US drones was targeting unidentified militants who posed no threat

Top secret documents show that half of those killed in a year were ‘unknown extremists’

The US government was accused of hiding the truth about its drone programme after leaked intelligence files revealed that it was targeting unidentified militants who posed no immediate threat to the United States.

Despite President Barack Obama’s public promise that the CIA’s armed Predators and Reapers were only firing on those suspected of plotting against America, top-secret documents show that in one year alone almost half of those killed were simply listed as “unknown extremists”.

The documents, obtained by US news agency McClatchy, also reveal Pakistan’s intelligence agency was co-operating with the US at the same time as its government was condemning drone strikes on its soil.

“There is now mounting evidence that the Obama administration is misleading the American public – and the world at large – about the drone war it is waging in Pakistan,” said Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer working with the British human rights charity Reprieve.

“The reports show a significant number of the strikes have nothing to do with al-Qa’ida. Instead, they may have been a quid pro quo exchange between two countries’ spy agencies. The result  is that the US often doesn’t know who it is killing.”

The US has come under increasing international pressure to open up its decision-making process to scrutiny following claims that the drone programme has killed hundreds of civilians among an estimated death toll of 2,500, predominantly in Pakistan and Yemen. Preparations are in place to transfer more control of the programme from the CIA to the Pentagon, in a move said to herald greater transparency.

The US intelligence reports leaked to McClatchy covered, its reporters said, most of the drone strikes in Pakistan during 2006 to 2008 as well as 2010 to 2011. Most of the attacks targeted al-Qa’ida but many were aimed at the Haqqani network and factions of the Pakistani Taliban.

At least 265 of the 482 people killed by the CIA programme in the 12 months up to September 2011 were listed as Afghan, Pakistani or “unknown extremists”.

This contrasts sharply with US administration’s claim that drones are only used to target “senior operational leaders” in al-Qa’ida, those involved in the 11 September 2001 attacks or individuals plotting imminent attacks on the US.

Last night a spokesman for the US Department of Defence said neither they nor the CIA commented on intelligence matters.

Clashes as Chilean students stage protests

Tens of thousands take to the streets in one of the largest demonstrations demanding free education.

Tens of thousands of students flooded the streets of Chile on Thursday in one of the largest demonstrations demanding free education.

After two years of student marches that have paralysed Chile’s major cities and generated expectations of change to a troubled system, the crisis over education reform remains a key electoral issue ahead of November’s presidential election.

Thursday’s protests were mostly peaceful. Students waved flags, chanted slogans and danced in the streets in a festive atmosphere recalling the creative marches of 2011, when thousands dressed as superheroes, staged mass kiss-ins and danced like zombies to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

But the marches, which are often infiltrated by violent anarchist groups, also ended with clashes between police and hooded vandals. Police arrested 109 people, including 24 minors, and at least six police agents were injured.

Student organisers estimated the crowd in the Chilean capital on Thursday at about 150,000 people. City officials said the number was closer to 80,000.

Local media called it one of the largest marches in Santiago in more than two decades.

‘Here to stay’

The size of the protest showed the strength of the student movement in an election year, said student leader Camila Vallejo.

“This symbolises that the student and social movement didn’t go home and that that the movement is here to stay,” Vallejo told local ADN radio.

The protests began during the 2006-2010 government of Michelle Bachelet and grew into strikes and school takeovers that forced her to shuffle her Cabinet. Bachelet tried unsuccessfully to calm the movement by naming a committee to discuss student demands.

The protests have turned into a bigger headache for president Sebastian Pinera, whose government is focusing a chunk of the 2013 budget on financing school loans at lower rates.

But students say it’s not enough because the system is still fails them with poor public schools, expensive private universities, unprepared teachers and unaffordable loans.

Chile’s higher education burden is the toughest of nearly any nation surveyed by the multi-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or the OECD. While families in Scandinavian countries pay less than 5 percent of the costs and U.S. families pay more than 40 percent,

Chilean households must pay more than 75 percent from their own pockets. The government’s share has been enough to provide only the brightest and poorest students with scholarships and grants.

Student leaders want to change the tax system so the rich pay more. They also want the state back in control of the mostly privatised public universities to ensure quality. They say change will come when the private sector is regulated and education is no longer a for-profit business.

Bachelet, 62, returned last month to Chile following a two-year stint heading the UN women’s agency in New York. She has announced her presidential bid and says if she wins a second term in office, she will try to end for-profit education.

“I believe the education effort must be infinitely more integrating, more inclusive and take care of the quality, of the barriers that block access to financing, of the segregation,” Bachelet told the weekly newspaperThe Clinic in an interview published on Thursday.

Internal debate within Hezbollah is intensifying over its role in Syria

So far, Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria number at least 20. The last two died a few days ago in an engagement against the Free Syrian Army in the al-Qassir region of Homs’ countryside, close to the Lebanese border.

Within the social base of the party, there now exists a debate that is expected to gain momentum with time, concerning the usefulness of sending young Shiite men to die in Syria, in defense of a cause that has nothing to do with the party’s declared purpose of protecting Lebanon from Israel.

Day by day, this debate is growing more and more into a protest movement that grows in intensity with the rising involvement of Hezbollah in Syria’s internal war, and the increase in the number of its dead there. It should be noted here that the party’s fighting force is almost entirely composed of Lebanese Shiites who primarily hail from two main areas: South Lebanon’s border region with Israel, and the Bekaa region adjacent to Syria.

While the party’s political leadership is primarily comprised of southerners, the Bekaa provides the majority of its fighters, for the Bekaa is known as at the “human reservoir” of the resistance movement. Each of these regions possesses its own psychological makeup that emanates from their social, cultural and economic peculiarities.

The south, for example, is more encouraging of education, with its sons accumulating political experience gained through their involvement in left-wing Lebanese movements during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as their high level of affiliation with Palestinian organizations at that time. Economically, the south traditionally lived off of agriculture — primarily tobacco and citrus fruits. Yet with the rise of Imam Moussa al-Sadr (the founder of the Amal movement), and then the ascent to power of Amal under the leadership of Speaker Nabih Berri, southern society underwent a period of social and economic development. This led to the growth of a middle class composed of business people and employees of various governmental institutions. Furthermore, a large proportion of the south’s expatriate sons working in Gulf countries and Africa have garnered success, to varying degrees.

On the other hand, the Bekaa was only marginally affected by the rise of the Shiite star on the Lebanese political scene. The reason for that is that educational levels in the region remained low, or even all but nonexistent in the more clan-oriented parts of the Bekaa.

In truth, the broader clan affiliation of Bekaa Shiites played a part in hindering their social and civic ascension towards modernity. The area long relied on the agriculture of cannabis. But, once the civil war ended, the Lebanese state destroyed the inhabitants’ cannabis crops, prevented them from re-growing such crops, and promised to provide them with an alternative, which it never did. This thus exacerbated the degree of poverty in the region.

Hezbollah, from its end, never adopted a policy of development towards the region, preferring to spread its authority there through the enlistment of thousands of the Bekaa’s sons as fighters drawing monthly wages. The aid provided by the party and Iran to the Bekaa’s Shiites is therefore nominal more than productive, which renders the economic and social crises even worse in a region that has always lacked a systematic and scientific plan to combat such problems.

The majority of Shiite militants who chose to fight alongside the Syrian regime came from the Bekaa.

Initially, Hezbollah gave members not belonging to its military wing the freedom to go to Syria without benefiting from party support. And so, Shiite fighters volunteered to go fight in Syria for three main reasons: The first was due to a fatwa (religious edict) issued by Hezbollah proclaiming that fighting in Syria was a form of Jihad (holy war). The second reason to fight resulted from the inflamed sectarian Shiite feeling of having to protect their religious shrines in Syria (the Sayyidah Zainab Shrine in Damascus and the Sayyidah Rouqayya Shrine in Douma, among others) from supposed Sunni usurpers. And the third emanated from financial need and Hezbollah’s ability to invest in the conflict as a result of its considerable and wide-ranging ability to mobilize people.

Lately, however, the party’s involvement in the fight in Syria has turned strategic, and has transcended offering the usual limited aid. Hezbollah’s leadership thus decided to enter the internal Syrian conflict for three main strategic considerations. First, the party believes that if it did not go to defend its Syrian regime ally, it would have to fight the common enemy it has with the regime, namely the Sunni Salafists. They believe the latter won’t stop at toppling the Syrian regime, but will move on to Lebanon to accomplish their mission of striking at Iran’s influence in the country, as well as that of its main ally there, Hezbollah. The second consideration has to do with the party’s belief that improving its internal political position requires that the situation in the region be in its favor; and it views the Syrian battlefield as the proper current venue to gauge the region’s pulse. Thirdly, there exists within the party an effective movement pressuring its leadership and demanding that Hezbollah not stand idly by while the so called Sunni Gulf aggression continues against Syria and its regime, characterized as having close ties to Iran and the Shiites.

In other words, this faction believes that the war for Syria not only constitutes an existential threat for that country’s regime, but also for all Shiites in the whole of the Arab world.

Ex-Pakistani President Musharraf admits secret deal with U.S. on drone strikes

Ex-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged his government secretly signed off on U.S. drone strikes, the first time a top past or present Pakistani official has admitted publicly to such a deal.

Pakistani leaders long have openly challenged the drone program and insisted they had no part in it. Musharraf’s admission, though, suggests he and others did play some role, even if they didn’t oversee the program or approve every attack.

In an interview this week in Islamabad, Musharraf insisted Pakistan’s government signed off on strikes “only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage.”

Still, his admission that Pakistani leaders agreed to even a limited number of strikes runs counter to their repeated denunciations of a program they long claimed the United States was operating without their approval. The drone strikes — which the nonpartisan public policy group New American Foundation estimates have killed at least 1,990 people in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians — are unpopular in Pakistan.

 

Secret drone deal between Pakistan, U.S.

 

Former Pakistani president’s new life

 

Shoe hurled at former Pakistani president

“Today, the world superpower is having its own way, without any consent from Pakistan,” former Interior Minister Rehman Malik said last month.

Despite such pronouncements, there’s been speculation that the story might have been different behind the scenes.

In a cable sent in August 2008 and later posted online by Wikileaks, then-U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson mentioned a discussion about drones during a meeting that also involved Malik and then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

“Malik suggested we hold off alleged Predator attacks until after the Bajaur operation,” Patterson wrote. “The PM brushed aside Rehman’s remarks and said, ‘I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.’ “

Unmanned U.S. drones began launching attacks in Pakistan in 2004, by which time Musharraf had been president for five years after taking power in a bloodless coup.

He said that Pakistani leaders would OK U.S. drone strikes after discussions involving military and intelligence units and only if “there was no time for our own … military to act.”

This happened “only rarely,” said Musharraf, who left office in 2008 and spent years in exile before returning to Pakistan last month to launch a political comeback. But sometimes, he said, “you couldn’t delay action.”

“These ups and downs kept going,” he said. “It was a very fluid situation, a vicious enemy, … mountains, inaccessible areas.”

Musharraf said that one of those killed by U.S. drones was Nek Mohammed, a tribal leader accused of harboring al Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s western border region. At the time, in June 2004, Pakistan intelligence sources said Mohammed died after Pakistani forces launched a missile at a house where he was staying.

A criminal investigation has begun into the death of a diabetic woman at scandal-hit Mid Staffs hospital

HSE launches investigation into Gillian Astbury’s 2007 death after she slipped into diabetic coma in scandal-hit hospital

A criminal investigation has begun into the death of a diabetic woman at scandal-hit Stafford Hospital, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has said.

Gillian Astbury died after slipping into a diabetic coma at the hospital in 2007. An inquest in 2010 found that the failure to administer insulin to the 66-year-old patient amounted to a gross failure to provide basic care.

The HSE said the decision to pursue the investigation into Astbury’s death was deferred until the conclusion of the public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which found as many as 1,200 patients needlessly died between 2005 and 2009 due to “appalling” failures of care.

A report by the chairman Robert Francis QC, published in February, highlighted “appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people” at the trust. The HSE confirmed their inspectors formally began an investigation on Thursday.

“Our focus will be on establishing whether there is evidence of the employer (the trust) or individuals failing to comply with their responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act.”

Astbury, from Hednesford, Staffordshire, died on 11 April 2007 while being treated for fractures to her arm and pelvis.

Jurors at the September 2010 inquest found that a contributory factor in her death was a systemic failure to provide adequate nursing facilities and low staffing levels.

The inquest heard that Astbury’s blood sugar levels were not properly monitored and insulin was not administered on the day before her death, despite being prescribed by doctors.

A police investigation was launched after her death, but the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.

The director of quality and patient experience at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, Julie Hendry, pledge to co-operate with the HSE investigation and apologised for the “appalling care” Astbury received.

‘Our guerrillas cannot give up their arms,’ said PKK commander Murat Karayilan.

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In a safe house made of cinder blocks and surrounded by grazing goats and sheep, nestled high in the remote mountains of northern Iraq, a Kurdish fighter who has waged a guerrilla war against Turkey for nearly three decades remains defiant in the face of peace.

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Murat Karayilan, military leader of the Kurdish rebels, said, “Our guerrillas cannot give up their arms.”

The New York Times

Mr. Karayilan is negotiating from a mountain redoubt in Iraq.

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Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

A banner depicting Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned Kurdish leader.

“Our forces believe they can achieve results through war,” said the fighter,Murat Karayilan, who commands the thousands of fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the P.K.K.

For all the costs of the long war, Mr. Karayilan, his fighters and millions of Kurds believe it helped them achieve something they never would have without armed struggle: a recognition of Kurdish identity and more democratic rights.

Now, as the P.K.K. negotiates peace with Turkey to end one of the Middle East’s most intractable conflicts, it is clinging to its guns despite demands by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, that it lay them down as a condition of talks. This defiance suggests that the peace process, despite the hope it has engendered on both sides, could be longer and more arduous than at first anticipated.

“Our guerrillas cannot give up their arms,” said Mr. Karayilan, in an interview here in the safe house, which had a freezer full of ice cream and satellite television despite its remote location. “It is the last issue, something to discuss as a last issue to this process.”

The shape of a peace deal is being negotiated in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and in the island prison cell of Abdullah Ocalan, the P.K.K. leader and philosopher-king of Turkey’s Kurdish resistance. But it has fallen to Mr. Karayilan to manage the peace process from his mountain redoubt in this lawless nook of Iraq, where the only authority is that wielded by gun-toting Kurdish rebels who operate checkpoints and live in caves at remote outposts.

The skies above these mountains have gone quiet, for now, as the bombing runs by Turkish planes, their pick of targets aided by imagery provided by American drones, have ceased in order to allow the talks to proceed.

Since a cease-fire was announced in March by Mr. Ocalan, pausing a war that has claimed nearly 40,000 lives since it began in 1984, Mr. Karayilan has been holding meetings and conferences with his followers to convince them of the merits of a deal that many of them are reluctant to accept for one overriding reason.

The rank and file, he said, “do not believe and trust the approach of Turkey.”

Mr. Erdogan, whose efforts at peace could establish his legacy as a peacemaker and propel him to the presidency next year, has demanded that the thousands of fighters scattered around Turkey lay down their weapons before withdrawing to safe havens in these mountains.

“We don’t care where those withdrawing leave their weapons or even whether they bury them,” Mr. Erdogan said in a recent television interview. “They must put them down and go. Because otherwise this situation is very open to provocation.”

Mr. Erdogan has also resisted new legislation, demanded by Mr. Karayilan’s party, to ensure the safety of retreating rebels. Instead, he has created a so-called committee of wise men, including Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals and leaders, to promote the peace talks.

Mr. Karayilan criticized Mr. Erdogan’s tactics, saying: “It needs a serious approach. Erdogan does not approach it seriously; he doesn’t understand the deep history. Everyone has to know that our guerrilla forces have continued our struggle successfully to this day.”

But Mr. Karayilan’s defiant words are tempered by his desire for peace. The latest cease-fire is the ninth announced by the P.K.K., which was designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe in 1993. Years ago the party gave up its ambition to create a separate Kurdish state, and it now says it will exchange peace for the expansion of Kurdish rights enshrined in a new constitution and the release of thousands of political prisoners from Turkish prisons.

“We want to solve our problems through peace and dialogue,” Mr. Karayilan said. “That is what we believe.”

But, he said, “if they do not accept Kurds as equal citizens, this problem cannot be solved.”

As the commander of the P.K.K., Mr. Karayilan also has influence — if not outright authority — over the group’s offshoot in Syria, the Democratic Union Party, or the P.Y.D., which has taken up arms in that country’s civil war to defend Kurdish areas. He and many other Kurds believe that the close relationship between the West, including the United States, and Turkey has been at the expense of the Kurds.

“In Syria, Kurds represent more secular and democratic groups,” he said. “However, the West is not developing relations with the Kurds in Syria. Why? Because of their relations with Turkey.”

This region, high in the Qandil mountain range, is within Iraq’s territory but beyond the control of any government authority. The rubble of houses that residents say were destroyed in recent years by Turkish warplanes can be seen from the road. On the side of one steep and narrow mountain passage sits the gnarled mess of a car — a memorial, a sign posted nearby says, to a family of seven killed in a Turkish airstrike.

Civilians here say they trust the guerrillas to mediate disputes and provide services. “In the cities, if you have a problem, you go to court,” said Kadir Ibrahim, a villager who said his home had been destroyed by a Turkish airstrike. “Here, the P.K.K. solves the problems. They are very polite. It’s unfair to call them terrorists. They are very polite and peaceful. They are just asking for their rights.”

At a time of revolution across the Middle East, it is time, Kurds say, for them to seize their rights and secure a better future. Millions of Kurds are spread across Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran, and they have long dreamed of independence. “Now, the world is different,” Mr. Ibrahim said. “Everything is different than before.”

With his bushy mustache and easy smile, Mr. Karayilan, who became commander of the P.K.K. after Mr. Ocalan was arrested in 1999, has an avuncular manner that belies his designation by the American government as a terrorist leader and kingpin (a label the Treasury Department applied to him in 2009 after determining that his organization raised money by smuggling drugs to Europe).

He sat in a back room of the safe house, with a yellow banner of Mr. Ocalan fastened to the wall. The air was sticky, and guerrillas carrying rifles served him tea.

If the war ends, he said, he hopes to return to Turkey to play a political role in advancing Kurdish rights. “After we put violence aside, then a democratic society has to be formed,” Mr. Karayilan said.

If the war does not end, though, he is ready to fight again.

“If this does not happen, there will be a great war,” he said.

Oliver Stone meets Julian Assange and criticises new Wikileaks films

Director visits Julian Assange at Ecuadorian embassy in London and praises the Wikileaks founder’s strength of mind

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone has attacked two forthcoming films about Julian Assange after revealing that he met the Wikileaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy in London last week.

Stone, a long-time supporter of Assange, tweeted a picture of himself with the political activist. He wrote: ”A sad occasion in that Julian could not follow me out the door. He lives in a tiny room with great modesty and discipline.”

In further tweets, Stone added: ”Strong mind, no sun, friends who visit, work to be done, one documentary coming out from Alex Gibney that is not expected to be kind.

”Another film from Dreamworks which is also going to be unfriendly … I don’t think most people in the US realise how important Wikileaks is and why Julian’s case needs support.

”Julian Assange did much for free speech and is now being victimised by the abusers of that concept.”

The films criticised by Stone were Alex Gibney‘s forthcoming documentary We Steal Secrets, which debuted at Sundance in January, and Dreamgirls director Bill Condon’s drama The Fifth Estate, which stars Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange alongside Laura Linney, Anthony Mackie and Peter Capaldi. It is due to be released in the US in November, which suggests an awards-season run in 2014.

Assange himself has attacked The Fifth Estate, which is based on former aide Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, as well as Guardian writers David Leigh and Luke Harding’s WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. Speaking via video link to the Oxford Union in January, he labelled it ”a massive propaganda attack” that told ”lie upon lie”.

Assange is living in the Ecuadorian embassy, which offered him asylum in August, and is hoping to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault. He says he fears being extradited from Sweden to the US over his WikiLeaks activism.

The US says it is urging China to use all its leverage to help rein in North Korea’s “destabilising” actions.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is in South Korea, where he is expected to call on China to evoke “a sense of urgency” in its talks with the North.

Pyongyang has ratcheted up tensions in the region, threatening nuclear strikes against South Korea and the US.

A leaked US intelligence report has said the North may now be capable of mounting nuclear warheads on a missile.

On Thursday, a US Congressman read out what he said was an unclassified section of a Defense Intelligence Agency study. He said it assessed “with moderate confidence” that the North could fire a nuclear-armed missile, though with “low reliability”.

The North has tested both nuclear weapons and missiles, but it had been thought it had not yet developed a device small enough to be a viable and deliverable weapon.

Such a development would change the past 20 years of diplomacy, says the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in Seoul, all of which has been aimed at stopping North Korea from getting that sort of weapon.

But the Pentagon later denied the report, with spokesman George Little saying it would be “inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage”.

South Korea is currently on a high state of alert amid indications that the North is preparing for a missile test.

Pyongyang has moved two Musudan ballistic missiles to its east coast. Estimates of their range vary, but some suggest the missiles could travel 4,000km (2,500 miles).

That would put US bases on Guam within range, although it is not believed that the Musudan has been tested before.

‘Stake in stability’

Mr Kerry is making his first trip to Asia since becoming secretary of state. He will spend time in Seoul and Tokyo as well as in Beijing, North Korea’s last remaining ally and its major trading partner.

 

A senior administration official told reporters on board Mr Kerry’s plane: “It is no secret that China has most leverage, most influence, with North Korea and I think fundamentally we would want them to use some of that leverage because otherwise it is very destabilising and it threatens the whole region.”

The official added that, although Washington was not privy to conversations between China and North Korea, “we would want China to bring a sense of urgency, the need to stop this escalation, into that debate”.

“China has a huge stake in stability and the continued North Korean pursuit of a nuclear armed missile capability is the enemy of stability. That gives us and the Chinese a very powerful objective in common, namely denuclearisation,” the official said.

US President Barack Obama has urged Pyongyang to end its “belligerent approach… and to try to lower temperatures”.

But he warned that while he preferred to see tensions resolved through diplomatic means, “the United States will take all necessary steps to protect its people”.

China, meanwhile, has denied reports that it is deploying troops along the North Korean border.

A defence ministry official said Beijing was “paying close attention to the development of the current situation on the Korean Peninsula and has always been committed to safeguarding peace and stability in Northeast Asia,” the state Xinhua news agency reports.

Anniversary approaches

 

North Korea has been making threats against South Korea, Japan and US bases in the region

North Korea has increased its warlike rhetoric following fresh UN sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and joint military manoeuvres by the US and South Korea.

The North says it will restart a mothballed nuclear reactor, has shut an emergency military hotline to the South and has urged countries to withdraw diplomatic staff, saying it cannot now guarantee their safety.

However, in the past few days North Korea’s media appear to be in more of a holiday mood, due to the approach of Monday’s celebrations marking the birth of national founder Kim Il-sung – a potential launch date for a new missile test.

On Thursday, foreign ministers from the G8 group of nations condemned in the “strongest possible terms” North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

Following talks in London, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said that if the North conducted another missile launch or nuclear test “we have committed ourselves to take further significant measures”.

Musudan missile

• The Musudan, also known as the Nodong-B or the Taepodong-X, is an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Its likely targets are Okinawa, Japan, and US bases in the Pacific
• Range estimates differ dramatically. Israeli intelligence suggests 2,500km, while the US Missile Defense Agency estimates 3,200km; other sources put the upper limit at 4,000km
• These differences are due in large part to the fact that the missile has never been tested publicly, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Its payload is also unknown

AFTER ADMITTING UN PEACE PLAN WAS A PLOY, BROOKINGS PREDICTABLY SCRAPS IT AND BEGINS PROMOTING EXPANDED MILITARY CONFLICT.

y the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syriawas merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO’s ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from. In fact, Brookings actually stated in a recent report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” –page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.

Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, 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.

As if to alleviate any lingering doubts, NATO’s “Alliance News Blog” has confirmed that the US is committed not to “peace,” but rather to the overthrow of Syria’s government and is “already committed to helping [President Bashar al-Assad] fall,” but is “merely looking for the least violent, lowest cost way to get there.” The April 9, 2012 blog entry features an op-ed titled, “US ‘already committed to helping Assad fall’,” and fully admits that the US is equipping the so-called “Free Syrian Army” which has received weapons, leadership, and cash from the NATO-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists led by notorious mass-murderer Abdul Hakim Belhaj.

Image: NATO’s official “Alliance News Blog proudly reports that the US is already committed to helping “Assad fall” and is simply using the lull in fighting brought on by Kofi Annan’s disingenuous “peace plan” to rearm, reorganize, and redeploy their terrorist proxy forces against Assad. The op-ed featured on NATO’s blog was featured in the LA Times and written byCFR member Doyle McManus

And now, the Brookings Institution itself has predictably declared the Annan “peace deal” a failure and states that the time to “stretch” Syria’s military to the breaking point through expanded foreign-backed unrest has come. In an article titled, “Annan’s Mission Impossible: Why is everyone pretending that the U.N. plan in Syria has a prayer of suceeding?” Brookings Doha Center director Salman Shaikh insults the intelligence of his readership while handing out useful talking points surely to be parroted by the corporate-media over the next few days and weeks. Shaikh depicts the ceasefire’s failure as solely the result of the Syrian government’s belligerence and brutality, while mentioning nothing of the Syrian opposition’s documented and even admitted atrocities.

 

Video: Michael Weiss of the Neo-Con “Henry Jackson Society,” openly admits that diplomatic options are being paraded publicly to satisfy public opinion, but ultimately NATO plans to unilaterally intervene militarily in Syria, and will do so with the UN’s purposefully sabotaged “humanitarian operation” as its pretext.

And while portraying the Syrian government as irrationally carrying out a campaign of brutality against the Syrian people, Shaikh admits that the “Free Syrian Army” is operating militarily out of Turkey and that the Syrian National Council (SNC) represents foreign harbored and influenced leadership. While Shaikh portrays Syria’s minorities as “on the sideline,” he declines from explaining why they have not joined the foreign-driven unrest. In reality, these groups have been the hardest hit by rebel atrocities, including Syria’s large Christian communities.

Image: Christians in Syria have been particularly hit hard by what is being described as “ethnic cleansing,” not by Syrian security forces, but by NATO-backed death squads under the banner of the “Free Syrian Army.” The LA Times has been quietly reporting on the tragedy of Syria’s minorities at the hands of the Syrian rebels for months – and indicates that wider genocide will take place, just as it is now in Libya, should Syria’s government collapse under foreign pressure.

Shaikh’s shoddy salesmanship also reveals another truth – when he claims that “opposition leaders inside and outside the country do not have the resources to unite their ranks alone.” Surely any opposition group that represented the vast majority of the Syrian people, as the UN and the corporate-media claim daily, would not have trouble finding the resources inside of Syria “alone.” In reality, the unrest in Syria is driven by a foreign-backed violent minority, carried out by a combination of violent Sunni-extremists from Syria and many foreign fighters brought in from abroad. Many of Syria’s real opposition find the “Free Syrian Army’s” collaboration with foreigners “unacceptable.”

NATO and its proxies’ efforts have failed primarily because the movement’s semi-covert foreign backing is still not enough to turn the tide, and more overt backing is needed, including foreign military intervention. Shaikh’s entire argument hinges on the creation of a “genuine grand opposition coalition ” that currently, admittedly, does not exist.

As the Brookings Institution prepares the next stage of its premeditated escalation against the sovereign nation-state of Syria, and continues framing the violence as one-sided, a torrent of reports even from the corporate-media itself confirms what many geopolitical analysts have been saying for over a year – that the “Free Syrian Army” is conducting a vicious campaign of terrorism leaving Syrian security forces no choice but to continue fighting on to restore order.

In fact, just today, Wednesday May 9, 2012, Syrian rebels attempted to attack a convoy consisting of Kofi Annan’s UN monitors. France inexplicably then blamed the Syrian government for not providing adequate security for the UN monitors, after a year of condemning the government for attempting to restore order in the face of the very growing militant violence the attacks resulted from. And in recent weeks, everything from Human Rights Watch reports, to open admissions from the rebels themselves confirm that they are committing widespread human rights abuses and turning toward indiscriminate bombing tactics. This indicates a threat Syria’s government would be remiss not to counter – and surely a threat the “international community” would be remiss to continue supporting, funding, and even arming.

Now a concerted effort will be made to sabotage the UN peace plan in every shape, form, and manner, especially through increased violence and particularly in cross-border incidents to help sell NATO-backed, Turkey-led incursions into Syria to carve out “safe havens.” From there a steady stream of weapons and fighters from around the world will be funneled in, in an attempt to, as Brookings Shaikh puts it, stretch Syria’s forces “to a breaking point.”

Image: The cover of the CFR’s flattering report on US-Turkey relations, full of empty promises to entice Turkish leaders into falling on their swords for Western ambitions across the Middle East. And of course, the report is written in the context of what Turkey can do for the US in terms of Syria and Iran in particular. Pro-genocide Madeleine Albright chaired the “task force” that produced the report.

To help convince Turkey to “take the plunge” for NATO, the Council on Foreign Relations has recently published a reportattempting to flesh out an improved alliance between the US and Turkey – claiming the new relationship would trump the potential for US cooperation with any BRICS nation (except perhaps India). This patronizing political stunt attempts to fill Turkish leaders with delusions of grandeur, tempting them with “goodies” ahead of falling on their swords for Wall Street and London’s ambitions in Syria and Iran. Turkish leaders might reassess such grandiose claims and remember BRICS’ growth and benefits are based on solidarity and production, avoiding “alliances” with Wall Street, London, and their institutions, while conversely, Wall Street and London’s “benefits” are based on domination, exploitation, betrayal, and unsustainable pyramid schemes.

Syria’s fate rests on both Syria and its allies’ ability to produce a tactical reality on the ground that would make any foreign military incursion a disaster. It also depends on either Turkey’s wisdom or foolishness in considering the elementary ploy and poisoned “goodies” the West is dangling in front of it in exchange for complicity in dividing and destroying neighboring Syria.

The corporate-financiers centered around the capitals of the West have committed to a global war aimed at permanently destroying nation-states and replacing them with a homogeneous administrative system built out of Wall Street and London-funded NGOs, interlocking with the West’s contrived “international institutions.” It is in essence, a World War, currently being fought with 4th generation warfare to build a neo-imperial global government. With overt efforts to destabilize nations around the world, including Russia and China, the West’s hand is revealed and there is no turning back.

The only hope of stopping disaster if either the corporate-financiers succeed or fail (thus turning in and feeding on itself), is to recognize their source of power, and begin undermining it on a daily basis through both boycotting their goods and services, while simultaneously replacing their corporations and institutions with local, genuine alternatives. Syria may seem like an isolated conflict, but is in reality linked to us directly, regardless of where we live. Either we live in a nation that will be next, or a nation who will be further crushed under the hubris, power, and arrogance of an empowered Wall Street and London elite.

T. Cartalucci

AFTER ADMITTING UN PEACE PLAN WAS A PLOY, BROOKINGS PREDICTABLY SCRAPS IT AND BEGINS PROMOTING EXPANDED MILITARY CONFLICT.

y the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syriawas merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO’s ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from. In fact, Brookings actually stated in a recent report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” –page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.

Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, 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.

As if to alleviate any lingering doubts, NATO’s “Alliance News Blog” has confirmed that the US is committed not to “peace,” but rather to the overthrow of Syria’s government and is “already committed to helping [President Bashar al-Assad] fall,” but is “merely looking for the least violent, lowest cost way to get there.” The April 9, 2012 blog entry features an op-ed titled, “US ‘already committed to helping Assad fall’,” and fully admits that the US is equipping the so-called “Free Syrian Army” which has received weapons, leadership, and cash from the NATO-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists led by notorious mass-murderer Abdul Hakim Belhaj.

Image: NATO’s official “Alliance News Blog proudly reports that the US is already committed to helping “Assad fall” and is simply using the lull in fighting brought on by Kofi Annan’s disingenuous “peace plan” to rearm, reorganize, and redeploy their terrorist proxy forces against Assad. The op-ed featured on NATO’s blog was featured in the LA Times and written byCFR member Doyle McManus

And now, the Brookings Institution itself has predictably declared the Annan “peace deal” a failure and states that the time to “stretch” Syria’s military to the breaking point through expanded foreign-backed unrest has come. In an article titled, “Annan’s Mission Impossible: Why is everyone pretending that the U.N. plan in Syria has a prayer of suceeding?” Brookings Doha Center director Salman Shaikh insults the intelligence of his readership while handing out useful talking points surely to be parroted by the corporate-media over the next few days and weeks. Shaikh depicts the ceasefire’s failure as solely the result of the Syrian government’s belligerence and brutality, while mentioning nothing of the Syrian opposition’s documented and even admitted atrocities.

 

Video: Michael Weiss of the Neo-Con “Henry Jackson Society,” openly admits that diplomatic options are being paraded publicly to satisfy public opinion, but ultimately NATO plans to unilaterally intervene militarily in Syria, and will do so with the UN’s purposefully sabotaged “humanitarian operation” as its pretext.

And while portraying the Syrian government as irrationally carrying out a campaign of brutality against the Syrian people, Shaikh admits that the “Free Syrian Army” is operating militarily out of Turkey and that the Syrian National Council (SNC) represents foreign harbored and influenced leadership. While Shaikh portrays Syria’s minorities as “on the sideline,” he declines from explaining why they have not joined the foreign-driven unrest. In reality, these groups have been the hardest hit by rebel atrocities, including Syria’s large Christian communities.

Image: Christians in Syria have been particularly hit hard by what is being described as “ethnic cleansing,” not by Syrian security forces, but by NATO-backed death squads under the banner of the “Free Syrian Army.” The LA Times has been quietly reporting on the tragedy of Syria’s minorities at the hands of the Syrian rebels for months – and indicates that wider genocide will take place, just as it is now in Libya, should Syria’s government collapse under foreign pressure.

Shaikh’s shoddy salesmanship also reveals another truth – when he claims that “opposition leaders inside and outside the country do not have the resources to unite their ranks alone.” Surely any opposition group that represented the vast majority of the Syrian people, as the UN and the corporate-media claim daily, would not have trouble finding the resources inside of Syria “alone.” In reality, the unrest in Syria is driven by a foreign-backed violent minority, carried out by a combination of violent Sunni-extremists from Syria and many foreign fighters brought in from abroad. Many of Syria’s real opposition find the “Free Syrian Army’s” collaboration with foreigners “unacceptable.”

NATO and its proxies’ efforts have failed primarily because the movement’s semi-covert foreign backing is still not enough to turn the tide, and more overt backing is needed, including foreign military intervention. Shaikh’s entire argument hinges on the creation of a “genuine grand opposition coalition ” that currently, admittedly, does not exist.

As the Brookings Institution prepares the next stage of its premeditated escalation against the sovereign nation-state of Syria, and continues framing the violence as one-sided, a torrent of reports even from the corporate-media itself confirms what many geopolitical analysts have been saying for over a year – that the “Free Syrian Army” is conducting a vicious campaign of terrorism leaving Syrian security forces no choice but to continue fighting on to restore order.

In fact, just today, Wednesday May 9, 2012, Syrian rebels attempted to attack a convoy consisting of Kofi Annan’s UN monitors. France inexplicably then blamed the Syrian government for not providing adequate security for the UN monitors, after a year of condemning the government for attempting to restore order in the face of the very growing militant violence the attacks resulted from. And in recent weeks, everything from Human Rights Watch reports, to open admissions from the rebels themselves confirm that they are committing widespread human rights abuses and turning toward indiscriminate bombing tactics. This indicates a threat Syria’s government would be remiss not to counter – and surely a threat the “international community” would be remiss to continue supporting, funding, and even arming.

Now a concerted effort will be made to sabotage the UN peace plan in every shape, form, and manner, especially through increased violence and particularly in cross-border incidents to help sell NATO-backed, Turkey-led incursions into Syria to carve out “safe havens.” From there a steady stream of weapons and fighters from around the world will be funneled in, in an attempt to, as Brookings Shaikh puts it, stretch Syria’s forces “to a breaking point.”

Image: The cover of the CFR’s flattering report on US-Turkey relations, full of empty promises to entice Turkish leaders into falling on their swords for Western ambitions across the Middle East. And of course, the report is written in the context of what Turkey can do for the US in terms of Syria and Iran in particular. Pro-genocide Madeleine Albright chaired the “task force” that produced the report.

To help convince Turkey to “take the plunge” for NATO, the Council on Foreign Relations has recently published a reportattempting to flesh out an improved alliance between the US and Turkey – claiming the new relationship would trump the potential for US cooperation with any BRICS nation (except perhaps India). This patronizing political stunt attempts to fill Turkish leaders with delusions of grandeur, tempting them with “goodies” ahead of falling on their swords for Wall Street and London’s ambitions in Syria and Iran. Turkish leaders might reassess such grandiose claims and remember BRICS’ growth and benefits are based on solidarity and production, avoiding “alliances” with Wall Street, London, and their institutions, while conversely, Wall Street and London’s “benefits” are based on domination, exploitation, betrayal, and unsustainable pyramid schemes.

Syria’s fate rests on both Syria and its allies’ ability to produce a tactical reality on the ground that would make any foreign military incursion a disaster. It also depends on either Turkey’s wisdom or foolishness in considering the elementary ploy and poisoned “goodies” the West is dangling in front of it in exchange for complicity in dividing and destroying neighboring Syria.

The corporate-financiers centered around the capitals of the West have committed to a global war aimed at permanently destroying nation-states and replacing them with a homogeneous administrative system built out of Wall Street and London-funded NGOs, interlocking with the West’s contrived “international institutions.” It is in essence, a World War, currently being fought with 4th generation warfare to build a neo-imperial global government. With overt efforts to destabilize nations around the world, including Russia and China, the West’s hand is revealed and there is no turning back.

The only hope of stopping disaster if either the corporate-financiers succeed or fail (thus turning in and feeding on itself), is to recognize their source of power, and begin undermining it on a daily basis through both boycotting their goods and services, while simultaneously replacing their corporations and institutions with local, genuine alternatives. Syria may seem like an isolated conflict, but is in reality linked to us directly, regardless of where we live. Either we live in a nation that will be next, or a nation who will be further crushed under the hubris, power, and arrogance of an empowered Wall Street and London elite.

T. Cartalucci