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OPCW HQ, The Hague, The Netherlands
Neither Syria nor the OPCW's work with UN inspectors in Syria is mentioned in the Nobel Committee's press release. In fact, the U.S. and Russia are singled out for their failure to comply with treaty obligations. Rest assured, however, that CNN and the rest of the lamestream media is making hay out of this to refocus international attention on the U.S.-led agenda for shock and awe in Syria:
CNN
Fri October 11, 2013
The Nobel Peace Prize has turned the global spotlight back on the conflict in Syria.
The prize committee in Oslo, Norway, awarded it Friday to the international chemical weapons watchdog helping to eliminate the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
Its inspectors have just begun with that work in the active war zone, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded them the prize in support of the arduous and life-threatening task that lies ahead of them.
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, discuss the good news for the economy as compensation payments for fraud trickles into the local economy, and then they introduce the concept of the People's Price Fix and a Keiser's Hierarchy of Price Fixing. In the second half, Max interviews Professor Antal E. Fekete of FeketeResearch.com about Fed induced hyper-deflation and why the American Austrians were wrong to predict that quantitative easing would cause inflation.
© Moadamiyeh Media Center/EPAAn Aug. 26,, 2013, photo released by the Syrian opposition Moadamiyeh Media Center is said to show U.N. inspectors collecting samples from a site that was allegedly hit by a chemical gas weapon, in Moadamiyeh suburb, Damascus, Syria.
The award caught much of the world by surprise, as did last year's prize, which went to the European Union. But the removal of chemical weapons from Syria has been viewed as an important step in bringing an end to a two-and-a-half year war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.
"Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel's will," the committee said, recalling the extensive use of chemical weapons in World War I and their use by states and terrorists alike.
Chemical weapons visit a particular horror on victims, and to those watching from around the world. Awarding the prize to the OPCW may be seen as a resounding vote to end the scourge of chemical weapons once and for all.
© AFPHuman Rights Watch highlighted five opposition groups that likely took part in the Aug. 4 killings.
In a report released on Friday, the New York-based rights group presented evidence that anti-Syria terrorist groups carried out the killings and the hostage-taking in their several-day operation that began around Alawite villages in Latakia on August 4.
The 105-page report was compiled based upon on-site investigation and interviews with 35 people, including the survivors of the attacks.
According to the report, most of the killings apparently took place on the first day of the offensive. A vast majority of the hostages are also women and children.
The human rights organization further said the acts of violence "rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity," calling on the UN Security Council to immediately take such cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The rights group also stressed that the scale and organization of the attacks on civilians suggest premeditation.
"This operation was a coordinated, planned attack on the civilian population in these Alawite villages," said Joe Stork, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
Comment: Wow, HRW reports the truth for once. A Takfiri, by the way, is basically an Islamic religious fundamentalist. So that's pretty much all the 'rebels' in Syria.
As much as we online journalists love reports that rank things, even we must sometimes resist the urge to blog about them, even "in one map." Because honestly, some countries are just going to either be really good or bad at various things for the foreseeable future. Just as the Central African Republic is not going to be the best country for women within our lifetime, you'll probably never see a Scandinavian nation on a "failed states" slideshow.
Freedom House's annual Freedom on the Net report is out, and like in most such reports, the actual rankings are largely unsurprising. Iceland, the frozen whistleblower nirvana, ranked first, and second was Estonia, the tiny Baltic country that gave us Skype. China, Cuba, and Iran came in last, obviously.
One thing that is a total grab bag, though, is the list of countries that had the largest declines in Internet freedom. Because although "free" and "not free" countries tend to stay that way, big jumps in their standings can be a sign of really significant and fascinating trends. Here are the explanations for the three of the biggest "losers," as it were: India, Brazil, and the United States.
Freedom House's annual Freedom on the Net report is out, and like in most such reports, the actual rankings are largely unsurprising. Iceland, the frozen whistleblower nirvana, ranked first, and second was Estonia, the tiny Baltic country that gave us Skype. China, Cuba, and Iran came in last, obviously.
© Freedom House
© peoplesworld / FlickrA rally against the Koch brothers' attempt to buy Los Angeles Times on May 14, 2013.
Their "masters of the universe" world view is that they or their daddies or their daddies' daddies were the ones who "built America" and, thus, it's their right to tear down the remarkable edifice of U.S. law, politics and economics created over the past two-plus centuries - if the country's less-deserving inhabitants insist on raising taxes on the rich to fund programs benefiting the poor and the middle class.
That is what we're watching now, what might be called the Koch Brothers' "Samson Option," pulling down the temple to destroy their enemies even if doing so is also destructive to them and their fortunes.
Charles and David Koch and other right-wing billionaires and near-billionaires are blind with anger after wasting millions of dollars on Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and the Republican Party in a failed attempt to defeat Barack Obama, the Democrats and health-care reform. These were the guys who smirked knowingly when Romney sneered at "the 47 percent" of Americans who receive some government help; they got snappish when Obama called them "fat cats"; they demanded the honorific title of "job creators."
© jeanbaptisteparis / FlickrNoam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky is one of the world's greatest living intellectuals. His work and achievements are well known - he is a foundational American linguist, professor emeritus at MIT for more than 60 years, undeviating political activist and commentator, and an ally of progressive movements around the world.
In this interview, Truthout spoke with the 84-year-old by telephone to discuss the current US government shutdown, tumultuous state of American politics, the Syrian Civil War and a wave of capitalist reform in South America.
Chomsky's latest works are Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe, with writer and multimedia artist Laray Polk, and On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, with novelist and filmmaker André Vltchek.
The DEA is a failed institution.
The GOP House's temper-tantrum-induced shutdown of the U.S. government can be called many things - an extortion, a frustration, an outrage... name your unflattering descriptor. But if it does anything of use for the American people, it serves up an inarguable indication of the government's true priorities. It shows us, verbatim, which programs are deemed "essential" and which aren't.
For instance, the national parks and almost a million federal employees have been cutoff, while the military continues to operate full-force.
And while the injustices of the shutdown are many, among the most hypocritical government priorities is the continued funding of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) - an organization focused on ending the war on drugs - sent an email to supporters on Friday asking why the DEA was considered essential during the government shutdown.
"You and I both know the DEA isn't effective," he wrote. "So why is it considered essential?"
A very good question considering the fact that, even if fighting the war on drugs was reasonable priority to maintain during a shutdown (it isn't) the DEA has long since lost the war. Since its inception in 1973, it has failed to reduce the number of drug-related crimes in the U.S., and continues to place more than 1.2 million people behind bars each year for the mere possession of illegal substances.
During his time in captivity, the weight of the 55-year-old Egyptian has nearly doubled, reaching more than 420 pounds at one point, and his health has deteriorated as a result, both his lawyers and government officials concede.
Lawyers for El-Sawah, and the doctors they have brought down to the U.S. base in Cuba to examine him, paint a dire picture - a morbidly obese man with diabetes and a range of other serious ailments. He is short of breath, barely able to walk 10 feet, unable to stay awake in meetings and faces the possibility of not making it out of prison alive.
"We are very afraid that he is at a high risk of death, that he could die at any moment," said Marine Lt. Col. Sean Gleason, a military lawyer appointed to represent him.
Details about the condition of El-Sawah, who has admitted being an al-Qaida explosives trainer but is no longer facing charges, are emerging in a series of recently filed court motions that provide a rare glimpse into the health of an unusual prisoner, and a preview of arguments that may become more common as the Guantanamo Bay prison ages into a second decade with no prospects for closure in sight.
He's not the only one of the 164 prisoners at Guantanamo who is seriously ill. Last week, a judge ordered the release of a schizophrenic Sudanese man who spent much of the past decade medicated in the prison psych ward. His lawyers argued he was so sick, with ailments that also included diabetes, that he couldn't possibly pose a threat and therefore the U.S. no longer had the authority to hold him. The judge's ruling came after the government withdrew its opposition to his release.
Comment: Their operation in Syria was set off by a Russian diplomatic initiative, which proposed persuading Syria to give up its chemical weapons in exchange for United States backing off plans to bomb the country.