Washington raises specter of al Qaeda seizing Syrian chemical weapons

Bill Van Auken

Having first issued threats against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad over unspecified intelligence regarding its chemical weapons, the Obama administration is now warning that these arms may fall into the hands of the “rebels” which Washington itself has backed.

This is the significance of a front-page article published this week by the Washington Post, which reported that, “US officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.”

According to the Post, citing unnamed US officials, members of the Islamist militia, al-Nusra, which Washington has formally designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” and charged is an offshoot of Al Qaeda, overran “the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted” and were “closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions.”

While a decade ago, Washington prepared its invasion of Iraq by propagating lies about the regime of Saddam Hussein collaborating with Al Qaeda and a supposed threat he would supply the terrorist organization with “weapons of mass destruction,” today the Obama administration is floating a new and perverse pretext for war. It is raising the specter that its war for regime change in Syria might place such weapons into the hands of the Al Qaeda-linked forces that the US itself has both armed and strengthened in the bid to oust Assad.


The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble

Paul Craig Roberts

The Derivatives Tsunami and the bond and dollar bubbles are of a different magnitude.

The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years. The Guardian reports that means the federal deficit has to be reduced about $109 billion per year or 3 percent of the current budget. More simply, just divide $1.3 trillion by ten and it comes to $130 billion per year. This can be done by simply taking a three month vacation each year from Washington’s wars.


Get Ready…

Eric Peters

...because here it comes.

The bodies weren’t cold before the slaughter perpetrated by a single homicidal maniac became the basis for calls to slaughter the rights of millions of non-maniacs. That’s us, in case you missed it.

That 27 are dead is horrific, a nightmare. That the deaths of these innocents will be used to demagog gun ownership generally is arguably more so. For our rights – our liberties – are everything. Without them, our lives are nothing more than biological datum. We exist – but we do not live. Because it is not living when your life is controlled by others (those “others” being the people who control the machinery and enforcement apparatus of government) … when your freedom of action is denied, limited, constrained…. not because of any harm you’ve caused. But because someone else caused harm. And worse, because someone else might cause harm. For which you are to be held presumptively responsible.

This is the "logic" (poor word choice there) and the justification used for every abridgement of liberty we’ve suffered in recent memory. Someone might drive drunk. Therefore, anyone who happens to be out driving must submit to being treated as presumptively drunk driving – until they’ve demonstrated otherwise, to the satisfaction of armed and costumed goons. There might be a terrorist at the airport. So millions of innocent people trying to get someplace must submit to being handled – literally – as presumptive terrorists by armed, costumed goons. Purchase “too much” Sudafed – and you are presumed to be a confector of arbitrarily illegal “drugs.” And treated accordingly by armed, costumed goons – despite your having done nothing. That someone else might have done something is sufficient warrant to assume you did – or are about to. And to treat you as if you already had.


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