Syria News - Mar 20
At least 25 dead in Syrian 'chemical' attack as govt and rebels trade blame (PHOTOS) — RT News
U.S. evaluating Syria chemical weapons charges - Reuters
Russia says Syrian rebels used chemical arms near Aleppo - Reuters
Photographer says Syria attack victims suffocating, they could smell chlorine in the air - Reuters
Al Qaeda has employed crude chlorine bombs in the past in Iraq - The Long War Journal
VIDEO:(Arabic) Syria Chemical Weapons Attack Leaves 86 injured and 25 dead - SYRIAN STATE TV
VIDEO: Syria condemns rebels' 'chemical weapon attack' – guardian.co.uk
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Syria opposition PM rules out talks with Damascus (VIDEO) - FRANCE 24
US welcomes election of Syrian rebel PM - NOW
Russia "deeply regrets" election of Syrian rebel PM - NOW
Syria’s Salafi Insurgents: The Rise of the Syrian Islamic Front - Syria Comment
In Rural Syria, Christians Eye Revolution Suspiciously - Rudaw
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NATO Commander: Contingency plans under way for Syria - US News and World Report
Top Democrat endorses Syria no-fly zone - The Cable
Iraq turns blind eye to Iran arms flights to Syria: US - Ahram Online
In Syrian shadow, Iraq jihadists resurgent - UPI
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle@gmail.com
Escalating Syria's War
Escalating Syria's War
by Stephen Lendman
Syria is Washington's war. It was planned years ago. At issue is regime change. America tolerates no independent governments. It wants pro-Western puppet ones replacing them.
Death squad terror is policy. Washington upped the stakes. Headlines suggest chemical weapons use. Both sides trade accusations. Nothing's verified.
Peace Groups Declare Opposition to Missile Base in Maine
The Obama administration’s announcement that a “missile defense” base on the east coast of the U.S. will now be studied is the perfect example of a corporate-driven “solution” searching for a problem.
The studies have been justified by the supposed “nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran”. Using North Korea and Iran as justification for new missile defense deployments is sketchy since neither of those nations currently have the ability to launch a rocket able to reach the continental U.S. Nor would they likely fire one even if they had the capability considering the massive nuclear response that the U.S. could then unleash.
The east coast basing location for the technically challenged missile defense interceptor system appears to be either Caribou, Maine or Fort Drum, New York.
Wounded Marine humiliated by TSA, by Wendy Thomson
Phoenix’s Sky Harbor has had its fair share of TSA complaints.
Targeting Asia
Collection of recent articles courtesy of Joseph Gerson and the Working Group for Peace & Demilitarization in Asia & the Pacific
U.S. Policy:
Transcript: Thomas Donilon at Asia Society New York
Korea:
International Crisis Group: The Korean Peninsula: Flirting with Conflict
Who Did You Rape in the War, Daddy?
A Question for Veterans that Needs Answering
By Nick Turse, TomDispatch
On August 31, 1969, a rape was committed in Vietnam. Maybe numerous rapes were committed there that day, but this was a rare one involving American GIs that actually made its way into the military justice system.
And that wasn’t the only thing that set it apart.
War is obscene. I mean that in every sense of the word. Some veterans will tell you that you can’t know war if you haven’t served in one, if you haven’t seen combat. These are often the same guys who won’t tell you the truths that they know about war and who never think to blame themselves in any way for our collective ignorance.
War Without End
By Kathy Kelly
U.S. Marines occupy Baghdad, in March 2003, in front of the Al Fanar hotel that housed Voices activists throughout the Shock and Awe bombing.
Photo credit: Iraq Peace Team
Ten years ago, in March of 2003, Iraqis braced themselves for the anticipated “Shock and Awe” attacks that the U.S. was planning to launch against them. The media buildup for the attack assured Iraqis that barbarous assaults were looming. I was living in Baghdad at the time, along with other Voices in the Wilderness activists determined to remain in Iraq, come what may. We didn’t want U.S. - led military and economic war to sever bonds that had grown between ourselves and Iraqis who had befriended us over the past seven years. Since 1996, we had traveled to Iraq numerous times, carrying medicines for children and families there, in open violation of the economic sanctions which directly targeted the most vulnerable people in Iraqi society, - the poor, the elderly, and the children.
Remembering Rachel Corrie
Remembering Rachel Corrie
by Stephen Lendman
Rachel represented the best of courageous activism. She put her body on the line for justice. She did so because it matters. She's gone but not forgotten.
Ten years ago on March 16, an Israeli bulldozer driver murdered her in cold blood. She tried stopping a Rafah refugee camp home demolition.
Israel's Fascist Government: Part II
Israel's Fascist Government: Part II
by Stephen Lendman
On March 18, Israel's new government was sworn in. Doing so hardened fascist rule. A previous article explained.
Israelis elected their most extremist government ever. It's hugely over-the-top. It's militantly hardline, racist and unscrupulous. It menaces the region.
Local Peace Group Welcomes Pakistan Peace Delegates for Air Force anti-Drone Demonstrations This Week
CONTACTS: Jim Haber, 415-828-2506 Nevada Desert Experience Coordinator Toby Blome, 510-541-6874 Ann Wright, Ret., 818-741-1141 March 18, 2013As Nevada Desert Experience makes final preparations for its annual desert sojourn known as the "Sacred Peace Walk," a group of demonstrators are converging on the gates of Creech Air Force Base to hold constant vigil against the rising tide of robotic hunter-killer air systems like the Predator and Reaper "drones" controlled by crews at the Indian Springs installation.
10 Actions on the 10th Anniversary of the US Invasion of Iraq
- Send a letter for peace. Write a letter to the Iraqi people or an Iraqi individual and we'll be sure it gets delivered. Learn more.
- Attend a bridge vigil and presentation by IARP Executive Director Kathy McKay and Board Member Steve Clemens marking the anniversary on March 20 in Minneapolis. Learn more.
- Share stories of Iraqi citizens and US veterans affected by the war. Read, watch, and share the stories here.
- Provide life-saving clean water to Iraqi children. Learn more.
- Start a new Sister City relationship between an Iraqi and American city. Learn more in our report here.
- Write a letter to the editor about the ongoing human costs of the war. Check out the template provided by Iraq Veterans Against the War here.
- Organize a race or walk with your community to raise awareness and funds for clean water in Iraq or support for peacemakers in Iraq. Learn more.
- Share the new website, Costs of War, by Brown University.
- What do you dream about for Iraq's future? Write it here.
- Forward this email to a friend.
Syria News - Mar 19
Kerry says US won't stand in way of France, Britain or anyone else arming Syria's rebels - Fox News
An internal rift at the NSC on Syria? - Foreign Policy
UK Pulling out Special Forces from Afghanistan to Help Rebels in Syria - Daily Star Sunday
French minister to visit Turkey for talks on defense ties, Syria - todayszaman
Fundamental rift growing inside Syria opposition: German spy chief - PressTV
Russia strengthens its presence in Mediterranean Sea - Voice of Russia
Syria crisis is tipping Iraq into civil war, says minister - The Times
VIDEO: Croatian Weapons Arrive In Homs - Brown Moses Blog
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Syrian opposition elects interim prime minister - Boston Herald
Assad: We Negotiate under Our Conditions, Battle in our Favor - almanar.com
Assad sends letter to Zuma, asks BRICS ‘to intervene’ in Syria crisis - Yahoo! News South Africa
Pro-Assad group hacks HRW website, Twitter page - UPI.com
VIDEO: Asma Assad Makes Rare Appearance - Yahoo! News
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Key Lebanese export route through Syria to remain shut: Rebels- THE DAILY STAR
Tensions High in Lebanon After Assault on Sunni Clerics - ABC News
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Muslim Brotherhood Chief: Kurds Should Join Fight Against Assad Regime - Rudaw
Syria Kurds will seize control of Qamishlo: website - Mesopotamische Gesellschaft
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle@gmail.com
Iran War Weekly - March 12, 2013
Iran War Weekly
March 12, 2013
Ten Years After: How Not to Teach About the Iraq War
By Bill Bigelow, Common Dreams
In 2006, with U.S. troops occupying Iraq, the great historian and humanitarian Howard Zinn expressed his desire for what the end of the war would bring: “My hope is that the memory of death and disgrace will be so intense that the people of the United States will be able to listen to a message that the rest of the world, sobered by wars without end, can also understand: that war itself is the enemy of the human race.”
At least in a formal sense, our country’s memories of war are to be found in school history textbooks. Exactly a decade after the U.S. invasion, those texts are indeed sending “messages” to young people about the meaning of the U.S. war in Iraq. But they are not the messages of peace that Howard Zinn proposed. Not even close.
Let me offer as Exhibit A the textbook adopted for global studies classes in Portland, Oregon, the district where I spent my career as a social studies teacher, and which is used in countless school districts across the country: Holt McDougal’s Modern World History.
The section in Modern World History on the U.S. war with Iraq might as well have been written by Pentagon propagandists. In an imitation of Fox News, the very first sentence of the Iraq war section places the 9/11 attacks and Saddam Hussein side by side. The book presents the march to invasion as reasonable and inevitable, while acknowledging: “Some countries, such as France and Germany, called for letting the inspectors continue searching for weapons.” That’s the only hint of any anti-war sentiment. In fact, there was enormous popular opposition to the war, culminating on Feb. 15, 2003, a date that saw millions of people around the world demand that the United States not invade Iraq—if you’re keeping track, the largest protest in human history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. This, of course, is a pattern in corporate textbooks: Conflate governments with the people; ignore social movements.
Just as textbooks fail to begin the story of the Vietnam War in the 1940s (or before), so that students might have some context to evaluate later U.S. military intervention, today’s textbooks similarly ignore an earlier U.S. relationship with Iraq. For example, Modern World History says nothing about the role of the United States in aiding the Ba’ath party and Saddam Hussein for years, as they crushed all opposition and later waged war against Iran—a history summarized in a recent article by Iraqi sociologist Sami Ramadani, who fled Saddam Hussein’s repression in 1969. As Ramadani writes, “But when it was no longer in their interests to back him, the U.S. and U.K. drowned Iraq in blood.”
The official title of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Modern World History uses this term without any discussion of the “freedom” that this invasion might offer. The section ends with the terse conclusion that “the coalition had won the war.” And what about that supposed freedom? Silence.
Holding Harvard's Crimson Accountable
Holding Harvard's Crimson Accountable
by Stephen Lendman
Harvard's motto is "VERITAS." It's shield and class rings display it. At issue is anti-Palestinian bias.
2003-2013: Iraqi Resistance, American Dirty War, and the Remaking of the Middle East – PART 1
by Dirk Adriaensens on 18-03-2013
The crippling devastation of Iraq today overwhelms all else. It is difficult, given the facts on the ground, to recapture the imperial vision that was to make Iraq an exemplar of American sponsored democracy and a model for the American remaking of the Middle East. Iraq, after all, was to be a test case for the display of American pre-eminent power. That imperial vision is in ruins and Iraqi nationalism has reasserted itself.
Hawija February 2013
2003-2013: Iraqi Resistance, American Dirty War, and the Remaking of the Middle East – PART 1
- Decline of American Empire
- The Iraq war was illegal under International Law
- The real reasons of the Bush administration for invading Iraq and occupying the country
- The dramatic consequences of “blossoming democracy” for the nation and the people of Iraq.
The story of Iraq has become a tale of the total collapse of the original American objectives and the unintended consequence of the rise of a persistent Iraqi national resistance movement that, as American power declines, has demonstrated far more resilience than almost anyone imagined.
1. Decline of American Empire
On March 18, 2003 ECAAR (EConomists Allied for Arms Reduction) prepared a statement against unilateral initiatives for war in Iraq, which was endorsed by more than 200 US economists including seven Nobel Laureates and two former Chairmen of the Council of Economic Advisers. The text of the statement formed the basis of an ad in the Wall Street Journal. A few excerpts:
As American economists, we oppose unilateral initiatives for war against Iraq, which we see as unnecessary and detrimental to the security and the economy of the United States and the entire world community.
TSA’s VIPR at it again — fear mongering in Chicago, by Lisa Simeone
The TSA's VIPR teams, about which we’ve written countless times, have been at it again — this time in Chicago.
According to this CBS report (presented in an embarrassingly credulous, golly-gee-whiz fashion), a VIPR team slithered onto the Metra system and started manhandling bags and questioning people. Why? Because they had detected a nuclear isotope.
RToP calls on International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli crimes
Brussels, Sunday March 17th 2013
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine ends its 4-year examination of third party complicity in Israeli violations of International Law.
The Tribunal concludes that it will support all initiatives from civil society and international organisations aimed at bringing Israel in front of the International Criminal Court. It calls for the ICC to recognise Palestinian jurisdiction and for the organisation of a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on Israeli Apartheid.
Other key Recommendations issued by the Tribunal include:
- A reconstitution of the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid
- Further criminal investigations of corporations aiding and abetting Israeli violations such as the police raid on the Dutch construction equipment company Riwal [1]
- The establishment of an international committee of former Political Prisoners to campaign on Prisoner issues
- To support civil society in using the tribunal’s findings to undertake direct actions aimed at confronting state, institutional and corporate complicity with Israel’s crimes.
Washington Post Anti-Bolivarian Propaganda
Washington Post Anti-Bolivarian Propaganda
by Stephen Lendman
Western media scoundrels waged war on Chavez. They did so throughout his tenure. Managed news misinformation substituted for truth and full disclosure.
Chavez is gone. Misreporting continues. Post editors march in lockstep with other media scoundrels. Doing so betrays their readers.
UN Human Rights Council: US Imperial Tool
UN Human Rights Council: America's Imperial Tool
by Stephen Lendman
In 1945, the UN was established:
- "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war;
Intelligence Fraud from the Outset: Launching War on Iraq
A Last-Second Appeal for Sanity
Ten years ago, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was only hours away, but the case for this unprovoked war was already falling apart with exposure of hyperbole, half-truths and even a forgery. On March 18, 2003, a group of U.S. intelligence veterans pleaded with President George W. Bush to postpone the attack. The text of VIPS's March 18, 2003 Memorandum for the President follows.( A list of all 23 corporate memoranda produced by VIPS since its first, on February 5, 2003, is found at warisacrime.org/vips.)
March 18, 2003
Memorandum for: The President
From: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Subject: Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem
Not Too Big to Resist: Too Big to Jail
By Dan DeWalt
Corporate America just received the confirmation that they've been waiting for.
Former Newark TSA screener: “a lot of what we do is make-believe,” by Lisa Simeone
A former TSA screener at Newark International Airport concurs with other screeners and with rational observers and actual security experts: “A lot of what we do is make-believe.”
Read the rest at TSA News.
Chavez Laid to Rest
Chavez Laid to Rest
by Stephen Lendman
He died on March 5. Smart money says Obama killed him. His death was very suspicious. A previous article discussed it.
Hopefully forensic evidence will prove what many people believe.
Obama Heads to Israel
Obama Heads to Israel
by Stephen Lendman
As now scheduled, he'll arrive March 20. He'll remain until March 23. It's his first presidential visit. He made several trips before. He's only the fifth US president to go. Others included Nixon, Carter, Clinton, and GW Bush.
He waited until Israel's new government was formed. It took weeks to do so. On March 15, coalition partners agreed.
The Washington Post “addresses” a few TSA matters, by Deborah Newell Tornello
In a post today by the normally clear-eyed Jonathan Capehart — and in The Washington Post, no less — you will see plenty of admiration for the way the TSA handles children and the elderly (they get to keep their shoes and jackets on!) as well as cheery support for the some-animals-are-more-equal-than-others 
Our Hope, Still Dissenting and Resisting: 10 Years After Shock and Awe
By Malachy Kilbride
Traffic had come to a complete standstill on March 19, 2003 at the intersection of 16th H Streets, NW by Lafayette Park across from The White House as a couple of hundred protesters gathered on the sidewalk. Around 21 people or so lay on the ground in the street blocking midday traffic in a die-in, an act of civil disobedience, just hours before “Shock and Awe”, the US bombing of Baghdad, was triumphantly announced by the Bush Administration and celebrated by US corporate news media.
Detroit Symbolizes America's Decline
Detroit Symbolizes America's Decline
by Stephen Lendman
America's economy is sick. It's getting sicker. Coverup and denial conceal reality. Census data say record numbers of US counties are dying. It's over one in three.
It reflects population shifts and Depression conditions. America's decline gets little attention.
America's Dirty War in Iraq
America's Dirty War in Iraq
by Stephen Lendman
America wages wars dirty. They're all unprincipled and lawless. It's official policy. Exceptions don't exist. No-holds-barred barbarism is longstanding.
Rule of law principles don't matter. They never did. Modern technologies make today's wars worse than ever. All forms of brutality are commonplace.
