US claims of Assad’s chemical weapons are lies – Pushkov
RT | June 14, 2013
A senior Russian MP holds that the recent White House statement of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government is as false as the notorious reports about Iraqi WMDs.
“The data about Assad’s use of chemical weapons is fabricated by the same facility that made up the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Obama is walking George W. Bush’s path,” the head of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee Aleksey Pushkov tweeted.
The Russian MP was referring to the 2003 invasion in Iraq prompted by the US and UK claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened neighboring nations. The UN probe into the matter was underway as the invasion started and no traces of WMD have been discovered on Iraqi territory since the war ended, prompting accusations that the US administration and special services fabricated the data to get an excuse to start the conflict.
In comments to Russian news agencies Pushkov noted that the supplies of arms from the US to the Syrian rebels would hardly lead to the overthrow of President Bashar Assad’s regime. He added that the government in Syria is supported by “a significant, if not the larger, part of the population” and the Syrian military “show a high degree of resistance.”
Pushkov also forecast that the United States would now attempt to further escalate the situation.
“Now they are arming the rebels but then they will come to some form of direct military involvement. We cannot exclude the possibility of cruise missile strikes and if this measure brings no result – of direct military intervention,” he said.
The statement was made shortly after US authorities publicly announced that they had proof that pro-government forces used chemical weapons, like the nerve agent sarin in the Syrian conflict, killing at least 150 people. At the same time, the US side claimed that there was no proof about similar actions from the rebels’ side.
US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes has told the press that President Barack Obama has decided to boost the US support to the Syrian opposition forces and that this would now include military support. The detailed orders will be issued within the nearest weeks after Obama consults with the Congress, the official added.
Earlier last week UK and France said that their probes into the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria showed that the pro-government forces did it at least once causing casualties among rebels and called the international community for immediate action. Many officials, including top Russian politicians, noted that the impartiality of British and French researchers is under question and urged an independent probe.
The UN is currently preparing its own independent investigation, but it might take a long time. Syrian government has said it was ready to accept the UN delegation and help with the investigation.
In late March one of the conflicting parties in Syria allegedly used a sarin-charged missile near the city of Aleppo. The government and rebels now accuse each other of the attack that killed at least 25 people.
While the UK, France and now the United states accuse pro-Assad forces, Turkish media said in early June that the country’s security forces had found sarin gas in the homes of members of the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front – one of the main groups opposing the Syrian government.
Russian officials have repeatedly condemned the use of chemical weapons and urged an all-sided and unbiased research into all incidents connected with the issue.
Syrian rebels open fire on convoy carrying Russian journalists
RT | June 9, 2013
A Russian TV crew came under fire in Syria when a mainly civilian convoy taking the journalists to the Golan Heights was shelled by Syrian rebels.
The convoy shelled on Saturday was led by a Syrian army military vehicle, and consisted of several cars occupied by civilians, including one with Russian TV journalists.
The shelling started when the cars were about 5 kilometers away from their destination – ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ – the only crossing between Syria and the Golan Heights, disputed territory claimed by both Syria and Israel.
“The Syrian troops started to fight the rebels back, but the insurgents targeted the civilian cars,” said Evgeny Poddubny, the head of the Russian TV crew and special correspondent for Rossiya TV channel.
Throughout the fighting, a Russian cameraman kept filming; gunshots can be heard on the video for 15 minutes. The footage also features a Syrian army officer reporting to command that armed militants attacked first, that shelling was coming from both sides of the road.
“The convoy could not make it to the checkpoint, the rebels set an ambush on the road, fighting broke out, the military responded with heavy fire to cover the retreat of our TV crew, and then they retreated themselves. The militants were further confronted by the field artillery, which is deployed in the area,” Poddubny said.
No one was injured in the attack. A similar incident occurred recently in the Golan Heights buffer zone when Checkpoint Charlie was attacked and seized by rebels on Thursday, and quickly recaptured by government troops.
“The militants use the status of the territory; they hide in the buffer zone and are carrying out attacks like the one you’ve just witnessed. Then they retreat. And we cannot carry out special operations here – as that would be a breach of international agreements. Besides, the rebels are getting help from Israel – it supplies them with ammunition and even provides medical aid to terrorists in mobile hospitals,” Syrian army General Nasr Haidar, whose regiment is deployed in the area, told Rossiya.
Provocations by the insurgents are seen as major reason why international peacekeepers have been withdrawing from the area. Austrian troops, which accounted for 40 percent of the UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights, have announced their withdrawal.
This week, Russia proposed to replace Austrian UN peacekeepers on the Israel-Syria border. However, the mandate of the UN mission would not allow Russia’s participation.
The NYT and Chemical Weapons in Syria
By Michael McGehee | NYTX | June 7, 2013
Last month when UN investigator Carla Del Ponte came out publicly to say, “There are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” and, “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” it was quickly met with suspicion and denial, from the UN and the White House.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said as much to reporters.
“We are highly skeptical of the suggestion that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” Mr. Carney said. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.” (NYT, 05/07/2013)
In the previous month both the US and Israel came out with the claim that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.
On Tuesday the UN issued a report on the war-torn country, and The New York Times reported that, “There are reasonable grounds to believe limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used.”
However, the “paper of record” conveniently failed to note that the report immediately goes on to say that “It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator.”
But there are two very important developments to this story which have been met with total silence.
The first is the hacking of Britam, a British defense company. Four months ago it was reported by Yahoo! that:
The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad’s regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown.
One of the leaked documents was an email. The email:
Phil
We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.
We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.
They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?
Kind regards
David
One of the parties who continues to feed the UN information about the use of chemical weapons in Syria is the United Kingdom. The NYT reported on Wednesday, Britain “repeated an earlier assessment that ‘a growing body of limited but persuasive information’ pointed to the use of the same toxin.”
After the email was leaked, claims of chemical weapons usage were made and then President Obama was hounded to act swiftly. Syria’s President Assad allegedly crossed Washington’s “red line.”
The June 4th UN panel report claims that, “It is possible that anti-Government armed groups may access and use chemical weapons. This includes nerve agents, though there is no compelling evidence that these groups possess such weapons or their requisite delivery systems.”
The Turkish news agency, Zaman, reported on May 28, 2013—that is, a week before the UN report was published—that Syrian rebels were arrested in Turkey and had Sarin gas in their possession.
While Russia Today covered the development, as well as Voice of Russia and Iran’s PressTV, no Western source published the development.
In all the coverage provided on Syria and chemical weapons—in the last year the NYT has provided more than 1,100 news items—we should suppose that a hacked email showing Washington supports a plan to use chemical weapons in Syria and blame it on the regime, and that rebels have been caught with Sarin nerve gas in Turkey, simply is not “all the news fit to print.”
Syria’s Fake Sectarian War
By Shamus Cooke | Worker’s Action | June 7, 2013
The fate of Syria and the broader Middle East balances on a razor’s edge. The western media is giving dire warnings of an impending sectarian war between Sunni and Shia Muslims, a war that could drown the Middle East in a flood of blood.
Such a war would be completely artificial, and is being manufactured for geo-political reasons. When the most influential Sunni figures in Saudi Arabia and Qatar — both U.S. allies — recently called for Jihad against the Syrian government and Hezbollah, their obvious intentions were to boost the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia and its closest ally, the United States, by destroying Iran’s key ally in the region.
Will Sunni Muslims in Syria — who are the majority — suddenly begin attacking their Shia countrymen and the Syrian government? Unlikely. A compilation of data from humanitarian workers in and around Syria compiled by NATO suggests that:
…70 percent of Syrians support the Assad regime. Another 20 percent were deemed neutral and the remaining 10 percent expressed support for the rebels.”
The pro-Assad 70 percent is mostly Sunni. This data flies in the face of the constant barrage of western media distortion about what’s happening in Syria. Previous polling compiled last year by Qatar had similar results, and was likewise ignored by the western media.
The above article quoted a source familiar with the data:
The Sunnis have no love for Assad, but the great majority of the community is withdrawing from the revolt… what is left is the foreign fighters who are sponsored by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They are seen by the Sunnis as far worse than Assad.
Syrian Sunnis are likely disgusted by the behavior of the foreign extremists, which include a laundry list of war crimes, ethnic cleansing, as well as the terrorist bombing of a Sunni Mosque that killed the top Sunni cleric in Syria — along with 41 worshipers and 84 others injured. The Sunni cleric was killed because he was pro-Assad.
The recent calls for Jihad by the Saudi and Qatari Sunni leaders are likely in response to the Syrian government scoring major victories against the rebels. The rebels are now badly losing the war, in large part because they’ve completely lost their base of community support.
There are other key rebel supporters now taking urgent action to bolster the flagging rebel war effort. The leader of al-Qaeda, for example, made a recent plea for Sunnis to support the rebels against the Syrian government, while U.S. politician John McCain journeyed into Syria to meet with rebels — later identified as terrorists — to further commit the U.S. to the rebel side.
Meanwhile, The New York Times confirmed that the CIA had increased its already-massive arms trafficking program into Syria, while the European union agreed to drop the Syrian arms embargo, so that even more arms could be funneled to the rebels.
And to top it off, France now says it has proof that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels — a UN representative has suggested that just the opposite is the case — while the rebels are desperately trying to incite war between Syria and Israel by attacking the Syrian government on the border of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Also relevant is that the pro-Jihad religious leaders of Qatar and Saudi Arabia are taking a giant gamble in their recent anti-Hezbollah proclamations, and risk triggering political instability to these already-shaky regimes, which are hugely dependent on the religious leaders for support.
Hezbollah is still revered throughout the Muslim world for its military defeat of Israel in 2006; and most Muslims will likely be uninterested in waging Jihad in Muslim majority Syria. Also, attacking the Syrian government and Hezbollah would mean allying with Israel and the United States, not an ideal situation for most jihadists.
It’s very possible that the Syrian tinderbox could drag the surrounding Middle Eastern countries into a massive regional war, with Russia and the United States easily within the gravitational pull.
The Syrian conflict could end very quickly if President Obama rejected U.S. support for the rebels and demanded his U.S. allies in the region do the same. Obama should acknowledge the situation in Syria as it exists, and respect the wishes of the Syrian people, who do not want their country destroyed.
Instead, the U.S. is considering arming the rebels even more.
U.S. Senator John McCain revealed the unofficial U.S. government policy for Syria when he said that he would tolerate an extremist takeover of Syria if it weakened Iran.
At this point an extremist takeover of Syria will cost tens of thousands of more lives, millions more refugees, while exploding the region into a multi-country orgy of violence.
The media will blame such genocide on Islamic sectarian violence, and ignore the obvious political motives.
Hopefully, the social movement in Turkey will force the Turkish government out of the western-controlled anti-Syrian alliance, while empowering other Middle Eastern countries to do the same.
UN calls for record $5.2 billion aid package for Syria
Al-Akhbar | June 7, 2013
The United Nations on Friday launched a record $5.2-billion aid appeal to fund operations in Syria and neighboring nations, saying the number of people affected by the country’s brutal conflict was set to spiral.
The call for donations comes as the UN expects that 10.25 million Syrians – half the country’s population – will need humanitarian aid by the end of 2013.
The sum of aid being requested overshadows by far the $2.2 billion the UN sought in 2003 to help cope with the crisis sparked by the war in Iraq.
The $5.2 billion represents money needed across this year to pay for operations that have already been undertaken, are ongoing, or are due to be carried out until the end of December.
“The figure for the new appeal is both an expression of the alarm about the situation facing Syrians and an absence of a political solution,” said Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR.
It also marked a more than threefold increase on the $1.5 billion which the UN previously had said that it needed to cover operations this year.
The UN has so far received $1.0 billion of that sum, after launching an appeal last December.
In the latest appeal, the world body said that a total of $3.8 billion was needed to help Syrian refugees who have spilled across the country’s borders to escape fighting in their homeland.
The figure for operations inside Syria meanwhile was $1.4 billion.
According to UN estimates, more than 80,000 people have been killed and some 1.6 million Syrians have fled the country since the civil war began in March 2011 after a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad.
“The numbers represented in this plan are staggering,” said Amir Abdulla, deputy executive director of the UN’s World Food Program (WFP). “They’re not sustainable over the very long term.”
“They represent a tragedy for Syria and a burden on the region,” he told reporters.
The WFP, which has delivered 500 million meals in Syria so far this year, expects its weekly costs to rise from almost $20 million now to $36 million after September. It says it has a funding shortfall of about $725 million.
The WFP’s Syria Regional Emergency Coordinator Muhannad Hadi said: “We have reached a stage in Syria where some of the people, if they don’t get food from the World Food Programme, they simply do not eat.”
The overwhelming majority of the refugees have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, which are struggling to cope.
In Jordan, for example, one refugee camp is now the equivalent of the nation’s fifth-largest town.
With the revolt against Assad having morphed into a vicious, drawn-out conflict, the total number of refugees is expected to swell to at least 3.45 million by the end of this year, according to the UN appeal.
Within the country, a total of 6.8 million people are forecast to need aid this year, the majority of them people who have been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting.
“These are huge numbers. They are not sustainable over the very long term, which is why we hope that there will be a solution to the situation inside Syria,” said Abdulla.
“We hope that the world will respond, as millions of Syrians displaced in their home country, and refugees in neighboring countries, basically have little else to rely on at this time,” he added.
Syria’s pre-war population was 20.8 million.
“By the end of the year, half of the population of Syria will be in need of aid,” underlined Edwards.
The nature of the Syrian conflict has affected aid efforts, with convoys often having to clear dozens of checkpoints manned by different militias from both sides.
“In other operations, there’s often a front line when you’re dealing with two opposing forces. In this instance you’ve a very complex situation where there are pockets. There is no clear line. You’re dealing with a fragmented opposition who don’t follow a monolithic command and control structure,” said Abdulla.
(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
Russia slams the US for distorting results of trilateral talks on Syria
Press TV – June 7, 2013
Russia’s foreign minister has censured the US Department of State officials for their ‘peculiar comment’ on the results of a trilateral meeting over Syria in Geneva.
The trilateral meeting on Wednesday was held with the participation of UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi and representatives from Russia and the United States. It served as a preparatory move to pave the way for the Geneva 2 talks on the issue of Syria.
During a Thursday press conference, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “I have heard that officials from the US Department of State have given a very peculiar comment on the results of yesterday’s meeting in Geneva between Russia, US, and UN.”
“In particular, the State Department representative stated that Russia, the United States and the United Nations agree that the goal of the new conference in Geneva must be the forming of a new transitional government in Syria. This really matches with what was written down last year,” he said.
“But, if the reports that I have received are true, the State Department went on to add that this should be a transitional government to which the current authorities in Damascus would hand over all their powers. If this was really said by the State Department, this is a very strong distortion of what the talks were about,” the Russian foreign minister added.
He made the remarks in response to an earlier statement by Jennifer Psaki, a spokesperson for the US Department of State, where she reportedly claimed that participants in the preparatory meeting had agreed that the forthcoming talks on Syria should focus on the formation of a transitional government, to which the current administration should give up all powers.
Lavrov further reiterated that Moscow would continue to push for Iran’s participation in the upcoming Geneva meeting despite opposition from some Western states.
Meanwhile, Brahimi has expressed hope that the Geneva conference would convene in July, as the preparatory meeting failed to set a date.
Syria – Israel Is Losing the Battle
By Gilad Atzmon | June 7, 2013
In the last week we have been following desperate British and French attempts to push for military intervention in Syria. It is far from being a secret that both governments are dominated by the Jewish Lobby. In Britain it is the ultra Zionist CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) – apparently 80% of Britain’s conservative MPs are members of the pro-Israeli Lobby. In France the situation is even more devastating, the entire political system is hijacked by the forceful CRIF.
But in case anyone fails to grasp why the Jewish Lobby is pushing for an immediate intervention, Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer. Seemingly, the Syrian army is winning on all fronts. Israel’s military and geo-political calculations have proven to be wrong.
According to Debka, “the battle for Damascus is over”. The Syrian army had virtually “regained control of the city in an epic victory”. The rebels, largely mercenaries, have lost the battle they “can’t do much more than fire sporadically. They can no longer launch raids, or pose threats to the city centre, the airport or the big Syrian air base nearby. The Russian and Iranian transports constantly bringing replenishment for keeping the Syrian army fighting can again land at Damascus airport after months of rebel siege.”
But it isn’t just the capital. Debka reports that “Hezbollah and Syrian units have tightened their siege on the rebels holding out in the northern sector of al Qusayr; other (Syrian army) units have completed their takeover of the countryside around the town of Hama; and a third combined Syrian-Hizballah force has taken up positions around Aleppo.”
Debka maintains that senior IDF officers criticized the Israeli defense minister (Moshe Ya’alon) who “mislead” the Knesset a few days ago estimating that “Bashar Assad controlled only 40% of Syrian territory.” Debka suggests that the Israeli defense Ministry has drawn on a “flawed intelligence assessment and were concerned that the armed forces were acting on the basis of inaccurate intelligence.” Debka stresses, “erroneous assessments… must lead to faulty decision-making.”
Debka is clearly brave enough to admit that Israeli military miscalculations may have led to disastrous consequences. It reports, “the massive Israeli bombardment of Iranian weapons stored near Damascus for Hezbollah, turned out a month later to have done more harm than good. It gave Bashar Assad a boost instead of weakening his resolve.”
Debka is obviously correct. It doesn’t take a genius to predict that an Israeli attack on an Arab land cannot be accepted by the Arab masses, not even by Assad’s bitterest Arab opponents.
Debka maintains that the “intelligence focus on military movements in Syria especially around Damascus to ascertain that advanced missiles and chemical weapons don’t reach Hezbollah laid to a failure in detecting a major movement by Hezbollah militia units towards the Syrian-Israeli border.”
Israel is now facing a new reality. It is facing Hezbollah reinforcements streaming in from Lebanon towards the Golan heights and its border with Syria.
Israel, Debka concludes, will soon find itself “face to face for the first time with Hezbollah units equipped with heavy arms and missiles on the move along the Syrian-Israeli border and manning positions opposite Israel’s Golan outposts and villages.”
Debka is correct to suggest that instead of “growing weaker, Iran’s Lebanese proxy is poised to open another war front and force the IDF to adapt to a new military challenge from the Syrian Golan.”
Rather than The Guardian or Le Monde, it is actually the Israeli Debka that helps us to grasp why Britain and France are so desperate to intervene. Once again, it is a Zionist war which they are so eager to fight.
Sadly enough, it isn’t The Guardian or The New York Times that is there to reveal the latest development in Syria and expose Israeli lethal miscalculations. It is actually a ‘Zionist’ Israeli patriotic outlet that is providing the goods. I actually believe that this form of harsh self-criticism that is embedded in Israeli culture, is the means that sustains Israeli regional hegemony, at least monetarily. This ability to critically examine and disapprove of your own leadership is something I fail to encounter in Western media. Seemingly, the media in Israel is far more tolerant toward criticism than the Zionist dominated Media in the West.
Did an Israel lobby front group organize McCain’s trip to Syria?
Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | June 5, 2013
In an attempt to dispel embarrassing reports that Senator John McCain’s “surprise” trip to Syria featured a meeting with kidnappers — including Mohammad Nour of the Northern Storm rebel group — behind the 2012 abduction of 11 Lebanese religious pilgrims, The Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin cited Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of a little-known organization called The Syrian Emergency Task Force:
“Nobody self-identified as Nour, and none of the guys who were standing outside were in the meeting with McCain,” said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an American nonprofit that helped organize the McCain trip. Moustafa is in the picture and was also inside McCain’s meeting with the rebel commanders, along with Task Force political director Elizabeth O’Bagy.
Rogin’s defense of McCain, of course, rests on the perceived independence of Moustafa’s “NGO.” The Syrian Emergency Task Force, however, appears to have close ties to one foreign government and its powerful American lobby. Not only is Mouaz Moustafa listed as one of the Washington Institute’s “experts,” he recently addressed the AIPAC-created think tank’s annual Soref symposium on the theme of “Inside Syria: The Battle Against Assad’s Regime.”
Even more intriguingly, one of the web addresses for his nonprofit is “syriantaskforce.torahacademybr.org.” The “torahacademybr.org” URL belongs to the Torah Academy of Boca Raton, Florida whose academic goals notably include “inspiring a love and commitment to Eretz Yisroel.”
Of course, none of this will come as any surprise to those who familiar with John McCain’s lifelong service to the Land of Israel, a commitment that has invariably been at the expense of U.S. interests.
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.
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- John McCain and the Desperate Flailing of Syrian Oppositionists’ External Supporters (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Syrian Opposition Disintegrates, SRGS Withdraws
Al-Manar | June 3, 2013
The “Syrian Revolution General Commission” announced its withdrawal from the Syrian opposition body of the National Coalition on Monday. It accused the opposition leaders of misusing funds and pursuing personal ambitions.
SRGC considered, in a statement, that the Coalition’s initiatives do not fit the real nature and goals of the so-called revolution.
“We are withdrawing from the Coalition… because it is taking initiatives far removed from the true revolution and cannot represent the revolution in an authentic way.”
“Money has been wasted on the personal interests of the Coalition members who are more concerned with appearing in the media than helping the revolution,” teh statement added.
SRGC said that the Coalition violated the agreement on increasing the number of the representatives of the Syrian militants in the coalition during last meeting in Istanbul.
SRGC also accused some countries of “utilizing the Syrian revolution for its own interests” and exerting pressure on the Syrian opposition “without taking the true aims of the revolution into consideration.”
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John McCain and the Desperate Flailing of Syrian Oppositionists’ External Supporters
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Going to Tehran | June 3rd, 2013
Much was made last week about the infiltration of Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) into Syria for a brief photo op with various anti-Assad “rebels”—who, it turns out, have allegedly been involved in kidnapping Lebanese Shi’a pilgrims. (Senator McCain claims that none of the individuals with whom he was photographed identified themselves by names of those accused of kidnapping Shi’a pilgrims; his spokesman says it would be “regrettable” if the Senator had been photographed with people accused of committing such acts.) Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, another GOP Senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, noted acidly, “They say there are some pro-Western people and we’re going to vet them. Well, apparently we’ve got a senator over there who got his picture taken with some kidnappers, so I don’t know how good a job we’re going to do vetting those who are going to get the arms.”
In a blog post provocatively titled “Did John McCain Provide Material Support for Syrian Terrorists?”, see here, the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow wrote that a recent Supreme Court ruling (Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, issued in 2010) “upheld the [U.S.] government’s broad reading” of the statute that criminalizes “material support” for terrorism. In this reading, “coordinated political advocacy”—that is, advocacy coordinated with groups engaged designated by Washington as terrorist organizations—counts as material support. Those engaged in such “coordinated political advocacy” can be federally prosecuted; if convicted, they might go to jail for ten years.
In his post, Doug points to a number of cases where U.S. government’s expansive definition of material support for terrorism—now largely ratified by the Supreme Court—has produced disturbing legal outcomes. He argues that:
“lawmakers who approved the law should be subject to the same legal risks. Consider Sen. John McCain, who has been campaigning for war in Syria, just as he previously promoted war most everywhere else around the globe.”
After examining press reports on Sen. McCain’s trip to Syria—and on the activities of some of the rebels McCain met there—Doug concludes that Sen. McCain:
“would seem to have provided ‘material support’ to terrorists.”
“Having his photo taken with Islamic extremists could reasonably be interpreted as an endorsement, which, based on past cases, could be seen as providing ‘material support’ for terrorism. Presumably that isn’t what Sen. McCain intended. But the law’s application is not based on intent.
To be fair to the rest of us, the Justice Department should investigate…[A]s much as I oppose vague and ambiguous criminal enactments by the federal government, I would enjoy seeing Senator McCain in the dock, It would be cosmic justice for his support of the catastrophic invasion in Iraq and endless occupation of Afghanistan.”
After his drive-by photo op in “liberated” Syria, Sen. McCain apparently traveled to Yemen. We were struck by the Yemen Post’s report on his visit, see here; we also append the story below:
“According to several Yemeni-based local newspapers, US Senator John McCain, who briefly visited Yemen earlier this week to offer his support to the coalition government and discuss political and security developments is rumored to have directly urged President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi to facilitate the transfer of Jihadists to Syria.
As the Free Syrian Army is struggling to secure its advances against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose lists of supporters while thin remains mighty in military might, Washington and its allies in the region are said to be looking at ways to swell the ranks of the opposition by allowing foreign fighters to enroll against Assad regime.
In a move which analysts have already qualified as dangerous given the repercussions a similar policy led to in the 1980s, when Jihadists were sent to fight off Russian troops in Afghanistan, security experts worry al-Qaeda will use this opportunity to increase its recruitment pool while offering precious ground experience to its militants, which experience would be used later on against Yemen central government.
A source told several newspapers, ‘Senator McCain’s visit was to drum up support for Jihadist groups fighting Bashar al-Assad regime.’
While the government has so far refused to comment on the issues, quite understandably since its military is still locked in an on-going military struggle against Islamic operatives in its southern provinces, all the while preparing for the return of some Gitmo terror prisoners. Yemeni officials would have a difficult time reconciling the idea of Jihad in one place while fighting off the same rhetoric in its own backyard.”
If true, the Yemen Post report could be construed as another piece of evidence against the apparently terrorist-supporting Sen. McCain. For, according to this story, McCain lobbied the Yemeni government to send more jihadi fighters to Syria, in order to swell the ranks of groups engaged in terrorist activity—representatives of which the Arizona senator had met with immediately before traveling to Yemen.
What all of this suggests is the mounting desperation that advocates of using Syrian oppositionists—whether Syrian or not—to overthrow the Assad government must now be feeling. Their project has failed. But, rather than accept this failure, many, like Sen. McCain, want the United States to double down on their unsuccessful pseudo-strategy—to provide still more support the opposition forces, and even to become directly involved militarily (through no-fly zones, etc.).
Fifty-two years ago, the United States foolishly tried to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government by invading Cuba with a force of anti-Castro rebels. When that force, unsurprisingly, got into trouble almost immediately upon landing in Cuba, there were those who wanted President John F. Kennedy to order U.S. air support for the rebels. While Kennedy made a huge blunder by proceeding with the invasion in the first place, he was sufficiently astute at least not to compound his mistake by taking the United States into an overt, aggressive war against Cuba (certainly a covert campaign of aggression was already underway).
Similarly, President Obama has made egregious blunders in his policy toward Syria since March 2011. Let’s hope he doesn’t compound them by listening to John McCain and others desperate to hold on to delusions of American empire in the Middle East.
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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