Non-naturally occurring radionuclides from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant’s triple meltdown last year radioactively contaminated the entire northern hemisphere within days and the US west coast bore a significant brunt of so called hot particles, an independent scientific paper released yesterday claims. Charles Digges, 19/09-2012
US government environmental monitoring agencies have either declared as safe, refused to comment on, or – say several independent researchers – vastly understated what impacts, if any, this could have for America’s western coastal population. Significant omissions in data reporting and hobbling of radioactive monitoring systems, say many, make it seem unlikely that hard government facts will be forthcoming to support evidence presented by independent researchers.
According the attached report in the 3 October issue of the New York Times, defections from Assad's army to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have slowed to a trickle. No major units have defected. The FSA has resulted to trickery and coercion to gain recruits, including drugging and kidnapping.
Moreover, rebel tactics, like suicide bombing and murdering captured soldiers, are beginning to alienate the people.
Also, there is no evidence that rebel forces have materially weakened Assad's army. The Syrian army has changed tactics to rely more on artillery and bombing to strike from a distance and thus preserve its own forces.
All good info, but then the report concludes with at curious statement that the Syrian civil war as transformed from a struggle against a dictator into sectarian war that is being stoked by foreign meddling. This is a very superficial and, I believe, misleading conclusion. It smacks of apologia. The Syrian civil war has always been far more complex than that portrayed by the mainstream media like the NYT. Secular, Jihadi, and foreign influence have been part of this war from the git go. Almost all of the rebel forces are Sunnis, for example. The other ethnic groups have not joined the revolt. Readers interested in a more balanced and nuanced view of this incredibly complex civil war should read the report Syrian Jihadism attached here in pdf format.
Unless the international community demonstrates it is serious abouthuman rights, restitution and disrupting organised crime and criminality, its current policy of stability in place of justice can only continue to fuel both injustice and instability.
On 28 June 1999, Petrija Prljević, a 57 year-old woman in Pristina, was abducted from her apartment by men dressed in KLA uniforms. She was never seen alive again: a year later, her body was exhumed from a cemetery in Kosovo’s capital and positively identified by her son after he recognised items of her clothing. The job of finding out who caused her death was not investigated by the new prosecutors’ office on the basis that she died after the “war” in Kosovo had ended; instead it was investigated by the Eulex Rule of Law Mission. Over ten years later her relatives are still trying to find out what happened to her and who was responsible. Eulex seem no closer to launching an investigation to identify and prosecute her murderers, like the vast majority of the more than 1,000 other cases of murdered Serbs since NATO forces entered Kosovo. Contrast this with the efficient way in which Eulex’s Rule of Law Mission initiated investigations to find the persons responsible for the killing of a member of ROSU in summer 2011. As a recent Amnesty International report made clear, murders continue to be carried out with impunity under the gaze of an international community which seems peculiarly reluctant to investigate them. Indeed, while numerous Yugoslav officials have been tried and convicted for crimes against humanity committed by security forces under their command prior to June 1999, the fact is that of the more than 1,000 Serbs who have been killed since the end of the conflict, almost none have resulted in a prosecution, let alone a conviction. On the contrary, according to the testimony of some international police officials who have worked in Kosovo, there have been active attempts by some elements of the international administration to obstruct investigations, especially when they have threatened to implicate high-ranking Kosovo politicians.
Afghanistan-NATO: The withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan could come sooner than expected, according to NATO Secretary General Rasmussen. He conceded that the recent Taliban strategy of ‘green on blue' killings had been successful in sapping NATO morale.
In an interview with The Guardian Rasmussen acknowledged he felt pressure for a faster withdrawal from Afghanistan and said all options were being studied and should be clear within three months.
Rasmussen also said NATO's forces in Afghanistan have recommenced joint operations with Afghan forces. He said, “Almost all partnered activities have now been resumed and that reflects an assessment made by our commanders as regards the overall security situation.”
Special Comment: Two developments indicate the Coalition command does not know how to deal with the surge in green-on-blue murders. The first is the Afghan government's issuance of a cultural guide to Afghan forces advising them to not over-react to the cultural insensitivity of the Western soldiers.
A shocking new Federal Security Service (FSB) report circulating in the Kremlin today alleges that an entire American family that sought Russian protection from the Obama regime was massacred by US intelligence agents within hours of their planned escape from the United States.
According to this report, on 22 September a woman who indentified herself as Kathleen Peterson visited the Russian Centre for Science and Culture in Washington D.C. under the pretense of signing up to take a course titled Russian Language Express Course A-1 for beginners set to begin on 26 September whereupon she approached director Yuriy Zaytsev and “slipped into his hand,” while shaking it, an encrypted computer thumb drive covered in a small note that said “please help us we’re in danger.”
Following “standard protocols” for such instances, when Russian officials are approached on American soil by US citizens, this report continues, the note and thumb drive in question were “processed” according to “established procedures” and revealed the plans of Mrs. Peterson, her husband Albert [both pictured 2nd photo left], and their two children, Mathew and Christopher, to leave Washington D.C. on 23 September on a flight to Paris where it was requested they be met by Russian security personal as this family feared their lives were in danger.
Within 24 hours of Mrs. Peterson passing her information to Russian officials, this report says, she, her husband and two children were violently gunned down in their Fairfax County Virginia home on 23 September with this massacre being blamed by US police officials on a murder-suicide plot initiated by her husband, Albert, with at least one Western news source, quoting a source indentified only as “Maggie L.”, stating this tragedy was due to his, Albert’s, fears over Obama being reelected as US President.
According to US news sources, Albert Peterson was a longtime employee of the US defense giant Northrop Grumman until he resigned in 2009, and Kathleen Peterson was employed by the US defense contracting firm Blackbird Technologies located in Herndon, Virginia.
. . . . . . . .
This FSB report further notes Blackbird Technologies “tracking and tagging” of those US citizens destined to be placed in America’s most feared prisons called Communication Management Units, or CMU’s. These secretive political prisons for “domestic terrorists” radically restricts prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the dreaded “Supermax”, and any other such prison operating in the Western world.
This report is the result of nine months of research by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School (Stanford Clinic) and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law (NYU Clinic). Professor James Cavallaro and Clinical Lecturer Stephan Sonnenberg led the Stanford Clinic team; Professor Sarah Knuckey led the NYU Clinic team. Adelina Acuña, Mohammad M. Ali, Anjali Deshmukh, Jennifer Gibson, Jennifer Ingram, Dimitri Phillips, Wendy Salkin, and Omar Shakir were the student research team at Stanford; Christopher Holland was the student researcher from NYU. Supervisors Cavallaro, Sonnenberg, and Knuckey, as well as student researchers Acuña, Ali, Deshmukh, Gibson, Salkin, and Shakir participated in the fact-finding investigations to Pakistan.
EXTRACT (One Sentence from Each Summary Paragraph):
First, while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians
Second, US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury.
Third, publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best.
Fourth, current US targeted killings and drone strike practices undermine respect for the rule of law and international legal protections and may set dangerous precedents.
Greece: The General Confederation of Employees of Greece and the civil servants' union federation declared a 24-hour nationwide strike on Wednesday in protest against the finalization of the new package of austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors.
Tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated outside Greece's parliament on 26 September against austerity measures. The strike included doctors, teachers, tax workers, ferry operators and air traffic controllers. The Greek government is looking for ways to cut 11.5 billion euros ($14.7 billion) from the country's budget.
Comment: The economic hardships and austerity measures carry the risk of a breakdown in civil order. The key indicator of a spreading, unmanageable breakdown is the duration of protests. Thus far they have been short lived in Spain and Greece.
The international media has suggested the Eurozone crisis is now on a more stable trajectory. The protests suggest otherwise. European bankers and financial experts continue to fail to distinguish financial risks from real threats. There will be more outbreaks of civil disorder and more violent clashes.
Phi Beta Iota: We now know that financial assets inflated seventeen times verus the five times normal inflation (under a corrupt Federal Reserve) for physical assets. We now know that the financial mandarins and “control fraud” on the part of various governments has led to the internal looting of European Union and Americas commonwealths. Spain will be the next to collapse because the Spanish government has resolutely refused to consider the Iceland example. It is difficult to stop doing the wrong thing righter, we know this. Prospects for the USA in 2013-2014 are terrible. This is particularly troubling since there is nothing wrong with the USA that could not be fixed rapidly with the restoration of intelligence and integrity to governance.
