Tokio 2020

Debo confesar que me alegré mucho por el triunfo de Japón. Tokio se lo ha ganado. Sin arrogancia. Sin bambolla. Han tenido el valor de asegurar que podían afrontar el enorme problema que confrontan en Fukushima, y que no ocultaron. Sus representantes fueron convincentes. No ganaron, convencieron. Inspiraron seguridad ante un desastre. Dieron una lección zen. De humildad. De lucha contra la adversidad. No necesitaron acartonadas intervenciones principescas (ellos tiene también heredero al trono). Ni dos metros de atleta del mundo mundial como mascarón de proa. Ni de una alcaldesa de desmesurada (y falsa) sonrisa. No, Madrid no ha perdido. Madrid es invencible. Que tomen nota los responsables de la comercialización chapucera de la "Marca España" (aborrezco tal engendro).Que se hagan un buen "harakiri", una  autocrítica ignaciana (Íñigo de Loyola, por si no les suena a los lectores de Hola).
 España no se vende. Sus ciudadanos no somos sus vasallos. Ni su mercancía. No nos representaron como nos merecíamos.  Y la verdad, para colmo, se descolocaron de mala manera con el fallo olímpico final. Que no derrota. Al Príncipe le temblaba la voz y, pobre con tantos estudios, no dijo nada. Los otros comparsas tampoco dijeron nada. No escuché una felicitación sonora a Tokio. No nos representan. Tal vez por eso los rechazaron tres veces los del COI. A ellos. Porque España, variopinta, multicultural y fuerte, es inmortal. Y de Madrid al cielo. Todos los gatos y gatas con Tokio. Madrid que bien resistes. No pasarán esos pobres de espíritu. Ánimo y al toro. Unas olimpiadas son un hito, pero no la vida. Amo Madrid.
Con Madrid hasta la victoria siempre

La conexión saudí en Siria

Saudi Arabia’s “Chemical Bandar” behind the Chemical Attacks in Syria?By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

He leído el presente artículo y me ha provocado numerosas dudas. Lo atribuyo a que mi postura es muy simplista: todo lo que provoque muertes de civiles inocentes y otras barbaridades que no se contabilizan, debería evitarse, a ser posible antes de que sucedan. La comunidad internacional (¿existe?) ha dejado que el conflicto Sirio, un enfrentamiento de la variopinta oposición armada con las fuerzas fieles al régimen gobernante, se enquiste hasta extremos insoportables. El uso de armas químicas suele afectar a la población civil, ya que la mayoría de las fuerzas armadas regulares (o bandas bien provistas), están dotadas de medios de detección y artículos protectores. La administración estadounidense no va a ahorrar ningún sufrimiento a la población civil siria con una quimérica intervención "limitada, específica etc, etc,". Prometen una especie de neurocirugía bélica. Vaya por delante que no comparto en su totalidad el contenido del post firmado por Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya. Su autor usa información a la que no he tenido acceso. Pero refuerza mi convicción de que una intervención militar en Siria demuestra la impotencia de Occidente. 
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-arabians-chemical-bandar-behind-the-chemical-attacks-in-syria/5348464

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 theDestructive 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.
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.

This article was originally published on RT.

Madrid 2020

Oso y mendigo. Puerta del Sol, Madrid.

La candidatura de Tokio está herida de muerte por el estado de alerta 3, por fugas de agua radiactiva en el rector nuclear de Fukushima. En condesastre. blogspot. com encontrarán varios posts sobre el desastre nuclear del 11/11/2011. Que pena, lo siento mucho, pero el peligro es real. Y aunque ese país admirable va a poner toda su tecnología para paliar el grave problema (no se puede hacer otra cosa) concurren con una enorme desventaja. Nadie va a confiar en ellos. Otra vez será. Se lo merecen.

En Turquía proliferan las manifestaciones de los ciudadanos descontentos contra un régimen dudosamente democrático. Hay brotes de violencia. El Islám, les guste o no admitirlo, no soporta la libertad que se necesita para el deporte olímpico. Les ofenden los cuerpos de las deportistas. En fin. El mundo árabe es un polvorín. Así que, asunto terminado.

Así las cosas, Madrid es la opción menos mala. Llega a su tercera final olímpica consecutiva, con las garantías financieras (presuntamente) aportadas, pese a la aguda crisis que España padece desde hace un lustro, y reanudando el curso político, en el que el caso Bárcenas (interminable culebrón de corruptelas del partido en el gobierno, PP), los Ere de Andalucía (culebrón de corruptelas del gobierno de Andalucía, PSOE) y el contencioso con Gibraltar (penoso pulso con UK en el que Spain ha incurrido varios notables ridículos) por el vertido de bloques de hormigón, que impiden faenar a los pescadores españoles, mantendrán su espacio. La candidatura, con el aprobado del COI para su financiación, presume estrepitosamente además de una recién estrenada "ley antidopaje" , que pudo ser un obstáculo en sus anteriores intentos, y celebra los últimos insuficientes y paupérrimos datos del paro, 31 parados menos, que indican  "una sexta bajada consecutiva en agosto, mes en el que por primera vez hay una reducción desde el año 2000".

La capital de Spain, tercera en la elección para 2012 detrás de Londres y París y segunda para 2016 al perder la última votación frente a Río, solventó en menos tiempo del previsto su penúltimo examen ante la asamblea del COI, el pasado 3 de julio en Lausana. Eso es buen síntoma y provocó un ataque de euforia histérica en Doña Botella de Aznar. (Madrid Mayor).

Madrid 2020 sería un soplo de prosperidad para la empobrecida Spain. Ojalá que las Olimpiadas en España no se conviertan en un nido de olímpica corrupción, chanchullos, prebendas, contratos amañados, empresas fantasmas, ONG de millonarios, patrocinadores rastreros, urdangarines muy presuntos. Ojalá sean capaces de quitarse un poco esa arrogancia con la que molestan a muchos ciudadanos/as, la chulería sin gracia, el autobombo. Que las Olimpiadas sean una oportunidad de mostrar las culturas variopintas que conviven hace más de 500 años por aquí. Que suenen en castellano, en catalán, en vascuense, en galego, en todas las lenguas, con toda la riqueza que tenemos. Que no politicen la Olimpiada. Que se dejen de resaltar la "implicación" de quienes están obligados a hacerlo. 

Que el Madrid del 2 de mayo, el del 5/M, el de Chueca, el de Malasaña, el del Barrio de Salamanca, el de la Puerta de Alcalá, el de la Plaza Mayor, el de Pérez Galdós, el del Retiro, el de los atardeceres mágicos de una ciudad dura, chula, única, festiva, torera y mística a su manera, reciba al mundo. Pongamos que hablo del Madrid que amo tanto. De mi Madrid al que siempre vuelvo en sueños. Por un glorioso verano de 1986 en la Plaza Mayor. Siempre estaré en Madrid.

The perfect CV

Catty Cowan, la autora del presente post, es una verdadera experta en comunicación. Aquí les dejos sus recomendaciones para un CV presentable. Agregaría que si lo hacen on-line, con gracia, pero sin pasarse, puede ser efectivo. Los jefes de personal son muy listos. Y tienen poco tiempo.

"When it comes to applying for a new job, your CV could be just the ticket to get you that initial foot in the door and secure an interview – but how do you ensure your CV is added to the interview pile rather than thrown straight in the bin?

Putting together a successful CV is easy once you know how. It's a case of taking all your skills and experience and tailoring them to the job you're applying for. But what if you don't meet the right criteria? Well, I've put together the following tips to help you get started in creating a successful CV and securing your first (or next) arts job.

Get the basics right

There is no right or wrong way to write a CV but there are some common sections you should cover. These include: personal and contact information; education and qualifications; work history and/or experience; relevant skills to the job in question; own interests, achievements or hobbies; and some references.

Presentation is key

A successful CV is always carefully and clearly presented, and printed on clean, crisp white paper. The layout should always be clean and well structured and CVs should never be crumpled or folded, so use an A4 envelope to post your applications.

Always remember the CV hotspot – the upper middle area of the first page is where the recruiter's eye will naturally fall, so make sure you include your most important information there.

Stick to no more than two pages of A4

A good CV is clear, concise and makes every point necessary without waffling. You don't need pages and pages of paper – you just keep things short and sweet. A CV is a reassurance to a potential employer, it's a chance to tick the right boxes. And if everything is satisfied, there's a better chance of a job interview. Also, employers receive dozens of CVs all the time so it's unlikely they'll read each one cover to cover. Most will make a judgment about a CV within sections, so stick to a maximum of two pages of A4 paper.

Understand the job description

The clues are in the job application, so read the details from start to finish. Take notes and create bullet points, highlighting everything you can satisfy and all the bits you can't. With the areas where you're lacking, fill in the blanks by adapting the skills you do have. For example, if the job in question requires someone with sales experience, there's nothing stopping you from using any retail work you've undertaken – even if it was something to help pay the bills through university. It will demonstrate the skills you do have and show how they're transferable.

Tailor the CV to the role

When you've established what the job entails and how you can match each requirement, create a CV specifically for that role. Remember, there is no such thing as a generic CV. Every CV you send to a potential employee should be tailored to that role so don't be lazy and hope that a general CV will work because it won't.

Create a unique CV for every job you apply for. You don't have to re-write the whole thing, just adapt the details so they're relevant.

Making the most of skills

Under the skills section of your CV don't forget to mention key skills that can help you to stand out from the crowd. These could include: communication skills; computer skills; team working; problem solving or even speaking a foreign language. Skills can come out of the most unlikely places, so really think about what you've done to grow your own skills, even if you take examples from being in a local sports team or joining a voluntary group – it's all relevant.

Making the most of interests

Under interests, highlight the things that show off skills you've gained and employers look for. Describe any examples of positions of responsibility, working in a team or anything that shows you can use your own initiative. For example, if you ran your university's newspaper or if you started a weekend league football team that became a success.

Include anything that shows how diverse, interested and skilled you are. Don't include passive interests like watching TV, solitary hobbies that can be perceived as you lacking in people skills. Make yourself sound really interesting.

Making the most of experience

Use assertive and positive language under the work history and experience sections, such as "developed", "organised" or "achieved". Try to relate the skills you have learned to the job role you're applying for. For example: "The work experience involved working in a team," or "This position involved planning, organisation and leadership as I was responsible for a team of people".

Really get to grips with the valuable skills and experience you have gained from past work positions, even if it was just working in a restaurant – every little helps.

Including references

References should be from someone who has employed you in the past and can vouch for your skills and experience. If you've never worked before you're OK to use a teacher or tutor as a referee. Try to include two if you can.

Keep your CV updated

It's crucial to review your CV on a regular basis and add any new skills or experience that's missing. For example, if you've just done some volunteering or worked on a new project, make sure they're on there – potential employers are always impressed" 

The CIA big money

El presupuesto que las 16 agencias de espionaje de EE.UU. destinaron a labores de inteligencia y lucha contra el terrorismo fue de 52 mil 600 millones de dólares en el año fiscal 2013, según reveló el diario estadounidense The Washington Post, que cita nuevos documentos filtrados por el exanalista Edward Snowden, ahora en Rusia.

De acuerdo con The Post, que califica esta partida secreta como "presupuesto negro", es la primera vez que la opinión pública tiene acceso con tanto detalle a los gastos, recursos y evaluaciones internas de la inteligencia estadounidense.

La Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) es la principal beneficiaria de los fondos, con 14 mil 700 millones de dólares para este año fiscal, seguida de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional (NSA), con 10 mil 500 millones de dólares.

En total, la comunidad de inteligencia de EE.UU. emplea directamente a 107 mil 35 trabajadores, según los documentos.

"Las agencias de espionaje de EE.UU. han construido un coloso para la recolección de inteligencia desde los ataques del 11 de septiembre del 2001", afirma el diario a la luz de los datos del presupuesto. Pero ese coloso, añade, es "incapaz de proporcionar información crítica al presidente sobre una serie de amenazas para la seguridad nacional", según se desprende de las evaluaciones incluidas en la documentación.

Aunque el gobierno estadounidense ha divulgado regularmente desde el 2007 el nivel global de fondos que destina a las actividades de espionaje, nunca antes se había publicado cómo se usa el dinero ni qué resultados se alcanzan.

El sumario del Programa Nacional de Inteligencia obtenido por The Post, de 178 páginas, detalla los éxitos, fracasos y objetivos de las 16 agencias federales que constituyen la "comunidad de inteligencia" en EE.UU.

Entre estas "ciberoperaciones", llevadas a cabo de manera conjunta por la CIA y la NSA, se incluyen "agresivos" esfuerzos para acceder a redes informáticas extranjeras con el fin de obtener información o sabotear sistemas enemigos.

Las operaciones de contraespionaje, por su parte, están concentradas estratégicamente en torno a los objetivos prioritarios como China, Rusia e Irán.

De acuerdo con este "presupuesto negro", los programas de contraespionaje emplean a uno de cada cuatro trabajadores y reciben un tercio del total de los fondos.

Por último, el diario divulga documentos dedicados a la preocupación en el seno de la NSA acerca del "comportamiento anómalo" de su propio personal, y en el 2013 se identifican cerca de 4 000 posibles amenazas internas relacionadas con la filtración de información sensible por parte de sus agentes.(Con información de SE)
 

Sarin sobre Siria

Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?
By Yossef Bodansky



El uso, el asesinato, de miles de civiles mediante gas, presuntamente sarin, en Siria abre múltiples interrogantes. El análisis de Yossef Bodansky apunta respuestas para algunas de ellas.Y lo que es mejor, hace dudar, que es muy sano. Me atrevo a agregar algunas dudas propias: cómo es posible que la inteligencia estadounidense no detectara la presencia de arsenales químicos. ¿Se pudo evitar su empleo?. Me gustaría saber quién sintetizo tales productos, dónde, que mercado hay en torno al sarin (o soman y tabun). Se desconocen muchos detalles aparte de los muertos. La Administración estadounidense debería obrar con cordura. Y emplear mejor inteligencia.

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/did-the-white-house-help-plan-the-syrian-chemical-attack/5347542

There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters — which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition.

The extent of US foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the “horror” of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light.

On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria.

The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive.

Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence.

These weapons were loaded on more than 20 trailer-trucks which crossed into northern Syria and distributed the weapons to several depots. Follow-up weapon shipments, also several hundred tons, took place over the weekend of August 24-25, 2013, and included mainly sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles and rockets. Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were “the biggest” they had received “since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago”. The deliveries from Hatay went to all the rebel forces operating in the Idlib-to-Aleppo area, including the al-Qaida affiliated jihadists (who constitute the largest rebel forces in the area).

Several senior officials from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013. The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by US Amb. Robert Ford.

More important were the military and operational coordination meetings at the Antakya garrison. Senior Turkish, Qatari, and US Intelligence officials attended in addition to the Syrian senior (opposition) commanders. The Syrians were informed that bombing would start in a few days.

“The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days,” a Syrian participant in the meeting said. Another Syrian participant said that he was convinced US bombing was scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Several participants — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that the assurances of forthcoming bombing were most explicit even as formally Obama is still undecided.

The descriptions of these meetings raise the question of the extent of foreknowledge of US Intelligence, and therefore, the Obama White House. All the sources consulted — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that officials of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” actively participated in the meetings and briefings in Turkey. Therefore, at the very least, they should have known that the opposition leaders were anticipating “a war-changing development”: that is, a dramatic event which would provoke a US-led military intervention.

The mere fact that weapon storage sites under the tight supervision of US Intelligence were opened up and about a thousand tons of high-quality weapons were distributed to the opposition indicates that US Intelligence anticipated such a provocation and the opportunity for the Syrian opposition to exploit the impact of the ensuing US and allied bombing. Hence, even if the Obama White House did not know in advance of the chemical provocation, they should have concluded, or at the very least suspected, that the chemical attack was most likely the “war-changing development” anticipated by the opposition leaders as provocation of US-led bombing. Under such circumstances, the Obama White House should have refrained from rushing head-on to accuse Assad’s Damascus and threaten retaliation, thus making the Obama White House at the very least complicit after the act.

Meanwhile, additional data from Damascus about the actual chemical attack increases the doubts about Washington’s version of events. Immediately after the attack, three hospitals of Doctors Without Borders (MSF: médecins sans frontières) in the greater Damascus area treated more than 3,600 Syrians affected by the chemical attack, and 355 of them died. MSF performed tests on the vast majority of those treated.

MSF director of operations Bart Janssens summed up the findings: “MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events — characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers — strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.” Simply put, even after testing some 3,600 patients, MSF failed to confirm that sarin was the cause of the injuries. According to MSF, the cause could have been nerve agents like sarin, concentrated riot control gas, or even high-concentration pesticides. Moreover, opposition reports that there was distinct stench during the attack suggest that it could have come from the “kitchen sarin” used by jihadist groups (as distinct from the odorless military-type sarin) or improvised agents like pesticides.

Some of the evidence touted by the Obama White House is questionable at best.

A small incident in Beirut raises big questions. A day after the chemical attack, Lebanese fixers working for the “Mukhabarat Amriki” succeeded to convince a Syrian male who claimed to have been injured in the chemical attack to seek medical aid in Beirut in return for a hefty sum that would effectively settle him for life. The man was put into an ambulance and transferred overnight to the Farhat Hospital in Jib Janine, Beirut. The Obama White House immediately leaked friendly media that “the Lebanese Red Cross announced that test results found traces of sarin gas in his blood.” However, this was news to Lebanese intelligence and Red Cross officials.
According to senior intelligence officials, “Red Cross Operations Director George Kettaneh told [them] that the injured Syrian fled the hospital before doctors were able to test for traces of toxic gas in his blood.” Apparently, the patient declared that he had recovered from his nausea and no longer needed medical treatment. The Lebanese security forces are still searching for the Syrian patient and his honorarium.

On August 24, 2013, Syrian Commando forces acted on intelligence about the possible perpetrators of the chemical attack and raided a cluster of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar. Canisters of toxic material were hit in the fierce fire-fight as several Syrian soldiers suffered from suffocation and “some of the injured are in a critical condition”.

The Commando eventually seized an opposition warehouse containing barrels full of chemicals required for mixing “kitchen sarin”, laboratory equipment, as well as a large number of protective masks. The Syrian Commando also captured several improvised explosive devices, RPG rounds, and mortar shells. The same day, at least four HizbAllah fighters operating in Damascus near Ghouta were hit by chemical agents at the very same time the Syrian Commando unit was hit while searching a group of rebel tunnels in Jobar. Both the Syrian and the HizbAllah forces were acting on intelligence information about the real perpetrators of the chemical attack. Damascus told Moscow the Syrian troops were hit by some form of a nerve agent and sent samples (blood, tissues, and soil) and captured equipment to Russia.

Several Syrian leaders, many of whom are not Bashar al-Assad supporters and are even his sworn enemies, are now convinced that the Syrian opposition is responsible for the August 21, 2013, chemical attack in the Damascus area in order to provoke the US and the allies into bombing Assad’s Syria. Most explicit and eloquent is Saleh Muslim, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) which has been fighting the Syrian Government. Muslim doubts Assad would have used chemical weapons when he was winning the civil war.

“The regime in Syria ... has chemical weapons, but they wouldn’t use them around Damascus, five km from the [UN] committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,” Muslim told Reuters on August 27, 2013. He believes the attack was “aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction”. Muslim is convinced that “some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action” is responsible for the chemical attack. The US was exploiting the attack to further its own anti-Assad policies and should the UN inspectors find evidence that the rebels were behind the attack, then “everybody would forget it”, Muslim shrugged. “Who is the side who would be punished? Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdo?an of Turkey?”

And there remain the questions: Given the extent of the involvement of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” in opposition activities, how is that US Intelligence did not know in advance about the opposition’s planned use of chemical weapons in Damascus?

It is a colossal failure.

And if they did know and warned the Obama White House, why then the sanctimonious rush to blame the Assad Administration?

Moreover, how can the Obama Administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians in order to provoke a US military intervention?

Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs

Copyright Defense and Foreign Affairs and Oilprice.com 2013

Copyright © 2013 Global Research

Seis millones de desplazados sirios

The Drums of War are Beating: Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria

By Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer

Occidente deshoja una peligrosa margarita en torno a Siria. Mientras tanto el Alto Comisionado de la ONU para los refugiados (otra entelequia estadística) nos pone ante los ojos la dolorosa cifra de 6 millones de "desplazados" sirios. Y yo lo traduciría a personas como ustedes o como yo, aterrorizadas, desvalidas, que cargan lo poco que han podido salvar, desheredados. No me imagino de qué manera terminaremos pagando por tanto sufrimiento ajeno. El presidente Obama, que tal vez bendiga su mesa bien servida, rodeado de familia y mascota, y duerma a pierna suelta, deberá decidir que hace con un problema que ha dejado, de manera irresponsable, envenenarse hasta extremos insoportables. Por lo menos va a consultar con el resto de su Gobierno. Eso será el día 9. Apuesto que si se decide por los misiles o los drones

(de corta, limitada y precisa acción, tal vez se atreva a decir "limpia"), lo dejará para el día 11. Para otro 11/S de odio. Si a esto se añade la arrogancia criminal del presidente sirio la combinación puede ser altamente explosiva.

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-drums-of-war-are-beating-killing-civilians-to-protect-civilians-in-syria/5347187

The drums of war are beating again. The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong. “What we are talking about here is a potential response . . . to this specific violation of international norms,” declared White House press secretary Jay Carney. But a military intervention by the United States in Syria to punish the government would violate international law.

For the United States to threaten to and/or launch a military strike as a reprisal is a blatant violation of the United Nations Charter. The Charter requires countries to settle their international disputes peacefully.

Article 2(4) makes it illegal for any country to either use force or threaten to use force against another country. Article 2(7) prohibits intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in another country. The only time military force is lawful under the Charter is when the Security Council approves it, or under Article 51, which allows a country to defend itself if attacked. “The use of chemical weapons within Syria is not an armed attack on the United States,” according to Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell.

The United States and the international community have failed to take constructive steps to promote peace-making efforts, which could have brought the crisis in Syria to an end. The big powers instead have waged a proxy war to give their “side” a stronger hand in future negotiations, evaluating the situation only in terms of geopolitical concerns. The result has been to once again demonstrate that military solutions to political and economic problems are no solution at all.  In the meantime, the fans of enmity between religious factions have been inflamed to such a degree that the demonization of each by the other has created fertile ground for slaughter and excuses for not negotiating with anyone with “blood on their hands.”

Despite U.S. claims of “little doubt that Assad used these weapons,” there is significant doubt among the international community about which side employed chemical weapons. Many view the so-called rebels as trying to create a situation to provoke U.S. intervention against Assad. Indeed, in May, Carla del Ponte, former international prosecutor and current UN commissioner on Syria, concluded that opposition forces used sarin gas against civilians.

The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war. The illegality of chemical and poisoned weapons was first established by the Hague regulations of 1899 and Hague Convention of 1907. It was reiterated in the Geneva Convention of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court specifically states that employing “poison or poisoned weapons” and “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices” are war crimes, under Article 8. The prohibition on the use of these weapons is an international norm regardless of whether any convention has been ratified.  As these weapons do not distinguish between military combatants and civilians, they violate the principle of distinction and the ban on weapons which cause unnecessary suffering and death contained in the Hague Convention. Under the Nuremberg Principles, violations of the laws of war are war crimes.

The self-righteousness of the United States about the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad is hypocritical. The United States used napalm and employed massive amounts of chemical weapons in the form of Agent Orange in Vietnam, which continues to affect countless people over many generations.

Recently declassified CIA documents reveal U.S. complicity in Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, according to Foreign Policy: “In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.”

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and white phosphorous gas. Cluster bomb cannisters contain tiny bomblets, which can spread over a vast area. Unexploded cluster bombs are frequently picked up by children and explode, resulting in serious injury or death. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast areas of land. In Iraq, there has been a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth defects, probably due to DU. White phosphorous gas melts the skin and burns to the bone.

The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies “willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a grave breach, which constitutes a war crime.

The use of chemical weapons, regardless of the purpose, is atrocious, no matter the feigned justification.  A government’s use of such weapons against its own people is particularly reprehensible.  Secretary of State John Kerry said that the purported attack by Assad’s forces “defies any code of morality” and should “shock the conscience of the world.”  He went on to say that “there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Yet the U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, napalm and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury.  This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens.  The people of Vieques have lived under the colonial rule of the United States now for 115 years and suffer from terminal health conditions such as elevated rates of cancer, hypertension, respiratory and skin illnesses and kidney failure.  While Secretary Kerry calls for accountability by the Assad government, the U.S. Navy has yet to admit, much less seek atonement, for decades of bombing and biochemical warfare on Vieques.

The U.S. government’s moral outrage at the use of these weapons falls flat as it refuses to take responsibility for its own violations.

President Barack Obama admitted, “If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it . . .” The Obama administration is studying the 1999 “NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations,” the New York Times reported. But NATO’s Kosovo bombing also violated the UN Charter as the Security Council never approved it, and it was not carried out in self-defense. The UN Charter does not permit the use of military force for “humanitarian interventions.” Humanitarian concerns do not constitute self-defense.  In fact, humanitarian concerns should spur the international community to seek peace and end the suffering, not increase military attacks, which could endanger peace in the entire region.

Moreover, as Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies and David Wildman of Human Rights & Racial Justice for the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church wrote, “Does anyone really believe that a military strike on an alleged chemical weapons factory would help the Syrian people, would save any lives, would help bring an end to this horrific civil war”?

Military strikes will likely result in the escalation of Syria’s civil war. “Let’s be clear,” Bennis and Wildman note. “Any U.S. military attack, cruise missiles or anything else, will not be to protect civilians – it will mean taking sides once again in a bloody, complicated civil war.” Anthony Cordesman, military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, asks, “Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes. Can you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer would be no.”

The United States and its allies must refrain from military intervention in Syria and take affirmative steps to promote a durable ceasefire and a political solution consistent with international law. If the U.S. government were truly interested in fomenting peace and promoting accountability, it should apologize to and compensate the victims of its own use of chemical weapons around the world.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL). New York attorney Jeanne Mirer is president of the IADL and co-chair of the NLG’s International Committee. Both Cohn and Mirer are on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign

Copyright © 2013 Global Research