Revealed: Radioactive tuna from Fukushima meltdown could be making its way onto YOUR plate after being found off California coast
· Pacific tuna has radiation levels 10 times higher than normal
· Radioactivity has remained in system on 6,000-mile swim from Japan to U.S.
· Scientists claim fish should still be safe for people to eat as radiation remains below legal limit
By Daily Mail Reporter
29 May 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151368/Radioactive-bluefin-tuna-California-coast-Fukushima.html
If your muscles start swelling to superhero proportions after your next sushi meal, this might be why.
Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York have discovered bluefin tuna are carrying radioactive contamination leaked from Japan's crippled nuclear plant all the way across the Pacific to the United States, 6,000 miles away.
This is the first time a huge migrating fish has been shown to carry radioactivity such a distance, as they generally metabolise the contamination during their journey.
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Radioactive: Scientists said the increased radiation found in the Pacific bluefin tuna came from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant that was crippled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami
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Nuclear: The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, pictured, was badly damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami leading to a higher level of contamination in tuna
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'We were frankly kind of startled,' said researcher Nicholas Fisher, who reported the findings on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The levels of contamination were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years.
But even so, it's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the U.S. and Japanese governments, so is unlikely to affect humans.
Since the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that badly damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors, smaller fish and plankton have been found with elevated levels of radiation in Japanese waters.
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Prized: Sushi chef Kiyoshi Kimura poses next to a 269 kilogram bluefin tuna, which can fetch $24 for a thin slice at top Tokyo restaurants
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But scientists did not expect the nuclear fallout to linger in huge fish such as bluefin tuna, which grow to 10 feet and weigh over 1,000 pounds.
This is because they generally shed radioactive substances easily, metabolising it as they sail the world.
Five months after the Fukushima disaster, Fisher and his team decided to test Pacific bluefin, that spawn off the coast of Japan and swim east to California and Mexico.
To their surprise, tissue samples from all 15 tuna captured off the San Diego coast contained levels of two radioactive substances - caesium-134 and caesium-137 - that were higher than in previous catches.
The scientists also analysed yellowfin tuna, found in the eastern Pacific, and bluefin that migrated to Southern California before the nuclear crisis, to rule out any other causes for the enhanced radiation, such as ocean currents.
They found no trace of caesium-134 and only background levels of caesium-137 left over from nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s.
The results 'are unequivocal. Fukushima was the source,' said Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Bluefin tuna absorbed radioactive caesium from swimming in contaminated waters and feeding on contaminated prey such as krill and squid, the scientists said.
As the predators made the journey east, they shed some of the radiation through metabolism and as they grew larger. Even so, they weren't able to completely flush out all the radioactivity from their system.
'That's a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing,' Fisher said.
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Debris: Radioactive tuna is not the only casualty of the tsunami to wash up in North America, as this motorbike which found its way from Japan to Canada proves
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Pacific bluefin tuna are prized in Japan where a thin slice of the tender red meat prepared as sushi can fetch $24 per piece at top Tokyo restaurants.
Japan consumes 80 per cent of the world's Pacific and Atlantic bluefin tuna.
But researchers say the real test of how radioactivity affects tuna populations comes this summer when they plan to repeat the study with a larger number of samples.
Bluefin tuna that journeyed last year were exposed to radiation for about a month but the upcoming travelers have been swimming in radioactive waters for a longer period.
They are also keen to track the movements of other migratory species including sea turtles, sharks and seabirds, now they know bluefin tuna can transport radiation.
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Operators Admit Fukushima Radiation Levels Exceed 2 1/2 Times Announced
Fukushima plant operators are now admitting that the Fukushima radiation levels emitted from the disaster exceeds almost two and a half times the initial ‘estimate’ produced by Japanese safety regulators. The announcement comes after independent researchers exposed the true amount of radiation leaked from the plant back in October of 2011. The study revealed that significantly more radioactive caesium was released into the atmosphere as a result of the Fukushima explosion than many nuclear experts previously told the public.
Fukushima Radiation Levels: A Cause for Concern
The researchers from this study went against the official explanations (now confirmed as bogus by the operators themselves), and stated that the amount of radioactive isotope caesium-137 released at the height of the crisis was equivalent to 42% of that from Chernobyl. And that’s just the amount released at the height of the event. Many experts have actually labeled the Fukushima event to be even more catastrophic than the Chernobyl incident. Scientists who challenged the official report published their findings online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and authors state that Fukushima radiation levels truly began flooding the environment between being struck by the magnitude-9 earthquake on March 11th and being hit with a tsunami 45 minutes later.
Maxim Shingarkin, an expert in nuclear and radiation security, commented on the situation in Fukushima:
“In fact, this statement came with a big delay. The operating company deliberately concealed this information. The explanation is simple – the company is afraid that any checking by competent experts would reveal its inability to save the situation. Only recently, foreign experts founded a consultative body for the clean-up of the accident’s consequences. Moreover, the company is concealing the information about the amount of pollution of the environment.”
The plant now states that the meltdowns which took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air. But what happened to the majority of the radioactive contamination? According to the earlier report, 20% of the caesium-137 fell on Japanese land, and about 2% ended up on land outside the country. The remainder came down in the Pacific Ocean. Is it any wonder that ‘hidden’ deaths are now being reported by scientific research?
Health and radiation experts are now admitting that radiation stemming from the Fukushima disaster is leading to an unknown number of deaths as a result of increasing cancer rates around the globe. They are also stating that these deaths will be ‘hidden’ from the public eye due to a lack of accurate identification when it comes to targeting Fukushima-related cancer deaths.
It seems that Japanese government officials and plant higher-ups are now being forced to reveal certain details of the Fukushima disaster. From concealing integral information from the public to ignoring the real threat to public health, there is sincere lack of honesty and communication between many worldwide health officials and the citizens of the world. As information continues to surface, more and more truths will be expelled from the mainstream media and ‘health’ officials alike regarding the troubling event.
US military doctrine envisages the central role of "massive casualty producing events" in which innocent civilians are killed.
The killings are deliberately carried out as part of a covert operation. The enemy is blamed for the resulting atrocities.
The objective is to justify a military agenda on humanitarian grounds. The doctrine dates back to 1962: Operation Northwoods.
Under a secret 1962 Pentagon Plan entitled Operation Northwoods, civilians in the Cuban community in Miami were to be killed as part of a covert operation. The objective was to trigger a "helpful wave of indignation in US newspapers". The killings and "acts of terrorism" were then to be blamed on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro.
The objective of this sinister plan --which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President J. F. Kennedy-- refused to carry out, was to drum up public support for a war against Cuba:
"In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
.... The documents show "the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government," writes Bamford. (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba - ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted (See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001)
The Northwoods 1962 document was titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba". ”The Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage."
While the implementation of Operation Northwoods was shelved, its fundamental premise of using civilian deaths (described by the Pentagon as a "massive casuality producing event") as a pretext for intervention (on humanitarian grounds) has been applied on several occasions in the post 9/11 era.
The fundamental question: Were the May 2012 killings of civilians in the city of Houla part of a carefully planned covert operation, with the intent to drum up public support for a war on Syria.
The deaths are blamed on the Al Assad government, with "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers causing a helpful wave of indignation.". Meanwhile, several European countries, Canada and Australia have cut off diplomatic relations with Syria. This decision to isolate Syria was carried similtaneously by several governments. It was taken prior to the conduct of an investigation.
A military intervention by NATO --which is already on the drawing board-- is now being contemplated, following the statement of France's newly elected president Francois Hollande.
An outright war on Syria could potentially evolve towards a broader regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. It is, therefore, crucial that World public opinion take cognizance of the media lies and war propaganda pertaining to the Houla massacre, not to mention the insidious role of the US-NATO sponsored death squads.
Was the Houla massacre part of a sinister covert operation bearing the fingerprints of Operation Northwoods?
There is absolutely no evidence that the Syrian government was behind these killings.
There are indications as well as documentary evidence that, from the outset of the insurgency in the border city of Daraa in mid-March 2011, terrorists supported by foreign powers have been involved in the killings of innocent civilians. Israeli intelligence sources (August 2011) confirm an organized process of recruitment of terrorist fighters by NATO:
NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters ...
Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)
(DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
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Terrorists Portrayed as Opposition: BBC Wages Propaganda War on Syria
Millions globally follow BBC reports regularly. Most perhaps don't know they get propaganda, not real news, commentary and opinion.
Since established in October 1922, it's operated as a UK imperial tool. Its first general manager, John Reith, set the tone, saying:
"They (meaning the UK government) know they can trust us not to be really impartial."
Straightaway he betrayed the public trust. Operating as a reliable business and government partner got BBC labeled the "British Falsehood Corporation." Some today call it the "British Bombing (or Bombast) Club."
Reith used BBC as a strikebreaker. He secretly wrote anti-union speeches. He refused air time for worker representatives. He and current officials represent elitist interests, not public ones media outlets are supposed to serve.
Job applicants are vetted to assure pro-government, pro-business credentials. Aberrant ones aren't wanted. Whether on domestic or foreign issues, fair and balanced reporting isn't tolerated.
How can it be when government officials appoint senior managers. Any stepping out of line get fired. Nothing changed from inception to now.
Its claim about "honesty, integrity (being) what the BBC stands for, free from political influence and commercial pressure" is willful, deceptive hype.
UK-based Media Lens offers independent, "authoritative criticism." Its reports reflect "reality." It's free from corporate or government influence.
It covers BBC reporting. It once called it fundamentally one-sided, imbalanced, "biased, blinkered and culpable."
"Anyone can spot the propaganda with a modicum of vigilance while watching the news."
Western interests alone are represented. Viewers and listeners get one side only. They're "clearly expected to identify with NATO." They're "asked to assume there is a moral basis to (its) killing."
Attacking nations Washington and Britain declare "officially-decreed enemies" is supposed to be just and righteous no matter how lawless and indefensible.
BBC does what it's told. It's government funded, operated and controlled. It's Britain's official voice. It pretends to be independent and impartial.
"Propaganda merchants R Us," says Media Lens.
"In each decade, from its inception to the present day, the BBC bears the scars of its entanglements with those in power."
Media Lens quoted BBC news director, Helen Boaden. On June 10, 2011, she spoke the above words. She discussed the "value of journalism speech."
She quoted Groucho Marx once saying:
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing....And if you can fake that, you've got it made!"
Journalists are supposed to speak truth to power. Few, in fact, do it. None working for scoundrel media. BBC falls woefully short. It represents interests it's supposed to confront and hold to account.
Instead it serves wealth and power. It's a "propaganda system for elite interests," says Media Lens. Viewers and listeners are betrayed, especially on issues mattering most.
What's more important than war or peace? When Britain and America rage to fight, BBC marches in lockstep.
On February 1, 2012, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) headlined "BBC Peddles War Propaganda," saying:
BBC willfully misrepresents Iran's nuclear program. For example, on January 26, it "explicitly stated that Iran has nuclear bombs!"
A "tirade of demonization and misinformation" followed. Spurious accusations claimed Iran threatens world peace. Question Time host David Dimbleby breached journalistic fairness and accuracy codes. He featured guests stating spurious misinformation, not truth and full disclosure.
Journalist Melanie Phillips claimed "Iran is threatening genocide against Israel virtually every week, and it means it." She referred to the canard about wiping Israel off the map.
She continued saying:
"You are dealing in Iran with people who are not rational. You are dealing with people who believe that if they provoke the apocalypse, the end of days, they will bring to earth the Shiia Messiah, the Mahdi, and so they are in the business of provoking an apocalypse."
"It does not matter to them that in a nuclear exchange they may lose half of their own country. It doesn’t matter. This is the mentality that you are dealing with. And the threat is to all of us."
Broadcasting these type comments is unconscionable. Other guests say similar things. BBC features them. Viewers and listeners are misinformed. It repeats daily, especially when Britain and America plan war. CASMII had every right to complain. Doing so fell on deaf ears.
Last March, Alastair Crooke headlined his Asia Times article "Syria: Straining credulity?"
He quoted an unnamed US officer defining the future of warfare. In a 1997 US Army War College Quarterly article, he said:
"....we are already masters of information warfare. Hollywood is 'preparing the battlefield.' (We) will be writing the scripts, producing them, and collecting the royalties. Our creativity is devastating."
"Hatred, jealousy, and greed - emotions, rather than strategy - will set the terms of (information warfare) struggles."
Media scoundrels play the same role. The Syrian conflict "is scripted in emotional images and moralistic statements that always....trump rational analysis."
Baseless suspicions bring charges of crimes against humanity. Opposition and Western sources are cited. Warmongering officials write the scripts. Media scoundrels regurgitate their misinformation.
"Those who try to argue that Western intervention can only exacerbate the crisis are confronted (with images) of dead babies."
Those who write the scripts set the tone. Who'll contradict them without major media support? Expect none from BBC.
"Are we now to (believe) that armed opposition (insurgents are) motivated by" humanitarian concerns? "Will a Kosovo-type solution (improve things) in Syria?"
Does "anyone really believe American and European objectives in Syria (are) purely humanitarian?" Info-wars have other things in mind. At issue is regime change, not reform. It's about isolating Iran. It's about setting the stage for toppling its government after disposing of Syria.
"Do these reporters really believe" the agitprop they air? "Perhaps some do, but others (say things) to prepare the battlefield."
It bears repeating. When America, Britain, and rogue partners go to war or plan one, media scoundrels march in lockstep. BBC's done it for decades. Now it's at it again.
Spurious accusations claim Iran is developing nuclear weapons. In fact, none exist, and Iran threatens no one.
On May 27, Houla's massacre was featured. Reporting from Beirut, Jim Muir said:
"Some opposition groups are saying this could be a turning point."
"Western nations are pressing for a response...."
America wants "an end to (Assad's) 'rule by murder.' "
"The killings have sparked a chorus of international condemnation."
US, UK, French, and UN officials were quoted. They all pointed fingers one way. So did BBC by featuring them. The blame game accuses victims. Perpetrators get scant mention. Heated interventionist calls increase. "(I)ndiscriminate and disproportionate use of force" was charged.
On May 29, BBC reported on "how a massacre unfolded," saying:
"Anti-government activists, eyewitnesses and human rights groups - including the UN's high commissioner for human rights - point the finger at the Syrian army and the shabiha, a sectarian civilian militia that supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad."
BBC claimed army shelling began the attack. Syria categorically denies it. No tanks or artillery targeted Houla. None were positioned nearby. Hundreds of heavily armed Western-sponsored gunmen bear full responsibility.
Like other scoundrel media, BBC reported a tsunami of misinformation and lies.
On May 27, the London Telegraph headlined "BBC News uses 'Iraq photo to illustrate Syrian massacre," saying:
Willful deception was caught red-handed. The image used "was actually taken on March 27, 2003...." It "shows a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad."
BBC posted it on its web site under the heading "Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows." The caption suggests Houla bodies awaited burial.
Photographer Marco di Lauro spotted the deception. He took the photo. When he saw it he said he nearly "fell off his chair," adding:
"One of my pictures from Iraq was used by the BBC web site as a front page illustration claiming (Houla body images were) sent by an activist."
BBC pulls stunts like this often. So do US and other Western media. Notoriously they misreport on imperial wars and events preceding them. Propaganda substitutes for real news and information. Apologies after the fact when caught don't matter. Damage done can't be reversed.
What could Assad gain by killing babies, young children, women and the elderly? How would cutting their throats or shooting them at point blank range help? Obvious questions go unanswered. Regurgitated lies substitute.
The pattern repeats when Washington, Britain, and rogue partners want independent governments toppled. Media propaganda promotes wars.
It rages against Syrian civilians. Insurgent death squad assassins target them. They've been doing it since early last year. Like other scoundrel media, BBC ignores truths and features willful misinformation and lies. Fake images are prominently featured.
Viewers and listeners are misinformed and betrayed. Many wonder what's next. Domestic needs suffer to serve ravenous imperial appetites. No end of conflicts appear near.
Iran parliamentarians condemned the Houla massacre. They compared it to Israel's Sabra and Shatila slaughter. They called it "blatant....terrorist acts (of) mass murder...." Insurgents bear full responsibility. Assad is wrongfully blamed.
America should be held accountable, they said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said it was done "to create chaos and instability." It's also about preventing peace and paving the way for war.
On May 29, Press TV reported that the Habilian Association human rights group said:
"We have conclusive proof and documents showing that the MKO (Mujahedlin-e Organization) has a strong and significant presence in Syria."
"The terrorist group has begun, in an all-out fashion, acts of sabotage and terrorism against the Syrian government and nation, and has found major influence among the Syrian rebels."
Washington is directly involved. So are Western and regional partners. MKO plans a "large-scale attack." Preparations are underway.
Everything ongoing facilitates Washington's war plans. The worst could erupt any time. First Syria, then Iran, then new targets in an endless cycle of violence, killing, and destruction. Expect it. It's coming.
The evidence that 32 children under the age of ten were slaughtered at Houla, specifically by forces of the government of Bashar al Assad or its instruments is based upon claims that have not in fact been verified. While the role of forces supporting the regime in Damascus can not be ruled out, the actual events that gave rise to it are rooted in daily escalating operations of specific foreign funded terror forces of imperialism derived from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait and Libya.
The horrors of Houla are thus deployed in an identical manner in which the N.A.T.O - U. S. war on Libya was managed. Coordinating U.S., British and cognate foreign intelligence and mercenary forces were installed specifically in Libya to hijack popular disaffection and displace it for the purpose carving up the country.
In Libya, the slaughter of fifty thousand people ensued while competing foreign run militia ravage Libya whose 44.2 billion barrels of oil assets and resources are parceled out among scavenging imperial predators who set the process in motion when they hijacked the uprising that began with the oil workers of Ras Lanuf. Similarly, the current armed attacks in Syria are foreign in origin bearing the same imprint as that which ensued in Libya and engendering escalating violence and terror bombings, ascribed invariably to the target regime.
With imperialism, its hands dripping in the blood of the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, calling for military removal of the al Assad regime, claims regarding specific responsibility for the butchery at Houla of these children under the age of ten must be subject to evidence beyond proclamations by U.S. commanders. The same is true of the daily media campaign by CIA's talking heads at CNN, who conjoin their propaganda "reports" to orchestrated demands that a U.S/ NATO military invasion overthrow the government in Damascus.
Major General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. international unit in Syria pointedly avoided ascribing responsibility for the massacre of the children in Houla, stating. "Whatever I have learned on the spot in Syria is that one can not jump to conclusions."
The collection of killer squads run in Syria by Saudi, Qatar, Libyan and mercenary forces have transformed what was a movement of popular disaffection into a foreign and imperial-run terror operation with the specific objective of removing the government and sidelining, not empowering popular opposition.
The imperial campaign is intended to liquidate popular opposition not merely to the regime in Damascus but to the foreign terror squads put in place and set in motion by imperial sponsors whose agenda in Syria as elsewhere is to carve up Syria and render it a non-viable state.
The U.S. and N.A.T.O military and political functionaries who are orchestrating imperial overthrow in Damascus continue apace to slaughter and torment the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. In their daily predations they deploy the same methods and ideological cover.
Imperial killer squads are the fitting instruments of U.S. and N.A.T.0. rulers whose power is predicated upon the permanent destruction of democratic aspirations and of political movements and programs capable of displacing a dying order.
The last thing the imperial carvings-up of target countries intend is to facilitate popular control over national economic and social resources.
The real political agenda of which "Target Syria" is the current expression, is permanent subjugation of the mass of the Syrian people, the very condition obtaining in the countries whose mercenary forces have been organized, armed and insinuated in Syria by U.S. and N.A.T.O. rulers.
This is the abiding political and military setting for the war proclamations emanating yet again from Washington and N.A.T.O. capitals, and punctuated ad nauseam by the scripted declarations of the country-selling regimes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
Ralph Schoenman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Lies and Fabrications: The Houla Massacre
Full text of Syria's Amb. to the UN Dr Bashar Al-Ja’afari’s Press Conference
In response to the UN statement regarding al-Houla massacre
Full text of Dr Bashar Al-Ja’afari’s Press Conference at the UN
The full text of the Press Conference in which the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Al-Ja’afari denounced "the tsunami of lies that were said a few minutes ago by some members of the Council". – Silvia Cattori
Full text of the Press Conference
transcribed by JPH for silviacattori.net
In Syria is an appalling, horrific, unjustified, and unjustifiable crime. This massacre was condemned by my government in the strongest terms possible. And here my government’s version of the condemnation has joined exactly the wording adopted a few minutes ago by the Security Council.
I would like here to condemn also, on behalf of my government, the tsunami of lies that were said A few minutes ago by some members of the Council who tried to mislead you by saying that their way of levelling accusations against my government is based on what they said “evidences”. They are wrong and they are misleading you. Neither General Mood, nor anybody else told the Security Council and the informal session that he would blame the Syrian government’s forces for what happened. It is really pitiful and regrettable that some members of the Council came out just a few minutes after General Mood had finished his briefing to mislead you to tell you lie about what happened.
I invite you all to look to what happened in al-Houla in its entirety. In the comprehensiveness of the picture, what happened in al-Houla yesterday has a background and we should understand this background in order to catch and understand who perpetrated this crime.
Yesterday, after the Friday prayer, two hundred to three hundred armed men gathered around two o’clock pm. They gathered in several points actually, and then they moved and they met in one point, in al-Houla. They had pick-up cars loaded with heavy weapons such as anti-tanks missiles, mortars and machine guns, the Libyan way you saw a couple months ago, and they started attacking the law enforcement forces in the area who were positioned in five different points and at the same time the military attacks lasted from two o’clock pm. up to eleven o’clock in the evening.
So here we are not talking about a military attack that took place and ended in a matter of half an hour. It is a full fledge military operation planned in advance with multi task purposes. After attacking the law enforcement orders positions, the military forces turned towards the civilians, and then they moved to another village which is very next to al-Houla, one kilometre away, were they burned the national hospital, they burned the crops of the farmers and they burned houses. And they killed also dozens of innocent civilians in another village also next to al-Houla, called Shomaria. So here we are not talking about only one incident that took place in one precise area, we are talking about a theatre of operations that engulfed many small villages in the area.
My government has established a national Commission of enquiry tasked with the mission of finding out who are the perpetrators of this horrific massacre so that they will be brought to justice. Whoever committed this crime will be held accountable by the Syrian authorities, by the Syrian government’s law in the country.
The press statement adopted by the Security Council today, adopted somehow the version of events submitted by General Mood. If you go to the language in which the press statement was written, you will find that nothing indicates that the Council is blaming the Syrian government’s forces for the killings and the perpetration of the massacres. On the contrary it identifies that other elements in the picture may be responsible for what happened. I am saying this because the press statement says that the Security Council condemns in the strongest possible terms the killings confirmed by the United Nations observers. I am here also confirming on behalf of my government that there were killings of dozen of civilians, one hundred fourteen – and then an attack that involves a series of government artillery and tank shelling on residential neighbourhood.
Then the members of the Security Council also condemned the killing of civilians by shooting at close range and by severe physical abuse. Most of the killings that took place in al-Houla are due to this kind of assassinations, killing at close range, not killed due to the artillery shelling because artillery shelling would not leave the body of the victims the way you saw them. Here we are talking about the Algerian killing style in the early nineties.
My government will spare no efforts, whatsoever, to find out the perpetrators of these massacres, and to bring them to justice.
I would like to add to that, that the Security Council should meet also to identify and call on those who are arming the terrorist groups in Syria, who are hosting them, instigating them and inciting them to violence, and protecting them, also to be brought to justice. Some members in the Council, their officials said it publicly. Some of them are permanent members. Their high level officials said it publicly that they would spare no efforts to present and to provide the Syrian opposition with weapons, and some of them said “non lethal weapons”, I do not know what does it mean. But the immediate outcome of this weaponisation of the opposition was the result in the form of kidnapping the Lebanese pilgrims coming back from Iraq through Turkish territory, and in the form of suicide bombings and the infiltration by al-Quaida of the Syrian territory.
So we do not need double language in the Security Council. We need to bring everybody accountable to the justice, even though if we touch upon some permanent members. Those who have great interest in stopping violence and bringing to success the national inclusive dialogue in Syria should stop interfering in our domestic affairs, stop arming, hosting, financing and protecting the armed terrorist groups in my country. You cannot be an arsonist and a fireman at the same time. And this is exactly, unfortunately, the case of some members in this Security Council. The Arabic, the regional and the international dimensions of the Syrian crisis are not murky situation any more, and everybody knows what we are talking about.
I am in your hands.
Question: In the statement it said “Attacks involved the Syrian government artillery and tank shelling in residential neighbourhoods”. You disagree with that?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: I disagree with the interpretation provided to you of this sentence by the German ambassador, the British ambassador, and others. The interpretation was wrong. It is up to General Mood to present the facts. It is not up to the German ambassador or the British ambassador, or other ambassadors.
Question: But the fact that there was government shelling on a residential neighbourhood, was that a fact?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: General Mood did not say that.
Question: Given the circumstances were unclear, is General Mood more factual than the Secretary general?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: This is exactly what I was trying to say to your colleague. General Mood said that, that the circumstances were unclear with regard who to blame for these attacks. Yes, he did say that, but in this context, not in the context provided to you by some ambassadors.
Question: Do you feel that this letter of the Secretary General is it more akin to the statement of the German and the UK ambassadors or to the statement made by General Mood in consultations?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: More inclined to sympathise with the German and the British ambassadors, of course.
Question: What about the investigation?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: There is a close cooperation between the Syrian Government and UNSMIS [United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria] in Syria. Of course after establishing the Syrian national inquiry commission of investigation, the Syrian authorities will share with General Mood the outcome of these investigations, and then, of course, General Mood will share this information with the Security Council and Mr. Kofi Annan. One important point, gentlemen : you may remember that every time the Security Council has scheduled a session to discuss the Syrian crisis, something should happen in Syria. Either suicide bombing, or a terrorist attack, or a kind of massacre, the one unfortunately we are discussing today. So, it is not an innocent coincidence that the massacre took place only one day before the arrival of Mr. Kofi Annan to Syria. This dimension is very important because it casts shed of doubts about the real motivations of those who perpetrated this horrific crime. They are seeking escalation, they are seeking mobilisation of the Security Council against the Syrian government. No government whatsoever would massacre its own citizens for achieving political victory over its opponents. Using artillery and shelling and tanks and missiles would not kill these innocent civilians the way they were killed by. And this has been notified by the Security Council press statement when they said that they were killed at close range. That means that is a pure assassination, it is not about using artillery and tanks shelling.
Question: You say it is not the Syrian government, but who did it?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: The armed terrorist groups have initiated this kind of terrorist attacks from the beginning of the crisis in Syria. Here we are not talking about the first incident that takes place in Syria. Of course what happened yesterday is horrific, appalling, unjustified and unjustifiable crime. But this type of killings is not done by any government on earth. It is about armed groups, it is a terrorist crime. We cannot describe it with different terms. Whoever committed this crime will be held accountable to the Syrian justice, and the national investigation Committee established by the government yesterday should submit its report in three days from now. So we will know for sure who is behind this horrific crime in a matter of three days.
Question: Would it not give a pretext for members of Council Security members to blame the government that they are giving this by proxy?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: As I said in the beginning, we should look at the picture in its entirety. The issue is not to go into details. Sometimes details are important but sometimes they are not. The issue is to have the right judgement on what happened. And in order to have the right judgment you have to look at the picture in its entirety with its historical background, with its geopolitical dimensions. As I said, there is an Arab dimension, there is a regional dimension and an international dimension of the Syrian crisis. And some countries are publicly saying that they would support - and they have already supported - the Syrian military wing of the opposition with weapons. People should very cautious and very careful while reading the map of what is going on in Syria.
Question: Would it be for pushing to the increase in size of UNSMIS mission, maybe to arming their personnel, for some kind of internationalisation?
Bashar Al-Ja’afari: That might be one of the targets seek by those who perpetrated the crime. That might be one reason. One very important reason for perpetrating this kind of horrific crime: to increase the internationalisation of the Syrian crisis, and to increase the number of the staff of UNSMIS.
Thank you.
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Unholy Alliance Forming Against Syria
Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara, Brussels, Arab puppet regimes, Extremist Wahhabis, Al-Qaeda
Syria is bracing for more political chaos as all antagonistic forces appear to have entered into an unholy alliance to bring the government to its knees by ingeniously choreographing massacres and attributing them to Syrian government, thereby turning the country into fertile soil for US-led invasion.
Deadly clashes broke out on Friday between Syrian forces and armed groups in the township of Houla in Homs and claimed the lives of 108 people including at least 32 children according to the head of the UN observer mission in Syria. However, Syrian authorities on Sunday denied having a hand in the carnage. "Women, children and old men were shot dead. This is not the hallmark of the heroic Syrian army," Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdesi told reporters in Damascus.
Makdesi said the massacre was carried out by "terrorists" after fighting between rebels and forces loyal to al-Assad.
"They (rebels) were equipped with mortars and anti-tank missiles, which is a quantitative leap," he said. Violence is spiraling drastically despite the presence of 260 UN observers who are currently monitoring the ceasefire as part of a six-point peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan in March. Earlier this month, 55 people were killed and about 400 others injured in two strings of terrorist bombings near a military intelligence building in Damascus.
What deserves due attention in the carnage that happened in Houla is that many were shot dead at close range, many were Shia Muslims and many were women and children. In other words, these atrocities are conjectured to have been carried out at the hands of the extremist Wahhabis and al-Qaeda elements who are notorious for targeting women and children in their terrorist operations.
Another element which reinforces this speculation is that many among those who were killed were Shia Muslims for whom the Wahhabis nurse inveterate loathing. Despite the prevailing trend in western media to rule out the possible presence of the al-Qaeda in the country, the presence of al-Qaeda terrorists is gradually gaining strength in Syria. They are believed to have penetrated the country from Iraq, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon.
Washington is funding the rebel groups in Syria. A report reveals that the rebels in Syria “have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States” (The Washington post, ).
“We are increasing our nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, and we continue to coordinate our efforts with friends and allies in the region and beyond in order to have the biggest impact on what we are collectively doing,” said a senior State Department official, one of several US and foreign government officials on the condition of anonymity.
Besides, Washington is pressing Qatar and Saudi Arabia to fund and provide the rebels with heavy weaponries.
This behavior on the part of Washington runs counter to the fact that many rebels are linked with al-Qaeda and that the US claims to be fighting terror group. Along with Washington, the British government acknowledged early in March that it has provided an extra 2 million to the Western-backed rebels fighting the Syrian government. Prime Minister David Cameron told a hearing at the House of Commons Liaison Committee that his government had provided cash and equipment to western-backed rebels in Syria in the name of emergency medical supplies and food.
The government of al-Assad is losing ground thanks to the influx of the extremist Wahhabis and al-Qaeda members and on account of the financial and military support the rebels receive from the West and the Persian Gulf regimes.
The noose is getting tighter and tighter and all Washington and the extremists want is an absence of Bashar al-Assad. The implication is not that they are consciously united to topple the government of al-Assad but that they are united in a malicious cause to do so, each with its own benefits to reap. In other words, all these groups are fomenting unrest in Syria, and dragging the country into shreds of despair in their own way. Although these groups may ostensibly be at daggers drawn over different issues, they share one common point: the fall of al-Assad and therefore turning the situation to their own interest.
Metaphorically speaking, Syria is now going through a sea of troubles where there are many opportunists who will readily make the best of the crisis in the country.
Most importantly, Israel is silently and ironically funneling millions of dollars to the rebels in Syria. In fact, Israel is capitalizing enormously on the collapse of Bashar al-Assad government. The fall of al-Assad in Syria means a lot to Israel. It is in fact tantamount to immense latitude and a capacious place of potency in the Middle East.
Syria is now a nightmarishly humanitarian catastrophe lavishly brought about by the regional Arab puppet regimes, extremist Wahhabis, al-Qaeda, Washington and Israel.
Ismail Salami is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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US threatens military intervention in Syria following Houla massacre
The massacre of over 100 people in Houla is being utilized by the United States, other Western powers and the Gulf States to step up their drive for regime-change in Syria. Thirty-two children and 34 women were among Friday’s dead, the United Nations has said.
Speaking yesterday to Fox News, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said, “Of course, there is always a military option… it may come to a point with Syria because of the atrocities.”
His comments follow a series of bellicose statements by Washington. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “The US will work with the international community to intensify our pressure on [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and his cronies, whose rule by murder and fear must come to an end.” The White House called the Houla attack “a vile testament to an illegitimate regime.”
The Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is also once again urging direct military intervention. Kuwait, which currently heads the Arab League, announced it is calling for a ministerial meeting to “take steps to put an end to the oppressive practices against the Syrian people.”
The Free Syrian Army (FSA), based in Turkey and funded and organized by Washington and its allies, declared it was no longer committed to the truce brokered by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. It issued a statement saying that “unless the UN Security Council takes urgent steps for the protection of civilians, Annan’s plan is going to go to hell.”
The Western-backed Syrian National Council (SNC) has called on the UN Security Council to convene an emergency meeting and take binding decisions to “protect the Syrian people” by invoking Chapter VII, which sanctions the use of force.
The Obama administration has to date confined its efforts to destabilize the Assad regime to covert support for proxy Sunni-based forces such as the FSA and SNC. But it is seeking to capitalise on the tragic events in Houla to secure the necessary political backing for direct intervention. This means either enlisting Russia’s support or neutralizing Moscow’s opposition to any move to depose Assad.
On Sunday, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a nonbinding statement condemning the killings in Houla “in attacks that involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood.” The statement went on to condemn “the killing of civilians by shooting at close range and by severe physical abuse.”
Clear differences remain, however. Moscow fears that regime-change would deprive it of its main base in the Middle East and secure undisputed US hegemony over the region’s oil riches by surrounding Shia Iran with a ring of pro-Washington Sunni regimes.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking yesterday at a news conference with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, said he wanted Damascus to resolve its problems “without foreign interference.”
He continued: “Both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people, including several dozen women and children. This area is controlled by the rebels, but it is also surrounded by government troops.” There was no doubt that government forces had used artillery and tanks to shell Houla, he said, but many of the dead appeared to have been shot at close range or tortured.
Assad’s government “bears the main responsibility for what is going on,” he added, but it was facing terrorists whose bombings have the “clear signature of Al Qaeda.”
Publicly, the Obama administration is focusing its efforts on securing Russian support for a phased departure of Assad, modeled on the transition of power in Yemen. Republican Senator John McCain denounced Obama for embracing a “feckless” foreign policy in negotiating with Russia, while Obama’s Republican opponent in the presidential election, Mitt Romney, insisted that the US “should work with partners to organize and arm Syrian opposition groups so they can defend themselves.”
Obama has been reluctant to wage the type of direct NATO-led offensive carried out last year in Libya. But his Republican critics only state openly what the White House is already doing covertly in what may soon become a full-scale proxy war waged by Turkey and the Gulf regimes on America’s behalf.
Nothing that is said by the major powers or the mass media on Houla and the civil war in Syria can be taken at face value. Houla is being lined up to serve the same political function as atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in providing a justification for imperialist intervention.
First, there is as of yet no full account of the events themselves, which remain in dispute.
Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said that the fighting began after “hundreds of heavily-armed gunmen carrying machine guns, mortars and anti-tank missiles” launched an attack on five Syrian army positions that continued for nine hours. Five army positions in the area came under attack, leaving three soldiers dead and 16 wounded, he said. Blaming terrorists for the deaths that followed, he said that during the conflict, “Children, women and other innocent people were killed in their homes, and this is not what the Syrian army does. The method of killing was brutal.”
Opposition activists have admitted clashes between the army and the insurgency, but blame the deaths on pro-regime “shabiha” militia.
The head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Major-General Robert Mood, issued a report stating that “artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighbourhood,” while acknowledging that close-range shotgun wounds, stabbings and “severe physical abuse” were the main causes of death.
Mood has been quoted as saying, “Whatever I learned on the ground in Syria...is that I should not jump to conclusions.”
It should also be recalled that the media and Western politicians responded to previous atrocities, like the May 10 car bombs in Damascus that killed 55 people, with far less outrage and far greater caution when it came to apportioning blame. At the time, they concurred that this and similar terror attacks should not be presumed to be the work of Al Qaeda and uncritically cited opposition charges that they were provocations by the Assad regime. Yet, on May 18, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon declared publicly to little media comment, “I believe that there must be Al Qaeda behind it. This has created again very serious problems.”
The US and its European and Middle-Eastern allies are as wholly indifferent to what really happened in Houla as they are to the more general suffering of the Syrian masses. As British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant declared, “So, it does not matter, to be honest, what the exact circumstances in the run-up to this atrocity were. The fact is that it is an atrocity, and it was perpetrated by the Syrian government.”
Ultimate responsibility for Houla rests with Washington and its allies, who have fostered and armed a sectarian Sunni insurgency dedicated to the overthrow of the Assad regime and its replacement by a government entirely subordinated to a strategic Middle East alliance dominated by the US.
The only legitimate response to the Houla massacre is to redouble the demand for Washington and its accomplices to end their intrigues and subversion against Syria. It is up to the Syrian workers and peasant masses to determine their own future and to make a political reckoning with both the bourgeois Assad regime and the bourgeois and sectarian forces that presently dominate the opposition, thanks to their international sponsors.
Chris Marsden is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Media Disinfo: BBC criticised for using Iraq 2003 photo to illustrate Syrian massacre
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been slammed for mistakenly using a photo taken in Iraq in 2003 to illustrate the Syria massacre, in which over 100 people, including 32 children, were brutally killed.
The picture, taken on March 27, 2003, showed a young Iraqi child jumping over dozens of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad.
It was posted on the BBC news website under the heading "Syria massacre in Houla condemned as outrage grows".
According to The Telegraph, the caption stated the photograph was provided by an activist and cannot be independently verified, but said it is "believed to show the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial".
A BBC spokesman said the image has now been removed from the website.
"We were aware of this image being widely circulated on the internet in the early hours of this morning following the most recent atrocities in Syria. We used it with a clear disclaimer saying it could not be independently verified," the spokesman said.
"Efforts were made overnight to track down the original source of the image and when it was established the picture was inaccurate we removed it immediately," he added.
Meanwhile, a professional photographer, Marco di Lauro, said he nearly "fell off his chair" when he saw the image being used, and said he was "astonished" at the failure of the corporation to check their sources.
"What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone activist, citizen journalist or whatever. That's all," the paper quoted him, as saying. (ANI)
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Syria: Guardian's Houla Massacre Propaganda Stunt Uses Little Kid". Another case of reckless journalism aimed at selling war
The Guardian in their piece titled, "Houla massacre survivor tells how his family were slaughtered," admits that the heart-wrenching emotionally manipulative narrative it published comes straight from a nameless boy allegedly produced by "a town elder who is a member of the Syrian Revolutionary Council and is now caring for him." This fact, however, is buried paragraphs below, hopefully read long after the Guardian's intended message takes hold in the minds of readers.
The account raises serious suspicion as it contradicts the West's own original narrative of the Syrian military "shelling" the victims to death in their homes, and instead appears to be a deceitful, quickly prepared response crafted in the wake of verified evidence presented by Russia before the UN Security Council this week.
The Guardian itself previously published an article titled, "Syria shelling 'kills at least 90'" as well as a statement by UK Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt claiming the deaths were the result of artillery. Upon that narrative falling apart, the West is apparently retrenching itself in the face of Russian skepticism and reports coming from the people in Houla itself claiming militants, not soldiers, stabbed and shot the victims at close range, not shelled them with artillery.
The Guardian proclaims proudly in their newly crafted narrative that "the young survivor's chilling account emerged as Russia continued to blame both Syrian troops and opposition militias for the weekend rampage in the town that left at least 116 people dead and prompted fresh outrage against the regime's crackdown." The Guardian's revised account specifically claims the nameless boy supplied by the opposition, saw Syrian troops dismount from their tanks, and kill his entire family in front of him. Paradoxically, the Guardian then claims they weren't troops, but rather "al-Shabiha" irregular forces who dismounted from armored vehicles with "guns and knives."
Throughout the entire length of the Guardian's article, not a single shred of verified evidence was presented. Answering a question as to how the "boy" knew the gunmen were pro-regime militia men, he responded, "why are you asking me who they were? I know who they were. We all know it. They were the regime army and people who fight with them. That is true." Hardly conclusive evidence, hardly fit for print by any reputable journalist, but, however, a textbook example of manipulative war propaganda.
Hopefully the serial lies told by the Guardian, the BBC who recently included pictures of mass graves in Iraq in their Houla, Syria coverage, and Western leaders who have lied their populations into over 10 years of constant warfare, have finally reached a point where they will no longer be able to advance their agenda with even a fig leaf of credibility. Hopefully, if the West intends to carry forth with its wars of global aggression, they will do so as overt war criminals and invite the measures and penalties demanded when dealing with such war criminals.
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Phony ‘Houla Massacre’: How Media Manipulates Public Opinion For Regime Change in Syria
Intelligent skeptics should see through the media’s smoke screen in order to work out what is really going on in Syria
If you are still needing an academic tutorial on exactly how the mainstream media is able to generate a completely phony public consensus to support foreign intervention projects, you need look no further than the dangerous, fictional narrative currently being rolled out regarding Syria.
This past Saturday and Sunday morning, almost every major corporate mainstream newspaper and TV network in North America and in Europe ran with the average headline, “Massacre of the children as Syrian forces hit rebels”, giving hundreds of millions of readers and viewers to artificial impression that it was Syrian government forces – and not western-backed terrorist groups, who carried out a massacre on children and others days ago - even though, the true culprit of these attacks has not yet been determined – a fact which was only briefly mentioned later on in these very same media reports.
One of the UK best-selling weekend papers and most widely read online journals, Guardian media group’s The Observer, ran such a headline – one which shamelessly implied that the Syrian government carried out a massacre in Houla. This was used to shape public opinion in Europe, a reality which is later shaped for the North American market.
Corporate Journalism: The Art of Deception
It shouldn’t take a genius to see through this relentless western effort to takeover Syria, but not having learned their lesson from Libya, so many hard working and well educated westerners are bound to fall for it all over again.
Cui bono? Who benefits… from another civilian massacre? Clearly not the Syrian government. But western-backed terrorist groups who have been working to destabilize the country for over one year now, do clearly benefit.
Important to add here also, that the latest child massacre in Syria has been reported as being “done with knives” – which doesn’t sound like a government attack to any intelligent reader.
Do not underestimate for one second just how pivotal the western corporate media is in advancing an agenda of global destabilization:
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As we have seen used before in Syria and Libya, the alleged massacre in question is based entirely on unsubstantiated evidence, in this case its more uploaded ‘Youtube’ footage:
“Videos uploaded to the Internet and purporting to be from Houla show many dead and badly mutilated infants. Residents say some victims were killed with knives, while many more died from 18 hours of relentless shelling that left buildings wrecked and homes destroyed in a large residential area near the centre of town.”
Origins of these ‘Youtube video’ are still unknown, but the media machine and certain UN officials have already cited them as “evidence”. Also note that in the YouTube videos, many of the dead children appear to be shot in the heads with fire arms at close range, but this has not stopped certain ‘UN observers’ from accusing the Syrian government from killing children with tank shelling.
Mainstream Media 101
In order to shape consensus reality, first you need to frame the event. Here the story begins by laying soft blame on the Syrian government…
“Syria‘s fragile peace process is in shreds after what was claimed to be a regime-backed massacre…”
… and then proceeding to carefully cover themselves, so to speak, but retracting the allegations deeper into the article:
“Major General Robert Mood, head of the UN team in Syria, deplored the attack, which began at midday on Friday, as “indiscriminate and unforgivable” but did not say who had been to blame.”
Notice how the article itself states clearly that the persons responsible for the massacre is yet to be known, but The Observer has already framed the conclusion within the headline and in the beginning of the story, in order to fit a pre-determined conclusion. This conclusion happens to be directly in line with Washington and London’s foreign policy objective of regime change in Syria.
Take notes. Because this is how it’s done, time and time again – another clear example how large media outlets can effectively drive reality in the direction of their choosing, and this is why so many millions of public media consumers are left misinformed and dis informed, eventually leading to a marginal public endorsement of Washington, London and Tel Aviv’s interventionist foreign policy objectives.
Hours after this fake story was circulated in the GMT timezone, it made its way to EST, as the New York Times picks up the ball and runs it down the field. Here the story is further refined to streamline it with regime change policy objectives, codifying reality within North American sector, claiming that:
“More than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, were killed in a central Syrian village, top United Nations officials said Saturday, accusing the government of perpetrating the “indiscriminate” shelling of civilian neighborhoods.”
No real details are actually given to support this media-generated verdict, only that, “A United Nations statement said the observers confirmed that “artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential neighborhood.”
And finally, the Washington Post weighs in with their attempt to corner Russia and China on the issue, rounding out the artificial verdict today with their headline, “U.N. Security Council blames Syrian government for civilian massacre”, claiming that:
“The U.N. Security Council on Sunday blamed the Syrian government for most of the deaths in a massacre of 116 civilians in the village of Houla, issuing a unanimous statement condemning the killings that was supported by Syria’s staunch allies Russia and China.”
Shortly thereafter, the UN’s Ban Ki Moon and Save the Children charity weigh in with carefully-craft statements, but statements that are obviously framed and directed towards Syria’s Assad government, and not Gulf States, Washington and London-backed terrorist gangs currently operating under an all but official western mandate within Syria and from their NATO-sanctioned base over the border in southern Turkey. Reality is further shaped by the London Guardian’s Observer and others, with an official “international outcry”:
“The international community was united in its condemnation. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said the killings were a “flagrant violation of international law” while the White House called the violence acts of “unspeakable and inhuman brutality.” Arab League head Nabil Elaraby said the killings were a “horrific crime” and urged UN action.
Save the Children’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth, echoed calls for intervention. He said: “This indiscriminate killing must stop now. The world cannot sit back and allow this to happen. Children are suffering terribly in this conflict.”
But what is a more closer version of reality is this:
Western-backed terrorists, many of whom are al-Qaida, mostly hailing from outside of Syria, are fomenting civil war and carrying out a series of attacks on UN observers and civilians, in order to create the preferred western narrative that “Assad must go.”
Western readers should be under no illusion – your government operators are sanctioning civilian killing in places like Syria, and your corporate media are being used to place the blame on the west’s political enemy in the region – and therefore influence western public support for regime change.
After over one year of intervening through their own favored terrorist guerrilla proxy fighters and running arms into Syria – arms that are admittedly for going into the hands of western-backed al-Qaida groups there, the west has not yet succeeded in toppling the Assad government and installing a new puppet regime, as they did by using NATO military force in Libya last autumn. But western project managers like Hillary Clinton and William Hague have not given up, and if their corporate media outlets are allowed to determine their version reality in Syria, they will eventually get their “humanitarian intervention”, and the country will slowly be destroyed from within. Then regime change will happen.
It’s as simple as that.
The Syrian people are the ones who will eventually lose if Washington, London, Tel Aviv and the Gulf States succeed in destroying that country, as they have done in Libya and Iraq.
When this is done, then they will move on to destabilize Lebanon in order to unseat and neutralize Hezbollah.
After that, the door to attack Iran will be wide open.
There’s your World War Three in earnest.
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Syria: The West Undermines UN Monitors. Paves the Way for NATO Intervention Western propagandists unanimously defer to "activists" despite hundreds of UN monitors on the ground in Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, May 27, 2012 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31066
Reports this week of the Syrian military "slaughtering civilians" near Homs have been reported relentlessly by Western media outlets, citing solely "activists" who have been consistently exposed as manipulating and purposefully distorting the reality on the ground in Syria. After episodes including "Gay Girl in Damascus," who turned out to be in fact a "middle-aged American man in Scotland," and "Syrian Danny" who was caught directing fake gunfire before a staged "casualty report" given to CNN's Anderson Cooper, the word of "activists" in Syria, openly sympathetic to the Free Syrian Army, is clearly less than credible.
Image: Brookings Institution's Salman Shaikh, a chief proponent of the engineered violence plotted by Brookings and others since as early as 2007, makes veiled threats against the safety of UN monitors in Syria. Corporate-financier elite, through their think-tanks have made a concerted effort to undermine the UN mission now that the rebels have been successfully rearmed, reorganized, and redeployed. The next step, as stated by Shaikh's peers over at the Henry Jackson Society, after feigning attempts to diplomatically resolve the conflict, is to begin NATO military intervention.
Then there are aggregators like the London-based "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" who cites anonymous phone-calls and regularly consorts directly with the British Foreign Ministry, and convicted criminal George Soros' Open Society-funded Amnesty International (annual report page 8), Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders (page 39) (advised by a myriad of lawyers, PR firms, and even a representative of Goldman Sachs), who have already undermined their legitimacy in Libya after peddling verified-lies provided by the Libyan rebels while downplaying verified atrocities committed by NATO-backed militants that continue to this very day.
Despite this constant torrent of disinformation put out by dubious institutions possessing clear conflicts of interest, funded literally by convicted criminals and serial warmongers, a great deal of evidence has still emerged painting a very contradictory picture of events in Syria, and alleged "massacres" like the one supposedly unfolding once again near Homs. A picture of the Syrian military attempting to restore order in the face of a heavily armed, foreign-backed army of sectarian militants.
It is confirmed that indeed the "pro-democracy" "freedom fighters" in Syria are in fact carrying out horrific atrocities, including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of civilians - this according to Human Right Watch itself, as well as a recent report provided by the UN. These atrocities are revealed to be the result of sectarian violence, not aspirations for "democratic" reform, with ethnic and religious minorities being hit hardest by rebel attacks.
There are also admissions of Syrian rebels carrying out a campaign of indiscriminate terrorist bombings conducted by Free Syrian Army militants with ties to fighters who killed US troops in neighboring Iraq. Finally, there are revelations that the violence in Syria was not in fact "inspired" by the "Arab Spring," but instead the result of years of meticulous preparations by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to create a violent extremist front with which to destabilize a vast region extending from Iran all the to Lebanon, including Syria in between - this according to a 2007 New Yorker article titled, "The Redirection" by Seymour Hersh.
And despite the West's narrative unraveling, and it becoming abundantly clear that the unrest is being perpetuated by terrorist organizations funded and armed by foreign interests, the US has pressed on with Israel and Saudi Arabia in continuing this funding and arming - even in the midst of a UN brokered ceasefire. The Washington Post reported that indeed the Gulf States with the US' help, were arming militants operating in and around Syria despite the ongoing efforts by the UN to end the violence. Associated Press confirms that the US is further planning to arm Syrian militants, despite reports out of the Pentagon itself that Al Qaeda is demonstratively present and operating alongside the so-called Free Syrian Army. Again, it should be noted that as early as 2007, the Pentagon was well aware that arming extremists to destabilize Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon required using groups affiliated directly with Al Qaeda. What is Next for Syria.
As stated previously, the UN "ceasefire" was never intended to end the conflict, but rather allow militants and their foreign sponsors regroup and redeploy for the next leg of destabilization, hoping to fulfill public expectations that a "diplomatic" solution would be tried and "exhausted" before resorting to a NATO-led military intervention. Despite the trappings of a "Democratic" presidency under "Nobel Laureate" Barack Obama, the agenda pursued in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, and Syria represents a "continuity of agenda" stretching back to George Bush Sr.'s presidency, cultivated, defined and promoted by corporate-funded think-tanks and dutifully carried out by each successive presidency.
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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.
The 2007 plot described by Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection" began under the Bush Jr. presidency and has continued on in earnest under Obama. So when representatives of the Henry Jackson Society, a corporate-financier funded (beginning on page 18, .pdf), Neo-Conservative led think-tank speaks with Qatari government propaganda outlet Al Jazeera, declaring that the current UN "peace deal" is simply a means of satisfying public expectations that "diplomacy" will be tried before an inevitable, premeditated, unilateral NATO military intervention commences, the public should take notice that this is in fact the next intended step.
Similar calls from similarly affiliated Neo-Con think-tanks dictated US foreign policy leading up and into NATO's intervention in Libya, again despite America allegedly being "led" by a "liberal" "Democratic" president. World peace hinges on public awareness, the public boycotting and replacing the corporate-financier interests driving this global agenda and the war crimes that result, regardless of who is allegedly "president." World peace also depends on Syria along with its allies creating a diplomatic and tactical environment within and beyond Syria's borders that will make NATO military intervention, as well as their continued arming and funding of terrorist factions, untenable, unsustainable, and ultimately impossible.
The violence in Syria was premeditated and facilitated solely by malicious foreign powers openly seeking to effect regime change since as early as 2002 and arming and organizing violent extremists with direct ties to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood since as early as 2007.
In an April 2011 AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, admitted that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to admit that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect."
There is no doubt, then, that the destabilization across the Middle East, and specifically in Syria now, is a result of foreign aggression, exploiting, not assisting, democratic aspirations for neo-imperial hegemonic expansion. The goodwill, intentions, and courage of genuine NGO workers, activists, and regular people around the world has been harnessed to facilitate this malicious agenda, not unlike how imperial armies throughout time have lured their nation's youth to fill the ranks of a military built for extraterritorial conquest, not defense. The dual nature of modern empire - military conquest and NGO system administrators - using "national defense" and "human rights" in tandem to prod the public into one unjust war of conquest after another, continues only as long as the public's ignorance and apathy allows.
With the Western media now admitting that Syria's opposition consists in fact of very real terrorists, funded by despotic Gulf States and the West, carrying out systematic atrocities against the civilian population, we have only apathy left to blame if NATO is allowed to carry on with its campaign of military aggression - a Nuremberg offense we as a Western society swore after World War II, "Never Again!" Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Fukushima plant operators are now admitting that the Fukushima radiation levels emitted from the disaster exceeds almost two and a half times the initial ‘estimate’ produced by Japanese safety regulators. The announcement comes after independent researchers exposed the true amount of radiation leaked from the plant back in October of 2011. The study revealed that significantly more radioactive caesium was released into the atmosphere as a result of the Fukushima explosion than many nuclear experts previously told the public.
Fukushima plant operators are now admitting that the Fukushima radiation levels emitted from the disaster exceeds almost two and a half times the initial ‘estimate’ produced by Japanese safety regulators. The announcement comes after independent researchers exposed the true amount of radiation leaked from the plant back in October of 2011. The study revealed that significantly more radioactive caesium was released into the atmosphere as a result of the Fukushima explosion than many nuclear experts previously told the public.
