Tierry Meyssan

In English: NATO preparing vast disinformation campaign

Des États membres de l’OTAN et du CCG préparent un coup d’État et un génocide sectaire en Syrie. Si vous voulez vous opposer à ces crimes, agissez dès maintenant: faites circuler cet article sur le Net et alertez vos élus.

Dans quelques jours, peut-être dès vendredi 15 juin à midi, les Syriens qui voudront regarder les chaînes nationales verront celles-ci remplacées sur leurs écrans par des télévisions créées par la CIA. Des images réalisées en studio montreront des massacres imputés au gouvernement, des manifestations populaires, des ministres et des généraux donnant leur démission, le président el-Assad prenant la fuite, les rebelles se rassemblant au cœur des grandes villes, et un nouveau gouvernement s’installant au palais présidentiel.

Cette opération, directement pilotée depuis Washington par Ben Rhodes, conseiller adjoint de sécurité nationale des États-Unis, vise à démoraliser les Syriens et à permettre un coup d’État. L’OTAN, qui se heurte au double veto de la Russie et de la Chine, parviendrait ainsi à conquérir la Syrie sans avoir à l’attaquer illégalement. Quel que soit le jugement que l’on porte sur les événements actuels en Syrie, un coup d’État mettrait fin à tout espoir de démocratisation.

Très officiellement, la Ligue arabe a demandé aux opérateurs satellitaires Arabsat et Nilesat de cesser la retransmission des médias syriens, publics et privés (Syria TV, Al-Ekbariya, Ad-Dounia, Cham TV etc.). Il existe un précédent, puisque la Ligue avait déjà œuvré à la censure de la télévision libyenne pour empêcher les dirigeants de la Jamahiriya de communiquer avec leur peuple. Il n’y a pas de réseau hertzien en Syrie où les télévisions sont exclusivement captées par satellite. Mais cette coupure ne laissera pas les écrans noirs.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: A woman begs in the street at Sol square in Madrid Sunday, June 10, 2012. Spain's grinding financial misery will get worse this year despite the country's request for a European financial lifeline of up to a 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to save its banks. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Sunday that becoming the hot spot in the eurozone debt crisis is a big blow to a nation that took pride [in being] he continent's economic superstar just a few years ago. (D. Ochoa de Olza/GN)

This one won't be the last. The late Bob Chapman warned years ago about what's unfolding now in real time. He explained what this writer calls bad policies assure bad results. It happens every time.

They've simmered for decades. They continue now. They're worse than ever. Gresham's Law explained that bad money drives out good. So does bad behavior.

Money power in private hands assures it. Throughout its history, the Fed bears direct responsibility for monetary debasement and decline of American living standards. A 1913 dollar isn't worth a plug nickel today. Ahead perhaps it'll be worthless.

Chapman predicted it. He was spot on about what he told readers. He was way ahead of what others revealed. Before anyone saw trouble coming, he warned about easy money, market manipulation, reckless speculation, counterproductive fixes, and unsustainable debt causing today's crisis.

He predicted an eventual house of cards collapse. Only its timing remained uncertain. He said it could happen anytime from 2012 to 2017. He's not around to see it. It won't be pleasant when it comes.

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Paul Craig Roberts

“Ruins of Henry House, First Battle of Bull Run (CDS/AEI)

I have always been intrigued by the Battle of Bull Run, the opening battle of the US Civil War, known to southerners as the War of Northern Aggression. Extreme hubris characterized both sides, the North before the battle and the South afterwards.

Republican politicians and their ladies in their finery road out to Manassas, the Virginia town through which the stream, Bull Run, flowed, in carriages to watch the Union Army end the “Southern Rebellion” in one fell swoop. What they witnessed instead was the Union Army fleeing back to Washington with its tail between its legs. The flight of the northern troops promoted some southern wags to name the battle, the Battle of Yankee Run.

The outcome of the battle, left the South infected with the hubris that had so abruptly departed the North. The southerners concluded that they had nothing to fear from cowards who ran away from a fight. “We have nothing to worry about from them,” decided the South. It was precisely at this point that hubris defeated the South.

Historians report that the flight back to Washington left the Union Army and the US capital in a state of disorganization for three weeks, during which time even a small army could have taken the capital. Historians inclined not to see the battle as a victory for the South claim that the southerners were exhausted by the effort it took to put the yankees to flight and simply hadn’t the energy to pursue them, take Washington, hang the traitor Lincoln and all the Republicans, and end the war.

Exhausted troops or not, if Napoleon had been the southern general, the still organized southern army would have been in Washington as fast as the disorganized Union. Possibly the southerners would have engaged in ethnic cleansing by enslaving the yankees and selling them to Africans, thus ejecting from the country the greed-driven northern imperialists who, in the southern view, did not know how to behave either in private or in public.

It was not southern exhaustion that saved the day for the North. It was southern hubris. The Battle of Bull Run convinced the South that the citified northerners simply could not fight and were not a military threat.

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Daniel McAdams

A respected mainstream publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung(FAZ), has reported that the infamous Houla massacre in Syria, which the US and NATO hoped would be the casus belli for their planned invasion, was in fact carried out by rebel forces.

Highlighted in the National Review (of all places), the FAZ investigation was exhaustive and convincing. NRO reports on the original FAZ story:

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

"the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

For weeks, alternative media analysts and even eyewitnesses had been poking enormous holes in the suspiciously convenient Western narrative that Assad's forces slaughtered the villagers, cutting and killing at close range. No one paid attention, as usual.

The NRO piece continues with a fascinating story from a Christian monastery in the vicinity:

"Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. 'Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,' Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote."

Either Mother Agnès-Mariam is a liar or Hillary Clinton is a liar. You decide.

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Felicity Arbuthnot

“There was no honour left; ruin and war and the blood was flowing...Sadness, hate and the reign of arbitrary destruction.” ~ Rachid Taha, Algerian Musician and lyricist

Shocking details have emerged from an impeccable source (not named for obvious reasons) of the execution on Thursday 7th June, in Baghdad, of Abed Hamid Hamoud, President Saddam Hussein’s former personal secretary and aide.

Mr Hamoud, fourth on America’s 2003 asinine, juvenile playing card list of Iraq’s sovereign government, has been held in jail since June 2003, after being arrested by US occupying forces.

He was sentenced to death in October 2010 with former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz and former intelligence chief Sadoun Shakir, heightening fears for their imminent execution.

“What you have not heard” states the commentator : “is that (Mr Hamoud) was led to his execution whilst under the impression that he was going for a medical check up.

“The Iraqi government didn’t even notify his family or relatives or make arrangements with them to deliver his body.”

A chilling observation on America and Britain’s “New Iraq” is that the Maliki government is: “ … so intent on revenge that they have waved the formalities of telling a person they were taking him to his execution.”

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Stephen Lendman

BBC Uses a 2003 Picture from Iraq to Incite War Against Syria

■ When America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. Journalism is the first casualty. Managed news misinformation substitutes for truth and full disclosure.

"2">■ Cheerleading propaganda is relentless. Readers and viewers are betrayed. Imperial wars are called liberating ones. Separating fact from fiction is challenging.

■ Only replacing independent regimes with pro-Western puppet ones matters. Media scoundrels support it. Blood on their hands doesn't deter them. Steady income eases conscience pangs. Soul selling pays well.

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Wayne Madsen

The annual secretive Bilderberg Group conference, which brings together the capitalist world’s financial, political, and media kingpins in various venues, was held this year in Chantilly, Virginia, near the back gate of Washington Dulles International Airport. The Marriott Westfields resort hotel venue allowed official and unofficial guests to make their way from the airport as clandestinely as possible, thus avoiding the large number of protesters representing both the progressive “Occupy” and conservative “Tea Party” movements who gathered at the government security perimeter erected for the “private” conference.

This year’s Bilderberg conference featured three guests from Russia. However, unlike the “establishment” figures from Western nations, including the United States, Britain, Germany, France, and Canada, two of the three Russians represented the anti-Valdimir Putin opposition. Present at Bilderberg 2012 were Anatoly Chubais and Garry Kasparov, leading anti-Putin Russian politicians.

Chubais is reviled among a majority of Russians for shepherding the wholesale privatization of Soviet and Russian Federation state enterprises under the administration of President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The chief benefactors of the privatization were a handful of Russian entrepreneurs who soon became billionaire oligarchs. Many of these oligarchs soon found themselves in prison in Russia or in exile in Britain and Israel to avoid prosecution in Russia. Today, Chubais is the head of Rusnano, a leading Russian nanotechnology firm.

At the Chantilly conclave, Chubais rubbed shoulders with the robber barons of Wall Street, including former Goldman Sachs and Citigroup senior executive and Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, Goldman Sachs International Chairman Peter Sutherland, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company co-chairman Henry Kravis and former Obama Office of Management and Budget director and current Citigroup vice chairman Peter Orszag.

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Onésimo Alvarez-Moro

Ahora que vemos el anuncio de que España recibirá fondos europeos para sus bancos, algunos han concluído que España ahora está como Grecia y que este rescate a España lo confirma. Lo llamo rescate porque parece que hay bastante obsesión en los medios para que se llame rescate.

Los gobiernos normalmente tienen la tendencia, y la obligación, de medir sus palabras y se supone que evitar el uso de la palabra rescate tiene el objetivo de diferenciar lo que se ha anunciado de otros rescates de países, rescates de verdad. Hay varias diferencias importantes entre las ayudas europeas de Grecia y de España que demuestran la equivocación de los que utilizan este anuncio de ayudas como confirmación de que España y Grecia están en la misma situación. Algunas de estas diferencias incluyen las siguientes:

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William T. Hathaway & Paul Carline

A Review of Gaither Stewart's latest novel, The Trojan Spy

Gaither Stewart's The Trojan Spy takes the thriller genre an important step forward, advancing it from the work of his predecessors John le Carré and Robert Ludlum. Le Carré and Ludlum rebelled against the conventions of the classic spy thrillers, which assumed that we're the good guys who are under attack by bad guys so evil that we're justified in bending the rules to save ourselves from them. In that world, lies, deceit, sabotage, and even murder are sometimes necessary to defend peace, justice, and the American (or Western) Way against (pick one, depending on when the book was written) Nazis, communists, or terrorists.

Le Carré and Ludlum made the genre less predictable in terms of identifying the bad guys. Instead of these being agents of the particular ennemi du jour, as in the simplistic 007 stories, they gave us plots revolving around corrupt politicians, rogue secret service agents, and insider conspiracies -- as in the film Syriana, or le Carré's The Constant Gardener. The perennial theme of many of le Carré's stories is the callous amorality of secret services -- especially the American and British ones -- who routinely betray others, even their own agents, for very questionable ulterior motives. The good guys -- whether civilian or secret service -- are often sacrificed for political or operational ends.

In Ludlum's "Bourne" series of books and films the suggestion is that the hero, Jason Bourne, has been subjected to mind-altering techniques which largely erased his original persona, replacing it with that of a programmable assassin. There are clear links here to secret government-sponsored programs such as MKUltra -- which were more than likely used in a number of recent faked "terrorist" bombing incidents, notably those of the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid and the December 2010 "underwear bomber," Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- both of whom were described by witnesses as appearing confused and disoriented, with glazed eyes.

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Nile Bowie

For sixteen months, the people of Syria have undergone economic hardship, tremendous human suffering and the unparalleled horrors of war. As the Syrian opposition officially abandons the ceasefire and calls for foreign intervention and the imposition of a no-fly zone [1], US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced a new transition plan that would topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, signaling the increasing possibility of intervention outside the mandate of the United Nations [2]. Following clashes between militant rebel groups and government forces that claimed the lives of 80 Syrian troops [3], rebels in Aleppo have reportedly taken 11 hostages and vowed to release them only when a new state is established [4]. While Bashar al-Assad attributes the perpetuation of Syria’s crisis to outside forces [5], Iran has expressed its readiness to mount an armed resistance against foreign military forces in Syria [6]. Regardless of who perpetrated the recent killings in Qubayr and Houla, the profoundly disturbing images of lifeless children begs the question, has the Syrian crisis reached a point of incorrigibility?

Western media has largely relied on unconfirmed opposition accounts crediting the Shabiha, pro-government Alawite militias with carrying out massacres across Syria as a result of the Assad government “brainwashing the militia into believing the Sunni majority was their enemy,” as reported by The Telegraph [7]. Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has recently reported that anti-Assad Sunni militants carried out the massacre in Houla, targeting pro-government Alawi and Shia minorities, “Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population is Sunni. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet” [8].

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: 14-year old Malik Ahmed Suleiman after he was strangled to death for supporting Bashar al-Assad.

A Syrian documentary aired on June 9, and a June 7 report by Germany's leading broadsheet provide more evidence. Both refutes Western and scoundrel media misinformation. More on the latter below.

On May 10, suburban Damascus suicide bombings killed 55 and injured hundreds. The attack happened near Syria's military intelligence complex. Children were killed. So were drivers and others heading for work.

At the time, SANA state media said rescue workers collected "15 bags of limbs and torn-off body parts" from the scene. The blasts also destroyed 105 cars.

Western reports spuriously blamed Assad. He had nothing to do with it, other insurgent massacres, daily attacks, targeted assassinations, and Western-sponsored terrorism.

On June 10, SANA state media's documentary discussed the Damascus incident. It pointed fingers the right way. It named Western-recruited Jabhet al-Nasra terrorists responsible. They also carried out earlier attacks.

Jordanian terrorist Abu Musaab, Syrian Mohammad Ali Ghazi, and an Iraqi called Marwan "supervised the operation." Others involved included "Mohammad Ahmad Kamaleddin, a Syrian from Serghaya, Yasser, another Syrian, and an Iraqi known as Allawi."

Testimonies were aired. Medical student Abdullah said the Yousef al-Hajer terrorist organization recruited him to participate. He met Iraqi insurgents involved. They were affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Abdullah was enlisted to help make explosives. He didn't know for what purpose. He said Jabhet al-Nasra is active throughout Syria. It works cooperatively with Free Syrian Army elements. Their mission is violence and destruction to destabilize Syria and oust Assad. Recruits were deceived to go along.

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Adnan Al-Daini

So let me get this right: free market economists’, right wing politicians’ and commentators’ solution to the economic depression engulfing Europe and the U.S. is to cut government spending, slash welfare payments to the bone, and make it easier for employers to fire people.

Additionally, cut taxes to those at the top and give them a freer hand to incentivize them to use their entrepreneurial skills to create businesses, and with that jobs. Do not worry about the gap between the rich and the poor, they say, this is the price we have to pay for a dynamic economy that will make us all richer; they seem to have forgotten why we are in this mess.

Let us for a moment put aside the immorality of the impact of such actions on the vulnerable, the poor and the rising army of the unemployed; are they right? Do we really need to sacrifice social justice for good economic performance? 

Research by the Canadian Council on Social Development sought to examine those assertions and ideas. Put simply, it examined the proposition of the U.S economist Arthur Okun, who wrote:

Inequality reflects a system of rewards and penalties that is designed to encourage effort ...The pursuit of efficiency necessarily creates inequalities. And hence society faces a trade-off between equality and efficiency.

The work looked at per capita GDP growth in the 1990s, and for household after-tax income inequality (Gini index) in 1995 for Canada, the U.S., Australia, the UK and eight other European countries.

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James Cogan

A critical moment is approaching in the protracted vendetta by the US government and its allies against the WikiLeaks organisation and its editor Julian Assange.

The legal avenues to prevent Assange’s extradition from Britain to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault are rapidly being exhausted. On May 30, the majority of a seven-judge bench of the British Supreme Court rejected his appeal against rulings that a Swedish-lodged European Arrest Warrant should be enforced.

Assange’s lawyers are expected to seek a re-opening of the appeal before a deadline on June 13. The British judges, however, are unlikely to accept the defence argument that their ruling was based on legal points not raised during the hearing. His lawyers could further attempt to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, but that also is given little prospect of success.

Assange’s extradition to Sweden will almost certainly result in criminal charges and his detention. It would also establish the conditions for US authorities to unveil a secret grand jury indictment on charges of espionage and to file a warrant for his extradition from Sweden.

The existence of the secret indictment in Virginia in 2010 was confirmed in leaked emails by Fred Burton, a vice-president of the private intelligence company Stratfor. Burton wrote in February 2011: “Not for Pub—We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect… Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever.”

This intense hatred of Assange in US ruling circles is the product of WikiLeaks’ public exposure of the sinister machinations and crimes of the US government and governments around the world. The website published information that revealed US atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as hundreds of thousands of American diplomatic cables documenting anti-democratic intrigues that go on every day in the corridors of power internationally.

The response of the US political establishment has been vicious and relentless. Assange has faced public death threats. Vice President Joseph Biden accused him of being a “high-tech terrorist.” WikiLeaks has had its Internet domains shut down and its financial operations blocked. Its employees and supporters have been subjected to state harassment and surveillance.

Alleged whistle-blower Bradley Manning has been detained without charge for more than two years and is to be dragged before a military court martial in November. Manning faces life imprisonment for espionage and “aiding the enemy”, as would Assange if he were prosecuted on the same charges.

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Ellen Brown

Modern version of Niobe and her sorrows:
Niobe and her European lovers this time...

The problem is all inside your head she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.
~ Lyrics by Paul Simon

The Euro appears to be a marriage of incompatible partners. A June 1st article in the UK Telegraph titled “Why Europe’s Love Affair with the European Project Is Ending” reported that two-thirds of 9,000 respondents thought that having the euro as their single currency was a mistake.

For Greece, it was a tragic mismatch from the beginning; and like many a breakup, it is really about money. Greece is a vivacious young woman chained to a tyrannical old man. She yearns to be free to dance on her own; but breaking up is hard to do. Defaulting on her debts will force her out of the Eurozone and back to issuing drachmas, and she could get brutally beaten by speculators on foreign exchange markets for her insolence.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to an ugly divorce. The treaties binding the 17 member nations are just a set of rules, entered into by mutual agreement; and rules can be bent or broken, especially in crises. The ECB (European Central Bank) broke a litany of rules to save the banks, and so did the Federal Reserve to save Wall Street in 2008. Rules that can be bent for banks can be bent for people and nations—not just Greece, but all the other Eurozone countries threatening to file for divorce.

Paul Simon says there are 50 ways, but here are five creative alternatives.

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Alex Lantier

The US policy of assassination is inherently indiscriminate and criminal in character.

Speaking in Kabul yesterday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta threatened Pakistan with a ground intervention if it did not crush forces in Pakistan fighting US occupation troops in Afghanistan.

Panetta singled out the so-called Haqqani network, a militia in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region that mounts raids on US forces across the Afghan-Pakistani border. He said, “Haqqani safe havens still exist on the other side of the border. Pakistan has to take action [to stop] allowing terrorists in their country to attack our forces on the other side of the border. We are reaching the limits of our patience here.”

He continued, “It is difficult to achieve a secure Afghanistan as long as there is a safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan from which they can conduct attacks on our forces. … The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.”

Asked if the US might send ground troops from Afghanistan to attack targets in Pakistan, Panetta refused to rule it out. “I’m not going to go into particulars,” he said. “It’s about protecting our forces and trying to urge the Pakistanis to take the steps they have to take to control the situation.”

Panetta spoke alongside Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, who called for joint action by the US-backed Afghan puppet regime and the Pakistani government in Islamabad. “I do hope,” he said, “that gradually they will come to the conclusion to cooperate with us. If that cooperation starts, we will be able to disrupt their command and control, disrupt their training, disrupt their weapon recruitment and also will be able to eliminate or capture their leadership. Without doing that, I think our endeavor to achieve victory will become much more difficult.”

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