Questions arise from Parliament over the choice of U.K.-based G4S, accused of human rights abuses in Palestinian terrorities, as security for the Olympics.

G4S – security company for the London Olympics 2012.

G4S Ltd

G4S describes itself as “world’s leading international security solutions group” and has been given the security mission for the Olympics 2012. The company has already taken on 10,400 new employees for the Games.

However, G4S is a known supplier of equipment to several Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank.

They are also in charge of security systems at the Ofer detention center in Ramallah, where Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are held and tortured. The U.K. Parliament strongly criticized this detention center for human rights abuses in 2010.

G4S further provides equipment and security to several other Israeli prisons in which prisoners, illegally transferred from Palestinian territories, are held in breach of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

These settlements are seen by the U.K. – and nearly all other countries represented at the Games – as illegal according to international law.

All of this has raised some serious questions in Westminster about the choice of G4S for the security for the London Olympics.

Investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT in the video above: that “G4S seems to be “about the worst you could pick in the world to do this job.”

“This is basically the privatization of the British police force. It’s being sucked in by the G4S.” Gosling said, adding that that G4S are even “starting to operate police stations, they are also starting to do a lot of civilian support work for the police.”

Gosling added that the company appears to be receiving the U.K.’s support, in the form of official contracts. He said, “They are bidding for contracts in Birmingham and elsewhere to actually operate detention facilities inside existing police stations.”

Apparently G4S runs six private prisons in the U.K. In these prisons detainees are hired for full-time work, which pays under $3 a day. This privatization of prisons by companies like G4S creates a very dangerous financial incentive to criminalize poor people and “incarcerate them for private profit,” says Gosling.

Labour peer Lord Hollick will be leading the questioning at Parliament next week as to steps to prevent G4S from cooperating with the illegal Jewish settlements.

Parliament will also be questioning why the U.K. government is so eager to work with G4S, in spite of the fact that in September 2011, the firm’s contract for deporting migrants from the U.K. had been cancelled following 773 complaints of abuse filed against it. This included the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum-seeker who died as a result of being “restrained” by G4S staff.

The Morning Star is reporting that activists from over a dozen campaign groups picketed in front of G4S’s annual general meeting on Thursday last week. Around 70 protesters demonstrated against its “horrendous human rights record” in various locations, including Israeli prisons.

By Anne Sewell

10 June, 2012

@ Digital journal

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/326399#ixzz1xkZHV6yW

JERUSALEM – A new super-weapon has entered the Mideast cyber arena. First detected on Monday by a Moscow-based security company, ‘Worm.Win32.Flame’ – just call it ‘Flame’ – might be “the most sophisticated cyber weapon yet unleashed” on Iran’s secret nuclear networks.

“Flame can easily be described as one of the most complex threats ever discovered. Big and incredibly sophisticated, it redefines the notion of cyber-war and cyber-espionage,” Alexander Gostev posted on the ‘Securelist’ blog of Kaspersky Labs, the company that uncovered the worm. Gostev is head of the firm’s Global Research and Analysis Team.

The newly-discovered multi-task device sniffs network traffic, takes screenshots when certain applications of interest are run, records audio conversations, intercepts keyboards – the web seems to be the limit.

From an initial analysis performed by Kaspersky Labs, the ‘Flame’ creators gather highly sensitive intelligence on highly sensitive operations of states, principally in the Middle East – e-mails, documents, messages, or discussions inside sensitive locations – and can “target SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) devices, ICS (industrial control systems), critical infrastructure and so on.”

The hijacked data is then retrieved by operators through links to command-and-control (C&C) servers. “Key here is Flame’s completeness – the ability to steal data in so many different ways,” Gostev notes.

Kaspersky Labs discovered ‘Flame’ following a request from the United Nations. The world body’s International Telecommunication Union suspected the existence of an unknown malware – codenamed ‘Wiper’ – whose task would be to delete sensitive information across the Middle East.

Iran is the top target, with the worm ‘crawling’ in at least 189 of its computers. The West Bank comes second with 89 infected computers.

Sudan comes third with 32 damaged computers. Then almost in a tie, stands Syria with the worm identified in 30 computers. Eighteen computers were targeted in Lebanon; ten in Saudi Arabia. Next but not last is Egypt, with five contaminated computers. All, except the latter, are considered enemy states of Israel.

In its blog, the security software maker Symantec said ‘Flame’ was also uncovered in computers in Hungary, Austria, Russia, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.

Though no trace in the code ties the latest malware to any specific copyrighter, author or state, Iran indirectly blamed Israel for ‘Flame’.

“Some countries and illegitimate regimes are used to producing viruses,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast was quoted on Tuesday in the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars.

Tehran often refers to Israel as “the illegitimate Zionist regime”. The allegation was based on an interview given on Monday by Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon to Israel Army Radio.

“Anyone who sees the Iranian (nuclear) threat as a significant threat – it’s reasonable (to assume) that he’ll take various steps, including these, to harm it,” Ya’alon declared. He said “Israel is blessed as a country rich with high-tech; these tools that we take pride in open up all kinds of opportunities for us.”

According to a New York Times investigation published in January, ‘Stuxnet’, the cyber villain discovered in 2010 which attacked Iranian centrifuges, specifically in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was tested within the premises of the Dimona nuclear complex located in southern Israel.

According to Gostev, links could indicate that the ‘Flame’ wizards accessed technology used in ‘Stuxnet’. Indeed, the worm seems to have run in parallel to the ‘Stuxnet’ project as preliminary analyses show it’s been disseminated since February 2010.

Kaspersky Labs points at certain characteristics shared by ‘Flame’ and ‘Stuxnet’, but unlike ‘Stuxnet’ which damages computerized equipment, ‘Flame’ is meant to collect information.

‘Duqu’, another information-gathering malware useful in targeting ICS systems and attached to ‘Stuxnet’ was first uncovered in 2011 by the Laboratory of Cryptography and System Security (CrySyS) of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

In April, news came out from Iran that Tehran disconnected servers from the Internet as a cyber outbreak stroke at the Kharg island oil terminal (from which Iran exports some 80 percent of its crude oil). The attack is now thought to have been provoked by ‘Flame’.

The major difference between ‘Flame’ and the ‘Stuxnet/Duqu’ project lies in the fact that the ‘Flame’ code is 20 times larger, and targets thousands of systems worldwide, including computers in academia, private companies and of specific individuals.

What’s more, operators “can conduct analysis of the data of the victim systems and uninstall ‘Flame’ from systems that aren’t interesting, leaving the most important ones in place. After which they start a new series of infections,” Gostev emphasized.

Ilan Proimovich, Kaspersky’s representative in Israel, told Army Radio that the worm “is operated by remote control. It’s not always active, thus it’s so difficult to detect.”

Though the common assumption is that a small code like the one of ‘Stuxnet’ is easier to hide, the large size of the ‘Flame’ code (over 20MB) is precisely why it wasn’t discovered for so long, notes Gostev.

While the analysis of the ‘Stuxnet’ code (500K) took months, it’s estimated that deciphering the more complex ‘Flame’ code will last at least a year.

Israeli Information Security analysts say the worm highlights the Iranian nuclear program’s Achilles heel – its inability to ward off cyber attacks.

Assaf Turner, CEO of the Israeli-based Maya Security company, believes that “’Flame’ likely penetrated highly secure computer systems” in Iran.

“Iran’s brush with ‘Duqu’ and disastrous encounter with ‘Stuxnet’ prove that the Islamic Republic is, indeed, lacking in the field of cyber security,” he asserted on the Israeli news site YNet.

One could entertain the euphoric dream that the current cyber-espionage war would provide an elegant, virtual, way to put an end to the alarming suspicion that Iran is developing the capability to master the doomsday weapon. This, before other far more mortal means are employed to try to destroy the nuclear threat once and for all.

By Pierre Klochendler

31 May 2012

@ Inter Press Service

© 2012 IPS North America

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt terms the Eurozone economic crisis ‘serious’ and has been quoted as saying: “In reality, we’re talking about one of the greatest financial rescue operations the world has seen.” He was responding to a question by Swedish Radio after it was known that Spain may be the 4th member of the 17-nation Eurozone to seek outside help. It is expected that Spain would be seeking $ 100 billion from IMF to rescue its banks reeling under toxic real estate loans. To understand more, I looked into the work of Paul Krugman, who thinks no  lessons have been learnt ( The EurpTARP Cometh — http://nyti.ms/KrjgeN).

I found an interesting letter among the comments to Paul Krugman’s blog. Someone wrote, and I tend to agree, ” Spain now gets $ 100 billion for pumping into banks that won’t lend, won’t create jobs, not even invest any amount into any part of the Spanish economy.” Well, this being true, I don’t understand why is the Spanish government or for that matter IMF bosses unable to stop the intended bailout of Spain banks. As another blogger wrote: “An unemployment rate of nearly 25% combined with negative GDP growth should be treated as an economic emergency. All of the focus should be on addressing unemployment and boosting economic growth, not on bailing out banks.” (http://www.disequilibria.com/blog/?p=216)

Bailing out defaulting banks has become the standard solution to the economic crisis. It happened in 2008, when close to $ 20 trillion, were pumped into the global economy. Much of it went to service the bank debts, and we have all read disturbing reports of how millions of dollars were given as bonuses to the erring bankers — people who should have been in jail were awarded with handsome financial packages. This did not prop up the American economy either, which is once again in the throes of an unforeseen crisis. The American economy is on an artificial ventilator — using ‘quantitative easing’ to survive before it can muscle developing countries to open up for US goods and services, and also arm twist countries like India to allow FDI in retail and insurance.

What will happen if we allow the Spanish banks to collapse. Will Spain turn into a beggar? Or will the Spanish people flee to other countries? I don’t think any such thing will happen. Instead, the bailout package should be used to create more jobs. And that in turn will boost the economy. The same prescription holds true for other major economies. India, for instance, should focus more on creating jobs and feed the 320 million people who go to bed hungry. China, which is also in the midst of a recession, now becoming more obvious, should shift focus to creating more domestic demand and create more employment opportunities by turning agriculture profitable. The lure of population from the rural to the urban areas, and the thrust on rapid (and often environmentally destructive) industrialisation has already ruined the national landscape and has turned the country into a large export factory. This is unsustainable in the long run, and once the bubble bursts it will all be doom and gloom.

I had always thought that copying is the prerogative of only those who infringe on proprietary rights. But now I realise that governments all over the world have been merrily copying the economic model of growth from the US/EU. No wonder, every nation is in soup. Perhaps, the world would have been safe economically if the US had used its muscle power by bringing in provisions like Super 301 to stop other governments from copying its terribly flawed economic model, which has now brought the world to a brink. It isn’t too late. But as many others agree, the world hasn’t drawn any lessons. They continue to allow the banks to rob the national exchequer. As another commentator said: ” Bankers have become the biggest thieves in the history of the world…the global economy will never recover while it is being bled to death to rescue the fantasy balance sheets of the institutions and individuals who pyramid paper, buy governments and equate theft with economic production.”

By Devinder Sharma

11 June, 2012

@ Ground Reality

Devinder Sharma is a food and agriculture policy analyst. His writings focus on the links between biotechnology, intellectual property rights, food trade and poverty. His blog is Ground Reality

US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies seem increasingly problematic. His expanded use of missile strikes by Predator drones against targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere – now being launched at a rate of about one every week – seem certain to create more “terrorists” than they kill. They arouse fierce anti-America sentiment not least because of the inevitable civilian death toll. Obama is said to decide by himself which terrorist suspect is to be targeted for killing in any particular week, as if to confer some presidential sanction on operations of very doubtful legality.

Even more worrying is Obama’s apparently wilful sabotage of two diplomatic initiatives, one by Europe’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, the other by Kofi Annan. Ashton has been leading an attempt by the P5+1 to negotiate a ‘win-win’ deal with Iran over its nuclear programme, while Annan has been struggling to find a negotiated way out of the murderous Syrian crisis. Obama seems intent on compromising both initiatives.

Ashton managed to launch the P5+1 talks with Iran in Istanbul on April 14, after having agreed upon the ground rules with the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili. She pledged at that time that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be “a key basis” for the talks, thus sending a clear signal that Iran, as a signatory of the NPT, had the right to enrich uranium up to 3.5pc for power generation and other peaceful purposes. She also declared that the negotiations would “be guided by the principle of step-by-step approach and reciprocity,” thus giving a strong indication that the sanctions would be lifted in stages once Iran gave up enriching uranium to 20 per cent and provided convincing evidence that it was not seeking nuclear weapons. Iran responded favourably to this approach and the talks got off to a good start.

However, at the next meeting on May 23, in Baghdad, the talks ground to a virtual halt. No progress of any sort was made save for an agreement to meet again in Moscow on June 18-19. The early optimism was dispelled because Obama had hardened the US position. There was to be no recognition of Iran’s rights to enrich lower-grade uranium – indeed the P5+1 refused even to discuss the subject – and no easing of sanctions. On the contrary, Iran was faced with the prospect of even stiffer sanctions coming into force on July 1. The only sweetener was an offer of some spare parts for Iran’s civilian aircraft in exchange for an Iranian pledge to freeze 20 per cent enriched uranium. Iran was asked, in effect, to give up its trump card in exchange for peanuts. It was no surprise that Tehran considered the miserly offer insulting.

Obama seems to have been persuaded that Iran, already reeling under crippling sanctions, would meekly submit to American demands if still more pressure was applied. This was a fundamental error of judgement. Far from submitting, Iran reacted defiantly and hopes for a win-win deal evaporated. There are now no great expectations of a breakthrough at the Moscow talks.

So what is Obama up to? He seems to have adopted Israel’s hard-line view that Iran should be compelled to close down its nuclear industry completely – a clear deal-breaker. It is not all together clear whether he is doing so to counter accusations of weakness from his Republican challenger Mitt Romney or whether his hard, uncompromising line is intended to stave off Israel’s much-trumpeted threats to attack Iran in the coming months which, in view of the American electoral calendar, would inevitably suck in the US.

Obama has already joined Israel in clandestine warfare against Iran. In a major article last week in the New York Times, David E Sanger revealed that “from his first months in office, Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities …” The US and Israel then jointly developed the cyber-weapon Stuxnet, which caused considerable damage to the centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz facility.

By any standards, launching Stuxnet against Iran was an act of state terrorism. That Israel should engage in such practices is not surprising: its entire regional policy is based on subverting and destabilising its neighbours so as to ensure its own supremacy. But how can the US, which claims to be the supreme guardian of international order, justify such lowly behaviour?

Not content with sabotaging Ashton’s efforts, Obama is also undermining Annan’s difficult mission in Syria. The American president pays lip-service to Annan’s peace plan while, at the same time, secretly coordinating the flow of funds, intelligence and weapons to Bashar Al Assad’s enemies. Numerous sources attest that the US has taken upon itself the role of deciding which among the various armed rebel groups deserve support. One must only hope that in his eagerness to bring about the fall of the Syrian regime, Obama will not fall into the trap of funding and arming rebels, many of them linked to Al Qaida who have flowed in from neighbouring countries to fight the Syrian regime.

In short, Obama seems to have embraced the argument of Israeli hawks and American neo-conservatives that bringing down the Syrian regime is the best way to weaken and isolate the Islamic Republic of Iran, sever its ties with Lebanese and Palestinian resistance movements and eventually bring about a regime change in Tehran. The puzzle is to understand what has happened to Obama. This former professor of constitutional law was expected to correct the flagrant crimes of the Bush administration, such as the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the water-boarding, the network of secret prisons where torture was routine, the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’. Instead, by his own violent and questionable acts, he is widening the gulf between the US and the Muslim world.

No less a person than Henry Kissinger has, in a recent Washington Post article, reminded the US of the dangers of humanitarian intervention in Syria. “If adopted as a principle of foreign policy,” he wrote, “this form of intervention raises broader questions for US strategy. Does America consider itself obliged to support every popular uprising against any non-democratic government …?” If Al Asad is overthrown, he argues, a new civil war may follow as armed groups contest the succession. “In reacting to one tragedy, we must be careful not to facilitate another.” Kissinger’s main point is that states are sovereign within their borders. The US may have strategic reasons to favour the fall of Al Asad, but “not every strategic interest rises to a cause for war; were it otherwise, no room would be left for diplomacy.” In other words, the world should support the Annan peace plan and give it time to work.

By Patrick Seale

9 June, 2012

@ Information Clearing House

Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs, including ‘Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East’ and ‘Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire’. –Gulf News

This this article was first published at The Nation

War drums are beating again in Washington. This time Syria is in the crosshairs after a massacre there last week left more than 100 dead. As might be expected from an administration with an announced policy of “regime change” in Syria, the reaction was to blame only the Syrian government for the tragedy, expel Syrian diplomats from Washington, and announce that the US may attack Syria even without UN approval. Of course, the idea that the administration should follow the Constitution and seek a Declaration of War from Congress is considered even more anachronistic now than under the previous administration.

It may be the case that the Syrian military was responsible for the events last week, but recent bombings and attacks have been carried out by armed rebels with reported al-Qaeda ties. With the stakes so high, it would make sense to wait for a full investigation — unless the truth is less important than stirring up emotions in favor of a US attack.

There is ample reason to be skeptical about US government claims amplified in mainstream media reports. How many times recently have lies and exaggerations been used to push for the use of force overseas? It was not long ago that we were told Gaddafi was planning genocide for the people of Libya, and the only way to stop it was a US attack. Those claims turned out to be false, but by then the US and NATO had already bombed Libya, destroying its infrastructure, killing untold numbers of civilians, and leaving a gang of violent thugs in charge.

Likewise, we were told numerous falsehoods to increase popular support for the 2003 war on Iraq, including salacious stories of trans-Atlantic drones and WMDs. Advocates of war did not understand the complexities of Iraqi society, including its tribal and religious differences. As a result, Iraq today is a chaotic mess, with its ancient Christian population eliminated and the economy set back decades. An unnecessary war brought about by lies and manipulation never ends well.

Earlier still, we were told lies about genocide and massacres in Kosovo to pave the way for President Clinton’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. More than 12 years later, that region is every bit as unstable and dangerous as before the US intervention – and American troops are still there.

The story about the Syrian massacre keeps changing, which should raise suspicions. First, we were told that the killings were caused by government shelling, but then it was discovered that most were killed at close range with handgun fire and knives. No one has explained why government forces would take the time to go house to house binding the hands of the victims before shooting them, and then retreat to allow the rebels in to record the gruesome details. No one wants to ask or answer the disturbing questions, but it would be wise to ask ourselves who benefits from these stories.

We have seen media reports over the past several weeks that the Obama administration is providing direct “non-lethal” assistance to the rebels in Syria while facilitating the transfer of weapons from other Gulf States. This semi-covert assistance to rebels we don’t know much about threatens to become overt intervention. Last week Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said about Syria, “I think the military option should be considered.” And here all along I thought it was up to Congress to decide when we go to war, not the generals.

We are on a fast track to war against Syria. It is time to put on the brakes.

By Rep. Ron Paul

5 June 2012

@ Information Clearing House

New US battle guidelines partly designed to counter the military challenge from China are attracting strong criticism at home and abroad as unnecessarily provocative of one of America’s strongest economic partners.

The AirSea Battle fighting “concept” intends to maintain military dominance in strategically important areas as the US shifts its focus more towards Asia. It is being gradually disclosed by the Pentagon, which has viewed China’s military build-up in the past couple of decades with concern.

Yet as Washington struggles to strike the right balance between competition and co-operation in its relationship with Beijing and tries to cut military spending, there are warnings – even among military circles – that the new doctrine will aggravate relations with China unnecessarily.

“AirSea Battle is demonising China,” retired Gen James Cartwright, former vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said last week. “That’s not in anybody’s interest.”

The doctrine has powerful cold war echoes. Alarmed by the threat of Soviet troops over-running western Europe, American military planners developed a battle-fighting doctrine in the 1970s called AirLand Battle that became the basis for much of military policy in the later stages of the cold war, from new weapons to relationships with US allies.

AirSea Battle could have an equally important role to shape policy and strategy during the next two decades. Officials say it is meant to cement US alliances and to counter “anti-access, area-denial” weapons and capabilities that other countries have developed.

“This is probably the defining challenge today and, as we view it, in the near future,” Adm Jonathan Greenert, the navy chief, said last week in some of the first public comments on the subject by a senior Pentagon official.

Leon Panetta, defence secretary, will travel to Asia during the next week where he will be explaining the implications of the doctrine for US allies.

The battle guidelines attempt to address the big strategic themes now facing a military winding down from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: the rise of Asia; the shift in focus to sea and air power that the vast Asia-Pacific region demands; and the potential importance of cyberwarfare.

AirSea Battle, however, is being developed in a very different context from its cold war cousin. Budgets will be much tighter in the coming years. And while the Soviet Union was a clear adversary which was economically isolated, the US and China have deep economic ties, from trade to Treasury bonds.

Amid such delicate politics, US officials insist publicly that AirSea Battle is not focused on one country or even one region, but on technologies being developed by a host of countries and potentially non-state actors. “This notion should not be hijacked by any particular scenario,” Gen Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, said last week when asked if China was the main target.

Yet privately officials acknowledge the Pentagon has been alarmed by China’s investments in precisely the “access-denial” weapons that AirSea Battle is designed to tackle, from ballistic missiles that can sink warships to submarines and Beijing’s emerging cyberwar capabilities.

The Pentagon has also made no secret of its view that Asia is now a central priority of its long-term strategy. “One of the key projects that your generation will have to face is sustaining and enhancing American strength across the great maritime region of the Pacific,” Mr Panetta told graduates of US Naval Academy at Annapolis this week.

For some observers, AirSea Battle will push the US into dangerously provocative war planning against China. One of the documents the Pentagon has published, called the Joint Operational Access Concept, recommends that in the event of any conflict, the US “attack enemy anti-access/area-denial defences in depth”. In the case of China’s anti-ship missiles, that would mean preparing for a large pre-emptive strike on military bases in mainland China.

“The big risk is that such an attack would lead to a very dramatic escalation and China might even think it was an attempt to take out its nuclear capability,” says Raoul Heinrichs at Australian National University.

The guidelines are also being introduced in an era of budget cuts. The Pentagon has already reduced its budget by $485bn over the next decade and could be forced to cut by a similar amount under a budget agreement in Congress. But AirSea Battle will require huge investments in a long-distance bombers, submarines and in cyber capabilities, which will mean bigger cuts in other programmes or reduced spending on health and benefits.

“For about the last 12 years, if you wanted something, we basically could afford it,” said Lt Gen George Flynn, one of the Pentagon’s senior planning officials. “The new fiscal reality is going to require us to make choices.”

By Geoff Dyer

31 May 2012

The Pentagon©Reuters

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters on Thursday that the Obama administration’s continued pursuing of diplomatic solutions in Syria has put military planners in the Pentagon in a strategic bind.

Complaining of a “lack of focus,” he declared that with a clear instruction for regime change, “I can build you a plan, and I know how many divisions, I know how many air wings … it takes.”

This is the second time that Dempsey has gone on record to threaten military action. Speaking following the alleged May 25 massacre of over 1000 people at Houla, he went on Fox News to declare, “Of course, there is always a military option … it may come to a point with Syria because of the atrocities.”

The Houla massacre was immediately blamed on the regime of Bashar al-Assad and attributed to shelling by his troops. Within days, however, investigations proved that most deaths had been the result of summary executions by shots at close range and stabbings. Opposition forces blamed pro-government Alawite Shabihi militia, while the government blamed terrorists associated with the Sunni insurgency seeking to destabilise the United Nations ceasefire on the eve of a visit to Syria by Kofi Annan.

Once again, Dempsey utilised an alleged massacre as a platform for his warmongering—joining a Republican lobby led by Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat, urging the direct arming of the Syrian opposition and US air support.

The massacre this time is reported to have taken place in the village of Qubair, 20 kilometres from Hama, on Wednesday. But such details as are available are even murkier and more open to question than was Houla. Initial reports spoke of anywhere between 87 and 100 dead, over half women and children. It was supposed to have followed the same pattern as Houla—heavy shelling preceding an attack by Shabiha militia.

This casualty figure has since been revised down to “at least 55 people,” according to the pro-opposition UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The victims are, it said, mostly from the same Al-Yateem family, including 18 women and children.

Footage purportedly from Mazraat al-Qubeir showed the bodies of what the cameraman states are a dozen women and children, as well as the remains of burned corpses. An anonymous activist claims that the bodies of between 25 and 30 men were taken away by the killers.

The Syrian government has again rejected such accounts, putting the death toll in the town at nine and blaming terrorist groups seeking to promote military intervention on the eve of Thursday’s report to the UN General Assembly by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby. This report is to be followed by a closed-door briefing of the UN Security Council.

At the general assembly, Syria’s permanent representative, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, said that the massacre was committed five hours before any clashes happened, and that the images broadcast by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya were not those of massacre victims. “The instigative media channels have taken to airing such fabrications before the UN Security Council meetings,” he said.

Al-Jaafari said that local people had affirmed that the gunmen who committed the crime came from another nearby village. “What is taking place in some parts of Syria is an unjustifiable heinous massacre, but countries supporting terrorists and facilitating their crimes in Syria are complicit in the bloodshed,” he said. “Are suicide bombings that targeted Syria acts in self-defence? Are attacks on hospitals, medical staffs and schools democratic aspects?”

Dempsey’s chivvying of the Obama administration does not reflect a fundamental difference over strategy between the Pentagon and the While House. Obama is as much a blood-soaked war criminal as Dempsey. The administration wants regime change in Syria, achieved firstly by destabilisation and then possibly some form of proxy war waged by its allies, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. But it has to confront and neutralise the opposition of Russia, China, India and other states.

At the UN, Annan declared that his own peace plan “is not being implemented.” He told the Security Council that it was time to threaten “consequences” if Assad did not halt the strife, stating to reporters that other actions must be considered, “if the plan is not working, or if we decide it’s not the way to go.”

Ban Ki-moon joined in blaming the Assad regime. “For many months, it has been evident that President Assad and his government have lost all legitimacy,” he said. “The trail of blood leads back to those responsible.”

As the UN met, in Washington US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was hosting a meeting of representatives from 55 countries, with the aim of imposing additional punitive sanctions that would force the Syrian business elite to abandon the Assad regime. “Strong sanctions make clear to the Syrian business community and other supporters of the regime that their future is bleak so long as the Assad regime remains in power,” he said.

In Istanbul Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was taking part in a mini “Friends of Syria” meeting of foreign ministers and envoys from 16 European, Turkish and Arab countries discussing their plans for regime change. Clinton insisted that Assad must go and “transfer power” to an “interim representative government”. Her proposal is directed at winning support from Russia’s Vladimir Putin for a negotiated regime change like that organised in Yemen.

Though such an outcome is not excluded, Moscow remains at present opposed to what it recognises as a US attempt to bring Syria into its orbit, isolate Iran and secure its undisputed hegemony over the Middle East at the expense of Russia and China.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said of the reported massacre at Qubair, “There is no doubt that certain forces once again used vicious and despicable provocations to frustrate Kofi Annan’s plan.”

“It is imperative that the foreign players who are taking part in settling the Syrian problem use their channels to influence the armed opposition groups, whose increased recent activity and calls for outside intervention contradict this plan,” he continued.

Russia and China both reiterated their opposition to military intervention at the UN, with Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping stating, “You can’t say that because you dislike a country’s system, you can then think of ways to overturn its government.”

Russia’s Representative to the UN, Vitali Churkin, opposed unilateral pressure on Syria and sanctions, urging instead that the supplying of weapons and money to the opposition must end.

Moscow and Beijing were backed by India, whose representative Hardeep Singh Puri expressed concern at escalating attacks against both civilians and security forces.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that Moscow is proposing an international conference seeking to persuade all Syrian opposition groups to end violence and sit down for talks. This would involve the permanent members of the UN Security Council, Turkey, Iran, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the European Union.

He has the backing of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, comprising Russia, China and Central Asian states, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, which Thursday called for a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict, rejecting any “enforced handover of power”. Alongside economic cooperation, the SCO is pledged to military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and counterterrorism operations. Its intervention into the Syrian crisis is another sign of how the US drive for regime change threatens wider war in the region.

By Chris Marsden

09 June, 2012

@ WSWS.org

At least 18 Afghan civilians, including seven children, were killed early Wednesday morning after US special operations troops called in an air strike on their homes.

The massacre provoked an angry demonstration in Pul-i-Alam, the capital of Logar province southeast of Kabul, where the strike took place. Afghanistan’s PAN news service reported that residents came to the capital carrying the shattered bodies of the dead, to prove that the victims were civilians.

“The protesters chanted anti-US and anti-Afghan government slogans, saying ‘death to America, death to the Afghan government, death to [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai and death to Barack Obama,” PAN reported.

Security forces opened fire on the protesters, wounding at least one of them.

As is its standard operating procedure, the US-led occupation denied any knowledge of civilian victims, claiming all of the dead were “Taliban insurgents”.

“I do not have any reporting that would allow me to confirm civilian deaths,” Major Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the occupation forces said.

The Associated Press, however, reported Wednesday that its photographer in Logar province “saw the bodies of five women, seven children and six men piled in the back of vans that villagers drove to the capital of Logar province to protest the overnight strike.”

According to local Afghan officials, US special operations troops were mounting a night raid on a house in the Baraki Barak district in Logar province, when they came under fire. In response, they called in an air strike.

The strike reportedly hit the home of a village elder, Bashir Akhundzada, who was killed in the attack. The Associated Press quoted the head of the local village council as saying that a number of families had gathered at Akhundzada’s home Tuesday night for a wedding party.

“The house is completely destroyed,” said the local official. “Everyone is shoveling to try to get the bodies out. Some of the bodies have no legs, no hands.”

Two and a half weeks after the NATO summit in Chicago—where President Obama declared that “the Afghan war as we understand it is over”—violence in Afghanistan continues to escalate and the death toll continues to mount.

In Ghazni province, south of Logar, troops of the US 82nd Airborne are carrying out a major offensive in what has long been a stronghold of the armed opposition groups, as well as a route for men and supplies joining the fight from Pakistan. The Pentagon has billed the operation as the last major offensive in which massed American troops will be “clearing” villages, going house-to-house in a bid to drive out resistance forces.

An armed US helicopter went down over Ghazni province on Wednesday, killing two American pilots. “It is likely that the helo today was brought down due to enemy small arms and RPG fire,” a Pentagon official told CNN.

The 82nd Airborne units fighting in Ghazni are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in September, as the US military completes the drawdown of the troops sent there in the “surge” ordered by Obama in December 2009.

That drawdown will leave approximately 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan after September. While a formal deadline set by NATO calls for completing the withdrawal of all “combat forces” from Afghanistan by 2014, a “strategic partnership” deal signed by Obama and Karzai in Kabul at the beginning of last month sets the stage for a continued occupation of the country by what is projected to be at least 20,000 US troops, including large contingents of special operations forces. The US will maintain its control over air power in the country and, through the deployment of “trainers” and “advisors”, will direct the operations of the Afghan security forces.

The type of operation carried out in Logar province, involving Special Forces night raids and air strikes, will continue well past 2014 under the plans drafted by the Obama administration and the Pentagon. These operations are hated by the Afghan people and have prompted impotent protests by Karzai, who has publicly demanded that US military forces stop operations in Afghan villages and end air strikes that kill civilians. In reality, however, Karzai’s puppet regime, widely hated by the Afghan people, remains dependent upon US firepower to keep him in the presidential palace.

Washington is also escalating its military violence across the border in Pakistan, with eight drone strikes carried out against targets there over the past two weeks. Pakistan’s foreign ministry called in a senior US diplomat Tuesday following a drone strike the day before that killed at least 15 people in the northwestern frontier tribal region of North Waziristan. It was the third such strike in as many days, which together claimed 27 lives.

A statement issued by the Pakistani ministry called the drone strikes “unlawful, against international law, and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty”.

Rebuffing the Pakistani protest, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Wednesday that the drone strikes are “about our sovereignty as well”. He claimed that the US is “fighting a war in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]” and is justified in doing so, “because there were a group of individuals who attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 of our citizens.”

While Panetta invokes September 11 as the pretext for Washington’s drone war in Pakistan, the majority of the missile strikes from the pilotless aircraft are directed at individuals suspected not of terrorist plots against the United States, but of resisting the more than decade-old US military occupation of Afghanistan.

The provocative character of Panetta’s comments were magnified by the fact that he delivered them from New Delhi, Pakistan’s historic rival in south Asia, where he also urged greater involvement of India in Afghanistan, a prospect seen by Islamabad as a direct threat to Pakistan’s strategic position in the region.

Demonstratively identifying US interests with those of India, Panetta said: “Just as India views the relationship with Pakistan as complicated, so we do. It is a complicated relationship, often times frustrating, often times difficult.”

Relations between Washington and Islamabad have been marked by tension, particularly since US air strikes on Pakistani posts on the Afghan border last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. In retaliation, Islamabad closed the routes from the port of Karachi to the Afghan border upon which the US-led occupation force depended for at least a third of its supplies.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it had reached deals with the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, allowing US troops and equipment to use their territory to enter and leave Afghanistan. This so-called Northern Distribution Network is considerably longer and more expensive than the route through Pakistan, but it appears Washington is turning to it as part of preparations for a protracted and intensifying military intervention in the South Asian country.

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By Bill Van Auken

7 June 2012

@ WSWS.org