In recent weeks we’ve seen scores of civilian men, women and children massacred in the Syrian towns of Homs and Tremseh, a Turkish (NATO) plane shot down over international airspace, some 10,000 armed insurgents enter the country across the Lebanese border, and what amounts to nothing short of total anarchy and civil war in the streets of Syria that has left an estimated 17,000 people dead. Western nations have condemned the actions of the Syrian government, calling for a peaceful resolution, but some observers suggest that we’ve be doing exactly the opposite, and rather than looking for a peaceful solution, all indicators point to a growing powder keg that’s set to blow at any moment. The Russians were recently caught transferring armaments to the middle east nation amid condemnation from the Obama administration, with Secretary of State Clinton telling Russia they will “pay a price” for their attempts at halting progress in the region.Late last week headlines across the world raised the alert level even higher. According to intelligence reports President Assad has begun mobilizing his weapons of mass destruction arsenal. Though Colon Powell may not be available to show us the location of the WMDs this time around, “intelligence” reports from western agencies indicate that Assad is preparing to deploy chemical weapons, including sarin, cyanida and mustard gas, on the rebellious population of Syria.
The situation is now at a head, and two key developments in the last 24 hours indicate that whatever NATO has planned for Syria – be it a Libyan style no-fly zone or a full on Iraqiesque invasion – will soon come to pass.
First, a final warning was reportedly sent to the Assad government through intelligence back channels that threatened airstrikes on his weapons facilities:
…today, the Syrian ruler was given a “last warning” through intelligence channels in the West to leave the warheads and shells loaded with mustard gas, sarin and cyanide where they are. If he dared move them out of the northern and central locations where he deployed them last week, they would be destroyed from the air.
Source: Debka File
Second, likely a tell-tale sign that NATO military action will soon be initiated in Syria, several of Assad’s top generals and key security figures have fled the country with their families.
Several high-placed generals bolted Bashar Assad’s inner circle Sunday, July 17, including such key figures as two security services chiefs who were operations commanders of the Alawite Shabiha militia plus the former head of Syria’s chemical and biological administration who took six other generals with him. They all fled to Turkey and defected. A fourth senior general from another security service was assassinated in Aleppo.
…
1. They all managed to spirit their families out of Syria well before they absconded themselves, an operation that must have required weeks of careful and secret preparation. The failure of Assad’s many-tentacled, clandestine agencies to discover what was up and foil the walkouts, attests to serious lapses in their notorious efficiency.
2. All the defectors served in Damascus at the regime’s nerve center for suppressing the revolt.
3. They all made tracks for Beirut before making their way to Turkey. Neverthetheless, the extensive spy networks run by Iran and Hizballah in the Lebanese capital failed to pick up on the city’s use as a way station for Syrian defectors in flight to Turkey.
4. Despite their active roles in crushing the civil uprising in Syria, those generals clearly hoped to escape the consequences of their actions and becoming liable for prosecution. The Red Cross Committee in Geneva, the first international organization to call the violence in Syria a full-blown civil war, made it clear Sunday, July 15, that international humanitarian law applied henceforth throughout the country and provided a basis for war crimes prosecution, especially if civilians were attacked.
(source)
Top level military and intelligence officials within the Assad government are bugging out after reports surfaced that chemical weapons are in play and “last” warnings from the west have been issued.
We’ve seen similar circumstances before, in Iraq, where those who didn’t defect had their names and pictures placed on a deck of cards and were hunted down by Western forces. It looks as if the Syrians see the writing on the wall and don’t want to end up in front of an international war crimes tribunal or at the business end of a drone strike.
UN / NATO military action is coming to Syria, and it could very easily lead to a global crisis that pits western nations against Russia and China, who have been in solidarity with the Assad government.
As we’ve suggested before, it’s only a matter of time before the Russians and Chinese finally step in to counter the hegemony of western powers in the oil-rich middle east.
Many have pointed to Iran as being the breaking point and potential catalyst for World War III.
What if it’s Syria? And, what if it starts in the next few months?
—— Mac would be considered by some to be a doom and gloomer, though he believes reality is reality, and he tries to assign no positive or negative personal perceptions to any particular event. Mac provides personal commentary and a spin on news and current events. Mac Slavo writes and edits the website: SHTFPlan.com
world war 3 has already started ………..Russia, China, Iran and Syria Launch Massive Joint Military Exercise to defend Mid-East . Syria- Russia China Iran Send Armies for Largest Joint Military Exercise in the Middle East As another message to NATO not to interfere in Syria, Russia, China and Iran with the Syrian military are setting up the biggest joint military exercise in the history of the region.As part of its preparations, Beijing is reported to have asked Egyptian authorities to permit the passage through the Suez Canal in late June of 12 naval ships heading for the Syrian port of Tartus, where Moscow maintains a naval and marine base. DEBKAfile reported earlier this week that Russian naval vessels with marines on board were heading for Tartus. The Iranian media did not itemize their contribution to the joint exercise.geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com
China plans to build 20 cities a year for the next 20 years. The unacknowledged problem is finding buyers for those hundreds of millions of new homes.
Last year we published images of ghost cities based on a report from Forensic Asia Limited. This week we asked analyst Gillem Tulloch what has happened in the past six months.
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV – Tarpley.net
July 11, 2012
Videos: Author, historian, and geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley breaks down the latest regarding Syria including the most recent “Friends of Syria” confab, Wikileaks’ latest propaganda stunt on behalf of the Western elite, and a possible staged coup attempt in Syria by NATO. Dr. Tarpley also explains why NATO’s proxy “Syrian National Council” refuses to agree to any proposals by either the UN or the Syrian government.
For more in-depth analyst, please listen to Dr. Tarpley’s weekly radio show, World Crisis Radio.
As public interest in African affairs briefly found a place in mainstream talking points following a controversial viral video campaign about Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), both the United States and the African Union are mobilizing military forces to Central Africa to counter further threats to civilian safety posed by the group. Following the US deployment of one hundred military personnel to Uganda in 2011, the African Union has deployed a 5,000-solider brigade to LRA affected areas, tasked with pursuing the group and its leader, Joseph Kony [1]. In the United States, a new bill co-authored by U.S. Representative Edward Royce has been introduced to the Congress calling for the further expansion of regional military forces into the nations of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and the newly formed South Sudan [2].
Although the Lord’s Resistance Army has been accused of recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes against humanity throughout its two-decade campaign for greater autonomy against the Ugandan government, the group is presently comprised of less than four hundred soldiers [3] and remains a questionable threat. Meanwhile, China’s deepening economic engagement in Africa and its crucial role in developing the mining and industrial sectors of several nations is reportedly creating “deep nervousness” in the West, according to David Shinn, former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia [4]. As the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on the world stage, recent policy shifts toward an increased US military presence in several alleged LRA hotspots threaten deepening Chinese commercial activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, widely considered the world’s most resource rich nation [5].
As China maintains its record of consistently strong economic performance, Washington is crusading against China’s export restrictions on minerals that are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other products. As the United States, European Union and Japan project international pressure on the World Trade Organization and the World Bank to block financing for China’s extensive mining projects [6], US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s irresponsible accusations of China perpetuating a creeping “new colonialism” of the African continent remain rather telling [7]. As China is predicted to formally emerge as the world’s largest economy in 2016 [8], the successful aggregation of African resources remains a key component to its ongoing rivalry with the United States.
The villainous branding of Joseph Kony may well be deserved, however it cannot be overstated that the LRA threat is wholly misrepresented in recent pro-intervention US legislation. The vast majority of LRA attacks have reportedly taken place in the north-eastern Bangadi region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located on the foot of a tri-border expanse between the Central African Republic and South Sudan. However, the small number of deaths reported by official sources in recent times relies on unconfirmed reports where LRA activity is “presumed” and “suspected” [9]. Considering the Congo’s extreme instability after decades of foreign invasion, falsely crediting the LRA with the region’s longstanding cases of violence for political gain becomes relatively simple for those looking to gain enormous contracts for Congolese resources.
In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among others [10]; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these key components [11]. In 1980, Pentagon experts acknowledged dire shortages of cobalt, titanium, chromium, tantalum, beryllium, and nickel, eluding that rebel insurgencies in the Congo inflated the cost of such materials [12]. Additionally, the US Congressional Budget Office’s 1982 report “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral” notes that cobalt alloys are critical to the aerospace and weapons industries and that 64% of the world’s cobalt reserves lay in the Katanga Copper Belt, running from southeastern Congo into northern Zambia [13].
During the Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided training and arms to Tutsi Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the Congo’s mineral rich eastern provinces to pursue extremist Hutu militias following the Rwandan genocide. Although over six million deaths were attributed to the conflict in the Congo [14], findings of the United Nations suggest that neighboring regimes in Ugandan, Rwanda and Burundi benefitted immensely from illegally harvested conflict minerals, later sold to various multinational corporations for use in consumer goods [15]. The US defense industry relies on high quality metallic alloys indigenous to the region, used primarily in the construction of high-performance jet engines. The sole piece of legislation authored by President Obama during his time as a Senator was S.B. 2125, the Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; Section 201(6) of the bill specifically calls for the protection of natural resources in the troubled regions of eastern Congo [16].
The Congo maintains the second lowest GDP per capita despite having an estimated $24 trillion in untapped raw minerals deposits [17]; it holds more than 30% of the world’s diamond reserves [18] and 80% of the world’s coltan [19], the majority of which is exported to China for processing into electronic-grade tantalum powder and wiring [20]. The control of strategic resources in the eastern Congo is a vital element of the ongoing US-China rivalry, as Chinese commercial activities in the DRC continue to increase in the fields of mining and telecommunications. The Congo exported $1.4 billion worth of cobalt to China between 2007 and 2008 [21], while the majority of Congolese raw materials like cobalt, copper ore and a variety of hard woods are exported to China for further processing [22]; 90% of the processing plants in resource rich southeastern Katanga province are owned by Chinese nationals [23].
In 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) blocked a trade deal between a consortium of Chinese companies, who were granted the rights to mining operations in Katanga in exchange for US$6 billion in infrastructure investments, including the construction of two hospitals, four universities and a hydroelectric power project. The framework of the deal allocated an additional $3 million to develop cobalt and copper mining operations in Katanga, but the IMF argued that the agreement between China and the DRC violated the foreign debt relief program for so-called HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Countries) nations [24]. The marginalization of China by financial regulatory bodies is a strong indication of its throttling rivalry with American and European corporate communities, many of who fear being diluted in China’s increasing economic orbit.
While subtle economic warfare rages between partnered superpowers, the increasing western military presence in the Congo is part of a larger program to expand AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, through a proposed archipelago of American military bases in the region. In 2007, US State Department advisor Dr. J. Peter Pham offered the following on AFRICOM and its strategic objectives of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance, a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment” [25]. The push into Africa has more to do with destabilizing the deeply troubled Democratic Republic of the Congo and capturing its strategic reserves of cobalt, tantalum, gold and diamonds. More accurately, the US is poised to employ a scorched-earth policy by creating dangerous war-like conditions in the Congo, prompting the mass exodus of Chinese investors. Similarly to the Libyan conflict, the Chinese returned after the fall of Gaddafi to find a proxy government only willing to do business with the western nations who helped it into power [26]. The European Union’s recently offered contribution of $12 million to joint military operations against the ailing Lord’s Resistance Army suggests signs of a coming resource war in Central Africa [27].
At a July 6th, 2011 meeting of the Friends of Syria conference in Paris, the United States and its European Partners led calls for the implementation of new sanctions on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, with US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton threatening Russia and China for their stance on the issue. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called on the UN to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, mandating economic sanctions, an arms embargo, and potentially, military force. UN Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan admitted his six point peace plan had not succeeded and later criticized those nations undermining the plan by providing arms and assistance to Syria’s rebel fighters. Assad would not rule out direct negotiations with Washington and stated, “as long as you offer any kind of support to terrorists, you are partner. Whether you send them armaments or money or public support, political support in the United Nations, anywhere.”
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Saudi Arabia has set its feet on the path to a nuclear weapon capability and is negotiating in Beijng the purchase of Chinese nuclear-capable Dong-Fen 21 ((NATO-codenamed CSS-5) ballistic missile.
China, which has agreed to the transaction in principle, would also build a base of operations near Riyadh for the new Saudi purchases.
As we reported last year, Saudi Arabia has struck a deal with Pakistan for the availability on demand of a nuclear warhead from Islamabad’s arsenal for fitting onto a ballistic missile.
by Mac Slavo, Contributor
PN 