September 9, 2013

SOS Kerry actual comments

MODERATOR: Margaret Brennan from CBS.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Secretary, in that CBS interview that you just referenced, Bashar al-Assad said that the presentation that you’ve made reminds him, quote, his words, “of the big lie that Colin Powell said in front of the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” He says you personally have presented no evidence of a chemical weapons attack, just your confidence and your convictions. And he disputes the argument you just laid out, his argument saying his government relies on reality, not social media, and says Russian intelligence contradicts this false evidence. What is your response?

And secondly, is there anything at this point that his government could do or offer that would stop an attack?

SECRETARY KERRY: Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay, and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.

But with respect to the credibility issue, look, I just answered that. I just gave you real evidence, evidence that, as a former prosecutor in the United States, I could tell you I can take into a courtroom and get admitted. And I believe this man – I mean, I’ve personally tried people who have gone away for long prison sentences or for life for less evidence than we have of this. So I’m confident about the state of the evidence.

You can go to whitehouse.gov, read the unclassified report, and make your own judgments. What does he offer? Words that are contradicted by facts. And he doesn’t have a very strong record with respect to this question of credibility, because I personally visited him once at the instruction of the White House to confront him on his transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah, which we knew had taken place and had all kinds of facts, and he sat there and simply denied it to my face, notwithstanding the evidence I presented and what we showed him.

So this is a man who has just killed, through his regime, over 1,000 of his own citizens. Over 100,000, or about 100,000, have been murdered over the course of the last months. He sent Scud missiles into schools. He sends airplanes to napalm children. Everybody has seen that. This is a man without credibility. And so I will happily stand anywhere in the world with the evidence that we have against his words and his deception and his acts.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/09/213956.htm

September 8, 2013

Church of England has up to £10m invested in arms firm

The Church of England has invested up to £10m in one of the world's major arms firms, which supplies systems and technology for unmanned drones and jets to conflicts around the world. The discovery, on the eve of what is set to be the biggest day of protests against DSEi – the UK's leading arms fair – in Docklands, London, tomorrow, has led worshippers to accuse church leaders of profiting from conflict.

The Church Commissioners and Church of England Pensions Board are both shareholders in General Electric (GE), with shareholdings up to £10m. Yesterday, the Church defended the investment, claiming less than 3 per cent of GE's business was based in arms sales.

But the firm, along with its key subsidiary General Aviation, is a leading supplier of "integrated systems and technologies" for combat aircraft, military transport, helicopters, land vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles – better known as drones.

It is the 20th-highest-ranking firm in the world when it comes to defence sales, which accounted for almost 3 per cent of its total revenue last year – an estimated $4bn.

GE also makes the F101 aircraft, which took part in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Designed as a "strategic nuclear bomber", it was modified to carry a "diverse range of conventional weapons", according to GE's website.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/church-of-england-has-up-to-10m-invested-in-arms-firm-8803469.html

September 8, 2013

Violent Tea Party Mob Attacks Media.

Description from yt: This was filmed on the public lawn of the Arizona State Capitol on September 7, 2013 where the "We Are America Tour" added Arizona racist, former State Senate President President Russell Pearce. Pearce is famous for SB1070 and his association and endorsement of neo-Nazi JT Ready, who killed an entire family before killing himself in 2012. The local racists have worked closely with FAIR for years. I was there to film the speakers. It's a safe guess that if Minute Man Founder Chris Simcox wasn't sitting in jail for multiple counts of child molestation that he would've been a speaker at this event also. Is it any wonder why they didn't want the "liberal Media" filming them? For my own safety, I refused to leave without a police escort. It took over 7 minutes for any law enforcement to arrive. The video is edited only for length.

September 8, 2013

Libya lurches towards energy crisis as armed groups throttle oil supplies

Lawless Libya, these days seen as a major haven for al-Qaida, is facing its greatest crisis since Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in October 2011, as armed groups besiege oil fields and terminals, cutting production to a trickle and threatening economic meltdown.

Output has fallen from 1.4 million barrels per day in January to just 250,000 bpd, the government says, as militias, some of them hired by the government to protect energy installations, close down key infrastructure.

Independent analysts believe the production figure is even smaller, some say as low as 60,000 bpd, because of strikes by energy workers, security guards and militias that began in late July over pay and allegations of corruption.

These have been heightened by power struggles, regional demands for greater control of oil revenue, deep-rooted tribal issues that have intensified dangerously since Gadhafi's demise.

Read more at http://www.stockhouse.com/news/natural-resources/2013/09/05/libya-lurches-towards-energy-crisis-as-armed-group

September 8, 2013

A short guide to the Middle East.

September 7, 2013

Vatican abruptly removes envoy

Archbishop Josef Wesolowski’s sudden departure from the Dominican Republic has been the cause of feverish media speculation in the country

Authorities in the Dominican Republic will look into allegations of child sex abuse against the papal envoy to the Caribbean country following his abrupt removal from his post by the Vatican, Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said on Wednesday.

Dominguez was careful to note that his office is aware only of rumors about the papal nuncio, Archbishop Josef Wesolowski, and has not received any accusations.

A Vatican spokesman, the Reverend Federico Lombardi, confirmed that Wesolowski had been removed from his post and that the church was conducting an investigation of him. He declined to provide any details about the accusations against the Polish-born prelate.

A nuncio is the pope’s ambassador to a country and such an abrupt removal is rare.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/09/06/2003571504

September 7, 2013

Stop sending arms to Syria

The leader of Catholics in Syria spoke out against all countries which send in arms, saying that the impact of military shipments is "far more dangerous" than the use of chemical weapons.

While issuing an unequivocal condemnation of the “destructive” use of chemical weapons, Greek Catholic Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III of Antioch said that armed military support, including intelligence, coming from outside the country remained the most serious threat.

In a statement issued to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Patriarch Gregorios, who last week spoke out against armed intervention by the West, said that his country’s death toll, displacement crisis and infrastructure devastation was the direct fault of military hardware sent from outside Syria following the March 2011 start of the uprising against Syria’s President Bashar al Assad.

Writing in his capacity as President of the Assembly of the Catholic Hierarchy in Syria as well as Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Gregorios wrote: “…For the last 2½ years, Eastern and Western countries have not stopped sending weapons, money, military experts, secret service agents and Salafist fundamentalist armed gangs of thugs and criminals…”

“They have fallen on Syria like a destructive new flood, far more dangerous even than destructive chemical weapons, whose use on our Syrian soil we reject on any pretext whatever.”

http://au.christiantoday.com/article/armed-military-support-far-more-dangerous-than-chemical-weapons-says-syrian-church-leader/16040.htm

September 7, 2013

Vatican: 100,000 answer pope’s call, fill St. Peter’s Square for Syria peace vigil

Source: Washington Post

Tens of thousands of people filled St. Peter’s Square for a four-hour Syria peace vigil late Saturday, answering Pope Francis’ call for a grassroots cry for peace that was echoed by Christians and non-Christians alike in Syria and in vigils around the world.

The Vatican estimated about 100,000 took part, making it one of the largest rallies in the West against proposed U.S.-led military action against the Syrian regime following the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

Francis spent most of the vigil in silent prayer, but during his speech he issued a heartfelt plea for peace, denouncing those who are “captivated by the idols of dominion and power” and destroy God’s creation through war.

“This evening, I ask the Lord that we Christians, and our brothers and sisters of other religions and every man and woman of good will, cry out forcefully: Violence and war are never the way to peace!” he said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/tens-of-thousands-answer-popes-call-fill-st-peters-for-syria-peace-vigil/2013/09/07/03d0accc-17e3-11e3-961c-f22d3aaf19ab_story.html

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Pope Francis Leads Vigil Calling For Peace In Syrian Crisis

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/09/07/220037027/pope-francis-leads-vigil-calling-for-peace-in-syrian-crisis

September 7, 2013

The Burial Brigade of Homs: An Executioner for Syria's Rebels Tells His Story

Hussein can barely remember the first time he executed someone. It was probably in a cemetery in the evening, or at night; he can't recall exactly. It was definitely mid-October of last year, and the man was Shiite, for sure. He had confessed to killing women -- decent women, whose husbands and sons had protested against Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime. So the rebels had decided that the man, a soldier in the Syrian army, deserved to die, too.

Hussein didn't care if the man had been beaten into a confession, or that he was terrified of death and had begun to stammer prayers. It was his tough luck that the rebels had caught him. Hussein took out his army knife and sliced the kneeling man's neck. His comrades from the so-called "burial brigade" quickly interred the blood-stained corpse in the sand of the graveyard west of the Baba Amr area of the rebel stronghold of Homs. At the time, the neighborhood was in the hands of the insurgents.

That first execution was a rite of passage for Hussein. He now became a member of the Homs burial brigade. The men, of which there are only a handful, kill in the name of the Syrian revolution. They leave torture to others; that's what the so-called interrogation brigade is for. "They do the ugly work," says Hussein, who is currently being treated in a hospital in the Lebanese city of Tripoli. He was injured when a piece of shrapnel became lodged in his back during the army's ground invasion of Baba Amr in early March.

He is recovering in relatively safe Lebanon until he can return to Syria and "get back to work." It's a job he considers relatively clean. "Most men can torture, but they're not able to kill from close range," he explains. "I don't know why, but it doesn't bother me. That's why they gave me the job of executioner. It's something for a madman like me."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/profile-of-rebels-in-homs-and-their-executioners-a-824603.html

September 7, 2013

Pope calls all Catholics to pray and fast for Syria on Saturday

On Saturday Pope Francis will lead thousands in St Peter’s Square in a prayer vigil for peace.

During his Angelus address on Sunday, Pope Francis said: “We will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world. Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace.”

The vigil will include a recital of the rosary, eucharistic adoration, Scripture readings, a papal blessing and remarks by Pope Francis, said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi. During the event, which will last from 7 p.m.-11 p.m, priests will be available to hear confessions.

For all Catholics, the Pope has proclaimed Saturday a “day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East and throughout the world.” On fast days, adult Catholics in good health are expected to eat only one full meal.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/09/03/pope-calls-all-catholics-to-pray-and-fast-for-syria-on-saturday/