Fear Campaign Over Syria Weapon Stockpile

MEDIA ROOTS- One domino falls while another globalist target awaits toppling. Before the fog of war in Libya begins to sift, the political and media establishment have already latched their tentacles onto another chess piece in the Middle East: Syria. Last week, the US slapped economic sanctions on Syria for President Bashar al-Assad’s human rights abuses, freezing assets and blocking US business in the region.

Besides the saber rattling coming from the US government and the EU, the corporate media has launched a fear mongering campaign about Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons that is all too reminiscent of the WMD propaganda preceding the Iraqi invasion. The Washington Post released an article that is riddled with exaggerations and hyperbolic scenarios about Syria’s chemical arsenal, calling it the “largest in the world, consisting of tens of tons of highly lethal chemical agents.”

Even if the reports of Syria’s stockpile of weapons are true, it’s still completely illogical to engage militarily with a country simply for harboring chemical or nuclear weapons– especially since the US has the second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the entire world.

Abby

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WASHINGTON POST– In 2008, a secret State Department cable warned of a growing chemical weapons threat from a Middle Eastern country whose autocratic leader had a long history of stirring up trouble in the region. The leader, noted for his “support for terrorist organizations,” was attempting to buy technology from other countries to upgrade an already fearsome stockpile of deadly poisons, the department warned.

The Middle Eastern state with the dangerous chemicals was not Libya, whose modest stockpile was thrust into the spotlight last week because of fighting there. It was Syria, another violence-torn Arab state whose advanced weapons are drawing new concern as the country drifts toward an uncertain future.

A sudden collapse of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could mean a breakdown in controls over the country’s weapons, U.S. officials and weapons experts said in interviews. But while Libya’s chemical arsenal consists of unwieldy canisters filled mostly with mustard gas, the World War I-era blistering agent, Syria possesses some of the deadliest chemicals ever to be weaponized, dispersed in thousands of artillery shells and warheads that are easy to transport.

Syria’s preferred poison is not mustard gas but sarin, the nerve agent that killed 13 people and sickened about 1,000 during a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Sarin, which is lethal if inhaled even in minute quantities, can also be used to contaminate water and food supplies.

Read more about US Says Libyan Chemical, Nuclear Materials Secure.

© 2011 Yahoo News

Photo by Flickr user Dapper snapper

NYC West Side Curbs Drug Related Crime

MEDIA ROOTS- This is a perfect example of how a NYC community organized to tackle drug related crime by working on preventative methods instead of reactionary ones. The NYC West Side Crime Prevention Program just closed after 30 years of opertion, because members of the community began to take an active role in solving the region’s drug related crime epidemic.

Abby

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WEST SIDE SPIRIT– It’s not every day that the end of a venerable and productive organization is cause for community celebration, but the closing of the West Side Crime Prevention Program last week, after 30 years in operation, marked a victory for the Upper West Side and its residents.

Formed in 1980 in response to the dangerous conditions on the streets, the program began working with local schools, businesses and NYPD precincts to combat the rampant street crime and drug use—crack cocaine was a major problem at the time—in the area.

“In 1980, the West Side was like a wild west show, and kids were constantly being mugged. It just was not a safe place,” said Mort Berkowitz, president of WSCPP. “A kid leaving school with a nice pair of sneakers, a new jacket, could be set upon.”

“It was truly a golden age of community organizing,” said long-time executive director Majorie Cohen. “It was necessary. Things were bad. The SRO across the street from where I was raising my kids [on West 92nd Street] had four drug-related homicides within six months.”

She and other community members began working with the District Attorney’s office, criminal justice agencies, community boards and the NYPD. They cleaned up a particularly bad block of 107th Street that was notorious for drug dealing by holding outdoor summer camps there with the police. Soon they realized that they could also work to prevent crime, not just clean up after it.

Read the full article about The End of Crime?

© 2011 West Side Spirit

Photo by Flickr user Garagendrachen

No Accountability for Military Contractors

MEDIA ROOTS- Perhaps one of the most abhorrent aspects of US foreign policy in the 21st century is the privatization of the US military and the government’s outsourcing of military jobs to corrupt war contractors.

Despite Obama’s early campaign rhetoric about scaling down the use of contractors, he has increased their presence– they now make up approximately 50% of the total military force in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  

Military contractors are murderous thugs-for-hire who act above the law and hold zero allegiance to any constitutional body. Blackwater’s sordid slew of contemptuous behavior and criminal actions during the Iraq war might have cast a negative light upon them, but it didn’t stop the Obama administration from awarding their criminality with a quarter billion dollar contract to continue working in US war zones.

This unaccountability for criminal acts is not unique to Blackwater. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is a private security company that employs more US private contractors and holds larger contracts with the US government than any other firm in Iraq.

In 2007, a KBR employee named Jamie Leigh Jones claimed that she was gang raped by multiple KBR workers at a camp in Iraq’s Green Zone. After she reported the rape, she was reportedly locked in a shipping container and threatened with her job if she took further action. Appallingly, KBR has turned the case around and is now suing Jones for making “frivolous claims”, demanding $2 million in damages.

“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”

It’s shameful that these corporations have essentially no oversight from the US government– the Crime Victims Office at the Department of Justice was unable to investigate the incident because of a lack of jurisdiction over private contractors in Iraq.

Now it’s Jones’s word against KBR, and it doesn’t look like she has much of a chance to win against the monolithic corporation. Let’s just hope she can walk away without having given them a dime.

Written by Abby Martin

Photo by flickr user wenews

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MR Original – Bachmann: Insurance for Obama Victory?

MEDIA ROOTS- Michelle Bachmann’s catapult to fame eerily resembles Sarah Palin’s rise to the top during the 2008 election circus. Both Bachmann and Palin are media made sensations whose extreme antics and shocking ignorance of basic civics have only garnered them more attention. One can’t help but wonder if the popularity of such inept candidates has been in part manufactured by the establishment to provide insurance for another Obama victory.

On a panel discussing Michelle Bachmann’s potential presidential run, Chris Matthews strangely admitted that Bachmann was “created here“– in reference to his MSNBC show Hardball. Was he insinuating that he was partly responsible for Bachmann’s recognition and success?

In 2008, Matthews excoriated Bachmann for her suggestion to catalog and investigate ‘dissenters’ in the House of Representatives, then proceeded to give her a platform to speak at length on his show. Bachmann’s empty rhetoric equating liberalism with anti-Americanism became a viral hit online.


Michelle Bachmann on Hardball with Chris Matthews

 

Later on Real Time with Bill Maher, Matthews repeats himself, adding gleefully that “Bachmann’s going to win the nomination.” Maybe Matthews is smiling because he is hoping for his Frankenstein-esque creation to fall on her own sword, creating an easy victory for Obama. Tricks or so called ‘dirty’ ones have always been a part of the election cycle. Matthews is an influential partisan talking head, who is experienced enough in the media world to know exactly what he’s doing.

In a recent Media Roots Interview, Cindy Sheehan said that Sarah Palin was picked as Mccain’s VP as “insurance” for an Obama victory. Whether or not that’s true, it’s undeniable that a large amount of Americans voted for Obama in 2008 solely because of how terrifying the prospect of a Mccain/Palin presidency was.

It’s a sad state of democracy when people are fear-mongered into voting against their own interests. As long as the media continues to prop up such extremist GOP candidates, people who identify themselves as liberal, green and libertarian will continue to knee jerkily vote for bought-and-paid for establishment candidates that will proceed the policies that have bankrupted and demoralized this nation.

Written by Abby Martin & Robbie Martin

Photo by flickr user Scott Spiegael

Architects & Engineers – Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

MEDIA ROOTS- One of the most bizarre aspects of 9/11 is undoubtedly the mysterious “collapse” of World Trade Center Building Seven, a 47 story steel skyscraper that was never hit by an airplane, yet fell into its own footprint on 5:20 pm that fateful day.

The corporate media, the federal government and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (the arm of the government that eventually investigated the collapse) all maintain that Building Seven fell due to fires alone, despite a plethora of contradictory evidence pointing to controlled demolition.

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is a non profit organization consisting of over 1500 building professionals who have put their careers on the line to call for a new investigation into the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings. Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 is a new AE911Truth documentary that decimates the government’s official account of Building Seven’s destruction. The fifteen minute film features excellent interviews from building professionals and AE911Truth signatories. 

Abby Martin

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Solving the Mystery of WTC 7

http://AE911Truth.org

http://RememberBuilding7.org

 

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