Pepe Escobar

While the whole world was terrified by the prospect of the Obama administration bombing Syria, Chinese President Xi Jinping was busy doing the Silk Road.

One has to love that famous Deng Xiaoping dictum; "Always maintain a low profile". This being the second-largest economy in the world, "low profile" always packs a mighty punch. Cue to September 7, in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital, when Xi officially proposed no less than a New Silk Road in co-production with Central Asia.

Xi's official "economic belt along the Silk Road" is a supremely ambitious, Chinese-fueled trans-Eurasian integration mega-project, from the Pacific to the Baltic Sea; a sort of mega free-trade zone. Xi's rationale seems to be unimpeachable; the belt is the home of "close to 3 billion people and represents the biggest market in the world with unparalleled potential".

Talk about a "wow" factor. But does that mean that China is taking over all of the Central Asian "stans"? It's not that simple.

A roomful of mirrors

On Xi's Silk Road trip, the final destination was Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital, for the 13th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). And to cap it all off, nothing less than a graphic reminder of the stakes involved in the New Great Game in Eurasia; a joint meeting on the sidelines of the SCO, featuring Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

This is Rouhani's first foreign trip since he took office on August 4. Not an epic like Xi's; only two days in Bishkek. In a preliminary meeting face-to-face with Xi, Rouhani even started speaking "diplomatic Chinese" - as in the upcoming negotiations over the Iranian nuclear dossier leading, hopefully, to a "win-win" situation. Xi emphatically supported Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Rouhani stressed the Iran-China relationship "bears vital significance for Asia and the sensitive Middle East issue".

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Gilad Atzmon

“Britain's Jews fall in number but grow in self-confidence” stated yesterday’s Observer headline. Ned Temko ex-editor of the rabid Zionist Jewish Chronicle reviewed the state of the Jews in the Kingdom amid the opening of a new 50 million pounds Jewish cultural centre in West Hampstead.

According to the Observer we are awaiting a “new departure for the Jews of Britain”. But don’t worry folks, this time it isn’t a new global war promoted by CFI (Conservative Friends of Israel) or advocated by Hasbara writer David Aaronovitch. This time it’s just the opening of the JW3 – the London Jewish Community Centre – a spectacular exhibition of British Jews and their gift. “Its initial menu of nearly 1,000 events features well-known figures including Kevin Spacey, Nicholas Hytner, Zoë Wanamaker and Ruby Wax, as well as the former editor of the Times, James Harding, who is now head of BBC news.”

Just a few days ago, in spite of relentless pressure by the Jewish Lobby, the English speaking empire just managed to escape a new immoral interventionist war in Syria. By the weekend, the Observer was kind enough to remind us how influential Jews in this country are. “Despite their major impact in areas such as the professions, science, culture and the arts, the Jews of Britain now comprise a grand total of some 260,000 souls – less than 0.5% of the population. Outwardly, they are more self-confident, especially younger Jews who have grown up in an increasingly multicultural Britain.”

Notwithstanding all those ‘progressive’ voices who insist that Jews are drifting away from Israel and Zionism, The Observer article suggests the complete opposite. “Whatever their own views on Israeli policies, for many Jews on British campuses, ‘anti-Israel’ invective has sometimes come to feel not a lot different from antisemitism.” Jews in general and secular Jews in particular, do identify with Israel and for obvious reasons - It is that image of empowerment which they draw from the state that defines itself as ‘their State’. Consequently, they regard criticism of Israeli politics as an assault against their own existence and ‘right to be’. Similarly, the so-called Jewish anti- Zionist Jews, fall into the exact same trap. They also regard criticism of their vague political agenda as a racially motivated assault and an attempt to rob them of their elementary rights.

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Paul Craig Roberts

The worse threat every American faces comes from his/her own government.

At the federal level the threat is a seventh war (Syria) in 12 years, leading on to the eighth and ninth (Iran and Lebanon) and then on to nuclear war with Russia and China. The criminal psychopaths in Washington have squandered trillions of dollars on their wars, killing and dispossessing millions of Muslims while millions of American citizens have been dispossessed of their homes and careers. Now the entire social safety net is on the chopping bloc so that Washington can finance more wars.

At the state and local level every American faces brutal, armed psychopaths known as the police. The “law and order” conservatives and the “compassionate” liberals stand silent while police psychopaths brutalize children and grandmothers, murder double amputees in wheel chairs, break into the wrong homes, murder the family dogs, and terrify the occupants, pointing their automatic assault weapons in the faces of small children.

The American police perform no positive function. They pose a much larger threat to citizens than do the criminals who operate without a police badge. Americans would be safer if the police forces were abolished.

The police have been militarized and largely federalized by the Pentagon and the gestapo Homeland Security. The role of the federal government in equipping state and local police with military weapons, including tanks, and training in their use has essentially removed the police from state and local control. No matter how brutal any police officer, it is rare that any suffer more than a few months suspension, usually with full pay, while a report is concocted that clears them of any wrong doing.

In America today, police murder with impunity. All the psychopaths have to say is, “I thought his wallet was a gun,” or “we had to taser the unconscious guy we found lying on the ground, because he wouldn’t obey our commands to get up.”

There are innumerable cases of 240 pound cop psychopaths beating a 115 pound woman black and blue. Or handcuffing and carting off to jail 6 and 7 year old boys for having a dispute on the school playground.

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Elahi-Siddiqui

In his speech on Tuesday night, President Obama made an appeal to a largely skeptical American public to support the use of military force in Syria. And he did so, by evoking images that were sure to tug at all of our hearts — images of the Syrian children who had died in the chemical weapons attack in Damascus on August 21. But as Obama continues to voice his outrage against the plight of the Syrian children (which, by the way, he should) he is neglecting to even acknowledge the plight of the Pakistani and Yemeni children who are being killed, not by chemical weapons, but by America’s very own drones.

For long, proponents of the drone war, including Obama who has authorized over 300 strikes in just Pakistan, have held that the strikes are precise and successful in their goal to attack only those deemed to be a security threat to the U.S.

However, just one look at the number of civilians injured or killed by the strikes proves that this narrative is a false one. Between 2004 and 2013, the number of known civilians killed via drone strikes in just Pakistan is said to be up to 900. Of those, close to 200 have been children. In Yemen, American drones are responsible for the deaths of nearly 400 civilians, of which, at least 25 are children.

According to U.N Ambassador Samantha Power, "These weapons kill in the most gruesome possible way. They kill indiscriminately. They are incapable of distinguishing between a child and a rebel."

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Jean Shaoul

Publicly, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu had sought for days to present Israel’s response to the delayed assault on Syria as restrained and supportive. He did not want to appear as though Israel is pushing for war, and banned his ministers from expressing their opinions on the subject.

President Shimon Peres defended President Barack Obama’s decision to seek congressional approval for a military attack on Syria, saying he was “confident the US will respond against Syria… I think it’s permitted to carefully consider a decision beforehand rather than after, and I trust him on anything connected to Israel.”

Netanyahu had said little on the Syrian situation, beyond stating that Israel is not involved but would respond severely if attacked. Unusually, he did not give the traditional Jewish New Year interviews so as not to have to answer any questions about Syria or the possibility of a US attack. He cancelled a planned trip to Rome last week to meet Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who had planned to be there at the same time, in order to manage the political line in Israel. Instead, Kerry flew to Israel yesterday to discuss the Syrian crisis with Netanyahu.

Israel’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, claimed that Obama’s announcement to seek Congressional approval had taken Israel by surprise despite reports that Netanyahu was warned in advance—but uttered not a word of disappointment or criticism.

This show of unity fell apart when the Obama administration opted to engage in the Russian government’s proposal for Syria’s chemical disarmament, hoping that the process would create a new pretext for war.

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Glen Ford

When presidents fail, it is a public spectacle. In his rush into unprovoked war against Syria, President Obama overplayed his hand. Shortly before he appeared on television on Tuesday, “Obama’s handlers advised him that his political position was, for the time being, untenable.” But he’ll soon be back on the warpath, meaner and more aggressive than ever.

It was a strange speech, in which the real news was left for last, popping out like a Jack-in-the-Box after 11 minutes of growls and snarls and Obama’s bizarre whining about how unfair it is to be restrained from making war on people who have done you no harm. The president abruptly switched from absurd, lie-based justifications for war to his surprise announcement that, no, Syria’s turn to endure Shock and Awe had been postponed. The reader suddenly realizes that the diplomatic developments had been hastily cut and pasted into the speech, probably only hours before. Obama had intended to build the case for smashing Assad to an imperial peroration – a laying down of the law from on high. But his handlers threw in the towel, for reasons both foreign and domestic. Temporarily defeated, Obama will be back on the Syria warpath as soon as the proper false flag operations can be arranged.

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LiberationNews.org

1. “Let me be clear: President Obama is not asking the United States to go to war.” 
–John Kerry, Sept. 3
Translation: We are asking the United States to go to war without calling it war.

2. “The evidence here [against the Syrian government] is so clear and so powerful.”
 –John Kerry, Sept. 1 on ABC This Week
Translation: There is nothing clear or powerful about the “evidence,” but if we keep repeating this line maybe you will just believe us. Anonymously some officials have admitted that the “evidence” is “no smoking gun” but that will not be said that publicly. We will also omit the fact that the intelligence reports come out of the same office (Director of Intelligence James Clapper) that last year lied in front of Congress about the existence of the NSA domestic surveillance program.

3. It is "undeniable" and there is “no doubt” that the Syrian government ordered the chemical weapons attacks.
Translation: We are simply going to ignore that the Syrian government is vehemently denying the accusations, and that tens of millions of people around the world indeed have lots of “doubt” about our version of events.

4. “The belated decision by the [Syrian] regime to grant access to the UN team is too late to be credible.” 
-White House statement, Aug. 25
Translation: We actually never wanted the UN to investigate the attack, we just wanted to use the UN as a cover to legitimize our own airstrikes. We tried to dissuade the UN inspectors—who were accepted by the Syrian government the day after submitting their request—from going but now that the inspectors have gone ahead and gone to Syria, we have to discredit their investigation in advance.

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John W. Whitehead

News headlines to the contrary, there is actually more taking place right now than just the Obama administration’s conveniently distracting push for military action against Syria.

We’re still having our privacy rights ravaged by the surveillance state. The latest revelations confirm long-standing fears that there is nothing private from the government, which has used a variety of covert, unconstitutional tactics to gain access to Americans’ personal data, online purchases and banking, medical records, and online communications. The government’s methods include the use of supercomputers to hack through privacy settings, collaborations with corporations to create “back doors” for NSA access into encrypted files, and the use of strong-arm tactics against those technology and internet companies who refuse to cooperate.

We’re still being taken to the cleaners by a fiscally irresponsible and semi-corrupt government. Not only does Congress continue to spend money we don’t have on pork-barrel projects, but we’re writing welfare checks to regimes in the Middle East, sending billions of dollars in “foreign aid” to Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Egypt, among others. That aid usually takes the form of military aid (money for weapons, aircraft, and other military hardware from U.S. companies, as well as training at U.S. military schools) and economic aid. Earlier this year, President Obama approved a foreign aid package that translates to more than $11 million per day in military aid for Israel. As if that didn’t burden taxpayers enough, you can add a $4 million and counting printing error to the tab as a result of problems with the new $100 bill (the first batch had blank spots, the second batch was stolen by thieves, and this latest batch had too much ink).

And we’re still being terrorized by an out-of-control police state. Daily, there are new headlines about SWAT teams breaking down doors and militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. A 107-year-old Arkansas man is dead after a “shootout” with a SWAT team. Then there was the 16-year-old teenager who skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for a fleeing burglar. Or the July 26 shooting of an unarmed black man in Austin “who was pursued and shot in the back of the neck by Austin Police… after failing to properly identify himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident.” Or the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in the leg by police after she refused to show her hands.

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Gilad Atzmon

Today is Yom Kippur and the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Arab–Israeli Yom Kippur War. That war caught Israel totally on the hop. In the first days of the conflict, both the IDF and the IAF were defeated and humiliated. Moshe Dayan, the legendary Israeli defence minister, contemplated out loud the ‘destruction of the 3rd Temple’ and, according to different intelligence sources, Israel was close to using its ‘Samson option’ - a nuclear strike against Egypt.

Interestingly, neither the Egyptians nor the Syrians had any plans to ‘throw the Jews to the sea.’ In fact, their military objectives were rather limited – liberating land occupied by Israel in 1967. The Egyptians attempted to secure a narrow bridge-head over the Suez Canal and the Syrians hoped to free the Golan Heights or at least part of it.

But driven by pre-Traumatic Stress (Pre-TSD), Israeli army generals and the government managed to recast this joint Arab operation as nothing less than an emerging Shoa. Consequently, at least for the first days of the war, they panicked and unnecessarily and critically exhausted Israeli military assets and force.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel has access to the highest US political, military, and intelligence sources. It steals everything it can get its hands on. It ignores fundamental laws, rules, agreements and norms. It fits the classic definition of a rogue state. So does America.

Millions worldwide owe Edward Snowden sincere gratitude. He revealed what's vital to know. He connected important dots to do so. He revealed unconstitutional NSA spying. He did it courageously. When governments operate lawlessly, exposing wrongdoing is crucial. Doing it entails risks. Snowden did so anyway. He did it because it's the right thing to do. On September 11, London's Guardian published important new information. It did so from documents he provided.

On September 12, Russia Today (RT) headlined "EU lawmakers nominate Snowden for Sakharov human rights prize." European parliamentarians established it in December 1988. They did so to honor individuals and organizations championing human rights and freedom of thought.

Nelson Mandela and Russia's Anatoly Marchenko were its first joint recipients. In 1992, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo became the first organization given the coveted award. It's generally granted on or around December 10. It's the day in 1948 when the UN General Assembly ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's commemorated worldwide as Human Rights Day. Perhaps Snowden will be this year's recipient.

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Bill Van Auken

Avraham Shalom, Ami Ayalon, Yaakov Peri, Yuval Diskin,
Avi Dichter and Carmi Gillon (Sony/Allstar Picture Library)

A secret memo provided by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden to the British Guardian newspaper reveals that the US spy agency is funneling raw intelligence data, including information from intercepted communications of US citizens, to Israeli intelligence.

“The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens,” the Guardian article by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill reports.

The undated five-page memo records an agreement reached between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, the ISNU (Israeli Sigint National Unit), in March 2009, during the first months of the Obama administration.

Entitled “Protection of US Persons,” it purports to lay out a protocol for the Israeli spy agency’s handling of “signals intelligence information that has not been reviewed for foreign intelligence purposes or minimized,” i.e., raw intercepts provided without any filtering by the NSA itself. “Minimization” refers to an ostensible policy of determining whether phone calls, emails and other communications intercepted from American citizens are “essential to assess or understand the significance of the foreign intelligence.”

The memo states that the terms of the agreement are designed to ensure that the handling of such material by Israeli intelligence is “consistent with the requirements upon NSA by US law and Executive Order to establish safeguards protecting the rights of US persons under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.”

The Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” barring searches without narrowly defined warrants based on probable cause. It has been ripped to shreds by the NSA’s domestic spying operations, which amount to the wholesale seizure of personal records from virtually every American citizen and millions of people abroad, with no specific warrants whatsoever.

While insisting that the Israelis operate with deference to the US Constitution and law, the memo adds, “This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law.” In other words, in practice ISNU and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad are free to do as they please.

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Peter Symonds

Chemical claims should be investigated, not used as pretext
for war. [Recent] reporting has called into question these early,
credulous reports—and highlighted the continuing media failure
to treat WMD claims with the skepticism they deserve. (FAIR)

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are due to meet today in Geneva for talks over Moscow’s plan for Syria to give up its chemical weapons. Even before the two sit down, however, the Obama administration has already made clear that the US intends to exploit the negotiations to provide a new pretext for its planned military onslaught on Syria.

In an online chat forum yesterday, Kerry insisted that the US would continue to push for a binding UN resolution that would punish Syria if it delayed or broke off the disarmament process envisaged in the Russian proposal. “We need a full resolution from the Security Council in order to have confidence that this has the force it ought to have,” he said.

The French government has already drawn up a resolution that it plans to table in the UN Security Council that France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius declared would involve “extremely serious” consequences if Syria failed to adhere to a strict timetable for the destruction of its chemical weapons stocks.

The French resolution also contains a condemnation of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad for the gassing of civilians. Like the Obama administration, the French government’s “case” for punishing Syria is based on lies. It has provided no evidence that the chemical weapons attack on August 21 was carried out by the Syrian military, nor has it refuted the findings of a Russian investigation which found that anti-Assad Islamist militias were responsible.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Putin established as the leader of the free world and the defender of the rule of law - Paul Craig Roberts

Putin’s article in the September 11 New York Times has the stuck pigs squealing. The squealing stuck pigs are just who you thought they would be–all those whose agendas and profits would be furthered by an attack on Syria by the obama Stasi regime.

Included among the squealing stuck pigs are Human Rights Watch bloggers who seem to be financed out of the CIA’s back pocket.

Does any institution remain that has not been corrupted by Washington’s money?

Notice that the reason Putin is being criticized is that he has blocked the obama regime from attacking Syria and slaughtering countless numbers of Syrians in the name of human rights. The stuck pigs are outraged that obama’s war has been blocked. They were so much looking forward to the mass slaughter that they believe would advance their profits and agendas.

Most of Putin’s critics are too intellectually challenged to comprehend that Putin’s brilliant and humane article has left Putin the leader of the free world and defender of the rule of law and exposed obama for what he is–the leader of a rogue, lawless, unaccountable government committed to lies and war crimes.

Putin, being diplomatic, was very careful in his criticism of obama’s September 10 speech in which obama sought to justify Washington’s lawlessness in terms of “American exceptionalism.” Obama, attempting to lift his criminal regime by the bootstraps up into the moral heavens, claimed that United States government policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.”

What obama told Americans is exactly what Hitler told the Germans. The Russians, having borne more than anyone else the full weight of the German war machine, know how dangerous it is to encourage people to think of themselves as exceptional, unbound by law, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Security Council, and humane concerns for others. Putin reminded obama that “God created us equal.”

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Voice of Russia (VoR)

A retired US military officer Karen Kwiatkowski in an interview to VoR reveals interesting facts about American international policy and its relations with the Middle East - in particular, the information that the US provided chemical and biological weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime.

Twelve years ago America initiated its global war on terrorism following the 9/11 attacks. Looking back over these years, how far has America got in the struggle against the terrorist groups? And what did they manage to achieve?

First, we need to clarify. The United States was allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan up until August and September, early September of 2001. Secretary of State Colin Powell has just been in Kabul, he granted a monetary award to the Taliban government in recognition of their success in almost eliminating the opium trade after 6 years of trying.

In mid 2001, in the middle of that year, Taliban oil dignitaries will be unattained and used in Texas, as agreements on Afghanistan oil pipeline were being pursued, beyond that US intelligence and military relations with al-Qaeda's leader Bin Laden and others had been developed since the unset of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980s.

So, we go a way back with all these groups that today we understand to be terrorist groups. It isn't that the United States is in work with terrorist groups, with al-Qaeda. And what makes Obama's attacks in Libya and potential attacks in Syria so interesting – we are, as in the 1980s, fighting, in some respects, on the side of Muslim fundamentalist rebel groups, just as we were fighting with the Taliban 30 years ago against the Soviet Union.

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A short comment by Paul Craig Roberts

Putin Steps Into World Leadership Role

Vladimir Putin is established as the leader of the free world and the defender of the rule of law. Barack Obama is established as the leader of a lawless, rogue war criminal government that lies through its teeth and schemes to massacre millions of peoples.

This morning in the New York Times the President of Russia writes:

“It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.’”

“But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.”

“We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.”

“If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.”

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