AlterNet: By Pepe Escobar. Here comes Obama & Co, with Guns and Missiles,

About to be Blazing in Syria. The "responsibility to protect" (R2P) doctrine invoked to legitimize the 2011 war on Libya has just transmogrified into "responsibility to attack" (R2A) Syria. Just because the Obama administration says so. On Sunday, the White House said it had "very little doubt" that the Bashar al-Assad government used chemical weapons against its own citizens. On Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry ramped it up to "undeniable" and accused Assad of "moral obscenity". So when the US bombed Fallujah with white phosphorus in late 2004, it was just taking the moral high ground. So when the US bombed Fallujah with white phosphorus in late 2004 it was just taking the moral high ground. And when the US bombed Fallujah with white prosphorus in late 2004 it was just taking the moral high ground. And when the US helped Saddam Hussein to gas Iranians in 1988 it was also taking the moral high ground. The Obama administration has ruled that Assad allowed UN chemical weapons inspectors into Syria, and to celebrate their arrival unleashed a chemical weapons attack mostly against women and children only 15 kilometers away from the inspectors' hotel. If you don't believe it, you subscribe to a conspiracy theory. Evidence? Who cares about evidence? Assad's offer of access for the inspectors came "too" late". Anyway, the UN team is only mandated to determine whether chemical weapons were deployed, but not by whom, according to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's spokesman. As far as the Obama administration and UK Prime Minister David "of Arabia" Cameron are concerned, supported by a barrage of corporate media missiles, that's irrelevant, Obama's "red line" has been crossed by Assad, period. Washington and London are in no-holds-barred mode to dismiss any facts contradicting the decision. Newspeak, of the R2A kind rules. If this all looks like Iraq 2.0 that's because it is. Time to fix the facts around the policy all over again. Time for weapons of mass deception, all over again. The Saudi-Israeli axis of fun. The window of opportunity for war is now. Assad's forces were winning from Qusayr to Homs, pounding "rebel" remnants out of the periphery of Damascus, deploying around Der'ah to counterpunch CIA-trained "rebels" with advanced weapons crossing the Syrian- Jordanian border, and organizing a push to expel "rebels" and jihadis from suburbs of Aleppo. Now, Israel and Saudi Arabia are so excited because they are getting exactly what they dream just by good ol' Wag the Dog methods. Tel Aviv has even telegraphed how it wants it: this Monday, the Yedioth Ahronot newspaper headlined with "On the Way to Attack" and even printed the ideal Order of Battle. Months ago, even AMAN, the Intelligence Directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) concluded that assad was not a fool to cross Obama's chemical weapon "red line". So they came up with the concept of "two entwined red lines", the second line being the Syrian government "losing control of its chemical weapons depots and production sites". AMAN then proposed different strategies to Washington, from a no-fly zone to actually seizing the weapons implying a ground attack.

AlterNet, By Alex Kane: 4 Reasons America's Still Fubding the Egyptian Military

As they Slaughter Their Own People. As the Egyptian military brutally cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood over the last week, the question coursing through the U.S. media was what America's response would be. Would the U.S. only curb economic aid? Or would the U.S. just take symbolic steps? We've gotten some answers, but the overall response towards the Egyptian military coup and violence remains unclear. The U.S. has reportedly curbed some economic aid, though that's only a fraction of the overall cash the U.S. gives to Egypt. The Obama administration announced a largely symbolic step in the wake of the killing of hundreds of people: the cancellation of joint military exercises. AS for the more important question of what the U.S. would do about its $1.3 billion in annual military aid given to the Egyptian armed forces, the picture is muddled. Yesterday, The Daily Beast's Josh Rogin reported that the Obama administration had secretly suspended a portion of U.S. military aid in response to the Egyptian military takeover, according to Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. Rogin reported that no aid be given to a government that came to power by way of a coup. So the U.S. is acting as if the Egyptian military's take over was a coup, which it was, while not publically saying so. But the White House today denied the report. "We are reviewing all of our assistance to Egypt. No policy decisions have been made at this point regarding the remaining assistance," a National Security Council spokeswoman told Yahoo! News. And even if Rogin's report was true, the key word is "temporary." The U.S. may have decided to suspend the aid for now, but it's likely that assistance would continue once the Egyptian military provides some democratic window dressing. Additionally, the reported suspension of aid only applies to the $525 million that has yet to be disbursed this year, a small fraction of the overall $1.3 billion the U.S. gives to the Egyptian military annually. So it's business as usual. The U.S. continues to fund the Egyptian military while its killing opponents of the coup and Islamists. Why is that? Here are 4 reasons why America funds the Egyptian military. 1. Israel. The flow of U.S. aid to Egypt began in 1979, when the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed. The treaty, which ended years of acrimony between the two countries and barred any chance of a new war breaking out between them, has been kept stable because of U.S. aid to Egypt. As Harvard professor Stephen Walt has written, "the current level of U.S. aid to Egypt. As Harvard professor Stephen Walt has written, "the current level of U.S. aid to Egypt and Israel is a bribe dating back to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Egypt got the money as a reward for making peace and realigning with the West." The benefits to both countries were great. Egypt got to build up its military and focus internally. Israel had the most powerful military in the region taken off the table as a threat as it continued to colonize the West Bank and Gaza. And more recently, Israel and Egypt have worked hand in hand to contain the threat posed to Israel from Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza.   

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog. Happy Labor Day, Lousy Wage Jobs Are Back!

The good news this Labor Day: Jobs are returning. The bad news this Labor Day: Most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. The trend toward lousy wages began before the Great Recession. according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, weak wage growth between 2000 and 2007, combined with wage losses for most workers since the, means that the bottom 60 percent of working Americans are earning less than now than thirteen years ago. This is also part of the explanation for why the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover, from 12.3 percent in 2006 to around 12 percent this year. More than 35 million Americans now live below the poverty line. Many of them have jobs. The problem is these jobs just don't pay enough to lift their families out of poverty. But wait a minute. Over this same period, productivity has grown by nearly 25 percent. That means the typical American worker is now producing a quarter more output than he or she did in 2000. So if wages have flattened or declined for the bottom 60 percent, yet productivity has increased, where have the gains gone? Mostly, to corporations and the very rich. All of which gives some context to the strikes in recent weeks at fast-food chain stores, such as McDonalds, where workers are demanding a raise to $15-an -hour from their current pay of $8 to $10 an hour. And the demonstrations and walkouts at Walmart stores, whose workers are also demanding better pay. The average Walmart employee earns $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart's employees work less than 28 hours per week and don't qualify for benefits. Few of these workers are teenagers. Most have to support their families. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median age of fast-food workers is over 28, and women, who comprise two-thirds of the industry, are over 32. The median age of big-box retail workers is over 30. These workers typically bring in half their family's earnings. They deserve a raise. At the very least, the minimum wage should be increased from the current $7.25 an hour to $10.50 and to $15 in areas of the country with a higher cost of living. Had the federal minimum simply kept up with inflation from the late 1960s, it would already be well over $10 today. Contrary to the predictable pontifications of conservative pundits, such a raise won't cause many low-wage workers to lose their jobs. Unlike industrial jobs, these sorts of retail service jobs can't be outsourced abroad. Nor are they likely to be replaced by automated machinery and computers. The service these workers provide is personal and direct: Someone has to be on hand to help customers and dole out the burgers. And don't believe critics who say any wage gains these workers receive will be passed on to consumers in higher prices. Big-box retailers and fast-food chains have to compete intensely for consumers. They have no choice but to keep their prices low.  

AlterNet: By Alex Kane: 4 Cases of the U.S. Sheltering Vicious Criminals that Reveal Total Hypocracy on Snowden!

Russia's decision early this month to grant National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden temporary asylum in the country has led to a chorus of U.S. officials and media personalities denouncing Vladimir Putin. "Russia has stabbed us in the back, and each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife," said Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on August 2. "Putin is acting like a schoolyard bully." David Satter of the conservative publication National Review used the occasion to write that "Russia, unlike the U.S. has no rule of law." But the cries for Russia to grant the request to extradite Snowden to face certain imprisonment and harsh punishment has exposed U.S. hypocrisy. There have been a number of cases in recent years when countries asked the U.S. to extradite suspected criminals back to their countries. But when it comes to those who committed crimes in the service of U.S. policy, America refuses those requests. As the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald pointed out in a recent column, the U.S. shelters a number of people who are accused of crimes more heinous than Snowden's even if the country making the request has an extradition treaty with America, which Russia does not have. Here are four egregious cases where the U.S. has refused extradition requests. 1. Robert Lady. After the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration granted the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to snatch people off the streets and whisk them to other countries for interrogation and torture. With the help of 54 countries, CIA operatives around the world implemented what was known as Bush's "extraordinary rendition" program. Robert Lady is one of those operatives. In 2000, Lady arrived in Milan, Italy to become the CIA's station chief. Three years later, he oversaw an operation that would become one of the CIA's station chief. Three years later, he oversaw an operation that would become one of the CIA's worst debacles in recent history. Lady and his team of operatives began working with Italian intelligence agents on the case of Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric and former member of a banned Islamist group who had successfully sought asylum in Italy. The U.S. and Italy were gathering intelligence on him because they suspected he had ties to terrorism. But higher-ups at the CIA pressured Lady to spurn his partnership with Italian intelligence and strike out on his own, though Lady tried to convince the CIA that wasn't a good idea. In 2003, CIA operatives led by Lady kidnapped Omar off the streets of Milan. They whisked the cleric off to Egypt where he faced harsh interrogation and torture. As  Amnesty International noted, Omar said that Egyptian security forces hung him "head down , feet up. hands tied behind my back, feet also tied together, and I was exposed to electric shocks all over my body." He was beaten on his genitals with a stick and kept in a rat-and cockroach-infested cell that reached extreme temperatures. Omar was released in April 2004 only to be re-arrested after telling friends about his ordeal, and was kept in solitary confinement. He was finally released for good in 2007.

AlterNet: By Lindsey Abrams: Frackers Sued for Causing Earthquakes!

It's becoming something of a pattern: A quiet town with no history of fault line activity signs a contract with natural gas drillers, Suddenly, it's beset by minor earthquakes. In Youngstown, Ohio, a recent study linked a spate of over 100 earthquakes to the process used to dispose of waste-water from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. In Greenbrier, Arkansas, there weren't hundreds of small earthquakes, but thousands. A study done in the region also linked their occurence to the arrival in town of waste-water disposal wells. As soon as the Arkansas Oil and Gas commission shut down the wells, the quakes stopped. The residents are suing. According to Reuters, over a dozen residents of Greenbriar have five federal lawsuites against the drillers, marking the first legal attempt to link earthquakes to waste-water wells: The first of the suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Arkansas, is scheduled to go to trial before Judge J. Leon Holmes next March, though the parties have been engaged in settlement talks, according to the court docket. The Arkansas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners, an oil and gas industry group, acknowledges that scientists found a possible connection between the disposal wells and the spate of minor quakes in and around Greenbrier. But J. Kelly Robbins, the group's executive vice president, said the companies had no way of knowing of any such link before wastewater injection began, and he said the operators shut the wells down when questions were raised. Other civil lawsuits have been raised against natural gas companies in the U.S., about 40 since 2009, but most of those focused on the health and environmental consequences, and none have made it to trial. And if these new suits succeed, Reuters points out, they won't just target fracking, as wastewater injection wells are used in other types of drilling as well. The U.S. Geological Survey suspects only a small number of the nation's injection wells of causing earthquakes, and position of the companies being sued seems to be that 1) they couldn't have predicted the quakes, 2) once they found out about the connection, they took the necessary action to stop them from occurring in the future, 3) in any case, the drilling brought billions of investment dollars into Arkansas ad boosted the state's natural gas production. "It's  something that happened, we addressed it and developed some rules to keep it from happening again and everyone has moved on," Lawrence Bengal, the director of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, told Reuters. In other words, sometimes consequences just can't be avoided.

By Tony Cartalucci: "Doctors" Behind Syrian Chemical Weapons Claims are Aiding Terrorists!

The "evidence" upon which the West is propping up its narrative of the Syrian government using chemical weapons against large numbers of civilians hinges so far entirely on claims made by "Doctors Without Borders." In the New York Times article, "Signs of Chemical Attack Detailed by Aid Group," it is reported: An international aid group said Saturday that medical centers it supported near the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack near Damascus received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents on the morning of the reported attack. Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders. The statement is the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus, the capital. While it is often described by the Western media as "independent," nothing could be further from the truth. To begin with, Doctors Without Borders is fully funded by the very same corporate financier behind Wall Street and London's collective foreign policy, including regime change in Syria and neighboring Iran. Doctors Without Borders' own annual report includes as financial donors, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, Mitt Romney's Bain Capital, and a myriad of other corporate-financier interests. Doctors Without Borders also features bankers upon its Board of Advisers including Elizabeth Beshel Robinson of Goldman Sachs. Complicating further Doctors Without Borders so-called "independ" and "aid" claims is the fact that their medical facilities are set up in terrorist held regions of Syria, especially along Syria's northern border with NATO member Turkey. In an interview with NPR, Doctors Without Borders' Stephen Cornish revealed the nature of his organization's involvement in the Syrian conflict, where he explains that aid is being sent to regions outside of the Syrian government's involvement in the Syrian conflict, where he explains that aid is being sent to regions outside of the Syrian government's control, and that his organization is in fact setting up facilities in these areas. Cornish admits: Over the past months, we've had a surgery that was opened inside a cave. We've had another that was opened inside a cave. We've had another that was opened in a chicken farm, a third one in a house. And these structures, we've tried to outfit them as best we can with enough modern technology and with full medical teams. They originally were dealing mainly with combatant injuries and people who were, civilians who were directly affected by the conflict. In other words, the Wall Street-funded organization is providing support for militants armed and funded by the West and its regional allies, most of whom are revealed to be foreign fighters, affiliated with or directly belonging to Al Qaeda and its defacto political wing, the Muslim Brotherhood. This so-called "international aid" organization is in actuality yet another cog in the covert military machine being turned against Syria and serves as a role as a medical battalion. The "hospitals" in Damascus being supported by Doctors Without Borders are in areas now under threat of being retaken by government forces, and it's these facilities that the Western media is drawing on for "evidence" that first, a chemical attack took place, and second, that it was the government who carried it out.     

By William Engdahl: Syria gas attack story has wiff of Saudi war propaganda!

The reports of massive chemical attacks in Syria might become the "red line" for the US for active military intervention. But even rudimentary analysis of the story shows it too early to believe its credibility. The Middle Eastern newspaper, Al Arabiya, reports that "At least 1,300 people have been killed in a nerve gas attack on Syria's Ghouta region, leading opposition figure George Sabra said on Wednesday" The paper went on to claim that the Government of President Bashar al Assad was responsible for the attacks. If confirmed it could be the "red line" that US President Obama previously stated would tip the US into active military intervention in Syria, using No Fly Zones and active military steps to depose Assad. That in turn could erupt into a conflagration across the Middle East and a Super Power confrontation with Russia and China and Iran on one side, and the USA, UK, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar on the opposite side. Not a happy prospect for world peace at all. Therefore the story is worth analyzing carefully. When we do, several things jump out as suspicious. First the newspaper breaking the story was Al Arabiya, initially saying that at least 500 people have been killed, according to activists. From there it got picked up by major international media. Making the story more fishy by the minute were reports from different media of the alleged number of dead that changed by the minute, 635 then to 800 by USA Today and 1,300 by Rupert Murdoch's Sky News. Al Arabiya, the origin if the story, is not neutral in the Syrian conflict. It was set up in 2002 by the Saudi Royal Family in Dubai. It is majority-owned by the Saudi broadcaster, Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC). Saudi Arabia is a major financial backer of the attempt to topple Syria's government. That is a matter of record, So on first glance Saudi-owned media reporting such an inflammatory anti-Assad allegation might be taken with a dose of salt. When we examine the printed content of the story, it gets more suspicious still. First they cite "activists at the at the Syrian Revolutionary Command Council said regime fighter planes were flying over the area after the bombardment, accusing the forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of using chemical agents." This is doubtful on many levels. First we can imagine that anti-government "activists" fighting Assad's forces would not be exactly neutral. The story gets even murkier. Further in the text of the article we read that the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of people were killed, including children, in a fierce bombardment." Now the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has been the source of every news report negative against the Syrian Assad government since the war began in 2011. More curious about the humanitarian-sounding SOHR is the fact, as uncovered by investigative journalists, that it consists of a sole Syrian refugee who has lived in London for the past 13 years named Rami Abdul Rahman, a Syrian refugee who has lived in London for the past 13 years named Rami Abdul Rahman, a Syrian Sunni muslim who owns a clothing shop and is running a Twitter page from his home. Partly owing to a very friendly profile story on the BBC, he gained mainstream media credibility. He is anything but unbiased.