Bill Van Auken

In a series of raids in the capital of Istanbul and in the southern provinces of Mersin, Adana and Hatay near the Syrian border, Turkish police rounded up 12 members of Syria’s Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front along with chemical weapons materials.

The Turkish media initially reported that police recovered four and a half pounds of sarin, the deadly never gas which had earlier been linked to chemical weapons attacks inside Syria.

While widely reported in the Turkish press, the arrests Wednesday have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times, which have openly promoted a US intervention in Syria, citing alleged chemical weapons use by the regime of Bashar al-Assad as a pretext, have posted not a word about the raids in Turkey.

The daily newspaper Zaman reported that “the al-Nusra members had been planning a bomb attack for Thursday in [the Turkish city of] Adana but that the attack was averted when the police caught the suspects. Along with the sarin gas, the police seized a number of handguns, grenades, bullets and documents during their search.”

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Bill Van Auken

Photo: Chechen Abdul-Baki Todashev holds a photo of his dead son Ibragim, during a news conference. His son was killed in Florida while being interrogated by the FBI about his alleged ties to a Boston Marathon bombings suspect. Mr. Todashev says FBI agents killed his son “execution style.” Abdul-Baki Todashev showed journalists 16 photographs of his son, Ibragim, in the morgue with six gunshot wounds to his torso and one to the back of the head. His son's body also appears to have been cut open (possible organ theft). The pictures were taken by his son’s friend Khusen Taramov. (AP/Zemlianichenko)

FBI and other law enforcement officials revealed Wednesday that Ibragim Todashev, the 27-year-old Chechen immigrant who was shot and killed after being interrogated for days about the Boston Marathon bombings, had been unarmed.

The killing of Todashev, and the rapid disintegration of the government’s official story—that he was shot after lunging at interrogators with a knife—is an extraordinary event. It casts into further doubt everything that has been said so far about the Boston Marathon bombings.

The report that Todashev was unarmed was followed Thursday by a press conference in Moscow, where the murdered man’s father, Abdulbaki Todashev presented a series of photographs of his son’s body taken at a Florida morgue showing that he had been shot six times in the torso and once in the crown of his head.

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Bill Van Auken

While ostensibly touring the Middle East to discuss a joint US-Russian proposal for peace talks between the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Western-backed “rebels,” Secretary of State John Kerry met with US allies to prepare for region-wide war.

Stopping first in Oman, Kerry held talks with the ruling Sultan, one of the string of monarchical dictators that constitute, together with Israel, the foundation of US influence in the Middle East. The secretary of state’s visit coincided with the signing of a $2.1 billion deal between the absolute monarchy and Raytheon Corp. for the sale of advanced weapons systems, including Avenger fire units, Stinger missiles, and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, part of a ring of steel that Washington has sought to erect around Iran.

From there, he flew to Amman, Jordan for a meeting Wednesday of the “Friends of Syria,” a US-led “coalition of the willing” that is fomenting the war for regime change in Syria. It consists of Washington, its European NATO allies, led by Britain, Turkey, Egypt and the various sheikhdoms and sultanates of the Persian Gulf, including the major arms suppliers to the anti-Assad militias: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

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Bill Van Auken

Forward Operating Base Logar, Afghanistan (Wikimedia Commons)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday revealed that Washington wants to maintain nine US military bases scattered across the country after the formal deadline for the withdrawal of US and NATO coalition forces at the end of 2014.

In a speech delivered at Kabul University, Karzai stressed that he was amenable to the US demand, indicating that he was willing to trade the bases for promises of a continued flow of economic aid from the West and security for his puppet government. Another likely condition is US support for the election of his handpicked successor in an election set for next year.

“If these conditions are met, we are ready to sign the contract with the United States,” he said. As to the continued presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil after more than a dozen years of war and occupation, Karzai stated, “We see their staying in Afghanistan beyond 2014 in the interests of Afghanistan as well as NATO.”

The statements represented an abrupt rhetorical shift by the US-backed president. In recent months, Karzai has accused Washington of colluding with the Taliban to increase violence and create a pretext for a continued US military presence. He has repeatedly demanded an end to US aerial bombardments and to night raids by US Special Forces, which have claimed civilian lives and increased hatred for both the foreign occupation and Karzai’s corrupt puppet government in Kabul.

In February, Karzai barred US special operations troops from operating in the entire province of Maidan Wardak, southwest of Kabul. These and other statements and gestures have been aimed at deflecting popular hostility and posturing as a nationalist leader, rather than Washington’s stooge.

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Bill Van Auken

CIA's & Mossad's war on Syria: Destruction in Aleppo

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a Pentagon press conference Thursday that the US is “rethinking” policy on directly arming the so-called rebels in Syria.

Appearing with British Defense Minister Philip Hammond, Hagel became the first Obama administration official to acknowledge that Washington is considering a qualitative escalation of its proxy war in Syria.

“Arming the rebels; that’s an option,” Hagel said. Asked directly whether the administration was considering such a step, he replied: “Yes.”

Hammond echoed Hagel’s position, stating that Britain has “not thus far provided any arms to the rebels, but we have never said it’s something we will not do.” He added that London was concerned with “legality,” and was presently subject to a European Union ban on supplying arms to any side in Syria.

“We will look at the situation when that ban expires in a few weeks’ time,” the defense minister said. Britain and France have been pressuring other European powers to alter the sanctions regime, so that they both can directly transfer weapons to the Islamist-dominated militias fighting Syrian government forces.

In reality, both the US and Britain are already deeply involved in supporting the forces fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The CIA has established a covert station in Turkey near the Syrian border to coordinate the shipment of arms from that country as well as Saudi Arabia and the other Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, both US and British military forces have undertaken the training of so-called rebels inside Jordan.

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Bill Van Auken

The cutthroats braying for war against Syria out of supposed concern over the use of chemical weapons have already killed a million Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Afghans to this end, and they are prepared to slaughter millions more people.

In preparation for a US war against Syria, Washington’s political establishment and the corporate media are steadily escalating a campaign of lies and propaganda about the alleged use of chemical weapons.

The propaganda about Syrian chemical warfare is completely unsubstantiated and based on assertions that have about as much credibility as the propaganda used by the Nazi regime in Germany to portray its invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia as acts of self-defense and humanitarianism.

Typical is an editorial in the Financial Times, the voice of the City of London’s financial oligarchy. After first acknowledging that “there is no firm proof” that any chemical weapons have been employed by Syrian government forces, the editorial goes on to affirm that “if, as close observers of the Syrian conflict believe, the claims are true, then only concerted action now can hope to prevent atrocities in the future such as that of Halabja, where in 1988 the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq gassed to death 5,000 of its rebellious Kurdish citizens.”

The conclusion is preposterous. Having admitted there is no proof that the Syrian military used even the small amount of Sarin gas that the Obama administration mentioned in a highly conditional claim last week, the newspaper asserts that “only concerted action”, i.e., direct military intervention, can forestall genocidal atrocities.

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Bill Van Auken

In an attempt to pave the way for a direct military intervention aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad, Washington, its NATO allies, Israel and Qatar have all in recent days broadcast trumped-up charges that Syria has used chemical weapons.

In a letter to members of Congress Thursday, the White House declared, “The US intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria.”

In the midst of a Middle East tour dedicated to arranging a $10 billion deal to provide Israel and the right-wing Arab monarchies with advanced weaponry directed against Iran, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel denounced the chemical weapons use, saying it “violates every convention of warfare.” He went on to acknowledge, “We cannot confirm the origin of these weapons, but [they]...very likely have originated with the Assad regime.”

Similarly, British Prime Minister David Cameron charged Syria with a “war crime,” stating: “It’s limited evidence, but there’s growing evidence that we have seen too of the use of chemical weapons, probably by the regime.”

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Bill Van Auken

Navy Seal/Craft operative working for the Govern-
ment in a what in reality was a military exercise in
preparation for a full-fledged dictatorship. - We're
supposed to believe the corporate media's fairytales
about "terrorists". We're not supposed to understand
where all this is headed. - Until it's too late. (Editor)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, was formally charged Monday with use of and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, a federal offense that carries the death penalty.

The twin bombings of April 15 killed three people and wounded over 170 more. The other suspect in the bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s older brother Tamerlan, died after a shootout with police.

A federal judge was brought to Tsarnaev’s hospital bed along with an assistant US attorney and a public defender for the formal presentation of the charges. Tsarnaev, who suffered multiple wounds before his capture last Friday, remains in serious condition, on a ventilator and under sedation. He is reportedly unable to verbally communicate because of a gunshot wound to the throat.

With one brother dead and the other wounded so he cannot speak, there is no one to contradict the official story that the two operated alone and without any knowledge of US intelligence agencies.

The hospital hearing marked the first time since his capture that Tsarnaev, a US citizen, has seen a lawyer. The Obama administration announced its intention not to read him his Miranda rights to remain silent and be represented by an attorney on the pretext of a “public safety” exemption, even though law enforcement officials in Boston assured the public that they were in no further danger. This gave an FBI-CIA interrogation team unfettered access to Tsarnaev, who was reportedly able to respond only by moving his head or writing down answers.

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Bill Van Auken

Obama does not care to ponder what underlies the bloody events from Tucson, to Aurora, to Newtown to Boston. Any serious examination going beyond incomprehensible “evil” would inevitably involve an indictment of himself, his government and the social order over which he presides.

Three days after the bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 170 at the Boston Marathon, President Barack Obama flew to Boston to deliver a speech at an interfaith service for the victims and survivors.

This marks the fifth time that Obama has delivered such an address following mass killings, beginning with Fort Hood, Texas in November of 2009 and including Tucson, Arizona in January 2011, Aurora, Colorado in July 2012 and Newtown, Connecticut last December.

The corporate media, which has cynically dubbed Obama the “consoler-in-chief,” hailed his latest speech as “inspiring,” “powerful” and “moving.” It was all they wanted to hear and in no way conflicted with their efforts to frame the events in Boston within the reactionary narrative of the “war on terrorism,” turning them into another justification for war abroad and attacks on democratic rights at home.

In reality, it was painfully evident that Obama was working off of a template, engaged in a national ritual that is utterly routine, banal and insincere. Almost invariably, he begins these speeches by invoking “scripture.”

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Bill Van Auken

US Secretary of State John Kerry has made a series of public statements ostensibly in mourning for the 25-year-old Foreign Service officer Anne Smedinghoff—one of five Americans, including three soldiers, killed in a Taliban car bomb attack in Afghanistan’s southern province of Zabul on Saturday.

The death of someone so young is tragic, as it has been for nearly 2,200 American troops killed in 11 years of war and occupation. Yet Kerry’s remarks aim not so much at comforting grieving family members and friends, as at justifying and defending the war that cost this young woman’s life.

He said that the death presented “a stark contrast for all of the world to see between two very different sets of values.” On the one hand, he said, was “a brave American … determined to brighten the light of learning through books written in the native tongue of the students that she had never met, but whom she felt compelled to help,” while on the other, were “cowardly terrorists determined to bring darkness and death to total strangers.”

The same day that Anne Smedinghoff lost her life, a US airstrike killed at least 18 people, including 11 children ranging from a few months to eight years old. Six women were badly wounded in the attack. Kerry uttered not a word of sympathy for the loss of these young lives, nor for the parents left to grieve them. Needless to say, the death of 11 children received not one one-hundredth of the coverage given to that of the American diplomat in the US media, which, as always, is contemptuous of Afghan lives.

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