch chemical weapons in Syria and 104 Brigade is not one of them. Furthermore, there is chain of command that needs to be followed; chemical weapons can only be used with a high-level clearance and approval from Syria’s upper echelons.

The US government has fallaciously tried to equate the UN’s verification that sarin gas was used as some type of evidence that the Syrian government was responsible. While sarin samples have been verified by the United Nations, the authenticity of the evidence that has been provided by the US that the Syrian government is guilty needs to be examined. The US-supported insurgent’s videos that were appraised as real by US intelligence and presented to the world by the Obama Administration as evidence have not been verified. On the contrary, these videos have dubious scenes where the same bodies reappear in different locations.

From Strategic Deterrence to Liability

The Obama Administration has deliberately hidden behind the word «norm» and its plural («norms») as a means of trying to substitute it for an aura and façade of legality when it claims that Syria is in violation of international norms. Norms are expected patterns of behavior and not compulsory laws that must be enforced by the international community. Moreover, if the US wanted to follow international law it would obey what the Chemical Weapons Convention stipulates clearly, which says that when there is a violation all the signatories of the Chemical Weapons Convention must gather and then collectively decide what to do. There is no international law in place that allows the United States to unilaterally decide what to do or present itself as the enforcer of international agreements.

Syria was never in violation of international law through it position of chemical weapons either. This is because, like Egypt, Syria never signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. The reason behind this decision was that both the Egyptian and Syrian militaries decided to hold on to their chemical arms as strategic deterrents against Israel’s biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Although Israel became a signatory state to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, just like Myanmar, the Israelis did not ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention. This is why Syria chose not to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention until after the chemical attack in Ghouta.

It became clear to the Syrian government in 2013 that the liability of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal outweighed its use as a strategic deterrent. As a result of the Syrian conflict, Syria’s chemical weapons have become less likely to prevent a foreign attack or invasion of Syria. The liability has become too great and as a result the Syrian government decided to give them up. This has pleased both the US and Israel, because it has given them a strategic advantage over Syria and its regional allies.

Now that Damascus has joined the Chemical Weapons Convention it should be noted that the Syrian government is not responsible for destroying its chemical weapons stock either under the agreement it has with the OPCW. It is the OPCW and the United Nations that are the responsible parties. The responsibility of Syria is to identify and declare all of its chemical weapons stock and to provide the OPCW access to them for destruction. It is possibly that the US may also try to obscure these facts as well to manipulate the situation.

America’s Goal is to Crush the Syrian Nation in an Indirect War of Attrition

The US government does not care about making the world a safer place. Syria’s chemical weapons have been a smokescreen all along. Speaking to Perviy Kanal (Channel One/First Channel), Russia’s largest network, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov let it be publicly known that the US was threatening to end working with the OPCW and to sabotage the agreement to destroy Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons if the Russians refused to give political compensations to the US. What Washington has wanted in return for an agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons is that Russia and China allow a United Nations Security Council resolution that authorizes the use of force to be passed.

Before the chemical attacks on Ghouta, the anti-government forces in Syria were suffering one major defeat after another at the hands of the Syrian military. As the internal pressure against Syria began declining, the external pressure began increasing. The Israeli aerial assaults on Syria and the Turkish border incidents and threats were meant to bring the Syrian military’s winning momentum to an end. These Israeli and Turkish moves were meant to change the balance of power and direction of battle momentum in Syria. Their aim was to do this by psychologically disorienting and weakening the Syrian military and government with crippling doses of fear while motivating and encouraging the anti-government militias to intensify their attacks.

The psychological attempts to bolster the anti-government militias against the Syrian military and its supporters failed. The Syrian military’s victories continued throughout 2013. The anti-government militia incursions into Latakia were blocked and their offensive surge from the Jordanian border was beaten by the Syrian military. Hezbollah also intervened to help purge the anti-government forces from the Lebanese-Syrian borders.

This has brought the US and its allies closer and closer into direct confrontation, in some form or other, instead of indirectly attacking Syria via their proxies. The US government, however, prefers to secure its objectives without using its own resources or exerting itself in any costly ventures. This is why Washington’s initial option has been to threaten and to give the perception of being ready to use military force before actually using military force.

The US strategy in Syria is that of an indirect war of attrition. America loses the conflict in Syria if either combating side in Syria wins. The US government and Israel want the fighting in Syria to continue as long as possible between all combating sides. Washington and Tel Aviv do not want to see anyone coming out totally victorious. This is even acknowledged by US analysts with high-level ties to the Pentagon and US government. This objective is candidly outlined in an article written on August 24, 2013 by Edward N. Luttwak, a military analyst and senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in the New York Times.

The real target of the US-led campaign in Syria is the Syrian nation and not merely the government in Damascus. The government could matter less. The US and Israeli objectives in Syria are to crush Syria as a nation-state, even if their own insurgent allies or Syrian National Coalition clients win and form the government in Damascus.

 

Saudi Arabia’s “Chemical Bandar” behind the Chemical Attacks in Syria?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-arabians-chemical-bandar-behind-the-chemical-attacks-in-syria/5348464

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Nothing the US claims about what happened in Syria adds up. We are being asked to believe an illogical story, when it is much more likely that it was Israel and Saudi Arabia who enabled the Obama Administration to threaten Syria with war.

The Obama Administration’s intelligence report on Syria was a rehash of Iraq. “There are lots of things that aren’t spelled out” in the four-page document, according to Richard Guthrie, the former project head of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. One piece of evidence is the alleged interception of Syrian government communications, but no transcripts were provided.

Just as with the Obama Administration’s speeches which all fall short of conclusively confirming what happened, nothing was categorically confirmed in the intelligence report. Actually it comes across more as a superficial college or university student’s paper put together by wordsmiths instead of genuine experts on the subject.

Going in a circle, the report even depends on “unnamed” social media and accounts as sources of evidence or data. Lacking transparency, it states that “there are accounts from international and Syrian medical personnel, videos, witness accounts, thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area, journalist accounts and reports from highly credible non-governmental organizations.”

Chances are that these unnamed sources are actually foreign-funded insurgents, Israeli media, Saudi media, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – which includes fighters in the ranks of the insurgency and salutes Saudi Arabia as a model democracy – or the NGO Doctors Without Borders. These are the same sources that have been supporting the insurgency and pushing for regime change and military intervention in Syria.

Moreover, one of the main sources of the intelligence and communication interceptions that are supposed to be a smoking gun is none other than Israel, which is notorious for doctoring and falsifying evidence.

The US intelligence report also claims to have advanced knowledge about the plans to launch a chemical weapons attack several days before it happened. A leading expert on chemical weapons, Jean Pascal Zanders, who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies, asks why the US government did not tell the world about it and issue warnings about a chemical attack at that time.

An Israeli-Saudi-US conspiracy?

The US-supported anti-government forces fighting inside Syria are the ones that have a track record of using chemical weapons. Yet, Obama and company have said nothing.

Reuters / Loubna Mrie

Despite the anti-government forces accusations that the Syrian military launched a chemical weapon attack on Homs at Christmas in December 2012, CNN reported that the US military was training anti-government fighters with the securing and handling of chemical weapons. Under the name of the Destructive Wind Chemical Battalion, the insurgents themselves even threatened to use nerve gas and released a video where they killed rabbits as a demonstration of what they planned on doing in Syria.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, two brigades of anti-government fighters that were trained by the CIA, Israelis, Saudis, and Jordanians crossed from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan into Syria to launch an assault, respectively on August 17 and 19, 2013. The US must have invested quite a lot in training both anti-government brigades. If true, some may argue that their defeat prompted the chemical weapons attack in Damascus as a contingency plan to fall back on.

However, how they came by chemical weapons is another issue, but many trails lead to Saudi Arabia. According to the British Independent, it was Saudi Prince Bandar “that first alerted Western allies to the alleged use of sarin gas by the Syrian regime in February 2013.”  Turkey would apprehend Syrian militants in its territory with sarin gas, which these terrorists planned on using inside Syria. On July 22 the insurgents would also overrun Al-Assal and kill all the witnesses as part of a cover-up.

A report by Yahya Ababneh, which was contributed to by Dale Gavlak, has collected the testimonies of witnesses who say that  “certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.”

The Mint Press News report adds an important dimension to the story, totally contradicting the claims of the US government. It quotes a female insurgent fighter who says things that make a link to Saudi Arabia clear. She says that those who provided them with weapons “didn’t tell them what these arms were or how to use them” and that they “didn’t know they were chemical weapons.” “When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she is quoted.

There is also another Saudi link in the report: “Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a ‘tube-like structure’ while others were like a ‘huge gas bottle.’”

So it seems that the Saudis enabled the chemical attack while the Israelis provided them cover to ignite a full-scale war, or at the very least enable a bombing campaign against Damascus. Israel and Saudi Arabia have empowered the Obama Administration to threaten war on Syria.

Obama wants to change the balance of power in Syria

The moralistic language coming out of Washington is despicable posturing. The hypocrisy of the US government knows no bounds. It condemns the Syrian military for using cluster bombs while the United States sells them en mass to Saudi Arabia.

 

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo / Scanpix Sweden / Jessica Gow)

The UN inspectors entered Syria in the first place on the invitation of the government in Damascus. The Syrian government warned the UN for weeks that the anti-government militias were trying to use chemical weapons after they gained control of a chlorine factory east of Aleppo. As a precaution, the Syrian military consolidated all its chemical weapons into a handful of heavily guarded compounds to prevent the anti-government forces from reaching them. Yet, the insurgents launched a chemical weapon attack against the Syrian government’s forces in Khan Al-Assal on March 19, 2013. Turning the truth on its head, the insurgents and their foreign backers, including the US government, would try to blame the Syrian government for the chemical attack, but the UN’s investigator Carla Del Ponte would refute their claims as false in May after extensive work.

Concerning the alleged August attack the Obama Administration has been lying and contradicting itself for days. They say that traces of chemical weapons cannot be eliminated, but that the Syrian government destroyed that same evidence that cannot be eradicated. They want an investigation, but say they already have all the answers.

The claims that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the suburb of Ghouta defy logic. Why would the Syrian government unnecessarily use chemical weapons in an area that it controls and shoot itself in the foot by presenting the US and its allies with a pretext to intervene? And of all the days it could unnecessarily use chemical weapons, the Obama administration wants us to believe that the Syrian government picked the day when United Nation inspectors arrived in Damascus.

Even the biased and misleading state-run British Broadcasting Corporation admitted that there was something strange about the event. The BBC’s  own “Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen says many will ask why the [Syrian] government would want to use such weapons at a time when [United Nations] inspectors are in the country and the military has been doing well militarily in the area around Damascus.”

The US is deliberately pointing the finger for the use of chemical weapons at the Syrian government.

American officials have a track record of lying to start wars against other countries. This has been the consistent modus operandi of the US from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, and from Iraq to Libya.

It is not Syria that is going against the international community, but the warmongers in Washington, which include the Obama Administration.

Washington is threatening to attack Syria as a means of prolonging the fighting inside Syria. The US government also wants to have a stronger hand in the country’s future negotiations by restoring the balance of power between the Syrian government and America’s anti-government insurgent allies, thus weakening the Syrian military and ending its winning momentum against the insurgency. If not softening Damascus up for the insurgents, America wants to level the equation and undermine the Syrian government before a final negotiation takes place.

Now is the time for the “responsibility to prevent war”—the real R2P—to come into play.

The Media Deception About the Terrorist Attacks in Lebanon

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

There has been an ongoing information war being fought for hearts and minds inside and outside of the Middle East. The war has mostly been tied to Syria. As the US and its allies begin to focus their attention on Hezbollah in Lebanon, the media war now includes the events in Lebanon. This, however, has not stopped the media attempts to depict the fighting in Syria in sectarian terms as a regional war between Shias and Sunnis or to demonize Syria’s allies…

In regards to Syria, the Israeli media, the Saudi media, and Lebanon’s Hariri-owned media — which belongs to Hezbollah’s US/Saudi-supported rivals — have all carried the same August 2013 AFP story or some derivative of it that deceitfully reports the Iran and Hezbollah are now running Syria. The Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva, the Daily Star, Ya Libnan, Al-Arabiya, the Saudi Gazette, Hürriyet, Naharnet, France 24, Fox News, and the Dubai-based Gulf News are examples of the type of media that carried this so-called news. Here is an extract of the text which sums up the entire image that the article is trying to engrain into the minds of its readers: «Assad ‘no longer runs Syria. The real rulers of Syria are the Iranian (elite) Revolutionary Guard… with the participation of Hezbollah fighters,’ Jarba said». The entire report is built around a quote by Ahmad Al-Jarba, the leader of the foreign-controlled and funded Syrian National Coalition.

How the Mainstream Media Legitimizes Terrorism Against Lebanese Civilians

Next the same media outlets finessed the news about the terrorist bombs planted in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh. The August 15, 2013 terrorist bombings in the neighbourhood of Al-Rouweiss (Al-Rweiss) were downplayed and, in a manner of speaking, legitimized by the media through their selective use of language. The attack on Al-Rouweiss came about a month after the July 9, 2013 terrorist attack on the neighbourhood of Bir Al-Abed. Both are densely populated neighbourhoods in Dahiyeh. The Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) in the United States took quick notice of the biased media framing. IPA asked the following, on August 16, 2013, through the title of a report: «Why Isn’t Beirut Bombing Called ‘Terrorist’? What’s Behind It?»

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akbar is worth looking at to get a grasp of the biased media reporting that has been used to reframe the events as legitimate. It commented thus on August 17, 2013: «The Western media have double standards when it comes to ‘terrorism.’ Within hours after two bombs were detonated at the Boston Marathon last April, many in the media had christened it a ‘terrorist attack.’ Meanwhile, the August 15 bombing in Rouweiss that killed at least two dozen is a ‘blast’ that occurred in a ‘Hezbollah stronghold.’» As Al-Akhbar observes, the word «Hezbollah stronghold» plays a prominent role in giving the impression that the civilian neighbourhours bombed in Beirut were armed barracks. Al-Akhbar even nicely sums up some of the biased titles used to describe the terrorist attacks:

Wall Street Journal: «Car Bomb Blasts Hezbollah Stronghold in Lebanon»

BBC: «Deadly Lebanon Blast in Beirut Stronghold of Hezbollah»

LA Times: «Massive Explosion in Beirut Rocks Hezbollah Stronghold»

Washington Post: «Bomb Explodes in Hezbollah Stronghold in Beirut, Injuring Dozens»

Reuters: «Over 50 Hurt as Car Bomb Hits Hezbollah Beirut Stronghold»

Associated Press: «Car Bomb Rocks Hezbollah Stronghold in Lebanon»

France24: «Car Bomb Rocks Hezbollah Stronghold in Beirut»

Mixed with the other narratives that the same media outlets are painting, the terrorist attacks are being tacitly portrayed as some type of legitimate retaliation. Readers are basically led to think that the terrorist attacks in Dahiyeh were a military act against some type of Hezbollah base.

How the Mainstream Media Lies and Deliberately Places the Blame on Sunni Muslims

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, responded to the terrorist attack on Al-Rouweiss by categorically saying that the attacks were not the work of Sunni Muslims. He gave a speech saying that there were going to be those groups and individuals that would try to blame the terrorist attacks in Beirut on the Sunnis and said that these groups and individuals should be outright dismissed. In fact, he said that anyone that used this divisional logic was an «Israeli» and a partner in the goal of creating massacres. He made it clear that the individuals who planted the bombs did not represent the Sunni Muslims or the Arabs or the Syrians or the Palestinians. In a message to the US and its allies, he also said clearly that Hezbollah was aware that the intelligence services of the US and its allies had infiltrated various terrorist groups and manipulate them as tools.

Despite Nasrallah’s clear words, his words were totally changed by the same media outlets that were legitimizing the terrorist attacks in Beirut. The Israeli media, the state-run British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Al Jazeera, and Al Arabiya would blatantly fabricate the news and claim that Nasrallah «blamed the Sunnis» or try to manipulate readers into getting the impression that he did. The New York Times would title an August 16, 2003 article on the terrorist attacks as the following: «Hezbollah Makes Vow to Step Up Sunni Fight». It would never even mentioning that Nasrallah went out of his way to say that the people involved in the terrorist attacks were the tools of the US and Israeli government and not really Sunni Muslims. Instead Ben Hubbard would focus on sectarianism in Lebanon and write: «In short, Hezbollah has more enemies than it used to have».

The BBC on the other hand would write a similar article on August 16 too. It would also use a grossly misleading title. The title would be «Hezbollah blames Sunnis for bomb». After a large number of people caught it, the BBC would change the title to «Beirut bomb: Hezbollah’s Nasrallah blames Sunni radicals».

Exposing the Yellow Journalism at Work as a Tool of War

Aside from their direct or indirect links to these media outlets, even the political actors involved show that the way the news is reported is not circumvent of them. Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Party and a Saudi client, even responded to Hassan Nasrallah’s speech by saying that he had no right to designate what groups are terrorists. Hariri’s overlords in Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, refused to even condemn the terrorist attacks. This again is tied to the attempts to reframe the terrorist attacks in Beirut as a legitimate military act.

This type of yellow journalism that relies on misleading headlines that essentially say everything that the hollow articles carry and have little or no newsworthy material is not politically neutral. It is a weapon of war. All these articles are agitating for bloodletting in the Middle East, specifically between Shias and Sunnis. This type of journalism either directly or indirectly stokes the fires of sectarianism in Lebanon and the Middle East with the intentions of spreading sectarian animosity. This is why it deliberately ignores and refuses to even acknowledge the main points of Nasrallah’s speech that clearly pointed the finger at Israel and the US and said that the terrorist attacks had nothing to do with Sunni Muslims.

From Turkey with Love: Another Israeli attack on Syria?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Prime Minister Erdogan and his AK Party government have a track record of being deceitful, especially in regards to both Israel and Syria.

No one should be surprised to hear that Israel and Turkey are collaborating together against the Syrians. With the aim of tightening the front against Syria, President Obama even travelled to Israel in March 2013 to directly broker a quick rapprochement between the governments of Israel and Turkey. Getting a public nudge from the Obama Administration, Israel and Turkey would announce that their diplomatic row was over only two days after NATO announced it had put together contingency plans for operations in Syria on March 20, 2013. Even when relations were publicly sour between Ankara and Tel Aviv, the two countries maintained military and commercial ties.

Despite the fact that Prime Minister Erdogan denounced Tel Aviv for attacking Syria, the first fruits of Israeli and Turkish collaboration became visible in May 2013 when Israeli warplanes attacked a Syrian military research facility in the town of Jamraya with US approval, as admitted by President Obama to Telemundo. Right after the Israeli attacks the Turkish and Israeli militaries launched simultaneous exercises on their respective borders with Syria. Although the military operations were presented as uncoordinated events, both Ankara and Tel Aviv were coordinating with one another in a military posture against Syria. The Israeli and Turkish moves on their borders with Syria were probably aimed at preventing Syria from responding through intimidation. The Turkish government would also put extra pressure on the Syrians by blaming them for a terrorist attack in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, which the Turkish activist group of internet hackers named Redhack would reveal was known about well in advance by Turkey’s Gendarmerie Intelligence.

Israeli Merkava tanks roll during a military exercise in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the border with Syria on July 18, 2013. (AFP Photo / Jack Guez)

What Happened in Latakia?

Just when it began becoming apparent that the US and its allies were facing serious regional setbacks in the Middle East and North Africa, reports began circulating about an explosion in Latakia. Unverified reports, originating from anonymous sources in Israel in early July 2013, began claiming that Tel Aviv had launched an attack against the Syrian port of Latakia that caused a massive explosion. As the rumours began to circulate in the media, it was dubiously claimed that the Israeli attacks were launched against shipments of Russian-made S-300 air defence systems that were in the process of being delivered to Syria by the Kremlin. US officials would enter the picture by deliberately leaking more information about what happened in Latakia by claiming that Israel used its air force to bomb the port there to destroy a military depot filled with Russian-made Yakhont land-to-sea anti-ship missiles.

Then, on July 15, RT’s Paula Slier would report from Tel Aviv that Israel had attacked Latakia by using a Turkish military base. This would upset the Turkish government, which would deny it and say anyone making the claims was involved in an “act of betrayal.” In response to the Russian report, Turkish officials would up the ante by claiming that the Russian anti-ship missiles in the Syrian port were destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon and that the US and Israel had coordinated the attacks by holding meetings in Turkey with the anti-government militias operating inside Syria. Uzi Mahnaimi would complicate the matter by reporting through the British press that the Israeli attacks were launched from a German-built Dolphin from the sea, which essentially vindicated Turkey by refuting the claim that a Turkish base was used by the Israelis.

 

Syrian rebels head to the town of Bsankol in the northwestern province of Idlib to join comrades fighting regime forces for the control of the highway that connects Idlib with Latakia on July 11, 2013. (AFP Photo / Daniel Leal-Olivas)

What has to be understood is that countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia conceal their collaboration with Tel Aviv due to the heavy opposition against the Israeli occupation of Palestine among their respective societies. What is also important to note is that a Turkish jet was downed in 2012 by Syria when it was following a route that was used by Israeli jets near the Syrian-Turkish border. The use of this aerial route by Tel Aviv has never really been challenged by Turkey. It is also part of an important pattern that shows how close the tactics used by Israel and Turkey against Syria are.

From Turkey with love! (The first time around)

On June 22, 2012 a Turkish F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber from Malatya in Turkey was shot down above Syrian airspace. There would be conflicting reports about the fate of the pilots. The Turkish media would report that they were rescued while Syrian sources would claim that they were captured. The fighter-bomber’s two pilots, however, would reportedly be found dead trapped under the jet’s wreckage almost two weeks later.

Perhaps coming as a surprise to many, the Syrian and Turkish governments would conduct joint search and rescue efforts to find the airplane’s wreck and the two missing pilots. Damascus would even allow Turkish rescue units to enter Syrian territorial waters and make the proposal that a joint Syrian-Turkish military committee be formed to investigate what really happened.  Syria would even apologize to Turkey and argue that its troops thought that the Turkish warplane was an Israeli jet violating Syrian airspace.

Initially, it was clear that the Turkish government did not know how to react and made several contradictory statements. Erdogan would even say that he was unaware if the Syrians had shot the jet down and was waiting for precise information about the incident. Ultimately, Ankara would claim that the Turkish jet was shot down by the Syrian military without any warnings inside international airspace above the Mediterranean Sea. Later the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya network—the Fox News of the Arab World—would claim that the two Turkish pilots were executed by the Syrians and had their corpses planted into the wreckage under instructions from the Russian government, which also directed Damascus to apologize and then tried to manage the entire event.

What had caught the Turks, and NATO, by surprise was the fact that the Syrians had detected the F-4 fighter-bomber. The Turkish jet was actually spying against Syria on an intelligence mission conducting low altitude reconnaissance work and testing the air defence systems of Syria. This is why the Turkish government quickly changed its position several times. Expecting to be exposed, the Turkish government at first played stupid. At the outset Turkish officials talked about the incident like it was a mistake. They even admitted that the Turkish plane had crossed into Syrian airspace, but said it was an honest accident during a training mission. When Damascus said nothing, however, Erdogan and his government began to aggressively blame the Syrians of unjustified aggression.

 

A Turkish F-16 fighter jet approaches the tarmac of Incirlik airbase in the southern Turkish city of Adana July 4, 2012. (Reuters / Umit Bektas)

The Syrians would respond to Ankara’s lies by relying on the technical facts. From a technical standpoint the Turkish government’s story that Ankara’s jet was shot by the Syrian military while it was flying outside of Syrian airspace over the Mediterranean Sea was impossible. The reason was that the Turkish warplane was downed by an anti-aircraft artillery machine gun with a maximum range of 2.5 kilometers, which can only operate from land and operates on the basis of visual confirmation. It would have been impossible for the Syrians to use the anti-aircraft machine gun to target the Turkish jet if it were in international airspace, because it was out of firing range. Surface-to-air missiles would have had to been used instead by the Syrians. Moreover, Syria would even warn NATO as a whole, after Turkey called a NATO consultative meeting under the Washington Treaty’s Article 4, not to even think of violating Syria’s airspace, territorial waters, or land borders.

Many of the same tactics that were used against the Libyans by Turkey and NATO have been recycled against the Syrians. The failed Turkish spy mission for NATO in 2012 was actually a repeat of what happen to Libya in 2011. A Syrian pilot had defected by flying with his jet from Al-Dumayr, just northeast of Damascus, to Jordon’s King Hussein Air Base in Mafraq on June 21, 2012. The Syrian pilot, Colonel Al-Hamadeh, even sent his family out of Syria to Turkey before he defected. From Jordon his Syrian jet’s flight codes were passed to NATO and Turkey to disguise or cloak their aerial units as friendly Syrian ones. The Turkish military and NATO had tried to disguise the Turkish F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber as a Syrian jet using the stolen codes. The Syrians, however, were aware of what happened earlier to Libya when two Libyan warplanes defected to Malta and handed over their military flight codes to NATO, which used those codes months later when it attacked Libya as a means of bypassing Libya’s air defence system.

The AK Party’s dirty hands

The AK Party has dirty hands and has tried to hide many of its activities from its own citizens. When the idea that a Turkish military jet could have been involved in operations against Syria was reported in 2012 by members of the Turkish media, the AK Party government began a very aggressive campaign to censor them. The Turkish government began drafting new media laws to prevent criticism against the Turkish government and Erdogan attacked the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet and anyone that dared to question the official narrative provided by his government as a “traitor” and “enemy of the state.”

Skeptics cannot be blamed for thinking that the story about the Israeli military strike on Latakia was planted to disguise the miserable failure of Washington’s regime change project in Syria, Israel’s growing fears about the regional environment, and the regional decline of the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite Ankara’s denials, the revelation of Turkish involvement in the events surrounding Latakia is pushing the different players involved to talk more. It should be remembered that Prime Minister Erdogan and the AK Party government in Turkey have a track record of being very deceitful, especially in regards to Turkey’s cooperating with Israel and their government’s aggression against the Syrians. In this context, the news that Israel used a Turkish base against Syria to avoid detection should come as no surprise either. Even the same tactical approaches were used by both the Israeli and Turkish militaries in regards to entering Syrian airspace from the Syrian Arab Republic’s northwestern coast.

Things will become cleared once, and if, more governments start talking openly about the events that occurred in Latakia. Only then can there be a clear picture of what really happened in Latakia. Nevertheless, there should be no mistake about it that the Israeli-Turkish alliance never really ended and that Israel and Turkey are comrades-in-arms against the Syrians.