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To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 1:19:14 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 85487

Congressional Black Caucus Ordered Not To Criticize Obama On Syria, “Limit Public Comment” On The Issue… Like good lap dogs, they will comply. Via The Cable: As an increasing number of African-American lawmakers voice dissent over the Obama administration’s war plans in Syria, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has asked members to “limit public comment” on the issue until they are briefed by senior administration officials. A congressional aide to a CBC member called the request “eyebrow-raising,” in an interview withThe Cable, and said the request was designed to quiet dissent while shoring up support for President Obama’s Syria strategy. The CBC, a crucial bloc of more than 40 votes the White House likely needs to authorize a military strike in Syria, is scheduled to be briefed by White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice on Monday. Until then, CBC chairwoman Marcia Fudge has asked colleagues to “limit public comment until [they] receive additional details,” Fudge spokeswoman Ayofemi Kirby told The Cable. When asked if the White House requested the partial gag order, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said “the Administration is reaching out to all Members to ensure they have the information they need to make an informed judgment on this issue.” Kirby said it was her boss’s request and was aimed at keeping members informed rather than silencing anti-war members.

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 1:53:39 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 85487

Liar liar pants on fire…. Published on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) John Kerry's Very Precise Death Toll: Where Does It Come From? by Peter Hart Much of the case the U.S. is making against Syria is based on intelligence that the government is so far unwilling to make public. (Image: C-SPAN)When the PBS NewsHour covered John Kerry's dramatic presentation on the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria on August 21, reporter Jeffrey Brown ( 8/30/13) zeroed in on the death toll: KERRY: The United States government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children. BROWN: The chilling numbers stood out from the U.S. intelligence assessment released this afternoon. And, lest anyone doubt, the secretary of State insisted, its findings are as clear as they are compelling. On ABC World News (8/30/13), Martha Raddatz emphasized the numbers as well: It is the images and the stories from the survivors that are clearly the most compelling. And that number 1,429–1,429 killed, including those 426 children. On NBC Nightly News (8/30/13), anchor Lester Holt said that Kerry had "revealed that more than 1,400 people had been killed in the chemical attack, including more than 400 children." Note: "revealed," not "said" or "claimed" or "alleged." And the New York Times editorial page ( 8/31/13), in a piece about the need for stronger legal justification for launching an attack on Syria, wrote definitively that such action would be "in response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria that killed more than 1,400 people." But where does that number come from–and why is substantially higher than other estimates? As the AP ( 8/31/13) reported: But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that monitors casualties in the country, said it has confirmed 502 deaths, nearly 1,000 fewer than the American intelligence assessment claimed. Rami Abdel-Rahman, the head of the organization, said he was not contacted by U.S. officials about his efforts to collect information about the death toll. "America works only with one part of the opposition that is deep in propaganda," he said, and urged the Obama administration to release the information its estimate is based on. And Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel of the McClatchy news service ( 9/2/13) noted that substantially lower death tolls were released by Britain (more than 350) and France (281). Much of the case the U.S. is making against Syria is based on intelligence that the government is so far unwilling to make public (Washington Post, 9/2/13)–and some of what is available is not terribly convincing (Truthout.org, 9/3/13). So journalists should, at a minimum, attribute these estimates to the government–and note that they are not in line with other reputable estimates of the death toll in Syria. Ideally, reporters should ask John Kerry to explain the discrepancy. He just made the rounds on all the major Sunday chat shows, and no one who was interviewing him thought to bring it up. © 2013 Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 2:43:48 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 85487

SEPTEMBER 05, 2013 A Region in Turmoil Lawlessness and Ruin in Libya by PATRICK COCKBURN A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources. Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters. Mutinying security men have taken over oil ports on the Mediterranean and are seeking to sell crude oil on the black market. Ali Zeidan, Libya’s Prime Minister, has threatened to “bomb from the air and the sea” any oil tanker trying to pick up the illicit oil from the oil terminal guards, who are mostly former rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and have been on strike over low pay and alleged government corruption since July. As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria. In an escalating crisis little regarded hitherto outside the oil markets, output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now. Despite threats to use military force to retake the oil ports, the government in Tripoli has been unable to move effectively against striking guards and mutinous military units that are linked to secessionist forces in the east of the country. Libyans are increasingly at the mercy of militias which act outside the law. Popular protests against militiamen have been met with gunfire; 31 demonstrators were shot dead and many others wounded as they protested outside the barracks of “the Libyan Shield Brigade” in the eastern capital Benghazi in June. Though the Nato intervention against Gaddafi was labeled as a humanitarian response to the threat that Gaddafi’s tanks would slaughter dissidents in Benghazi, the international community has ignored the escalating violence. The foreign media, which once filled the hotels of Benghazi and Tripoli, have likewise paid little attention to the near collapse of the central government. The strikers in the eastern region Cyrenaica, which contains most of Libya’s oil, are part of a broader movement seeking more autonomy and blaming the government for spending oil revenues in the west of the country. Foreigners have mostly fled Benghazi since the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, was murdered in the US consulate by jihadi militiamen last September. Violence has worsened since then with Libya’s military prosecutor Colonel Yussef Ali al-Asseifar, in charge of investigating assassinations of politicians, soldiers and journalists, himself assassinated by a bomb in his car on 29 August. Rule by local militias is also spreading chaos around the capital. Ethnic Berbers, whose militia led the assault on Tripoli in 2011, temporarily took over the parliament building in Tripoli. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has called for an independent investigation into the violent crushing of a prison mutiny in Tripoli on 26 August in which 500 prisoners had been on hunger strike. The hunger strikers were demanding that they be taken before a prosecutor or formally charged since many had been held without charge for two years. The government called on the Supreme Security Committee, made up of former anti-Gaddafi militiamen nominally under the control of the interior ministry, to restore order. At least 19 prisoners received gunshot shrapnel wounds, with one inmate saying “they were shooting directly at us through the metal bars”. There have been several mass prison escapes this year in Libya including 1,200 escaping from a prison after a riot in Benghazi in July. The Interior Minister, Mohammed al-Sheikh, resigned last month in frustration at being unable to do his job, saying in a memo sent to Mr Zeidan that he blamed him for failing to build up the army and the police. He accused the government, which is largely dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, of being weak and dependent on tribal support. Other critics point out that a war between two Libyan tribes, the Zawiya and the Wirrshifana, is going on just 15 miles from the Prime Minister’s office. Diplomats have come under attack in Tripoli with the EU ambassador’s convoy ambushed outside the Corinthia hotel on the waterfront. A bomb also wrecked the French embassy. One of the many failings of the post-Gaddafi government is its inability to revive the moribund economy. Libya is wholly dependent on its oil and gas revenues and without these may not be able to pay its civil servants. Sliman Qajam, a member of the parliamentary energy committee, told Bloomberg that “the government is running on its reserves. If the situation doesn’t improve, it won’t be able to pay salaries by the end of the year”.

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 2:46:52 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 85487

SEPTEMBER 05, 2013 counterpunch.org Larry Summers and the System Making the World Safe for Banksters by ELLEN BROWN In an August 2013 article titled “ Larry Summers and the Secret ‘End-game’ Memo,” Greg Palast posted evidence of a secret late-1990s plan devised by Wall Street and U.S. Treasury officials to open banking to the lucrative derivatives business. To pull this off required the relaxation of banking regulations not just in the US but globally. The vehicle to be used was the Financial Services Agreement of the World Trade Organization. The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations. Bank deregulation proceeded according to plan, and the government-sanctioned and -nurtured derivatives business mushroomed into a $700-plus trillion pyramid scheme. Highly leveraged, completely unregulated, and dangerously unsustainable, it collapsed in 2008 when investment bank Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, taking a large segment of the global economy with it. The countries that managed to escape were those sustained by public banking models outside the international banking net. These countries were not all Islamic. Forty percent of banks globallyare publicly-owned. They are largely in the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which house forty percent of the global population. They also escaped the 2008 credit crisis, but they at least made a show of conforming to Western banking rules. This was not true of the “rogue” Islamic nations, where usury was forbidden by Islamic teaching. To make the world safe for usury, these rogue states had to be silenced by other means. Having failed to succumb to economic coercion, they wound up in the crosshairs of the powerful US military. Here is some data in support of that thesis. The End-game Memo In his August 22nd article, Greg Palast posted a screenshot of a 1997 memo from Timothy Geithner, then Assistant Secretary of International Affairs under Robert Rubin, to Larry Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Geithner referred in the memo to the “end-game of WTO financial services negotiations” and urged Summers to touch base with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Citibank, and Chase Manhattan Bank, for whom private phone numbers were provided. The game then in play was the deregulation of banks so that they could gamble in the lucrative new field of derivatives. To pull this off required, first, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the 1933 Act that imposed a firewall between investment banking and depository banking in order to protect depositors’ funds from bank gambling. But the plan required more than just deregulating US banks. Banking controls had to be eliminated globally so that money would not flee to nations with safer banking laws. The “endgame” was to achieve this global deregulation through an obscure addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization, called the Financial Services Agreement. Palast wrote: Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods–that is, my cars for your bananas. The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in “bads” – toxic assets like financial derivatives. Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.” And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives. The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization. WTO members were induced to sign the agreement by threatening their access to global markets if they refused; and they all did sign, except Brazil. Brazil was then threatened with an embargo; but its resistance paid off, since it alone among Western nations survived and thrived during the 2007-2009 crisis. As for the others: The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim–and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany. The Holdouts That was the fate of countries in the WTO, but Palast did not discuss those that were not in that organization at all, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. These seven countries were named by U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.) in a 2007 “Democracy Now” interview as the new “rogue states” being targeted for take down after September 11, 2001. He said that about 10 days after 9-11, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What did these countries have in common? Besides being Islamic, they were not members either of the WTO or of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That left them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland. Other countries later identified as “ rogue states” that were also not members of the BIS included North Korea, Cuba, and Afghanistan. The body regulating banks today is called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), and it is housed in the BIS in Switzerland. In 2009, the heads of the G20 nations agreed to be bound by rules imposed by the FSB, ostensibly to prevent another global banking crisis. Its regulations are not merely advisory but are binding, and they can make or break not just banks but whole nations. This was first demonstrated in 1989, when the Basel I Accord raised capital requirements a mere 2%, from 6% to 8%. The result was to force a drastic reduction in lending by major Japanese banks, which were then the world’s largest and most powerful creditors. They were undercapitalized, however, relative to other banks. The Japanese economy sank along with its banks and has yet to fully recover. Among other game-changing regulations in play under the FSB are Basel III and the new bail-in rules. Basel III is slated to impose crippling capital requirements on public, cooperative and community banks, coercing their sale to large multinational banks. The “bail-in” template was first tested in Cyprus and follows regulations imposed by the FSB in 2011. Too-big-to-fail banks are required to draft “living wills” setting forth how they will avoid insolvency in the absence of government bailouts. The FSB solution is to “bail in” creditors – including depositors – turning deposits into bank stock, effectively confiscating them. The Public Bank Alternative Countries laboring under the yoke of an extractive private banking system are being forced into “structural adjustment” and austerity by their unrepayable debt. But some countries have managed to escape. In the Middle East, these are the targeted “rogue nations.” Their state-owned banks can issue the credit of the state on behalf of the state, leveraging public funds for public use without paying a massive tribute to private middlemen. Generous state funding allows them to provide generously for their people. Like Libya and Iraq before they were embroiled in war, Syria provides free education at all levels and free medical care. It also provides subsidized housing for everyone (although some of this has been compromised by adoption of an IMF structural adjustment program in 2006 and the presence of about 2 million Iraqi and Palestinian refugees). Iran too provides nearly free higher education and primary health care. Like Libya and Iraq before takedown, Syria and Iran have state-owned central banks that issue the national currency and are under government control. Whether these countries will succeed in maintaining their financial sovereignty in the face of enormous economic, political and military pressure remains to be seen. As for Larry Summers, after proceeding through the revolving door to head Citigroup, he became State Senator Barack Obama’s key campaign benefactor. He played a key role in the banking deregulation that brought on the current crisis, causing millions of US citizens to lose their jobs and their homes. Yet Summers is President Obama’s first choice to replace Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Chairman. Why? He has proven he can manipulate the system to make the world safe for Wall Street; and in an upside-down world in which bankers rule, that seems to be the name of the game.

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 2:56:27 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 85487

Your President Obama is a fascist dictator. he embodies the worst traits of the worst presidents…all rolled into one empty suit. SEPTEMBER 05, 2013 Support the Troops? A Brutal Arrest of Iraq War Vet at Anti-Syria Rally by DAVE LINDORFF The US has yet to launch President Obama’s latest war crime of massively bombing Syria (a country that does not threaten this nation) and already federal police thugs, in this case National Parks Service Rangers, have violently arrested an Iraq War Veteran who was peacefully playing her banjo in the shade on Independence Mall in Philadelphia following an anti-war protest and march. Emily Yates, an activist with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and a professional folksinger and banjo player, can be seen in this video, peacefully standing plucking her instrument when she is ordered to move by a group of Park Rangers. When she asks them (politely) why she has to move off of federal park property that is open to the public, she is not given any explanation. Then at one point, she is grabbed from behind roughly without warning and slammed, bent over, across the wooden top of a park bench, with several large rangers pinning her down, and with her hands wrenched behind her back, as they try to place metal cuffs on her wrists. As she struggles to breathe with all that pressure on her forcibly bent-over form, a senior officer can be heard telling her to “relax” and to “stop resisting” — though with three men piled on top of her, it is clear she is not resisting. Yates was held in a federal lockup for two days before an arraignment on Monday, at which she was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and, most seriously, “assaulting a federal officer.” The latter charge, absurd when matched up against the video of the arrest, is a felony carrying a heavy jail sentence. One is reminded of those black jokes about police ramming arrested persons head first into the sides of patrol cars and then charging them with damaging public property, or punching handcuffed victims in the face and then charging them with banging their heads into the officer’s fist. It is impossible to view the above video and see any evidence of “assault.” Nor could Yates have been assaulting the larger scrum of rangers who were all over her prone body later when she can be seen being held on the ground, screaming for help, as angry spectators shouted from the sidelines for the rangers to let her go, to “stop strangling her” and to call for a medic. Yates’ attorney, Larry Krassner, offered TCBH! a statement on the case saying: “Emily is a six-year military veteran who served honorably for two tours in Iraq. She has PTSD. She was arrested and injured by federal officers for no good reason. The US government owes its veterans better treatment than this, even when they happen to be opposed to further war in Syria.” I would add it owes its citizens, veterans or not, better treatment than this too, especially in this particular location, of all places. Independence Mall is a three-block piece of property run by the National Park Service in Philadelphia. A favored spot for tourists from all over the nation and the world, with the restored Independence Hall at one end, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written and where the Bill of Rights was passed into law, protecting freedom of speech and assembly, and the Constitution Center at the other end, where the US Constitution and its guarantees of freedom are celebrated, it is also a favored locale for protest actions, such as the protest and march against a US attack on Syria, which took place just before Yates’ arrest. The brutal assault on this peaceful folksinger offers a stark view of the reality of America’s burgeoning police state, set as it was against the image of the building where America’s founding documents offered the hope for such a different kind of state. The park’s rangers Saturday certainly sent many foreign tourists home with a whole different view of the “Land of the Free” not to mention the “Home of the Brave.” I’m reminded of my own arrest by a park ranger some 45 years ago, which went down quite differently. It was the summer of 1968, and I was driving across the country from California to Connecticut in a 1946 Dodge pickup truck with a friend. We were earning our gas money along the way with my 12-string Guild guitar, which I would take out at opportune moments, setting the case open beside me and plucking my tunes. We were passing through beautiful Yosemite Park, and had figured it would be a good place to pick up some extra gas money before going through what we expected to be some rough territory for busking in Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Nebraska, and so I sat down on the running board of the truck and began to play in the middle of the main parking lot. I wasn’t begging. There was just a sign on the inside of the case top saying “Gas money”. People passing by were standing and listening and tossing in money and it was going well until a ranger drove up. He was an older guy, and didn’t look particularly happy about it when he said he had to arrest us for “panhandling.” (There was a real difference between this fellow, who clearly saw his job as being a custodian of a natural wonder, not a cop, and the young toughs working as rangers at Independence Mall, who look and carry themselves like club bouncers enjoying their power.) Being an easterner, I asked the Yosemite ranger what panhandling meant. He said, “What you’re doing — asking for money.” I told him I thought panhandling meant cooking on an open fire in a pan, and I insisted I wasn’t asking for anything, but that people were coming up to us, not the other way around. But he said he’d been told to bring us in, so we were brought to the ranger station, where he wrote up two tickets. I didn’t look at mine until we were driving out of the park towards Nevada. Only then did I see the amount: $500! More than I had earned all summer working in Seattle. No wonder he had told us not to ignore our tickets, which he warned were federal offenses. Furious at the unfairness of it, I wrote a letter to then Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall (the father of current New Mexico Senator Tom Stewart Udall), stating that I did not think it proper to fine someone short of money $500 for trying to earn some, particularly as I was merely entertaining people in a parking lot who were coming over to listen to me because they were enjoying the music. I received my letter back in the mail a few weeks later. On it, in red felt-tipped pen, was a note saying, “I agree. The ticket has been cancelled. Stewart Udall.” And I wasn’t even a veteran. I was a long-haired hippy war resister. What a far cry from the horror show that befell fellow folksinger and war veteran Emily Yates! There was no indication that the ranger thugs who assaulted and arrested her on Independence Mall had any shame or reluctance about what they were doing. In fact, based upon their sworn statements at the arraignment, they were also willing to lie about what happened, to claim that this small, slightly built young woman was assaulting them, instead of the other way around. The right thing at this point would be for Stu Udall’s successor, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, to do as Udall did and toss out her arrest, perhaps also disciplining her park goons and instructing them about the finer points of respecting the right of citizens, especially in Independence Mall, to exercise their freedom of speech and assembly. Sadly I suspect Yates will have to go through some kind of lengthy and costly legal battle, while having her freedom of travel severely restricted (although supposedly innocent until proven guilty, she is under court order, as part of her bail conditions, to remain in either Philadelphia or her home city of Oakland, CA, except when traveling on business to perform at concerts), until as would seem likely based upon the above video and others like it, her case is either thrown out, or the government loses. And of course, she has to endure months of worrying that in what passes for justice in federal courts these days, she could even end up being convicted and having to spend years in jail, ending up a convicted felon. I hope she gets off these trumped up charges, and that she files brutality charges against the ranger thugs who attacked her and violated her civil liberties. I also hope those rangers, and the federal prosecutor responsible for charging her in Philadelphia, will listen to her song: Try Not to Be a Dick.

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 3:01:39 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 85487

SEPTEMBER 05, 2013 No Pol Pot When in Doubt Say “Hitler” by JP SOTTILE Poor Pol Pot. He just can’t get any respect. Despite a solid resume as a crazed, brutal dictator responsible for killing approximately 1.7 million of his own people, his name never comes up when the caretakers of American empire set their sights on an enemy du jour. The same goes for Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, General Franco, Idi Amin, Attila the Hun, Caligula and Vlad the Impaler. No, when it’s time to fire up the Great American Fear Factory for another “lobbying blitz” and bellicose “product launch,” America’s policymakers conjure up the darkest star of human history. They say “Hitler.” Saddam Hussein? Say “ Hitler.” Slobodan Milosevic? Say “ Hitler.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Say “ Hitler.” And now, as if on cue, Secretary of State John Kerry said “ Hitler.” Faced with sparse domestic and international support for launching expensive cruise missiles into the middle of a civil war, Kerry re-booted the Hitler franchise by comparing Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to history’s first name in unchecked evil. In fact, he compared Assad to Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Looks like Saddam is now in an elite class of evildoer. Evoking Hitler is the foreign policy equivalent of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. Comparisons to Hitler are meant to spark an immediate, visceral reaction and designed to “clear out the building.” Once the dissent leaves the room, the debate has effectively ended. It also demarcates a rhetorical red line. If you cross it, you are siding with Hitler. And no one wants to be on the side of Hitler. At least, that’s what Team Obama is banking on with its next “lite” war. The Peace Prize President likes bombs and missiles and drones, and that means war without American body bags and graves and, therefore, much domestic fallout. Team Obama is also banking on ignorance—of historical context and basic historical facts—on the part of the media, members of Congress and the American people. Adolf Hitler started World War II. He invaded Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia. Over twenty million Russians died. So did 2.5% of the world’s entire population. Hitler declared war on the United States without direct provocation and, when coupled with casualties fighting Hitler’s Japanese allies in the Pacific, some 400,000 Americans died. And then there is the Holocaust. Six million European Jews died in a systematic genocidal pogrom. Bashar al-Assad, on the other hand, is fighting a complicated civil war with competing ethnic, religious and proxy factions. He has invaded no one. Declared war on no one. But he is a dictator. Some 100,000 people have died. And, according to Team Obama and their French partners, he used chemical weapons on his “own people.” That fact does make him comparable to another Baathist bad guy—Saddam Hussein. According to “Professor” Kerry, Saddam’s use of gas on his “own people” and on Iranian people sets him apart from guys like Stalin and Mao who, history has shown, are responsible for the deaths of millions of people. But does that make him Hitler? Rather, was Saddam, like Bashar, more comparable to other dictators and despots of the 20th Century? How about the Shah of Iran, General Suharto, General Pinochet or Colonel Qaddafi? They all ruled with iron-fisted brutality—as evidenced by the Shah’s infamous SAVAK, Suharto’s purges of communists and political opponents, and Pinochet’s bloody, neo-fascist repression. They all subverted democracy. They all killed their “own people.” Perhaps the problem with those far more rational comparisons is that those dictators were all supported by the United States. Even Qaddafi had his day in the sun after 9/11 “changed everything” and he traded his WMDs and access to his oil for a free pass from Washington. In fact, the 20th Century saw both tacit and explicit US support of various repressions, dictatorships, mass killings and, in a particularly woeful period during the 1980s, Central American death squads. So far—from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and across Central Asia—the 21stCentury isn’t much better. But the problem is even deeper than that litany of compromised values. If chemical weapons are sui generis—thus, uniquely abhorrent—then it is truly unfortunate that Kerry lumped Assad with Saddam the very same week that documents confirmed US implicit and active support for Saddam’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. What’s more, the US did nothing when he used them on his “own people.” Maybe that was because Saddam was gassing the Kurds, which was quietly welcomed by America’s steadfast allies in Turkey who, like US client Saddam, were also fighting an internal war against Kurdish rebels. Apparently, Kerry and Co. don’t read Foreign Policy magazine or, for that matter, much actual history. Or, if they do, they must hope that Congress and the media don’t dust of books or search Lexis-Nexis. They might find that it was just a short time ago that a “rendition-obsessed” US government sent “suspects” to be tortured by Assad’s regime! However, Kerry’s knack for revisionism is nothing new. Remember that classic line from the 2004 election about funding for the Iraq War? While choking on some pretzel logic, Kerry said, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Well, he may also have been for Bashar before he was against him. Until the Arab Spring came along, Assad was a darling of Washington’s foreign policyand media establishment. Now, also as if on cue, the Daily Mail publishes a cozy picture of then-Senator Kerry and his wife sharing dinner with the Assads in 2009 to discuss, perhaps, regional peace efforts. Although we don’t know what was said, the picture is reminiscent of Don Rumsfeld’s famous, grainy handshake picture with then-dictator Saddam Hussein in 1983. And that’s history. No matter how much Team Obama refuses to acknowledge it, it does have a nasty habit of repeating itself—like those incessant Nazi documentaries on the History Channel. Hopefully, enough people have watched enough Nazivision™ to see that this sad, belligerent effort to protect Obama’s credibility strains the bounds of credulity. Who knows, if he keeps on keeping on…maybe he’ll join a long line of peopleand presidents who’ve also been compared to Hitler. If nothing else, he won’t be compared to Pol Pot.

To: koan who wrote (52864)	9/5/2013 3:39:15 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Recommended By FJB Respond to of 85487

Obama's Syrian plans have NOTHING to do with sarin. BTW you voted for the blood thirsty Obama. UN accuses Syrian rebels of chemical weapons use Syrian rebels have made use of the deadly nerve agent sarin in their war-torn country's conflict, UN human rights investigator Carla del Ponte has said. By Damien McElroy and agencies 9:04AM BST 06 May 2013 "According to the testimonies we have gathered, the rebels have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas," del Ponte, a former war crimes prosecutor, said in an interview with Swiss radio late on Sunday. ...... telegraph.co.uk U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator GENEVA \| Sun May 5, 2013 6:13pm EDT GENEVAThe United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte. "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television. "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,"she added, speaking in Italian. Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used. The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled. President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December. The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee. The United States has said it has "varying degrees of confidence" that sarin has been used by Syria's government on its people. President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a "red line". reuters.com I think its clear there was an attempt to blame these earlier uses of sarin on the Assad regime, but the UN didn't go along. Being skeptical, I can't help but wonder if another setup had to be made to justify the US action on behalf of the rebels. Who we KNOW have used sarin themselves. This isn't about sarin use. We're NOT intervening because of sarin use .. if that were Obama's motive, he'd have bombed the rebels months ago.

To: koan who wrote (52864)

9/5/2013 9:23:52 PM

From: Brumar89

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

Respond to of 85487

MSNBC Had 20% Fewer Viewers Surrounding Obama's Syrian Address Versus Previous Saturday

By Noel Sheppard | September 5, 2013 | 15:47

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC president Phil Griffin told the New York Times in June that his network is "not the place" for breaking news.

This was evident again this past Saturday when MSNBC actually saw a 20 percent week-over-week decline during the busy news period when President Obama announced that he was going to Congress for approval to attack Syria.

Variety reported Wednesday (emphasis added):

Nielsen estimates that Fox News Channel was the most-watched news network during the special breaking news coverage on Syria from noon to 5 p.m. ET, averaging 971,000 viewers — slightly ahead of CNN’s 926,000. This period covered the hours leading up to President Obama’s address and the hours following it.

While both FNC and CNN saw significant week-over-week gains, third-place MSNBC actually was down about 20% week to week, averaging 390,000 viewers for its Syria coverage.

That bears repeating: "FNC and CNN saw significant week-over-week gains, third-place MSNBC actually was down about 20% week to week."

So, once again, Americans turned to other sources of information when serious news broke.

Of course, this isn't the first time this happened this year.

Americans avoided MSNBC during the busy news week in April when the Boston Marathon was bombed and a fertilizer plant exploded in Texas.

The following month, MSNBC came in fourth in one of the busiest news days of the year when more information came out about Amanda Berry's captor, the Jodi Arias verdict was announced, and the Benghazi Congressional hearings took place.

In March, the Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of MSNBC's programming is opinion and not news.

Americans clearly agree, and have decided to go elsewhere for information about serious events.

When are cable and satellite providers going to realize this and move MSNBC away from real news channels on their program guides?

Read more: newsbusters.org

To: koan who wrote (52864)

9/5/2013 9:25:14 PM

From: Brumar89

1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

Respond to of 85487

MSNBC's Facebook Page Churning Out Positive Obama/Syria Memes

By Ken Shepherd | September 5, 2013

MSNBC hosts are skeptical if not downright opposed in principle to President Obama's push to bomb Syria, but the MSNBC.com Facebook page is doing its level best to present President Obama in a favorable light, complete with photo memes of the president adorned with quotes related to his Syria policy. [see screen captures below page break]

On September 1, the day after President Obama announced he was going to seek congressional approval, MSNBC Facebook page editors posted a photo of the president emblazoned with the following quote:

"Our democracy is stronger when the president and the people's representatives stand together." President Obama August 31, 2013

The accompanying text reads:

President Obama will seek congressional approval before taking military action in Syria...

and their responses have poured in. Read them here: onmsnbc.co

Three days later, the network's social media folks were at it again, taking a laughable line from the president about how it was not he who drew the now-infamous "red line" but the world:

"I didn't set a red line, the world set a red line." President Obama on Syria 9/4/2013

The accompanying text read:

President Obama is making the international case for action in Syria.

WATCH: onmsnbc.co

Below are the images in question: