Western lies, criminality unraveling in Syria
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | September 19, 2013
The US has accused Russia of “swimming against the tide” in persisting with its claims that foreign-backed militants in Syria committed the chemical weapons attacks, not the Syrian armed forces, as the Western governments have asserted.
In a sense, the US is correct. Russia is indeed swimming against a tide – a powerful tide of fabrication and propaganda promulgated by Washington, its Western allies and their dutiful news media.
But that tide is now subsiding, by the day, as more facts emerge about what really happened in Syria with regard to the use of chemical weapons. If Russia was swimming against a tide, the position of the US and its allies is now sinking from lies and criminality.
As each day passes, it becomes clear that Western states tried to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government and thereby trigger a desired military aggression.
The Western propaganda operation went into full speed on Monday following the release of the report by the United Nations chemical weapons team, led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom. No sooner had that report been published than the US, British and French governments were crowing that it provided “conclusive proof” of their allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed the mass killings on 21 August near the capital, Damascus.
The UN team did not actually state who perpetrated the chemical gas attack, but its inferences allowed others to point the finger of accusation at the Syrian army. So too did the tone of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who called for sanctions against those who commit such crimes “against your own people”.
So, they all lined up in familiar choreography to denounce the Syrian government. The US, British and French said they were justified in calling for military strikes and that they intended incorporating such action in the recent chemical decommissioning deal worked out by Washington and Moscow. For a day or two, it seemed that the Western governments had gained the psychological upper hand.
But it is increasingly clear that the Western “certainty” over Syrian chemical weapons is an edifice built on sand. The initial Western claims were never supported by verifiable evidence, only “secret intelligence”. Now it turns out that the UN inspectors’ report upon which the Western governments have rested their case is fatally flawed.
By its own admission, the UN study was carried out hurriedly under duress and in circumstances tampered with by the Western-backed anti-government militants. In a word, its putative evidence is unreliable.
More damning is the new disclosure by the Syrian government purporting to show that the culpable party for the gas attack near Damascus is the insurgents. Syria shared this “factual evidence” with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who was in Damascus this week. Syria and Russia are to submit this information to the UN.
What is disturbing is that this latest evidence, which includes ballistic charts and chemical analysis data, was already presented to the UN team led by Sellstrom. Russia has also said that other evidence and information presented to the UN team during the investigation was ignored in its final report. That suggests that the UN team was compromised to accommodate Western political interests.
Another disclosure this week is that Moscow confirmed that it never supplied Syria with sarin gas, not even during the years of the former Soviet Union. The significance of this is that Western governments flagged up the finding in the Sellstrom report that the inspectors had recovered remains of unusual rockets with Cyrillic (Russian) lettering. The inference was that Russia supplied Syria with chemical weapons, which the Syrian army had used.
But the Kremlin denied that it has ever delivered such munitions to Syria. It said that Soviet-era rockets with Cyrillic markings of the type cited in the Sellstrom report were supplied in the past to Libya. Given that Libya is a major arms supply conduit to the Western-backed so-called rebels in Syria, this again lends credibility to the Russian and Syrian claims that the chemical gas attacks near Damascus were carried out by these groups in a provocation to elicit Western military intervention.
There are many other unanswered perturbing questions about the chemical weapons attack near Damascus last month. Who were those dead children in the videos that the West has based so much of its emotive claims on? Why were they dressed in day clothes if they were supposedly killed in the middle of the night when they should have been in their beds? Why were their corpses arranged in such an orderly way, suggesting the scene was organized for an anticipated video recording? Why are there so few adult female victims in the apparent gas attack? Where are the grieving mothers and fathers of the little ones whose bodies are stacked up in death shrouds?
More chilling is a study led by Syrian Christian figure, Mother Agnes Mariam, which cites relatives of the dead who claim that the children were abducted by militants during earlier attacks in the northwest Latakia area. In that case, the children may have been poisoned, not by rockets filled with sarin, but by premeditated murder, with the purpose of fabricating a chemical gas attack.
What this demonstrates is that the exact circumstances of the atrocity near Damascus are far from known. But what is clear is that Western governments are shamelessly contriving partial and unsubstantiated data to fit political objectives.
The rush to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government shows once again that the Western objective is regime change. That objective is criminal and the means to achieve it – fabricating lies and fomenting acts of war – gravely compound the criminality.
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Escalation Expected in Syria Ahead of Geneva II
By Ahmad Hassan | Al-Akhbar | September 18, 2013
With the West’s decision not to intervene militarily in Syria, at least not directly, there is renewed talk of two courses of action dominating events in the country: a strong push for holding the Geneva II conference and an escalation in battles on the ground.
Damascus – After the relative calm that prevailed in Damascus over the past few weeks, with anxious anticipation of a Western strike, clashes in the capital have now resumed in parallel with escalations in the northern and southern Damascus countryside, Qaboun, and the Yarmouk refugee camp. Some believe this escalation could be part of preemptive preparations on the field ahead of the coming major political event in Geneva II.
In this regard, a high-level Syrian official who preferred not to be named told Al-Akhbar, “The road to Geneva is now compulsory for all parties. The conference will most likely be held in October, probably on October 28. We in the Syrian government declared our readiness to participate in the conference without any conditions, so the ball is now in the court of the opposition, which remains unserious about participation.”When Al-Akhbar asked him about the identity of political forces participating in the conference and how they would be represented, he said, “The Syrian government has chosen the names of the officials that make up its delegation. As for the opposition, those present at the table will include the Kurdish forces, the Doha coalition (i.e. the Syrian National Coalition), the Commission (i.e. the National Coordination Commission), and the Coalition of Forces for Peaceful Change.
“Regarding the representation of each political faction, this is not important, because the outcome of Geneva II will not be determined by voting, but by accords that all parties will be committed to implement. But each faction has the right to choose its representatives at the conference.”
He continued, “The main problem that remains is that of military representation. It is not yet known whether a tentative formula has been reached to guarantee the participation of Syrian militants in the conference.”
According to the source, the majority of Syrians believe that reaching an accord with Syrian militants who have legitimate grievances may pave the way for the Syrian army and these militants to join forces against foreign fighters from al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as other radical militant factions.
Securing the Capital Before Geneva II
Throughout the crisis, the armed opposition has consistently sought to disrupt security in the Syrian capital, especially before every international political event. In the balance of gains and losses, the opposition and the countries that support it know well that every gain or setback in the field will impact political negotiations. This has driven the two warring parties to further mobilize with one goal in mind: controlling Damascus.
On the ground, everything indicates that Damascus’ center will remain under the control of the Syrian army, whether before or after the international conference. One thing that could change this is if battles in the countryside tip the balance in favor of the opposition. Yet nothing in the daily battles taking place in the past few days suggests this is happening.
Indeed, the Syrian army continues to advance in the northern Damascus countryside. In Zamalka, near the city of Douma, the army pounded militant strongholds with mortar rounds before directly engaging opposition forces, inflicting heavy losses in their ranks. In Barzeh, the Syrian army is also advancing, following clashes in the vicinity of the Tishreen Military Hospital. Meanwhile, clashes along the Qaboun-Harasta-Irbeen axis are taking the form of “cleansing by fire,” with the Syrian army combing the area in preparation for declaring the northern countryside a region controlled by the Syrian government forces.In the southern countryside, the clashes and skirmishes taking place in Daria are proceeding in a direction that favors the Syrian army, which has now surrounded the city, controlling more than half of it. This progress in the southwest, along the Sehaya-Daria-Jdeidet Artouz axis, is in dire need of an effective advance along the capital’s southeastern front, where the army was recently able to take control of the town of Shebaa after fierce fighting.
The southeast Damascus countryside is significant because it is now almost the only way left for the army to end the stalemate in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp and the Filastine and Tadamon districts controlled by the armed opposition. But military analysts believe that seizing these areas can no longer be done using traditional tactics (air coverage with ground-based assault), and instead requires shifting the place of attack from the northern entrance of the region to the southern entrance.
This, they say, will be possible after the army regains absolute control over the areas of Sayyida Zeinab, Yalda, and Babila, cutting off the only supply route for the militants holed up in Yarmouk in the process. Today, there are reports indicating that the political and military leadership in Syria are in favor of this scenario, which they want to put into force before heading to Geneva II.
Related articles
- Syria Gives Russia ‘New Evidence’ Militants behind Chemical Attack (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Syria and the ‘devious’ Israeli connection — Dr. Olmert doth protest too much, methinks
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | September 18, 2013
In a September 9 blog for The Huffington Post, Dr. Josef Olmert seizes on Professor Stephen Walt’s open letter to Congressman Joseph Kennnedy, urging him to oppose the use of military force against Syria, as an opportunity to attack Walt and Mearsheimer’s thesis that the influential — not “demonic” as Olmert chooses to misrepresent it — Israel Lobby has managed to skew U.S. foreign policy from its national interest. Writes Olmert:
So, under these circumstances, I eagerly expected to read about the Israeli connection of the Syrian problem, as well as it being behind the President’s decision to attack in Syria. Nothing of the kind in the open letter, and for good reason. The Syrian conflict has nothing to do with Israel. So was the case in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring started, so it was in Libya, where the US intervened ” from behind,” so it was in Egypt, where the secular-liberal Tamarud movement agitates against the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty and the deposed Muhammad Morsi related to Jews as descendants of pigs and monkeys.
Well, Israel has not been involved in all these situations, as well as in Yemen, Bahrain etc. because the Arab Spring had nothing to do with the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It has to do with poverty, corruption, authoritarianism and sectarianism — all are huge issues which are concerned with the very fabric of the Arab state system, with basic ills of Arab societies; in sum, with issues that are mostly the makings of the Arabs, ones which ought to be solved by them.
The Arab Spring has been a cataclysmic, formative event, the most important to have happened in the Middle East since the heydays of Nasserism, back in the 1950′s. Such a huge event and no Israel connection, so where is the big thesis of Walt and Mearsheimer? How is it connected to the Middle East circa 2013? Well, it is not.
Dr. Olmert’s denial of an Israeli connection to the so-called “Arab Spring” is undermined, however, by his own biography. Although omitted from his “full bio” page at the HuffPost, the adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina is a contributor to an “online community” known as Fikra Forum, “that aims to generate ideas to support Arab democrats in their struggle with authoritarians and extremists.” Notwithstanding the high-sounding self-description, the pro-democracy “Arab” forum is in fact a creation of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that was itself created by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful and best known organization in the Israel Lobby.
Among Olmert’s fellow Fikra Forum contributors is Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that lobbies Washington for military intervention on behalf of the Syrian opposition. As Moustafa’s Israeli Fikra co-contributor no doubt remembers, an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by SETF’s recently resigned political director, “Doctor” Elizabeth O’Bagy, was touted by John McCain and John Kerry during a Senate Foreign Relations hearing to bolster the dubious case for intervention in support of the supposedly “moderate” rebels.
So who does the one-time advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the brother of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert think he’s fooling when he claims there’s no “ever devious” Israeli connection to the Syrian problem?
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @O_Cathail.
Related articles
- A brief insight into the Israel Lobby’s non-transparent reinforcement of a ‘red line’ on Syria (thepassionateattachment.com)
- Israelis Flying Aid to Syrian Rebels Under the Cover of Humanitarianism (thepassionateattachment.com)
Surveillance at the United Nations
By Danny O’Brien and Katitza Rodriguez | EFF | September 17, 2013
The surveillance scandal has now reached the United Nation’s Human Rights Council, which opened its 24th session last week to a volley of questions about privacy and spying, many of them targeted at the United States and United Kingdom. (That’s perhaps not surprising, since U.N. representatives were among those listed as being monitored by the NSA and GCHQ).
The opening statement by the eminent South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay (now the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights) warned of the “broad scope of national security surveillance in countries, including the United States and United Kingdom,” and urged all countries to “ensure that adequate safeguards are in place to prevent security agency overreach and to protect the right to privacy and other human rights.” On September 13, the German Ambassador Schumacher delivered a joint statement on behalf of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Hungary expressing their concern about the consequences of “surveillance, decryption and mass data collection.”
One part of the potential solution to those concerns will be officially launched this Friday in a Human Rights Council side-meeting on digital privacy hosted by these same concerned countries: the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance.
For over a year, EFF has been working with other civil liberties groups to develop these principles that spell out how existing human rights law applies to modern digital surveillance. The 13 Principles — which have been signed by 258 organizations across the world— also provide a benchmark that people around the world can use to evaluate and push for changes in their own surveillance laws. For this 24th session, EFF has joined RSF and APC in a joint written submission to the HRC, advocating for these checks and balances.
The Human Rights Council isn’t the only diplomatic venue at the United Nations where complaints about the United States’ surveillance practices are being heard. The Human Rights Committee is also set to scrutinize the United States on its compliance with Article 17 (right to privacy) of the International Coventant on Civil and Political Rights. The United States’ written response to Human Rights Committee has already laid out its diplomatic response in favor of the Patriot and FISA provisions. It notably dodges the key question that is emerging from other countries regarding these programs: if the U.S. government cannot rein in its domestic surveillance program, riven as it is with constitutional and statutory problems, just how much worse are the controls on the surveillance of non-US persons?
More directly relevant to the diplomatic community is a connected question: how can the United States accuse, with a straight face, other countries of undermining “Internet Freedom” through the use of malware and mass spying, when it seems that there are precious few internal limits to what its own security services are permitted to do in the same arena?
This is not just a matter of the United States’ international reputation. The greatest risk to the Internet in the international arena right now lies in the formation of an unholy alliance between countries who are already seeking excuses to spy and censor the net and those, like the United States, who have previously argued against such practices, but are now having to defend their own surveillance excesses with similar language.
Without promising substantive reform at home, the U.S. and the U.K. risk alienating their own allies at the United Nations, while granting a carte blanche for other countries to pursue a repressive Internet agenda abroad. The Western countries implicated in the NSA scandal should grab onto the full set of principles as a liferaft: a way that they can show a commitment to transparency and proportionality in a way that obliges other countries to follow the same standards. Otherwise, the U.S. and the U.K. will be seen as having started a race to the bottom of privacy standards: a race too many other countries will be happy to join.
Court Reveals ‘Secret Interpretation’ Of The Patriot Act, Allowing NSA To Collect All Phone Call Data
By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | September 17, 2013
The FISA Court (FISC) today released a heavily redacted version of its July ruling approving the renewal of the bulk metadata collection on all phone calls from US phone providers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. This is part of the “secret interpretation” as to how the FISC interprets the Patriot Act’s “business records” or “tangible things” section to mean that the government can order a telco to turn over pretty much all records — even as the very author of the law says it was written specifically to not allow this interpretation.
Much of the ruling is pretty much what you’d expect, given the way defenders of this program have been insisting that this is all very legal. It argues that Smith v. Maryland show that there are no privacy protections in data given to your telco. It goes on at length defending the third party doctrine, arguing that because some third party holds your data, you have no expectation of privacy. As many have argued, this is a ridiculous and antiquated view of the third party doctrine, not at all consistent with modern technology, but the FISC repeats it without question. While some have pointed out that even if single points of metadata might not be privacy violating, collecting all of them creates a new problem, the court rejects that entirely.
From there, there’s a big discussion of whether or not “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation.” This is a big part of where the concern lies. How can the government defend the claim that all records are “relevant to an authorized investigation.” Here, the court compares the order to the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which lets the government get access to records as well. And then the word games begin. Basically, it argues that because one law requires “specific and articulable facts” and that the information must be “material,” while the other (the PATRIOT Act) does not, then the government doesn’t need specific and articulable facts. Rather it just needs “a statement of facts showing there are reasonable grounds to believe that the records are relevant to the investigation.”
For non-content records production requests, such as the type sought here, Section 2703(c) provides a variety of mechanisms, including acquisition through a court order under Section 2703(d). Under this section, which is comparable to Section 215, the government must offer to the court “specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” 2703(d) (emphasis added). Section 215, the comparable provision for foreign intelligence purposes, requires neither “specific and articulable facts” nor does it require that the information be “material.” Rather, it merely requires a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the records sought are relevant to the investigation. 50 U.S.C. That these two provisions apply to the production of the same type of records from the same type of providers is an indication that Congress intended this Court to apply a different, and in specific respects lower, standard to the government’s Application under Section 215 than a court reviewing a request under Section 2703(d). Indeed, the Act version of FISA’s business records provision required “specific and articulable facts giving reason to believe that the person to whom the records pertain is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” 50 U.S.C. §1862(b)(2)(B) as it read on October 25, 2001. In enacting Section 215, Congress removed the requirements for “specific and articulable facts” and that the records pertain to “a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.” Accordingly, now the government need not provide specific and articulable facts, demonstrate any connection to a particular suspect, nor show materiality when requesting business records under Section 215. To find otherwise would be to impose a higher burden — one that Congress knew how to include in Section 215, but chose to dispense with.
Also, it argues that since Section 215 allows recipients of the order to challenge them and no telco ever has that this lends it to believe there are no problems with the law.
Second, Section 2703(d) permits the service provider to file a motion with a court to “quash or modify such order, if the information or records requested are unusually voluminous in nature or compliance with such order otherwise would cause undue burden on such provider.” Congress recognized that, even with the higher statutory standard for a production order under Section 2703(d), some requests authorized by a court would be “voluminous” and provided a means by which the provider could seek relief using a motion. Under Section 215, however, Congress provided a specific and complex statutory scheme for judicial review of an Order from this Court to ensure that providers could challenge both the legality of the required production and the nondisclosure provisions of that Order. 50 U.S.C. §1861(f). This adversarial process includes the selection of a judge from a pool of FISC judges to review the challenge to determine if it is frivolous and to rule on the merits, provides standards that the judge is to apply during such review, and provides for appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and, ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court. This procedure, as opposed to the motion process available under Section 2703(d) to challenge a production as unduly voluminous or burdensome, contemplates a substantial and engaging adversarial process to test the legality of this Court’ Orders under Section 215. This enhanced process appears designed to ensure that there are additional safeguards in light of the lower threshold that the government is required to meet for production under Section 215 as opposed to Section 2703(d). To date, no holder of records who has received an Order to produce bulk telephony metadata has challenged the legality of such an Order. Indeed, no recipient of any Section 215 Order has challenged the legality of such an Order, despite the explicit statutory mechanism for doing so.
Basically, the court says “why of course there’s an adversarial process” to protect users’ privacy. It just depends on Verizon or AT&T taking up the fight on behalf of their users, and they haven’t done so, so let’s just assume everyone’s okay with this. That’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Admittedly, the public should be up in arms that Verizon and AT&T appear to have no interest in challenging these broad collections of data, but that hardly makes them constitutional.
From there we move onto the interpretation of how this massive data collection could possibly be seen as “relevant.” First, it notes (as mentioned above) that the government doesn’t need to prove that the data is actually relevant. Just that it has reasonable grounds to believe that they are relevant.
As an initial matter and as a point of clarification, the government’s burden under Section 215 is not to prove that the records sought are, in fact, relevant to an authorized investigation. The explicit terms of the statute require “a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant.
Then it basically says that because the NSA can sniff out terrorists within a giant database, that makes the entire database relevant. Really.
This Court has previously examined the issue of relevance for bulk collections. See; [REDACTED] While those matters involved different collections from the one at issue here, the relevance standard was similar…. (“[R]elevant to an ongoing investigation to protect against international terrorism….”). In both cases, there were facts demonstrating that information concerning known and unknown affiliates of international terrorist organizations was contained within the non-content metadata the government sought to obtain. As this Court noted in 2010, the “finding of relevance most crucially depended on the conclusion that bulk collection is necessary for NSA to employ tools that are likely to generate useful investigative leads to help identify and track terrorist operatives.” [REDACTED] Indeed, in [REDACTED] this Court noted that bulk collections such as these are “necessary to identify the much smaller number of [international terrorist] communications.’ [REDACTED] As a result, it is this showing of necessity that led the Court to find that “the entire mass of collected metadata is relevant to investigating [international terrorist groups] and affiliated persons.” [REDACTED]
It then applies those previous, redacted-named rulings, to this case, repeating the DOJ’s own filing saying “all of the metadata collected is thus relevant, because the success of this investigative tool depends on bulk collections.”
That’s ridiculous and tautological. You could argue that the “success” of a program designed to stop crimes “depends on” putting cameras inside everyone’s home, but that doesn’t make it any less a violation of privacy. It also hardly makes the collection of all such data “relevant.”
The FISC continues to tap dance on the grave of the 4th Amendment:
The government depends on this bulk collection because if production of the information were to wait until the specific identifier connected to an international terrorist group were determined, most of the historical connections (the entire purpose of this authorization) would be lost. The analysis of past connections is only possible “if the Government has collected and archived a broad set of metadata that contains within it the subset of communications that can later be identified as terrorist-related.” Because the subset of terrorist communications is ultimately contained within the whole of the metadata produced, but can only be found after the production is aggregated and then queried using identifiers determined to be associated with identified international terrorist organizations, the whole production is relevant to the ongoing investigation out of necessity.
Once again, that makes no sense. First off, just because you can put together all this aggregate data and use it to find criminals and terrorists doesn’t automatically make it legal. Once again, I’m sure that having cameras in everyone’s homes would allow similar capturing of illegal behavior. But that doesn’t make it legal. Second, the argument that without this metadata collection the information would be “lost” is clearly untrue. As was just revealed a few weeks ago, AT&T has employees embedded with the DEA who are willing, ready and able to do deep dive searches on decades worth of phone records (even beyond AT&T). The data isn’t lost. They’re available via AT&T employees who are working right alongside government employees.
Incredibly, the FISC then claims that the mere claim that terrorists use the phone system is enough to show that all phone records are relevant.
The government must demonstrate “facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation.” The fact that international terrorist operatives are using telephone communications, and that it is necessary to obtain the bulk collection of a telephone company’s metadata to determine those connections between known and unknown international terrorist operatives as part of authorized investigations, is sufficient to meet the low statutory hurdle set out in Section 215 to obtain a production of records.
Except, almost nothing there makes sense. It’s not true that it is necessary to obtain bulk collection of the metadata to find those connections. And just because terrorists live in houses, we don’t say that it’s okay for law enforcement to search every house. Take this same argument and apply it to anything else and the 4th Amendment goes away entirely.
In short, this shows the serious problems with these efforts being non-adversarial. The FISC more or less buys the government’s argument at every single turn, even though there are multiple arguments for why the government’s position is either not true or, at the very least, misleading.
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Syria Gives Russia ’New Evidence’ Militants behind Chemical Attack
Al-Manar | September 18, 2013
The Syrian government has handed Russia new materials implicating militants in a chemical attack outside Damascus on August 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Wednesday after talks in Damascus.
“The corresponding materials were handed to the Russian side. We were told that they were evidence that the militants are implicated in the chemical attack,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies after talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem late Tuesday.
He said that Russia would “examine the Syrian materials implicating the militants with the utmost seriousness.”
Russia has repeatedly expressed suspicion that the chemical attack was a “provocation” staged by the militants with the aim of attracting Western military intervention in the conflict.
Ryabkov also said Russia was disappointed with the UN report into the chemical weapons attack published this week, saying it was selective and had ignored other episodes.
“Without a full picture, we cannot describe the character of the conclusions as anything other than politicized, biased and one-sided,” he said.
Ryabkov is on a visit to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the results of the agreement between Moscow and Washington reached in Geneva at the weekend to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
He said he emphasized to Moallem the importance of the Syrian side “strictly and swiftly” handing over details of its chemical weapons arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the first step in the agreement.
The Syrian ambassador to Moscow, Riyad Haddad, told the Interfax news agency that Ryabkov was expected to have a meeting Wednesday with President Bashar al-Assad.
Ryabkov said he assured the Syrian side that there was “no basis” for a UN Security Council resolution on the chemical weapons agreement to invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allows the use of force and tough sanctions.
He said this could only be considered if the UN Security Council was able to confirm violations of the convention on chemical weapons. “This is a hypothetical situation.”
“It is especially important that some kind of political interests do not again appear, especially in New York (at the UN Security Council),” he added.
Swiss take obligatory army service to referendum
RT | September 18, 2013
On Sunday, the Swiss are voting on a proposal to abolish military conscription in favor of a voluntary army. The country with no clear foes and a long tradition of neutrality could find better ways of spending money than playing at war, proponents say.
Switzerland, once a proud supplier of mercenaries for numerous wars in Europe, has maintained a policy of armed neutrality for the last five centuries. It isn’t a member of any defense pacts and wasn’t even member of the United Nations until 2002. But it has an army of 150,000, the size of Austria’s, Belgium’s, Norway’s, Finland’s and Sweden’s armies combined.
Under Swiss law, all able-bodied males must take part in compulsory military service between the ages of 18 and 34. This comprises 18 to 21 weeks of basic training and further yearly refresher courses lasting 19 days. Senior officers may have to serve up to the age of 50 and spend more than twice as much time on army duty than ordinary recruits.
Boot camp is praised by advocates as a character-building experience, which teaches working in a team under stress and gives a chance to develop leadership skills. It also serves as a kind of glue for Swiss society, with connections made in the service lasting on in civilian life. For a country with four different language groups, it is seen by many Swiss as crucial for national unity.
The military is also the cornerstone of the Swiss militia, which has a role similar to the National Guard in the US. Those in the army help civilian authorities and respond to natural disasters and other major events. Many continue helping society as volunteers after retiring from the service by joining the fire service, participating in local politics. or serving other public duties.
An anachronism that costs too much
However, there are plenty who see military traditions as an expensive anachronism, which is no longer necessary. The pacifist Group for Switzerland without an Army (GSoA) has gathered the 100,000 signatures necessary to put their abolition proposal to a national referendum.
Referenda are essential to Switzerland’s direct form of democracy and are held several times a year at national, regional and local levels. An initiative must win support from a majority of voters and a majority of cantons to be passed and made law.
GSoA, which has been campaigning against obligatory army service since 1982, argues that the country located in the heart of Europe doesn’t need big military firepower to protect itself and that a purely voluntary force would suffice. It criticizes conscription, which excludes Swiss women and disrupts study and work for men, costing an estimated $4.3 billion to the economy annually.
“Not everyone has time to play war,” declares the GSoA campaign poster.
The group has pushed unsuccessfully for several referendums in the past, trying to scrap the military, preventing the procurement of American fighter jets, banning all arms exports from Switzerland, and stopping the Swiss tradition of conscripts keeping their assault rifles at home after initial training.
Sunday’s vote is not expected to go in favor of the GSoA. A survey by Swiss television in August revealed that 40 per cent of respondents would reject the initiative, with another 17 per cent leaning that way. The support for the military is particularly strong in the older generations, with 68 per cent of those over 65 opposing the initiative. Less than a third of Swiss people support the proposal.
“Switzerland needs an army,” says Jakob Büchler of the Christian Democrat Party (CVP), a member of the National Council, which rejected the initiative as cited by The Local. “We are a small country, we are a neutral country, and we are a country that isn’t in any defense alliances. We have to therefore organize our own defense and security ourselves, and that’s why we need an army.”
Opponents of the initiative fear that there won’t be enough volunteers for military service and Switzerland would then have to start a costly change to a professional army.
Globalization advancing
Lately, GSoA reasoning has found support from an increasing number of multinational firms who are not happy to see local staff being sent to boot camps, reports Reuters. The contact-building aspect of the military is diminishing too, with Swiss companies being infiltrated by foreigners – just six of the CEOs at Switzerland’s top 20 companies hold Swiss nationality – and of course females are climbing the corporate ladder, too. Meanwhile young men nowadays have other options such as internships abroad.
While the GSoA proposal is likely to be thrown out, they are still hoping for a strong showing of support for their stance as they continue their fight. “The more ‘yes’ votes we receive, the greater the pressure will be to reform the army,” says Seraina Patzen, a spokeswoman for the group.
The Swiss military are not objecting to undergoing reform. They have already shrunk the number of troops considerably. In the late 1980s Switzerland had 800,000 soldiers and officers, but by 2003 the number had dropped to 350,000. The plan is to reduce the current army of 150,000 to 100,000 in coming years.
Conscription rules were made less strict. Since 1996 conscientious objectors may serve an extended period in the civil service as an alternative to joining the military.
But the Defense Ministry maintains that a conscripted military is necessary for the country. During a recent media tour of barracks, Defense Minister Ueli Maurer said Switzerland may not face an enemy in the field, but may become, for example, a target of a cyber attack disrupting the transport network. In order for the army to respond to national emergencies, it needs to be able to draw on the best IT specialists, engineers and technicians the country has to offer.
Brazil to bypass US-centric internet amid spy revelations
Press TV – September 17, 2013
Brazil has announced plans to bypass the US-centric internet amid revelations that Washington conducts spy operations on web communications.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced the country’s measures to boost the Brazil’s independence and security on the World Wide Web, including storing data locally and bypassing internet traffic that goes through the United States.
Rousseff said plans are in the works to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and all the South American nations in order to create a network free of US eavesdropping. This is while most of Brazil’s global internet traffic passes through the US.
The president also announced that she will push for new international rules of privacy and security in hardware and software during the UN General Assembly meeting later this month.
The country’s postal service also plans to create an encrypted e-mail service that would serve as an alternative to Gmail and Yahoo, two companies being monitored by the NSA.
Experts said the move may herald the first step toward a global network free from US monopoly and its illegal surveillance of global communications.
The development comes following the publication of documents leaked by whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in July, exposing US spying on Brazilian companies and individuals for a decade.
Snowden, a former CIA employee, leaked two top secret US government spying programs under which the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are eavesdropping on millions of American and European phone records and the Internet data from major Internet companies such as Face book, Yahoo, Google, Apple, and Microsoft.
The NSA scandal took even broader dimensions when Snowden revealed information about its espionage activities targeting friendly countries.
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Brazilian president postpones visit to Washington over US spying
RT | September 17, 2013
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has postponed a state visit to Washington in response to the US spying on her communications with top aides. Rousseff is demanding a full public apology from President Obama.
Barack Obama spoke with Rousseff on Monday in an attempt to persuade her into following through with the trip, the Brazilian president’s office said, according to AP.
Brazil’s TV Globo reported that the call between the two presidents lasted for about 20 minutes. Obama and Rousseff discussed revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on the Brazilian leader’s phone calls and emails. The two presidents then “jointly” agreed to cancel the meeting, Globo reported, citing the presidential office.
The Brazilian government said in a statement that “the conditions are not suitable to undertake this visit on the agreed date.” It expressed hope that the conflict will be resolved “properly” and the trip will happen “as soon as possible.”
The state visit was initially scheduled for October 23. The Obama administration has confirmed that the visit was canceled.
“The president has said that he understands and regrets the concerns disclosures of alleged US intelligence activities have generated in Brazil and made clear that he is committed to working together with President Rousseff and her government in diplomatic channels to move beyond this issue as a source of tension in our bilateral relationship,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Earlier this month, TV Globo revealed in a report that the NSA monitored the content of phone calls, emails, and mobile phone messages belonging to President Rousseff and undefined “key advisers” of the Brazilian government. The NSA also spied on Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and nine members of his office.
The revelations were based on evidence provided by former CIA employee and NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which was passed to British journalist Glenn Greenwald.
A document dated June 2012 showed that the Mexican President’s emails were read through one month before he was elected. In his communications, the then-presidential candidate indicated who he would like to appoint to several government posts.
The Brazilian government denounced the NSA surveillance as “impermissible and unacceptable,” and a violation of Brazilian sovereignty.
In July, Greenwald co-wrote articles for O Globo, in which he claimed that some of the documents leaked by Snowden indicated that Brazil was the NSA’s largest target in Latin America.
Greenwald wrote that the NSA was collecting its data through an undefined association between US and Brazilian telecommunications companies, but he could not verify that Brazilian companies had been involved.
Following the revelations, the Brazilian government ordered an investigation into telecommunications companies to determine whether they illegally shared data with the NSA.
Defense ministers of Brazil and Argentina signed a broader military cooperation agreement on September 13. The two governments will work together to improve cyber defense capabilities following revelations of Washington’s spying on Latin American countries.
Brazil will be providing cyber warfare training to Argentine officers from 2014.
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Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
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