The War Against Syria

That guy from Skull & Bones says it's time for the U.S. to intervene in Syria.



Kerry: U.S. will respond to ‘moral obscenity’ of Syria massacre

Secretary of State John Kerry left no doubt Monday that the United States believes Syria’s Bashar Assad used chemical weapons to slaughter civilians last week and vowed that the United States will respond to that “moral obscenity.”

“Anyone who can claim that an attack of this staggering scale could be contrived or fabricated needs to check their conscience and their own moral compass,” he said, in a barb likely meant for Syria and its patron Russia. “What is before us today is real and it is compelling.”

Kerry, speaking to reporters at the State Department, described the attack in very personal terms, describing how he had watched the “gut-wrenching” videos of the dead and dying via social media. But he gave no details about when a decision on whether to use force in response to last week’s massacre might come — or whether it would.

The secretary of state said the United States government and its allies were reviewing non-public information about the alleged attack and promised “we will provide that information in the days ahead.”

“Make no mistake, President (Barack) Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people,” Kerry warned. “Nothing today is more serious and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny.”

View gallery."Free Syrian Army fighters flee a building in fear of …
Free Syrian Army fighters flee a building in fear of an airstrike by forces loyal to Syria's Preside …
The top U.S. diplomat offered no new public evidence to back up U.S. charges that the Assad regime used chemical weapons in an attack just outside Damascus that anti-Assad fighters claim might have killed more than 1,300.

Instead, he declared that shocking social media videos shared by the opposition had essentially made the world witness to the assault.

After a round of telephone diplomacy on Sunday, Kerry said, “I went back and I watched videos — videos that anybody can watch on social media — I watched them one more gut-wrenching time.”

“As a father, I can’t get the image out of my head, of a man who held up his dead child, wailing, while chaos swirled around,” he said.

“The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity,” he underlined.

ecretary of State John Kerry left no doubt Monday that the United States believes Syria’s Bashar Assad used chemical weapons to slaughter civilians last week and vowed that the United States will respond to that “moral obscenity.”

Сирийские сапёры. Без права на ошибку

لسلاح الكيمياوي في سوريا:الضربة القاضية لجركة الإخوان المجرمين ف

Israel Grants Oil Rights in Syria to Murdoch and Rothschild

Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. This from a 2010 Genie Energy press release:

Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”

“I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”

For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria.

In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.

Genie Energy Ltd-B
(GNE:New York Consolidated)
Last $8.81 USDChange Today -0.01 / -0.11%Volume 15.6KGNE On Other Exchanges
As of 8:04 PM 08/28/13 All times are local (Market data is delayed by at least 15 minutes).
SnapshotNewsChartsFinancialsEarningsPeople

OwnershipTransactionsOptions
OverviewBoard MembersCommittees
Insiders At Genie Energy Ltd-B (GNE)
Name (Connections) Board Relationships Title Type of Board Member Age
Howard Jonas 125 Relationships Chairman and Chairman of Nominating Committee -- 57
Other Board Members On Board*
Name (Connections) Board Relationships Type of Board Member Primary Company Age
James Courter 35 Relationships -- Starz Media, LLC 72
William Perry 27 Relationships -- EGL Resources, Inc. 56
Allan Sass Ph.D. 10 Relationships -- Genie Energy Ltd. 74
Alan Rosenthal 10 Relationships -- Genie Energy Ltd. 59
Irwin Katsof 13 Relationships -- CTM Media Holdings, Inc. 58
Keith Murdoch 199 Relationships -- Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. 82
Nathaniel Rothschild OM, GBE 55 Relationships -- RIT Capital Partners plc 77
Richard Cheney 10 Relationships -- Genie Energy Ltd. --
Michael Steinhardt 311 Relationships -- WisdomTree Investments, Inc. 72
Kevin Kauffman 12 Relationships -- K.P. Kauffman Company, Inc. 57

Israel Grants Oil Rights in Syria to Murdoch and Rothschild
May 7, 2013

For Israel to seek to exploit mineral reserves in the occupied Golan Heights is plainly illegal in international law. Japan was succesfully sued by Singapore before the International Court of Justice for exploitation of Singapore’s oil resources during the second world war. The argument has been made in international law that an occupying power is entitled to opeate oil wells which were previously functioning and operated by the sovereign power, in whose position the occupying power now stands. But there is absolutely no disagreement in the authorities and case law that the drilling of new wells – let alone fracking – by an occupying power is illegal.

Israel tried to make the same move twenty years ago but was forced to back down after a strong reaction from the Syrian government, which gained diplomatic support from the United States. [this is really important to comprehend: it demonstrates just how powerful and influential powerful pro-Isreal organizations like AIPAC and other Zionist think tanks have become in twenty-years considering the the U.S. recognized Syria on this issue and now the U.S. is threatening Syria with a military attack] Israel is now seeking to take advantage of the weakened Syrian state; this move perhaps casts a new light on recent Israeli bombings in Syria.

In a rational world, the involvement of Rothschild and Murdoch in this international criminal activity would show them not to be fit and proper persons to hold major commercial interests elsewhere, and action would be taken. Naturally, nothing of the kind will happen.

Genie Energy Corporation is a division of IDT Corporation (www.idt.net), a consumer services company with operations primarily in the telecommunications and energy industries. IDT Corporation's Class B Common Stock and Common Stock trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbols IDT and IDT.C, respectively.

Genie Energy is comprised of IDT Energy, an energy services company that resells electricity and natural gas to residential and small business customers primarily in New York State, and Genie Oil and Gas, Inc., which consists of (1) American Shale Oil Corporation which holds and manages a 50% interest in American Shale Oil, LLC, a joint shale oil initiative in Colorado with Total, S.A., and (2) an 89% interest in Israel Energy Initiatives, Ltd., a shale oil initiative in Israel.

Alan K. Burnham, PhD – Chief Technology Officer, American Shale Oil, LLC.; Research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for over 30 years;

Dick Cheney – 46th Vice President of the United States. Former President and CEO of Halliburton Company, and U.S. Secretary of Defense;

Wes Perry – Chairman of the Board, Genie Energy. Founder and CEO of E.G.L. Resources, an energy exploration and development company;

Allan Sass, PhD – Former President and CEO of Occidental Oil Shale, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum [Armand Hammer/Al Gore];

Michael Steinhardt – Principal Manager, Steinhardt Management LLC. Renowned hedge fund investor and founder Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., and noted philanthropist;

Eugene A. Renna – Former Executive Vice President of Exxon Mobil and a member of its Board. Also formerly President and COO of Mobil Corporation;

Stephen M. Trauber – Vice Chairman and Global Head; Energy Investment Banking Group, UBS Investment Bank [Switzerland];Harold Vinegar, PhD – Former Chief Scientist - Royal Dutch Shell.

Member of Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic[edit source | editbeta]

Since September 2012, Del Ponte has been a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, under the auspicies of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In May 2013 she accused the Syrian rebels of using chemical weapons, a view diametrically opposed by the majority of Western government officials. She stated, "We still have to deepen our investigation, verify and confirm (the findings) through new witness testimony, but according to what we have established so far, it is at the moment opponents of the regime who are using sarin gas.
NATO[edit source |

In late December 1999, in an interview with The Observer in London, Del Ponte was asked if she was prepared to press criminal charges against NATO personnel for alleged war crimes in Kosovo by NATO pilots and their commanders. She replied "If I am not willing to do that, I am not in the right place. I must give up my mission".
This was followed by various negative official responses, military and civilian, from the US and Canada. Del Ponte's office subsequently issued a statement, dated four days later: "NATO is not under investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICTY. There is no formal inquiry into the actions of NATO during the conflict in Kosovo".
Organ smuggling allegations[edit source | editbeta]

Main article: The Hunt: Me and War criminals
See also: Organ theft in Kosovo
In 2008, Del Ponte published a book "The Hunt" in which she claimed that the Kosovo Albanians had smuggled human organs of kidnapped Serbs after the Kosovo war ended in 1999. Her book created an international controversy. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia stated regarding Del Ponte's allegations: "The Tribunal is aware of very serious allegations of human organ trafficking raised by the former Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, in a book recently published in Italian under her name. No evidence in support of such allegations was ever brought before the Tribunal’s judges."
On 4 April 2008 Human Rights Watch asked Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha to open investigations on the matter under international supervision. They ignored the letters and instead publicly rejected del Ponte's claims as unsubstantiated. On 5 May 2008 Human Rights Watch called the Del Ponte allegations "serious and credible" and publicly called on Tirana and Pristina to cooperate.
Del Ponte alleged that the victims were more than 400 Serbs missing from the war. "Serious and credible allegations have emerged about horrible abuses in Kosovo and Albania after the war," said Fred Abrahams, HRW Senior emergencies researcher of HRW.
“ According to the journalists’ information, the abducted individuals were held in warehouses and other buildings, including facilities in Kukës and Tropojë. In comparison to other captives, some of the sources said, some of the younger, healthier detainees were fed, examined by doctors, and never beaten. These abducted individuals - an unknown number – were allegedly transferred to a yellow house in or around the Albanian town of Burrel, where doctors extracted the captives’ internal organs. These organs were then transported out of Albania via the airport near the capital Tirana. Most of the alleged victims were Serbs who went missing after the arrival of UN and NATO forces in Kosovo. But other captives were women from Kosovo, Albania, Russia, and other Slavic countries. ”
In 2008, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe authorized Carla Del Ponte to lead a formal investigation and employed a watcher to report her findings to the Parliament.
According to a draft Council of Europe report cited by The Daily Telegraph, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was one of the key players in the traffic of organs of Serb prisoners after the 1998-99 conflict.
In November 2012, Haradinaj and all of the accused in this matter were acquitted for the second time of these accusations.

Russia gives UN forensic proof rebels used chemical weapons in Syria

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations, told reporters he submitted an analysis, " certified by chemical weapons organizations," in "80 pages of photographs, formulas and graphs" to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Inspectors In Syria Forbidden From Finding Out WHO Used Chemical Weapons, Only IF They Were Used

“The [weapons inspection] team must be able to conduct a full, thorough and unimpeded investigation,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday night. However, the team is only mandated to determine if chemical weapons were used, not who used them, Mr. Ban’s spokesman said.

will the usa and france now go alone ? wrote:

As the world holds its breath, wondering when the US and its allies will attack Syria, Western governments and its well-oiled mainstream media seem to be ignoring a key player that has kept strangely quiet during this crisis: Israel.

Today, US power rests heavily on its terrifying military, its industrial-financial complex, and its global media clout.  But that power is fast eroding because, in the age of the Internet, power is increasingly much more about prestige, credibility and trust, an area where the US is falling to pieces.

US interventionism has become all too blatant over the past 20 years. The Balkans War in the late 1990s, with the bombing of Belgrade, triggered initial alarms especially amongst non-ally countries because, coupled with Bush Sr.’s 1991 Gulf War, it became clear that the  American global hegemon was out to get the whole world, especially with the former Soviet Union out of the way.

But what got red lights blinking really strongly was Iraq.  Baby Bush’s false accusations of “weapons of mass destruction” as an excuse to take out an entire country just so he could “smoke out” an uncomfortable former associate, Saddam Hussein, were blatantly obscene and proved to many that the American global hegemon was officially out of control.

Back then, America still had the excuse of the horrendous 9/11 terror attacks in New York and Washington to justify its mass war-mongering.  But American credibility took a sharp fall when George W himself ended up admitting that: (a) there was no connection whatsoever between nasty Saddam and nasty Osama who allegedly did 9/11 (Alas! We’ll never know because Obama later threw Osama into the ocean...) and (b) there most definitely, assuredly and unequivocally were NO weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...  Add to that the burden of growing proof that 9/11 may have been a false flag...

So, America had to design a new system of war or, rather a new system of getting itself into war against its selected “rogue state” targets.  It’s no longer enough to go on TV and accuse such and such a country of being a “danger to world peace” or that it “does not have the kind of democracy that we want to see” as Hillary Clinton said when visiting Egypt only last year...  

No.  Something new had to be invented: “The Arab Spring”, which is the code for instigating, triggering and engineering civil strife in target countries which can then be escalated, as necessary, to veritable social war.  And if the ongoing leadership still don’t get the message and insist on clinging to power, then US, UK, Israeli and other intel agencies can escalate the engineered nationwide mischief all the way up to fully–fledged civil war.  Libya, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq…

Engineering such wars throughout the Middle East basically required:

(a) Identifying who the “freedom fighters” would be – mostly thugs, terrorists, guerrillas, soldiers of fortune and a wide assortment of violent mercenaries;

(b) Then arming them with lethal high (though not too “high”)-tech weaponry, financing them to ensure they can do as they please inside the target country, and

(c) Unleashing them onto the cities of Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, just as they did (and still do) inside Iraq.

And if all of that doesn’t work, then just order several NATO fighter squadrons to bomb the damn place to smithereens and provide satellite Intel to local “freedom fighters” so they can execute Hollywood-like operations such as the live-TV assassination of Muammar Gaddafi and his family, accompanied by Hillary Clinton’s chuckles on CBS TV.

But the case of Syria is different.  

The world will no longer have America pulling the wool over its eyes.  Growing sectors in the international community are coming to understand that those gangs of violent assassins, rapists and criminals – aka Syrian Freedom Fighters – have been armed, trained, financed and given the fullest media support by the US and its allies.  

America’s dirty tricks department is raving full-blast right now trying to pin recent chemical weapons attacks on Bashar al-Assad’s government, but this is getting very low credibility ratings.  Common sense dictates that it would be suicide for President Bashar Assad to kill his own civilians – including children – in a Damascus neighborhood, when his real enemies are the Western-backed terrorists and delinquents trying to take over his country.  

Why would Assad give his enemies the “perfect excuse” for an armed attack against Syria?  Common sense tells us that Assad is surely telling the truth when he accuses those very same terrorists for that “false flag” attack as a way of bringing NATO in on their side, with its jets, cluster bombs and napalm.

Every time we hear of such dreadful terror attacks we need to understand two fundamental issues: (1) who benefits from such attacks, and (2) follow the money trail...

Today, America’s credibility, trust and prestige have fallen so low that even the British Parliament finally disavowed any armed intervention by the UK, at least until such time as the UN or some truly trustworthy independent entity churns up irrefutable proof regarding who perpetrated those heinous chemical weapons atrocities in Syrian last week.

So David Cameron cannot just yet go into “puppy poodle mode” behind Obama, as his predecessor Tony Blair did so obediently behind George W. a decade ago over Iraq.

But let’s look at three factors that are missing in the ongoing analysis of the Syrian crisis:

1) Israel
Ever since the two Gulf wars, America has been fighting Israelis’ wars for them.  In the case of the 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq, this was so obvious that the very same NeoCons who in 1996-7 planned war against Iraq in their “Project for a New American Century (PNAC)” think-tank - Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Bush, Douglas Feith, David Wormser and others – would later execute that war in 2003 as top officers in the George W. Bush regime.  The prime reason: Saddam Hussein was then the greatest threat to “democratic and favored ally” Israel.

Several of those NeoCons – Douglas Feith, David Wormser, Richard Perle and other Bushites - had already gone so far as to prepare a strategy report for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” which, again, targeted Iraq as Israel’s key foe at the time.  

So, the Iraq War was to a great extent a proxy war that only benefitted Israel, becoming a huge headache for America, which lost thousands of its sons.  

As the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Bin Mohammed, once famously pointed out: "The Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

2) Israel
The excessive and overpowering role that Zionism plays in American politics, American finance, American universities, American mainstream media including it Hollywood “entertainment industry,” and over American foreign policy, has been all but proven. This vital issue today lies at the heart of an increasingly far-reaching debate among America’s intelligentsia, which is, of course, being hushed up by the mainstream media.

One of its milestones was played out by two of its prestigious academics – Stephen Walt, former Dean of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and his colleague John Mearsheimer, professor of Political Science at Chicago University – who published their groundbreaking book: “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” in 2007.

In it, they show in a very convincing and well-documented manner the long reach and powerful clout that the “Israel First” lobby exercises over the US media, the banks, the Congress, the State Department and the Pentagon, whereby they are able to systematically tip the scales in favor of Israel, no matter what the cost. No matter if right or wrong.
And the cost to America has been extremely detrimental to its National Interest.  Here lies one of the roots of much of the disrespect, mistrust and even hate that growing sections of global public opinion feel towards the US and its key allies.

3) Israel
President Barack Obama’s problem right now is that America’s military establishment is very much aware of the stakes involved in any “preventive attack” against Syria and, much more importantly, against Iran.  Intervention against either or both countries will undoubtedly lead to massive war in the Middle East.  

Look at a map: Syria and Iran lie squarely inside Russia’s vital geopolitical sphere of interest, which is already under heavy Western encroachment.  Read their lips: Russia is saying, “not one step further!”  

America would do very well to think twice or thrice before doing anything rash…

But here comes the problem: ever since Israel was kicked out of Southern Lebanon in July 2006 by the well-armed and trained (by Iran and Russia) forces of Hezbollah commanded by Nasrallah, Israel has been licking its wounds; dark furor and revenge burns in Zionism’s heart.

Since Bibi Netanyahu came back to power in 2011, Israel has gone into preventive war mode, using Iran’s inexistent nuclear program as a pretext.  For that past four or five years, Israel has been threatening Iran with military attack almost every other day, with Washington, London and Paris nervously obliging...

The American military, however, are painfully aware that there’s some truth to former Prime Minister Mahathir’s words.  They don’t want to fight yet another Israeli war this time in Iran.  So, they have been acting as a brake which is reflected in Obama’s increasing “caution” regarding Iran, going so far as to dispatching his military top brass to Israel to calm Netanyahu down, trying to make sure Israel does not launch a unilateral “preventive attack” on Iran that will drag the US into a massive conflict in the Middle East, the results of which are far from clear.

Actually a US-UK defeat in the Middle East could very well spell the beginning of the end of America as a global superpower. Russia (and China) are staring very sharply at the Middle East…  They are not blinking...

The ongoing US military strategy says that if the White House must take on Iran, it should first take out Syria.  At least that seems to be America’s promise of sorts to keep Netanyahu’s dogs of war at bay.  

But the weeks have turned into months, the months into years and Zionists in Israel, the US, Britain , France and elsewhere are getting awfully impatient.

They want their D-Day now!  

If the road to Tehran must go through Damascus, then, America: take out Damascus now!  

For three years the US has been engineering “Arab Spring” civil war in Syria but Bashar Assad’s still there. Russia stands behind him.  

A UN Security Council unanimous vote against Syria is no longer an option. Britain’s Parliament just said no to David Cameron, and French President Hollande’s support of the US lacks clout: sadly for the French it’s been many decades since France was last able to decide the outcome of any war, anywhere...  Now, many in the US Congress are grumbling...

So, Mr. “CEO” of the United States of America Barack Obama: it’s your call now!

You either strike against Syria now – today, even – to the unanimous applause of Zionists in Israel, Congress, the global banks and markets, the mainstream media and throughout the world, or you stand down and your prestige, “Mr. President,” goes down the drain.  

Your bluff will have been called. And a bluffing president is no president at all.

Mr. Putin knows this only too well, which is why he maintains Russia’s powerful fleet roaming the waters of the Mediterranean off the coast of Syria...

Once again, it’s shame on you, America!

Another fine mess the Israeli Trojan Horse has gotten you into...!

Adrian Salbuchi is a political analyst, author, speaker and radio/TV commentator in Argentina. www.asalbuchi.com.ar

Manufacturing the Dead Head

Russia is planning to boost its national defense and national security spending in the current decade. Around 20 trillion roubles ($641 billion) [that is a huge outlay in ONLY seven short years] have been earmarked for the State Armaments Program (Gosudarstvennaya Programma Vooruzheniy, GPV–2020) to be spent by 2020.