Médecins sans Frontières says symptoms indicate mass exposure to neurotoxic agent, as Syrian state TV claims chemical weapons found in rebel tunnels. ● Médecins sans Frontières has said hospitals it supports in Damascus treated thousands of patients for neurotoxicity, the first independent indication of the use of poison gas in a deadly incident on Wednesday in the Syrian capital. The medical charity said the hospitals received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on Wednesday morning, of which 355 reportedly died. Dr Bart Janssens, director of operations at the charity, said: "Medical staff working in these facilities provided detailed information to MSF doctors regarding large numbers of patients arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excess saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress." He said he could not confirm the cause of symptoms or the culprits.

Syrian soldiers have found chemical agents in tunnels dug by the militants in the Damascus suburb of Jobar, with some of the soldiers having been affected by the chemicals, Syria's TV says.

Reuters: Russia: Syrian rebels preventing probe into alleged chemical attack ● Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday Syria's opposition was preventing an objective investigation into allegations the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack. "Much needed signals from the opposition, including its readiness to guarantee the safety and effective work of U.N. experts on territory controlled by militants, unfortunately are not forthcoming," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "It is directly preventing an objective investigation into the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria."

Russia Today/LiveLeak: Syria: Army 'finds US made chemical weapons effects' in opposition stronghold ● Syrian government forces says they found materials including chemical weapons protection masks made in the US, and toxic chemical agent containers made in Saudi Arabia, when it raided a tunnel in the opposition stronghold of Jobar near Damascus on Saturday. A Syrian army officer told reporters that soldiers participating in the raid showed symptoms such as suffocation and dilated pupils in addition to vomiting and general fatigue. According to the army, symptoms appeared minutes after opposition militants detonated two explosive devices. The officer said chemical agents are still being analysed. The claims follow condemnation from countries such as the UK, France and the US of the Assad government after an alleged chemical weapons attack earlier in the week. Russia, has suggested that opposition militants could have been responsible for the attack.

Russia Today: Syrian rebels use toxic chemicals against govt troops near Damascus - state media ● Syrian rebels have used chemical weapons against regime forces in the Damascus suburb of Jobar, where soldiers discovered stockpiles of toxic poisoning antidotes, state media reports. According to SANA citing “an official source” suffocation cases among army soldiers have been reported. The source told the agency that army unit pushed into the area, where soldiers were attacked, and seized a warehouse containing material labeled 'Made in KSA' as well as a large number of protective masks. In addition, the army discovered a stockpile of chemical poisoning antidotes with 'The Qatari-German Company for Pharmaceutical Industries' label on them.

Syrian Radio & TV: BREAKING: Syrian soldiers have found chemical agents in tunnels dug by the terrorists in the Damascus suburb of Jobar, with some of the soldiers having been affected by the Chemicals.

LiveLeak: FSA trial sarin/nerve gas on rabbits 3-4 months prior to the chemical attacks in Ghouta - VIDEO

Global Research: Deleted Daily Mail Online Article: “US Backed Plan for Chemical Weapon Attack in Syria to Be Blamed on Assad” ● In January 29, 2013, Britain’s most popular Daily Newspaper, in its online version Dailymail.co.uk published an article titled: U.S. ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime’ A few days later they pulled the article. What the reason was for the deletion remains unclear. The article was published at this URL.

Kevin Barrett: Syria chemical mayhem: Another Israeli false-flag? ■ How could Israel immediately know who was behind the Syrian chemical attack? Israeli leaders have amazing powers of clairvoyance. Whenever a huge, history-steering terror attack happens, the Israelis immediately know who did it. Before the dust settles, they stand up and tell the world exactly what it all means - and provide the script for the way they want the world to react. Christopher Bollyn reminds us: “Within minutes of the airplane crashes on 9/11, Ehud Barak (the founder and master of the Israeli military's covert operation force, the Sayeret Matkal) was in the London studio of the BBC World ready to provide a plausible (and political) explanation to the world. Barak, the real mastermind of 9/11, was the first person to call for a 'War on Terror' - and US intervention in Afghanistan and the Middle East.” Like Ehud Barak minutes after 9/11, Moshe Yaalon stood up just hours after the Syrian chemical weapons tragedy and provided an apparently pre-scripted narrative.

● A defense official, cited by Reuters, said on Friday the US Navy was expanding its Mediterranean presence with a fourth cruise-missile ship, the USS Mahan. Though the source stressed to Reuters the Navy did not have orders to prepare for military operations against Syria. ● The ship was due to head back to the United States, but the commander of the US Sixth Fleet decided to maintain the ship in the region. All four ships are capable of launching long-range, subsonic cruise missiles to reach land targets. ● President Barack Obama is "under renewed pressure" [from Israel] to take action following the emergence of footage of what appears to be the aftermath of a toxic agent attack in a Damascus suburb on Wednesday.

CBS News: U.S. preps for possible cruise missile attack on Syrian gov't forces
PressTV: Hagel: US positioning forces for possible military action on Syria

[Jun 20, 2013] Press TV has conducted an interview Saeb Shaath, author and Middle East expert in Belfast, about the issue of US president Obama’s declaration to escalate the war in Syria by arming militant elements and the confirmation statement by Shimon Peres saying the US has no other choice. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: No surprise in what the Israeli president has said about the US arming insurgents, but what was surprising is Shimon Peres saying that that was the last option that the US has. Is that the last option that the US has, is the Israeli president correct there?

Shaath: They are trying to bluff their way around this. The president of Israel, he knows more than what he tries to tell. Israeli had a role from the beginning and its role was to create a series of such destruction in Syria. Let me say historically in 1948 the doctrine was declared by Ben Gurion, then the leader of the Zionist movement who founded Israel when the British installed it for them, said they have to be able to fight all the Arabic countries together - that’s how Israel can succeed and that’s become their doctrine, which was used to implement devious tactics in creating hot spots and flash points in every Arabic country such as sectarian, religious tensions and they created their undercover groups to act as political movements or religious movements within the Arabic world. That is a British and US tactic and they taught the Israelis very well how to use it.

Stephen Lendman: Drumbeat for War on Syria ● Whenever America goes to war or plans one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. Truth is the first casualty. Managed news misinformation substitutes. It happens every time. It's standard practice. It's no different this time. Facts on the ground don't matter. They're systematically ignored. Nations Washington opposes are vilified. Harsh media scoundrel rhetoric targets them. It repeats with disturbing frequency. It's escalating now.

Judges ask government to provide detailed evidence about why it wants right to trawl data seized using terror laws. ● The high court has given the government until Tuesday night to provide detailed evidence about why it wants the right to trawl and share data seized using terror laws from the partner of a Guardian journalist. Lord Justice Beatson and Judge Kenneth Parker said in a judgment outlining their decision to allow the police to continue accessing material taken from David Miranda that the ruling was made because while they could not judge the strength of the government's claims about the national security risks the material would pose if disclosed, they did have "serious assertions by responsible persons". Miranda's partner, Glenn Greenwald, has exposed mass digital surveillance by US and UK spy agencies based on material leaked by Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence contractor. Miranda was travelling from Berlin back to his home in Rio de Janeiro when he was detained at Heathrow last Sunday.

● Israel has been forced to issue a formal apology to Japan over offensive comments posted on Facebook by its head of online public diplomacy. ● The apology followed a complaint by the Japanese ambassador to Israel, Hideo Sato, after senior government official Daniel Seaman disparaged commemorations for the victims of the 1945 atomic bombs, causing a wave of protests in Japan. ● "I am sick of the Japanese, 'Human Rights' and 'Peace' groups the world over holding their annual self-righteous commemorations for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims," Seaman wrote on his Facebook page. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the consequence of Japanese aggression. You reap what you sow."

Digital infrastructure exceeding limits of human control, industry experts warn. ● A series of system crashes affecting Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft in the past fortnight has brought warnings that governments, banks and big business are over-reliant on computer networks that have become too complex. ● The alarm was sounded by industry experts in the aftermath of a three-hour network shutdown that paralysed the operation of the Nasdaq stock market in New York on Thursday, on what should have been a quiet day of routine share trading on the exchange. ● Jaron Lanier, the author and inventor of the concept of virtual reality, warned that digital infrastructure was moving beyond human control. He said: "When you try to achieve great scale with automation and the automation exceeds the boundaries of human oversight there is going to be failure. That goes for governments, for consumer companies, for Google, or a big insurance company.

■ Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst convicted of making public thousands of secret documents, was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison. But the files Manning sent to the website WikiLeaks remain on the Internet for anyone to read, and their impact on the world may be debated for as long as he remains in prison.
■ "Manning was under the impression that his leaked information was going to really change how the world views the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and future wars actually," Navy Capt. David Moulton, a forensic psychiatrist testifying in Manning's defense, told the military court on July 14. "It was his opinion that if through crowd sourcing that enough analysis was done on these documents, which he felt to be very important, that it would lead to greater good, that society as a whole would come to the conclusion that the wars weren't worth it, that really no wars are worth it."

Politico: Ron Paul: Manning ‘should be released’
David Walsh: In letter to Obama, Bradley Manning defends exposure of war crimes

Jeff Jarvis ● What are you thinking, Mr President? Is this really the legacy you want for yourself: the chief executive who trampled rights, destroyed privacy, heightened secrecy, ruined trust, and worst of all, did not defend but instead detoured around so many of the fundamental principles on which this country is founded? And I voted for you. I'll confess you were a second choice. I supported Hillary Clinton first. I said at the time that your rhetoric about change was empty and that I feared you would be another Jimmy Carter: aggressively ineffectual. Never did I imagine that you would instead become another Richard Nixon: imperial, secretive, vindictive, untrustworthy, inexplicable.

■ The Obama administration has given up more of its surveillance secrets, acknowledging that it was ordered to stop scooping up thousands of Internet communications from Americans with no connection to terrorism — a practice it says was an unintended consequence when it gathered bundles of Internet traffic connected to terror suspects.
■ One of the documents that intelligence officials released Wednesday came because a court ordered the National Security Agency to do so. But it's also part of the administration's response to the leaks by analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, who revealed that the NSA's spying programs went further and gathered millions more U.S. communications than most Americans realized.

Stephen Lendman: Lawless NSA Spying Exposed