19.04.2017

Links April 2017

This post is hastily written because I’m busy with garden work. The links are incomplete, I just trashed one week of email news alerts which I simply cannot check in the little time that I’m still able to spend on the computer.

A few people cancelled the blog subscription after the last post, which rejected the Western media narrative about “a murderous tyrant (Syrian President Assad) who committed another warcrime.” It would be easier of course for me just to howl along with the pack, but that’s not my nature, I always tried to sing my own tune.

A tale of two cities

The difference of reports about fighting in Mosul to the reports about the Aleppo siege are stunning. Thousands of civilians have died in Mosul, many of them in US bombing raids, at least five hundred thousand are on the run. The suffering and pain in Mosul dwarfs anything what happened in Aleppo, but while the liberation of Aleppo from Islamist gangs was covered daily and called hell-hole, slaughterhouse, bloodbath, holocaust, warcrime, torched earth, etc., Mosul is barely mentioned and the enormous civilian death toll is apparently regarded as inevitable. The Islamic State is blamed for using civilians as human shields, US bombings are deemed absolutely necessary, the resulting “collateral damage” seen as unavoidable.

A tale of two atrocities

After the alleged nerve gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, Western media instantly condemned Syrian President (butcher) Assad and called for his removal. The USA first conducted a retaliatory strike against the Syrian airbase Al Shayrat, then spoke of the necessity to carry out an investigation. President Donald Trump’s approval ratings rose significantly, showing off US military might has surely won him sympathies at home (where is the US “anti-war movement”?).

It appears that Trump finally has given in to the “permanent government,” becoming just another figurehead for the economic, political, military elite who reigns in Washington D.C.

In case you missed it and you could be forgiven to miss it, because the event barely made it into Western news reports: The BRICS block (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) issued a joint statement, that illegal military intervention in Syria is unacceptable.
Another event to be underreported was a suicide bombing against civilians with even more victims than the mentioned alleged nerve gas attack.

As part of a swap deal brokered by Qatar, a bus convoy with hundreds of civilians, mostly women and children, who had been evacuated from Foua and Kefraya, a Shia enclave in Idlib under siege by Tahrier al-Sham and their (moderate) Islamist friends, was driving towards Aleppo. The bus convoy was guarded by the jihadist group Ahrar al Sham. Shortly before reaching Aleppo, Ahrar al Sham blocked the convoy for two days, keeping the families on the buses in limbo with little food and water.

People were desperate and hungry, and when someone was handing out crisps and sweets to children, they all ran toward him. At this moment, a blue truck, apparently delivering food, drove along the column of buses and, as it reached the crowd of children, exploded in a gigantic blast. Four buses and six other vehicles were destroyed, 127 civilians, 95 of them children, died. Nearly 300 other people were severely injured. 200 evacuees are missing, thought to have been kidnapped by the Islamists in the chaos after the bombing.

Normally a swap deal would be denounced as “ethnic cleansing,” and the suicide bombing would dominate the front pages for days, declared as a heinous attack by deranged terrorists and called rightfully a warcrime, with enough graphic footage of injured and dead children to give you nightmares.

But not in this case, because, according to CNN and other Western media channels, the victims were just “Assad supporters,” killed in a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia. CNN told its audience: “Dozens of supporters of president Bashar al-Assad are the latest victim of Syria’s brutal civil war.”

Instead of looking to blame a particular side, most stories in the mass media focused on the human tragedy of the situation, basically absolving blame and trying to frame the Islamists in a sympathetic light despite that a) the attack was killing much more children than what happened in Khan Sheikoun and b) the attack most likely was carried out by one of the Islamist factions.
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21506&LangID=E
https://twitter.com/MmaGreen/status/853320893673635842
Never mind the killed “pro Assad” children, Assad has to go, as the USA ultimately told Russia. Assad has to go, ending the stranglehold of his minority Alawite sect onto power and ending the disenfranchisement of the Sunni majority.

Unfortunately there is no Sunni leader who could come even close to Dr. Bashar al-Assad’s popularity and most Sunni citizens of Syria don’t feel disenfranchised and are supporting him. Syrians have voted with their feet, and 14 millions prefer to live under President Assad, while 4 million refugees live abroad, 1,5 million in Tahrir al-Sham (al-Qaeda) controlled Idlib and Turkish controlled northern Aleppo along the border, 1.5 millions in Kurdish cantons, below 1 million in IS territory.

This is the reason the West calls for a transitional government and for banning President Assad to stand in a subsequent election. Everybody knows that he would win this election.
Feline news:
http://www.lifewithcats.tv/2017/04/16/this-family-got-much-more-than-a-boat-in-the-bargain-1/
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/12/a-cat-halted-the-marlins-game-by-running-onto-the-field-leading/22037086/ Not fond of spectator sports, but this game I would have enjoyed.
http://news.trust.org/item/20170316194141-6h7pn/ Who buys cat food from Nestle and Mars anyway? (Purina, Felix, Friskies, Gourmet, Fancy Feast; Royal Canine, Pedigree, Whiskas, Sheba). Please treat your cat companion with something better!
http://www.boredpanda.com/evil-cats-demons-summoning-satan/

Environmental news:
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/habitat-loss/2-7-million-animals-killed-federal-wildlife-destruction-program-2016/
https://qz.com/934106/egypts-nile-river-delta-once-the-bread-basket-of-the-world-may-soon-be-uninhabitable/
http://www.dw.com/en/drought-and-forest-loss-cause-vicious-circle-in-the-amazon/a-37882115
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/they-died-of-thirst-extreme-conditions-wipe-out-forest-over-1000-kilometres-20170313-gux252.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/stop-protecting-the-criminality-of-the-global-pesticides-industry/5580188
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/01/national/real-cost-fukushima-disaster-will-reach-¥70-trillion-triple-governments-estimate-think-tank/#.WOXnjlKB0UQ
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-board-idUSKBN17006KJubilation!
http://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1638.full Not surprising. Journalism for hire.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/cfia-report-glyphosate-1.4070275
https://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2017/04/agriculture-depleting-world-aquifers-new-satellite-measurements-show
http://earthfix.info/news/article/trees-or-bees-growers-fungicides/ The inevitable problems of monoculture and large scale food production.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40223-the-legacy-of-monsanto-s-pcbs-oozing-pus-birth-defects-and-immune-problems

Media and technology news:
While the St. Petersburg subway bombing hardly was mentioned in Western media and if so with a certain amount of schadenfreude, the Stockholm truck terror had all the headlines. Well, “the Russians brought it upon themselves with their aggressive meddling in the Middle East,” one could read between the lines.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/joel_whitney_cia_propaganda_cold_war_scheer_intelligence_20170317
https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/teenage-technology-addiction-smartphone-rehab-seattle-clinic-children-aged-13-mobile-devices-a7684356.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39617883?ocid=global_bbccom_email_16042017_top+news+stories Its on Facebook — how exiting!
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/843-nuking-the-west-coast-bbc-news-massively-hypes-north-korean-threat-to-the-united-states.html
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/844-trump-s-tomahawks-the-instant-certainty-of-the-mainstream-press.html
Imperial news:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/17/killing-the-elderly-social-security-starves-us-slowly-as-the-gop-tries-to-kill-us-by-gutting-health-care/
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/03/20/americans-support-increasing-budget-most-wasteful-federal-department.html
http://www.workers.org/2017/03/21/detroits-lights-out-whos-to-blame/ This couldn’t happen without serious consequences in a civilized country.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/27/us-facial-recognition-database-fbi-drivers-licenses-passports
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-aid-cuts-idUSKBN1752ME More weapons, less food. One has to set priorities.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176264/ Why should they treat their own land differently?
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/military/2017/04/12/northern-edge-military-exercise-again-brings-unease-to-coastal-towns/
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/what-is-it-like-to-live-without-running-water-detroit-families-know-20170411
Imperial conquest news:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/fury-in-cambodia-as-us-asks-to-be-paid-back-hundreds-of-millions-in-war-debts-20170311-guvxyp.html
https://www.liberationnews.org/china-sounds-the-alarm-trump-prepares-for-war-against-korea/
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/13/north-korea-the-grand-deception-revealed/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4416406/Demand-home-bunkers-soars.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/confirms-idlib-air-raid-denies-targeting-mosque-170317034322651.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/17/syria-mosque-airstrike-kills-dozens-of-civilians-near-aleppo Nothing to see here, because Russia and Syria were not involved.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/15/libya-national-army-oil-ports-sidra-ras-lanuf-russia-us Why Libyans yearn for a return of Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya, the West tries to keep the Islamists afloat. The warning about increased Russian influence shall prepare the public for another military intervention on behalf of the Islamic miscreants.
http://www.alternet.org/world/us-nato-invasion-libya-destroyed-country-beyond-all-recognition
Even US-media cannot hide anymore the devastation and pain which the US-NATO regime change in Libya has caused. Yet, mentioning Gaddafi still has to be avoided and any reference to the situation in Libya before his murder is forbidden.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-39567632 This writes the BBC: “Libya has been in chaos since the 2011 Nato-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.” The editor must have been asleep on the job to let this slip through.
http://news.trust.org/item/20170313181039-3p7o4/ Our (the West’s) Saudi friends cannot subdue the Yemenis despite having the third largest military budget in the world. So they just starve them to death.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-nato-is-using-saudi-arabia-the-west-is-the-true-perpetrator-of-genocide-in-yemen-genocide/5581737
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/21/reality-and-made-usa-famine-yemen Even the (so called) US progressives (liberals, left), who abandoned their most lofty ideals in support of Obama and Clinton, realize that something is not right with the US/Saudi war against Yemen. Not so fast, shout the apologists. The USA only supplies the weapons and bombs occasionally, and the war is not against Yemen but against Iranian influence in Yemen. Help me! And tell that the seven millions wo are starving, the 400,000 malnourished children, the ten thousand who have been killed until now.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/30/aiding-saudi-arabias-slaughter-in-yemen/
http://www.workers.org/2017/04/05/u-s-military-to-increase-aggression-in-yemen/
https://mideastshuffle.com/2017/03/22/danger-of-a-waterways-war-with-iran/
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article141336388.html After Brasil and Argentina, Venezuela is next on the US regime change list in its South American backyard.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Ecuador-Farmers-Sue-US-Defense-Contractor-over-Toxic-Fumigation-20170403-0019.html
https://www.infowars.com/rebels-admit-responsibility-for-chemical-weapons-attack/ More infos about the Syrian gas attack.
https://www.rt.com/news/335069-kurds-turkey-syria-rebels-sarin/
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/08/where-was-cias-pompeo-on-syria/
http://necpluribusimpar.net/chemical-attack-syria/ Very detailed and in-depth analysis. Must read!
http://logophere.com/Topics2017/17-04/17_015-BLA-ShajulIslam.htm
http://theindicter.com/analysis-of-evidence-contradicts-allegations-on-syrian-gas-attacks/
http://blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/2017/04/10/turkeys-role-in-idlib-chemical-attack-needs-to-be-probed/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syria-chemical-attack-al-qaeda-played-donald-trump_us_58ea226fe4b058f0a02fca4d This is from former weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.co.at/2017/04/new-evidence-that-syrian-gas-story-was.htmlUncategorized news:
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/egypt-2016-who-is-worse-mubarak-morsi-or-sisi/ Egypt is one of the nations with too many people and too little arable land left. There are not enough mineral resources to trade for food, large portions of the population will fall into poverty, many will starve.
The Sisi regime at the moment is succeeding in fueling the fear of a fate like Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen, and this fear is greater than any will to change. On the name of the war on terrorism, the regime justifies any unpopular measures, while the Islamists wait for their chance. They will have no peaceful solution for Egypts problems, because there are no solutions. They will call for jihad and the young men will go to war in foreign lands, because that is the only way they can make a living. More refugees, more terror, more failed states.

News from cat paradise

This morning I noticed, that peach leaf curl has resurged. I probably sprayed the fungicide two weeks too early. Two weeks before it would have been most effective. Maybe the pouring rain has washed it away. The peach trees bloomed beautifully, but freezing temperatures in the last two days may have ruined the blossoms anyway — there will not be many self grown peaches this year.

After the shocking discovery I visited three hardware stores and gardening centers in nearby towns to look for the peach trees on offer there and every tree I found was infected with peach leaf curl, most of them looked even worse than the trees in my garden. I felt somewhat relieved because if that happens to professionals, my failing may be not as unforgivable.

I know, another year lost…

The cats are in good spirit and good health. It is cold and it rains at the moment, giving me the chance to photograph the complete cat family in the sitting room.
Two more pictures of Linda
And one of Miss Marple, who is now 19 years old
Happy birthday, my lovely old lady! Have a good time and enjoy your life.
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06.04.2017

Outrages and suspicious coincidences

At least 70 people have been killed in northern Syria after being exposed to toxic gasses and the civilized world is shocked and calls for punishment of the perpetrator, which is clearly and easily made out as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the (after Putin) most despised person in Western media.

Take this from an unwavering, unshakable, and unrepenting Bashar al-Assad apologist:

There’s the principle of presumption of innocence. And there are momentous coincidences, lucky coincidences, defining moments. Just when two military offensives by Al-Qaeda affiliate Tahrir al-Sham (former Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, Jabhat al-Nusra) with the help of their TOS-approved (moderate) Islamist minions got stuck and the Syrian army is winning on nearly every front, a brutal nerve gas attack by butcher Assad’s air force obligates the worlds policeman to act and remove the criminal tyrant from power.

Historians once may write, that it was a pretext for war based on false evidence, or a false flag attack, just like the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, or the USS Maddox (Gulf of Tonkin) incident, or the Kuwait incubator babies, or Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or Muammar Gaddafis mass rapes.

Maybe there will be no historians and nobody left to read such a text. Russia, outspent militarily nine times by the USA, has still operational nuclear weapons. The USA can destroy Russia four times over, while Russia can destroy the USA only once. Once though is enough in this case.
US envoy to the UN Nikki Haley accused Russia of covering up for Damascus.

“Time and time again Russia uses the same false narrative to deflect attention from their ally in Damascus,” she said during a heated UN Security Council debate in New York, and hinting at possible unilateral action by the US, she added: “When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.”

US President Donald Trump said he considers the use of chemical weapons “beyond a red line” that “would not be tolerated.” Trump put the blame for the chemical attack squarely at Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and said his previous attitude toward the Syrian government — presented essentially as a hands-off approach — has “changed very much” in the last 24 hours.

“I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me,” Trump said.

In the already mentioned heated UN Security Council debate, Russia’s deputy UN envoy Vladimir Safronkov stressed, that both the Russia and Syria reject the narrative emerging in western media and that the source of a deadly chemical cloud was an ammunition depot operated by Islamist forces which had been hit in a Syrian air raid.

Russia called for an unbiased and transparent investigation, but such an investigation will not happen, because the location of the gas poisoning, the village Khan Sheikhun in Idlib, is Tahrir al-Sham territory and no independent investigator will dare to visit it.

Even if the UN should be involved, the investigation would not be impartial and objective, as Jordanian Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, the current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is well known for his Islamist sympathies.

From a broader view, common sense and logic speak against a nerve gas attack by Syria. What would be the benefit of using chemical weapons? Khan Sheikhun isn’t a critical military target, US President Trump has declared his intention to abandon the longtime US policy of regime change, and the Syrian government is more secure than it has been in years. The reckless use of WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) is the only thing that could change the momentum and jeopardize a Syrian victory.

Who would gain from an apparent WMD attack by the Syrian army? Short answer: The Islamic insurgents, Turkey (Erdogan just announced another offensive into Syria), the Gulf potentates, Israel (the Israeli cabinet just held a discussion about increasing involvement in the war, while Israeli jets bombed Deraa), the USA (because Russia’s position would be weakened).

The evidence:

A satellite picture of the compound which was hit and is said to be the chemical storage site shows what appears to be a trench. This alone would make it a logical target of an attack.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said, that the bombed warehouse was used to both produce and store shells containing toxic gas. The same chemical munitions were used by militants in Aleppo, where Russian military experts took samples in late 2016. Khan Sheikhun civilians  apparently displayed identical symptoms to those of Aleppo chemical attack victims.

Islamic insurgents in 2013 used Sarin at Khan al Assal in Aleppo province, killing 16 Syrian soldiers. The Syrian army later captured sarin shells from insurgents and nerve gas precursors were smuggled across the Turkish border, though these reports are of course disputed by the West.
All testimonies, pictures, videos of the incident in Khan Sheikhun are from the Islamist support organization White Helmets. The White Helmets reports are as usual contradictory, first mentioning bombs from helicopters, then from planes. Videos show victims and White Helmets personal in a military hideout dug deep inside a mountain. It doesn’t look like a hospital at all. The White Helmets act unprofessional, touching and washing people without even wearing gloves, chatting and looking quite relaxed.

The crater which according to the White Helmets was left by the nerve gas bomb looks awfully small and rather like the impact of a grenade. A bomb from an airplane would have left a much bigger crater. The presented bomb fragment doesn’t match any Russian bomb used by the Syrian SU-22 jet.

The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet cites activist Hussam Salloum and presents a video clip of a white cloud spreading over the village. Sarin and chlorine are colorless.

The method of creating sarin is fairly simple (even easier than to synthesize chlorine or phosgene) if one has the precursors, though the gas degrades fast because of hydrolysis and residual acid. The creation and use of sarin shells for a falls flag attack would be possible even with limited technical equipment and experience.

The videos of dying victims are not consistent with symptoms of sarin. The people in the video which are still alive are suffocating and slowly dying, a sarin death should involve a puddle of vomit from every victim and the ones still alive would be experiencing powerful spasms and painful deaths.

A MSF medical team providing support to the emergency department of the Bab Al Hawa hospital reported that some of the victims showed symptoms of sarin, but others of chlorine, suggesting that at least two different chemical agents were involved. This would support the theory that a chemical storage site was hit.

It is entirely possible that the symptoms in the videos are the impact of organophosphates such as pesticides or fertilizers which may have been stored at the warehouse for agricultural use or for bomb making. It could also be that the symptoms are from a low but persistent concentration of gas, as it would happen if storage tanks would have been hit.

There is a report that all the victims were captives of Tahrir al-Sham from their recent Hama offensive. The high number of poisoned civilians, including many children, near a warehouse, in a place with nothing but hills and a White Helmet base makes only sense if they were inmates of a prison camp.
There is no presumption of innocence in the Western press and the war drums are beating loudly. A steady stream of pro war articles from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Guardian, Spiegel, and similar “reputable” outlets shapes public opinion and creates pressure on the US administration to intervene in order to “save the Syrian children”.

A new report by the Jerusalem Post claims, that Syrian helicopters dropped barrel bombs with chlorine gas in the village of Al-Lataminahin in Hama province.

As US President Trump has been experiencing lots of problems with much of his initiatives blocked, he could be enticed to start an air campaign against Syria to distract from his domestic failings. One should keep an eye on US destroyers and cruisers in the Gulf and maybe the Mediterranean Sea. Any air-led mission against the Syrian army and air force will start with their cruise missiles.

Other Bashar al-Assad apologists:

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