Yet another Chinese Chemical Plant Explodes Mysteriously as China Dumps A Record $94 Billion In US Treasurys In One Month
via osnetdaily.com
Sep 7, 2015
[osnetdaily] Editor’s Note…
Fourth strike ! Looks like all the “coincidence theories” can be put to rest now, as China Dumps A Record $94 Billion In US Treasurys In One Month. All those mysterious explosions must be related.
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Zero Hedge
[by Tyler Durden]
If you’re planning on travelling to China, we have two pieces of advice:
- Do not look like a short seller
- Do not go near any chemical factories
Failing to heed the first tip there could get you thrown in jail (or, as Man Group’s China chief Li Yifei calls it, sent on a “short vacation”).
The consequences of failing to follow the second piece of advice above could be, how should we put this… explosive.
Washington Launches New Drone Assassination Program in Syria
via Global research
by Bill Van Auken
World Socialist Web Site
Sep 3, 2015
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are carrying out a secret drone missile assassination program in Syria, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday.
The existence of the so-called targeted killing program has come to light in the wake of last month’s assassination of a British citizen identified as 21-year-old Junaid Hussein, a hacker who is described as a cyber expert for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Hussein is alleged to have had some connection to one of the two armed men who were shot and killed outside a “Draw Mohammed” contest staged by right-wing anti-Muslim groups in Texas last May. He is also said to have been responsible for hacking the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US Central Command, the Pentagon command responsible for the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. He was sentenced to six months in jail in Britain in 2012 for hacking and publishing information from an address book of former prime minister Tony Blair.
US officials who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity claimed that the drone assassination program in Syria was directed exclusively at “high-value targets.” They insisted that Hussein fell into that category because of his alleged involvement in “recruitment,” which may mean little more than his postings on social media.
The Post report, citing an unnamed senior US official, also referred to “others killed in a recent weeks” in strikes carried out under the CIA-JSOC assassination program.
The extension of the drone killing operation into Syria marks a further expansion of a practice of assassinations that has been found illegal by United Nations agencies and which the Obama administration had previously claimed it was scaling back.
It moreover involves the CIA, a civilian agency which by definition cannot claim that its killings are carried out in accordance with the laws of war.
The White House indicated last April, after President Barack Obama’s admission that a January CIA drone strike in Pakistan had killed two Western hostages, US and Italian aid workers Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto, that the administration would take the drone killings out of the hands of the CIA and centralize them under the command of the Pentagon. At the time, Obama stressed the need for “transparency” in the assassination program.
Instead, yet another front in the secret drone war has been uncovered, and the CIA, instead of being removed from it, has joined in a seamless operation with the US military’s special forces.
The Post cited unnamed officials as stating that this “hybrid approach” involved the CIA “finding and fixing” those targeted for assassination, while JSOC was responsible for “the ‘finish’”, i.e., the actual killings. The officials went on to indicate that “the cooperation between the CIA and JSOC in Syria is increasingly viewed as a model that could be employed in future conflicts.”
JSOC, it should be pointed out, has been involved in atrocities equal to or surpassing those of the CIA. In December 2013, it targeted a convoy of vehicles carrying people to a wedding in Yemen, killing between 12 and 17 of them.
The Post article did not make clear how those targeted for assassination in Syria were being selected. Earlier reports established that Obama had personally chosen the individuals to be incinerated by Hellfire missiles in regular White House sessions known as “terror Tuesdays.” These assassinations amount to arbitrary executions in which charges are not presented against those to be killed, much less proven through any kind of judicial process.
Syria has now joined Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries where drone strikes have been launched. The reference to “future conflicts” makes clear that Pentagon’s planned expansion of its drone fleet (with the number of daily flights to be increased by up to 50 percent over the next four years) will see illegal killings introduced into other parts of the world with all of the attendant slaughter and terrorization of civilian populations.
The CIA-JSOC drone attacks amount to only a small fraction of the 2,450 air strikes carried out by US-led regular military forces against ISIS over the past year. This public campaign of airstrikes has had little effect in terms of dislodging ISIS from the broad swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory that it has occupied.
The CIA-JSOC operation appears to have a different purpose, which may be tied to the CIA’s earlier function in Syria, which was funneling arms and aid to the so-called “rebels,” the Islamist sectarian militias that serve as proxies for the West, Saudi Arabia and the other reactionary Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf in a war for regime change against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
An effective assassination campaign against “high-value targets” in ISIS would decapitate the Islamist group, while leaving its fighters to be recruited into a new front deemed acceptable by the CIA to receive US arms and assistance.
The extension of the drone killing program into Syria represents another escalation of a US-led intervention that has turned the country into a vast killing field, while destroying its economy and infrastructure
Flashpoint: White House Confirms Russian Presence In Syria, Warns It Is “Destabilizing”
via Zero Hedge
by Tyler Durden
Sep 3, 2015
[Potent News editor’s UPDATE: West Fabricated Reports About Russian Troops in Syria – Syrian Minister]
Two days ago we reported something which we had anticipated for a long time but nonetheless did not expect to take shape so swiftly: namely, that with Assad’s regime close to collapse and fighting a war on three different fronts (one of which is directly supported by US air and “advisor” forces), Putin would have no choice but to finally intervene in the most anticipated showdown in recent history as “Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state.”
This was indirectly confirmed the very next day when an al-Nusra linked Twitter account posted pictures of a Russian drone and a Su-34 fighter jet – the kind which is not flown by the Syrian air force – flying over the Nusra-controlled western idlib province.
Another twitter account said to have captured Russian soldiers in Zabadani “while fighting for Assad”
Also, one day after our report, the Telegraph reported that “Syrian state TV reportedly broadcasts footage of Russian soldiers and armoured vehicle fighting alongside pro-Assad troops.” According to the article, “the video footage claimed to show troops and a Russian armoured vehicle fighting Syrian rebels alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in Latakia. It is reportedly possible to hear Russian being spoken by the troops in the footage.”
It added that “a Russian naval vessel was photographed heading south through the Bosphorus strait carrying large amounts of military equipment, according to social media and a shipping blog” while “an unnamed activist with the Syrian rebel group the Free Syrian Army told The Times: “The Russians have been there a long time.”
“There are more Russian officials who came to Slunfeh in recent weeks. We don’t know how many but I can assure you there has been Russian reinforcement.” “
Then earlier today we got the closest thing to a confirmation from the White House itself which confirmed that “it was closely monitoring reports that Russia is carrying out military operations in Syria, warning such actions, if confirmed, would be “destabilising and counter-productive.”
Why the Refugee Crisis?
via Global Research
by Stephen Lendman
Aug 31, 2015
Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers head for safe havens daily – a human flood entering Europe, risking life and limb to get there. Why?
Endless US direct and proxy wars force desperate people to seek safety out of harm’s way. Numbers fleeing war and destabilized areas are greater than any time since WWII – increasing exponentially as conflicts and chaos rage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Donbass, Somalia, South Sudan, and elsewhere.
According to a UNHCR report, 60 million people were forcibly displaced by end of 2014. Globally one in every 122 people are asylum seekers, refugees or internally displaced persons. More than half the world’s refugees are children.
On August 28, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said over 300,000 refugees and asylum seekers crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe so far this year – greatly exceeding 2014’s 219,000 total, a human flood likely to approach half a million by year end, likely hundreds of thousands more in 2016 and beyond.
Thousands of others die or go missing. On August 27, hundreds were feared dead after two overcrowded vessels capsized off Libya’s coast. Dozens of Syrian refugees were found suffocated to death in a truck parked on an Austrian highway – their bodies in a state of decomposition. Other similar horror stories repeat with disturbing regularity.
[…CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE]
[related videos:
- The Planned EU Immigration Crisis – Morris
- The EU Must See Its Guilt For The Refugees – Morris]
Paul Watson Promotes Zionist Disinformation About Muslims and Free Speech – Non-Aligned Media
by Brandon martinez
via Non-Aligned Media
Aug 13, 2015
My critique of Paul Joseph Watson’s burgeoning neoconservatism and his Zionist disinformation about Muslims and the real culprits behind the war on free speech.
The Douma Market Attack: Another Fabricated Pretext for Intervention in Syria?
21st Century Wire says…
Aug 21, 2015
If indeed this is a false flag incident designed to demonize the Syrian government and fast-track a US-led military intervention and regime change in Syria – it wouldn’t be the first time.
More from Counter Punch…
Treating wounded from Douma market attack is harder because Syrian troops besiege the city. http://t.co/5E5lgn6koG pic.twitter.com/Ty2EYBoUTP
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) August 17, 2015
Eric Draitser
Counter Punch
The August 16, 2015 attack on a market in the Syrian town of Douma, just outside the capital Damascus, has caused international outrage. Condemnations of the Syrian government have poured in from seemingly all corners of the globe as President Assad and the Syrian military have been declared responsible for the attack, convicted in the court of media opinion.
Interestingly, such declarations have come well before any investigation has been conducted, and without any tangible evidence other than the assertions of the rebel spokespersons and anti-government sources. Indeed, there has been an embarrassing dearth of investigative questions asked as corporate media, who have been far from objective these last four and half years, have rushed to fit the facts to their long-standing narrative of “Assad the Butcher.”
IMAGE from NY Times – The death toll in Douma puts the incident among the deadliest air attacks during more than four years of conflict in Syria. (Credit Bassam Khabieh/Reuters)
This author fully understands that, in asking difficult questions, he will be called an “apologist,” an “Assad propagandist,” or some other such nonsense. Frankly, such name-calling means very little when compared to the suffering of Syrian people, and the untold brutality that will be visited upon them if the western corporate media and warmongers get their way and yet another imperialist so-called intervention is carried out in the name of “humanitarianism.” The goal is to ask the right questions, to cast doubt on the already solidifying propaganda narrative that will undoubtedly be used to justify still more war.
Those who work for peace must be prepared to interrogate the received truths of the media machine, to confront head on that which is uncomfortable, and to do so knowing that their motives are just. The victims of this war, both past and future, deserve nothing less.
Questioning the Douma Narrative
When carefully scrutinizing the documentary evidence of the attack, and comparing that to the claims made throughout western media, some troubling irregularities emerge. Not only do the claims seem to be exaggerated, but when placed within the historical context of this war, they seem to fit into a clear pattern of distortion and misinformation disseminated for political purposes, rather than objective reportage. Indeed, the raw footage taken on the scene goes a long way to contradicting some of the claims made by witnesses and “activists” (an interesting term in itself) often quoted in the media.
First, there is the allegation that more than 100 civilians were killed in an airstrike carried out by the Syrian military. There are certainly plenty of pictures that seem to bolster that claim, with debris scattered everywhere, aid workers carrying victims, and frightened civilians rushing around the destroyed marketplace. However, when one looks at the videos, even those provided by outlets such as The Guardian in the above linked article, one curious thing seems to be missing: bodies.
Indeed, it does seem odd that an airstrike could obliterate a crowded market on a Sunday, killing over a hundred people, and no videos or images would show bodies torn apart by the blast? One would expect to see mangled corpses, limbs scattered on the ground, pools of blood, etc. None of that seems visible.
Compare the Douma videos to those from Gaza on July 30, 2014 during Israel’s vicious war. An Israeli airstrike, which killed 15 people and injured more than 150, also hit a crowded market and caused horrific destruction. And in the videos, one sees bloodied bodies missing limbs, pools of blood on the street, and other gut-wrenching images. Or compare the Douma videos to those of the Christmas 2013 bombing of a crowded Baghdad market. The videos of that attack are gruesome, showing victims with heads partially blown off their bodies, legs attached to bodies by skin alone, lifeless corpses of children and other truly disturbing images…
Continue this article at Counter Punch
READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files
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