Syrian refugees flee to Lebanon [video]
PressTV
August 10, 2012
Since the outburst of subversive activities by the western foreign backed groups in Syria, over 115,000 Syrian Nationals have reportedly fled their country seeking refuge in neighboring countries. Though officials say the number of registered refugees doesn’t count those who have blended in, thus the number is not accurate. Refugees who have come to Lebanon are currently staying at crowded public schools or have set up tents in regions along the borders with Syria.
Ending Syria’s Violence
Begins with ending arms, cash, and support for terrorist front.
by Tony Cartalucci
July 16, 2012 – At 20 million, if even half of Syria’s population rose up against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, armed with pointed sticks, the revolution would be over in an afternoon. Instead, it has dragged on for nearly a year and a half, consisting of hit-and-run battles, terrorist bombings, and cross-border infiltration – indicating that but a slim minority has “risen up” and of that minority, the vast majority of them are sectarian extremists – admittedly many are not even Syrian.
Most importantly, it is not within Syria, but beyond its borders, that these “rebels” derive the summation of their support.
Syria’s Violence Was Premeditated From Abroad
Since 2007, interests within the US, Saudi, and Israeli governments, along with other Gulf State despots and proxies in both Turkey and northern Lebanon, have been assembling from across the Arab World an army of sectarian extremists, with close ties – even direct affiliations with Al Qaeda. Exposing this was US journalist, Seymour Hersh, who published his findings in a 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection.” Readers should note that Al Qaeda itself was an “Arab foreign legion” of sorts, created in the 1980’s also by the US to fight its proxy wars.
These militants drawn from across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, and Iraq, were armed, funded, and staged along Syria’s borders between 2007-2011. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who had fought a failed but brutally violent campaign to establish a faux-theocracy in the late 70’s and early 80’s was also contacted during this time by the West, receiving funding and directives to begin preparing for the violent overthrow of the Syrian government.
Photo: The face of Libya’s NATO-backed “revolution” was literally Al Qaeda – effectively ending 10 years of “War on Terror” mythology. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) commander, led sectarian extremists with NATO arms and air support against Qaddafi, and is now involved directly in arming, training, and supplying Libyan militants to NATO’s subversion of Syria. Belhaj and his LIFG mercenaries are just one of many groups of foreign fighters assembled by NATO to infiltrate and undermine Syria.
While this militant front was being assembled and prepared by US-Saudi-Israeli clandestine services, the US State Department was assembling a cover story with which to justify the planned bloodbath. That cover story would be later called the “Arab Spring.” In 2008, the US State Department hosted activists from Egypt in New York City, who would be funded, equipped, and trained both there, and later in Serbia by US-funded CANVAS before returning to Egypt in 2010 to prepare the grounds there for the “Arab Spring.”
Two years before the “Arab Spring” would be “sprung,” the US State Department began training and funding activist leaders from across the region, including Syria and Lebanon. They received up to $50 million, communication equipment, and were invited to training sessions organized by the US State Department itself. The goal was, admittedly, to send them back to their respective countries to train others, thus creating a “ripple effect.” This was later revealed by Assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights, Michael Posner in an April 2011 AFP report.
This indicates that both the “peaceful” and militant components of the Syrian so-called “uprising” were premeditated, organized, and manipulated geopolitical calculations for achieving Western foreign policy objectives, not to fulfill the “democratic aspirations” of the Syrian people. In fact, the inclusion of violent ideological militants in the equation almost certainly ensures such “aspirations” will never be achieved.
Image: A visual representation of the National Endowment for Democracy’s corporate-financier ties found across their Board of Directors. Far from “human rights advocates,” they are instead simply leveraging such issues to disguise what is in reality corporate-financier hegemonic expansion.
Furthermore, the very organizations and institutions the US State Department used to direct “activists,” namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries including Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), are steered not by progressive-liberals from Berkley, but rather names drawn from Boeing, Exxon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Conoco Philips, and other corporate-financier special interests.
NED’s board of directors also includes names from America’s pro-war Neo-Conservative establishment including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. These same interests, in fact, were simultaneously building up both the “pro-democracy” protesters and their violent extremist militant counterparts – with the obvious intentions of couching one within the other to then set the stage for the military intervention they are now incessantly lobbying for.
The Obvious Solution – Stop Foreign Arms & Cash
That the events playing out in Syria now were entirely premeditated from abroad by corporate-financier interests couching their aspirations for global hegemony within “democracy promotion,” does not condemn all of Syria’s opposition as “illegitimate.” However, those supporting both the violence created by foreign-funded death squads, and the unyielding interventionist agenda of the West’s so-called “Syrian National Council,” are indeed both illegitimate and a threat to Syrian peace as well as world peace.
Perhaps most indicative of just how disingenuous the so-called “Free Syrian Army’s” cause is, is the fact that their primary backers both financially and in terms of supplying military arms, are the despotic absolute monarchies of the Gulf States. These include Qatar and Saudi Arabia – the latter so despotic and nepotistic, the nation itself is named after the unelected, eternally ruling “Saud” family. That they, in concert with the West, seek “democracy” and “freedom” in Syria is an absolute absurdity – with their true intentions of undermining and destroying neighboring Iran the much more plausible, even admitted goal of violently subverting Syria.
Both the genesis and perpetuation of Syria’s violence is rooted not within Syria’s borders, but beyond them. Not in the alleys of Syria’s cities, nor the fields of its villages, but in Washington, Riyadh, Doha, Tel Aviv, London, Tripoli, and Ankara.
The obvious solution is for the “international community” to recognize, condemn, and end the flow of weapons, cash, and political support provided to overt foreign proxies. Syria’s borders should be secured with vast penalties imposed on Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon for failing to cooperate with Syrian security forces in stopping the flow of foreign arms, cash, and fighters.
Why the US Solution Will Not Work – Peace is Not Their Goal
The violence could literally grind to a halt overnight, when foreign mercenaries and Syrian Muslim Brotherhood extremists realize the spigot of arms, cash, and impunity had been turned off and the restoration of order throughout Syria made inevitable. Instead, the US, feigning ignorance to the documented role they played in the malicious origin of this conflict, proposes to increase the violence by further arming and providing “air support” for their front of militant extremists, just as they did in Libya to catastrophic effects.
They plan on doing this through a UN Security Council resolution loaded with Chapter 7 provisions – meaning military intervention, after a brief “last effort” to implement the UN’s peace plan the US fully prepares to sabotage. Since another NATO-led military campaign is universally reviled, the West has organized a series of publicity stunts to shock, scare, panic, and stampede their resolution through the Security Council. These include confirmed fabrications regarding the latest “massacre” in Tremseh, Syria – which UN monitors have concluded was instead a battle.
There was also the suspicious claim by “US officials” that the Syrian government was moving its “chemical weapons.” The reports warned that the Syrian government might deploy the weapons against civilians – failing to explain what besides justifying foreign military intervention, doing so might achieve. The reports also failed to mention “where” the weapons were being moved to – essential information “civilians” at risk might use to avoid a “massacre.”
Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change. Failing to achieve this, US policy makers are satisfied to arm and fund militants in an effort not to end the violence but to perpetuate it and its costly effects to keep a “regional adversary weak.” Clearly, the West’s interests in Syria are geopolitical, not humanitarian, and plan options to purposefully compound the humanitarian catastrophe it has engineered from the very beginning.
Failing to push their UN resolution through the Security Council, the US in its policy papers has literally stated it plans to “arm the opposition even knowing they will probably never have sufficient power,” to then “pin down the Asad regime and bleed it, keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention.”
This unconscionable, callous act of hostility toward Syria and its people – admits openly to using the militants it hails as “freedom fighters” to mire Syria in protracted violence destroying the lives, prospects, and potential of some 20 million people. This policy paper, crafted by the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution, illustrates the true self-serving nature behind the West’s “concern” for Syria.
Syria’s Fall Will Embolden a Dangerous Enemy of Humanity
It is essential, not only for the people of Syria, but for the entire planet placed in danger by the precedent being set by allowing the West to continue on with this insidious agenda, for the UN Security Council to block any resolutions put forth designed to implement it. Russia and China have been wrongfully berated for not capitulating to Western demands that military intervention be green-lighted so the atrocities committed by NATO in Libya can be repeated in Syria. Considering the premeditated, foreign orchestrated nature of Syria’s violence, and that it is the West itself that is responsible, it is unconscionable that they remain free of international condemnation, let alone given a say in how the bloodbath of their own creation is resolved.
For the vast majority of humanity, excluded from this process – we are given an instructive example of how dangerous and ineffective international law is – to the point where it has become a tool used by elitist perpetrators of vast crimes against humanity rather than a defense against them. But while we have no say in what the UN ultimately does, the monolithic power wielded by the West, granted to them by the fortunes of their immense corporations, financial institutions, and organizations, lays exposed directly to us – open to condemnation, boycotts, and their uprooting through their replacement with local alternatives.
The answer to solving Syria’s violence is simple – doing it will take some effort and courage. However, we must not fool ourselves into believing that Syria’s problems are theirs and theirs alone. What the corporate-financier interests are doing to their nation and people today, will embolden and strengthen them for when they finally decide to do it to us tomorrow.
If the US Loses Syria, the US Loses its Empire
US threatens Russia, China for not supporting campaign of terror in Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci
July 6, 2012 – The US’ increasingly unhinged rhetoric reached a new level of absurdity this week as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Western nations and their Arab proxies to “make it clear that Russia and China will pay a price because they are holding up progress” in regards to the US’ premeditated campaign of terrorism and violent regime change in Syria.
It was made public as early as 2007 by Seymour Hersh in his report “The Redirection” published in the New Yorker that the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others were gathering, funding, arming, and deploying a front of violent sectarian extremists, many with ties to Al Qaeda, to undermine, destabilize, and eventually lead to the overthrow of the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The violent campaign was rolled out publicly in the wake of a similarly premeditated geopolitical ploy, the so-called “Arab Spring,” and has since then been clearly exposed as the work of violent terrorist networks. Ironically, these terrorist networks are those allegedly the impetus of the “War on Terror,” now paradoxically being funded, armed, and politically backed by the West.
It was reported that Libyan terrorists led by Abdul Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a US State Department-listed “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” had joined the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) along with sectarian extremists from Iraq who specialize in the indiscriminate terrorist bombings now ravaging Syria.
In fact, the true nature of Syria’s “rebels” has become so well known, that recent attempts to sway public opinion with continued, but unsubstantiated reports of “atrocities” aimed at demonizing the Syrian government have been met with skepticism, doubt, and even indignation by the public – giving nations like Russia and China not only the opportunity to defy Western dictates, but a moral imperative to do so as well.
Collapsing Legitimacy Leads to Collapsing Empires
The global hegemony of Wall Street and London has been built behind a facade of “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy.” As these principles are eroded back home in the West, their use for dressing up otherwise naked imperialism, corporate monopolization, and military aggression abroad has become overt and increasingly ineffective.
While the US Secretary of State attempts to blame Russia and China for “holding up progress” in the West’s campaign of premeditated destabilization in Syria, it is more likely that the West’s own loss of legitimacy is the true reason it has not successfully convinced the world to go along with what is increasingly appearing to be a self-serving and very untenable agenda.
Should the US fail in its attempts to overthrow the government of Syria, and quite likely even if it does manage to succeed at this late hour, so much damage has been done to the West’s credibility, as well as to the credibility of its allegedly independent institutions, that future gambits will be even more difficult to execute. As the West’s economy and geopolitical power crumbles and its reach becomes less subtle and more adversarial, shareholders will seek more secure investments, financially, politically, and even tactically.
Maintaining an empire relies on an immense global infrastructure the West still possesses – but it is an infrastructure that is meeting competition from not only rival hegemonies, but from within individual nations as well, on both a national and grassroots level. Empires are also built on psychological factors such as faith in one’s institutions and fear of one’s military prowess. The West has been increasingly faltering in all respects in a world where these concepts are becoming increasingly challenged by shifting social, economic, and technological paradigms.
What the West should be doing is positioning itself for this changing world – instead it is clinging to a crumbling empire, scrambling to build a global paradigm rendered antiquated long before it has even been implemented. Boycotting the corporate-financier interests behind this attempt at establishing global hegemony will accelerate and ensure its failure – while resolving ourselves to creating genuine institutions on a local and national level for and by the people will ensure that we are not left in disarray once these corrupt globalist institutions are rendered moot.
WARNING: Possible NATO-FSA False Flag Attack in Syria
by Tony Cartalucci
June 10, 2012 – RT has warned of a possible plot being fomented by Syrian rebels inside NATO member Turkey. The plot involves Syrian rebels deploying chemical weapons obtained in Libya against Syrian civilians, then blaming the Syrian government for the mass casualty event. This of course would provide the West the “casus belli” it has been searching for to circumvent the UN Security Council and implement its long-planned campaign of regime change.
The Means
Libya’s arsenal had fallen into the hands of sectarian extremists with NATO assistance last year in the culmination of efforts to overthrow the government there. Since then, Libya’s militants led by commanders of Al Qaeda’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) have armed sectarian extremists across the Arab World, from as far West as Mali, to as far East as Syria.
Image: The symbols for nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. The West is the undisputed champion of deploying each of these weapons of mass destruction against their enemies – from nuclear bombs upon Japan, to depleted uranium and white phosphorus upon Iraq, to Agent Orange all across Vietnam – it stands to reason that these weapons would eventually end up in the hands of the their proxies as well.
Libyan LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, according to the London Telegraph, had in fact traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border to consort with the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA), pledging weapons, cash, and even fighters. Since then, at least one ship flush with Libyan weaponry bound for Syrian militants has been interdicted by Lebanon, while the Western press, including the Sydney Morning Herald, has reported on a massive influx of foreign fighters and arms. In addition to Libyan weapons, the Washington Post has also confirmed the US and Gulf States have been arranging the delivery of weapons to Syrian militants.
Additionally, as a result of NATO’s intervention in Libya, the scattered military’s extensive arsenal of anti-aircraft missiles has also fallen into the hands of Libyan militants, to then be proliferated throughout LIFG’s network of affiliates – all of which are sectarian extremists, many with direct ties to Al Qaeda. The Washington Post in their article, “Libyan missiles on the loose,” reported:
“Two former CIA counterterrorism officers told me last week that technicians recently refurbished 800 of these man-portable air-defense systems (known as MANPADS) — some for an African jihadist group called Boko Haram that is often seen as an ally of al-Qaeda — for possible use against commercial jets flying into Niger, Chad and perhaps Nigeria.”
Clearly, NATO’s proxies in Libya have become a regional arsenal for similar sectarian extremists – all demonstratively working in concert with Western designs to overthrow both nationalist governments in North Africa, and installing client regions throughout the Middle East to then array against Iran and by extension, Russia’s sphere of influence throughout the region. If Libya possessed deployable chemical weapons, it seems very likely that they would find their way to LIFG’s affiliates and their foreign legionaries along with the rest of their exported terror.
The Motivation and Intent
There is certainly room for plausible concern regarding all types of Libyan weapons falling into the hands of the Free Syrian Army. They have been publicly pledged by LIFG commander Belhaj, and they have been interdicted en-route by neighboring Lebanon. Does evidence also suggest that indiscriminate mass-casualty attacks could be carried out by the FSA and then blamed on the Syrian government, should they be “gifted” with Libya’s chemical weapons?
In Reuters’ April 2012 article, “Outgunned Syria rebels make shift to bombs,” it is admitted that Syrian rebels have openly begun carrying out a terrorist bombing campaign, including operating large bomb-making facilities, not unlike the one in Hama which exploded during a mishap, killing over 70 people, and leveling a city block. Very tellingly, the opposition, fully responsible for the catastrophic loss of life, immediately blamed it on the Syrian government, claiming the wide scale destruction was caused by a Scud missile attack.
The FSA bombing campaign itself has also killed and maimed hundreds of Syrians, mostly civilians – and astonishingly despite openly admitting to producing and deploying bombs, rebels have then denied responsibility for the subsequent explosions and inevitable civilian death tolls, blaming it instead on the Syrian government.
RT’s report also made the point of reminding readers of a recent attempt by rebels to have a UK Channel 4 news team killed by government troops for propaganda purposes, while German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has come forward with evidence (Google English translation here) implicating rebels as having staged the now infamous “Houla Massacre,” themselves – again for propaganda purposes.
For an opposition so transparently dishonest, and already caught attempting to frame the government for mass-casualty events and atrocities of their own doing, we see what is very clearly a militant movement capable of also deploying weapons of mass destruction more than within their means of obtaining, with the insidious motivations to use them against civilian populations as they have their indiscriminate bombings, and the audacity to then blame it on the Syrian government.
The Warning
While RT’s report remains unconfirmed, it is at the very least very plausible. By airing the story, RT may be preempting malicious interests contemplating such a ploy – realizing that the public is now fully inoculated to this propaganda and that it would only backfire on both the already faltering FSA, and their increasingly discredited Western sponsors.
West is Behind Syrian Violence [video included]
Violence Erupts in Northern Lebanon As Feltman of State Department, Lieberman-Graham-McCain Amigos Clique Seek NATO Takeover of Tripoli-Kleyate Region to Advance Attack on Syria.
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV – Tarpley.net
May 25, 2012
Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. Many people, including security forces, have been killed in the turmoil.
While the West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of the killings, Damascus blames ”outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.
Press TV has talked with author and historian Webster Griffin Tarpley to further discuss the issue.
The following is an approximate transcript of the interview. Continue reading Violence Erupts in Northern Lebanon As Feltman of State Department, Lieberman-Graham-McCain Amigos Clique Seek NATO Takeover of Tripoli-Kleyate Region to Advance Attack on Syria.
Syrian Forces Storm Aleppo to Release Abducted Lebanese, Nasrallah Warns Against Opportunism
Friends of Syria
May 22, 2012
12 Lebanese citizens were abducted by the Free Syrian Army in the region of Ajaj in Aleppo.
In details, the Free Syrian Army arrested the “Badr al-Kobra” bus that was carrying 50 Lebanese citizens coming back from a visit to the holy sites in Iran. The Army pulled the 7 men off of the bus, leaving 43 women onboard, allowing them to continue their driving to Lebanon.
As soon as residents learned of the incident, they closed several roads with burning tires in Dahiyeh, they rallied at the Bir al-Abed – Cinderella Intersection, cut off a number of roads, burned tires in front of Mar Mikhael Church in Chiyah and broke the windows of cars parked alongside.
The names of the abducted are as follows: head of the “Badr al-Kobra” campaign Abbas Cheaib, Hassan Mahmoud, Mehdi Ballout, Hussain al-Seblani, Ali Abbas, Abou Ali Saleh, Hussain Omar, Mustafa Yassin, Ali Zgheib, Awad Ibrahim, Ali al-Ahmar, Ali Safa, Rabih Zgheib and Ali Termos. Preparations are underway to hold a sit-in outside the Imam Al Kazem compound in solidarity with the abducted Lebanese citizens in Aleppo.
Later in the evening, Syrian forces launched raids with tanks and other armoured vehicles in the town of Ajaj, in Aleppo near the place where the Lebanese pilgrims were kidnapped.
The British-based group’s head, Rami Abdulrahman, said people in Ajaj had told him Syrian forces were combing some of the districts.
Commenting on the abduction, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that the commands of Hezbollah and the Amal Movement are following up on this issue at the highest levels. He stressed that he will spare no effort to release the abducted, adding that the Lebanese state must do the same.
Nasrallah called on everyone to cooperate in order to solve this problem, urging residents not to cut off roads.
Nasrallah warned that some may capitalize on this abduction for their own purposes.
Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar said that the women and some of the men who were aboard the bus are safe under the protection of the Syrian official authorities. He called on the government to contact influential parties and figures to release the pilgrims immediately.
A Hezbollah source earlier told LBCI that the blood of Dahiyeh’s residents is boiling, adding that the party began contacting key figures, calling for the release of the 12 captured Lebanese.
For his part, the brother of the campaign’s organizer told LBCI that the Free Syrian Army released the women in the region of Ajaj in Aleppo, adding that the Free Syrian Army called on the Syrian army to release some detainees in exchange for the release of the captured Lebanese citizens.
In a related context, the airport road was reopened after being cut off at Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam by relatives of the abducted Lebanese citizens.
We Told You So
by Ghassan Kadi
Friends of Syria
May 21, 2012
So… the Syrian events are spilling into Lebanon. I hate to say the I/we who know about the region, have told you that it would. I hate to also say that when we said it would, we were not talking about a so-called Arab-Spring spilling into Lebanon, the like of which we saw in Egypt, and which called for reform and freedom. Our fear was purely about a bloody sectarian conflict. Yes, we told you so.
In Syria now, the calls for freedom and democracy have all but gone silence. We also told you so. And they have been replaced by Allah Akbar and pure sectarian calls to turn Syria into a Sunni fundamentalist state. We also told you so.
A Sunni Sheikh, Ahmed Abdel Wahed gets killed in Lebanon, and Lebanon is on the brink of yet another sectarian war.
No rational person condones killing in any given situation, but a rational analysis of the killing of the Sheikh can perhaps give a possible explanation of how and why it happened.
To begin with, Abdel Wahed was an outspoken supporter of Hariri, the core of Sunni fundamentalism in Lebanon. The Hariri camp refers to Abdel Wahed as a martyr and a man of God. His opponents describe him as a sectarian rascal spreading sectarian anti-Alawite hatred in the hearts and minds of young Sunni Lebanese youth as well as a militarised arms trader. No one seems to be able to pin point what he really was with clear evidence.
But why would a Lebanese army checkpoint shoot to kill?
If there was truly a Lebanese Army conspiracy to kill Abdel Wahed as his mourners claim, the Army intelligence would have found a way to do so in a manner that does not overtly implicate it. Would it not?
Even during the ugly Lebanese Civil War when all sorts of militia groups were in control of the streets and check points, the “rule” for passing traffic was to stop at checkpoints and accept being searched. Shots were fired only and only when the travelling car did not stop. And when they did not stop, they did so for good reasons because they had something or someone to hide.
So if the rogue combatant militia run and led by thugs stuck to this rule, it is only rational to think that the regular Lebanese army would also stick to this rue. There is no reason as to why it would not.
The most likely scenario is that the Sheikh and his companion driver had some “thing” to hide, not some “one” to hide. Most likely, they were hiding weapons that they were couriering from some point A to another point B.
In any which way one looks at the situation, outsiders are not in a position to understand the complexity of the situation in the Middle East.
The uprising in Syria is not about reform. It is not about democracy. It is about sectarianism, sponsored by the Sunni Arab funds (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) under the blessing of the USA with a political objective to maintain Israel’s military superiority in the region and a financial objective to keep in control of the oil.
Targeting Syria is for “good” reasons, because it is the only Arab state left that opposes Israel, and the only one in which Moslems and Christians live under a law that gives equal rights to all.
This tragedy can spill into Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia…. and sees Sunnis and Shiites engaging into a blood bath the likes of which has not been seen for centuries anywhere in the world. Nothing can serve Israel better.
I just hope that I won’t have to find myself in a situation in the future to say to the pundits and cynics, those who support the Syrian uprising; I told you so.
PN 