Justin Raimondo

For months prior to the events in Ghouta the Syrian rebel propaganda machine had been revving up its motors, churning out murky YouTube videos supposedly documenting poison gas attacks by Syrian government forces. None of which were very convincing.

It wasn’t until late summer that the rebel narrative took hold in the mainstream media with an account of a Syrian government attack on Ghouta that reportedly killed anywhere from 1400 to approximately 250 people. The Obama administration latched on to these allegations and then some, assuring us that there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the Assad forces were responsible. Indeed, the President presented the American people with a fairly precise scenario that sounded almost like an eyewitness account:

"In the days leading up to August 21st, we know that Assad’s chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighbourhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces."

Administration officials made it seem as if we had tracked in real time the various steps Syrian government troops took in preparing the atrocity, and the War Party shouted hosannas to the NSA. There was just one problem: it was all a lie.

[Firstly,] as Seymour Hersh reports in the London Review of Books, there was no way the administration could have monitored communications between Assad and his commanders, since the Syrians had discovered – and plugged up – holes in their security months prior to the incident. (We know this thanks to Edward Snowden.) So they were lying about that. Secondly, the sensors the Americans (or someone) had planted near Syrian chemical arms caches detected nothing in the days prior to the attack: if Assad had launched the sarin-packed missiles, alarm bells would’ve gone off in Washington. They didn’t. Yes, but there was an attack utilizing poison gas that took place in Ghouta on August 21 – so who did it?

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Stephen Lendman

Stephen Lendman: Orange Revolution 2.0?

Pro-EU elements called for a Sunday "March of Millions." They hoped for maximum numbers turning out. Their plan is a Washington manipulated power grab. It's got nothing to do with democracy. It ignores Ukrainian sovereign rights. The event's slogan was "Ukraine for Europe." It should be named Ukraine for Western corporate predators.

At noon Sunday Kiev time, Itar Tass estimated about 1,000 in Independence Square. By mid-afternoon, thousands more joined them. Reports differ. AP said "several hundred thousand." Russia Today had a live feed. Visually the crowd size looked large. It was hard estimating numbers. Perhaps tens of thousands, not hundreds participated. It was far below a million.

At the same time, thousands of pro-government supporters gathered in Mariinsky Park. It's close to Ukraine's parliament building. The event's slogan was "Let's Build Europe in Ukraine." According to Kiev's ruling Party of Regions' press report, "speakers are calling for a peaceful settlement of the situation and condemn the actions of the opposing forces, aimed at splitting the society." They're being manipulated to cause trouble. They want President Viktor Yanukovych ousted. They want his cabinet ministers replaced.

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Wayne Madsen

The revelations that Sweden’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the National Defense Radio Establishment or Försvarets Radioanstalt (FRA), helped the global NSA FIVE EYES alliance to eavesdrop on Russia’s political leadership invalidates Sweden’s long-claimed military neutrality, a status that was in place from the end of the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century and which survived the Second World War…

FRA has, ever since the days of the Cold War, been a top Third Party signals intelligence (SIGINT) partner for the NSA, even during times when Sweden’s foreign policy was aggressively neutral, such as during the term of Social Democratic Prime Minister, Olof Palme, assassinated in 1986 by what many suspect was a plot involving the CIA. The use of FRA by the United States as a secretive NSA alliance partner in a deal that was largely unknown to Sweden’s own prime minister evokes similar suspicions about the SIGINT services of two Second Party partners of the NSA. In 1975, after Australia’s Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam demanded information on NSA and CIA activities at the U.S. Pine Gap intelligence complex in Alice Springs, as well as the activities of Australia’s Defense Signals Directorate (DSD), he was deposed in a coup led by Governor General John Kerr, a CIA agent-of-influence.

Similarly, after New Zealand Labor Prime Minister David Lange inquired as to details of the intelligence relationship between New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and NSA, he was deposed in a 1989 backbencher coup engineered by U.S. intelligence.

Ever since Palme’s assassination on a Stockholm street, Sweden has been governed by a series of pro-U.S. prime ministers, in addition to other senior Cabinet ministers. Most notable among these is former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who has been identified by WikiLeaks as a longtime CIA asset.

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