Abdo Hussameldin resigns on YouTube denouncing Bashar al-Assad and saying he is joining anti-government revolt


Syria's deputy oil minister, Abdo Hussameldin, has announced his defection on YouTube, becoming the first high ranking civilian official to abandon President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising against his rule erupted a year ago.

"I Abdo Hussameldin, deputy oil and mineral wealth minister in Syria, announce my defection from the regime, resignation from my position and withdrawal from the Ba'ath party. I join the revolution of this dignified people," Hussameldin said in a YouTube video uploaded on Wednesday and seen early on Thursday.

"I say to this regime: you have inflicted on those who you claim are your people a whole year of sorrow and sadness, denying them basic life and humanity and driving Syria to the edge of the abyss," he said, adding the country's economy was "near collapse".

The authenticity of the video, which was taken at an undisclosed location, could not be immediately confirmed.

Assad appointed Hussameldin, 58, to his position through a presidential decree in 2009.

The US denies an interest in Uganda's oil, but there are many other reasons for its presence in the region. None of them altruistic, claims war correspondent Eric Margolis.

American "aid" to Uganda is being offered without any third-party help, which is a sure sign that the effort is for its own sake, rather than humanitarian reasons.

The White House is deploying a hundred troops in the African country with the official aim of helping the authorities in a fight against a guerilla group that has been dragging on for two decades.

But award-winning war correspondent Eric Margolis told RT that if Washington had humanitarian interests in mind it would not be going in alone.

The people behind this campaign are MASSIVELY misguided. Or it's a CIA-sponsored psy-ops.

Take for example the fact that one of the 12 'policy makers' (US politicians) that they are targeting to help them ensure Joseph Kony is arrested is George 'Dubya' Bush. The puppet president who presided over the murder of 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. And we're all meant to believe that people like him are going to care about the plight of Ugandan children? Kony is Bush's ideological brother for god's sake.

Other than their complete ignorance of the fact that the US political elite is populated by the world's worst war criminals, the makers of this video are also massively ignorant of the truth about WHY Uganda, and many other African nations, are subjected to the brutal excesses of war lords and have been for so many decades.

Washington - Even as the United Nations' nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.

Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America's 16 intelligence agencies.

At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran. There is no dispute among American, Israeli and European intelligence officials that Iran has been enriching nuclear fuel and developing some necessary infrastructure to become a nuclear power. But the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies believe that Iran has yet to decide whether to resume a parallel program to design a nuclear warhead - a program they believe was essentially halted in 2003 and which would be necessary for Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes.

Israel and the United States have reportedly entered into a secret understanding in which Israel agrees to hold off on any plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities until at least 2013. In exchange for this, the United States has undertaken to provide Israel with the latest in so-called "bunker-busting" bombs, capable of penetrating the kind of hardened underground facilities that are believed to be safeguarding Iran's nuclear program.

As well, according to a report in today's Maariv newspaper, Washington has agreed to sell Israel the latest in long-range refueling aircraft.

The new military equipment is believed to improve the chances for success in any attack on Iran, and to make it worthwhile for Israel to delay any plan to attack the facilities it says are intended to produce nuclear weapons that will put Israeli security at risk.

In the first week of February, this year, Israeli secret agency, Mossad's Chief Tamir Pardo visited India with a three member delegation. Pardo's detailed talks with the Chief of Indian spy agency, RAW, Sanjeev Tripathi was part of Indo-Israeli secret alliance. The major aim of this meeting was to accelerate joint initiatives through their secret agencies so as to manipulate the strategic developments in South and Central Asia including Middle East. The purposes behind latest liaison of the top spymasters were also to intensify covert activities particularly to destabilise Pakistan and Iran, and to disrupt their cordial relationship besides exploiting US hardlining approach against China.

Another major aim of Mossad's head with his counterpart was to prepare a clandestine plan to obtain the secret designs of India and Israel in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of foreign troops from that country. Both are also disappointed by the new peace initiative by Pakistan and Afghanistan which does not favour their collective interests. So they intend to create misunderstanding between Kabul and Islamabad by sabotaging their new cooperation including their peace deals with the Afghan militants. Although Indo-Israeli secret alliance has full tactical support of the US regarding China, Iran and Pakistan, yet it is also working against America where similarities of interests are more important in case of New Delhi and Tel Aviv. In these terms, the two countries also seek to thwart the peace talks, being held in Qatar between the US and Taliban militants. Some reliable sources suggest that with the help of their affiliated militant groups, Mossad and RAW which have established their tentacles in Afghanistan have decided to intensify subversive acts on the US-led NATO installations in order to create obstacles in the withdrawal schedule of foreign forces, and to implicate both Afghan militants and Pakistan in this respect.

A document released by the WikiLeaks website has revealed that undercover US-led NATO forces are operating inside Syria against the Syrian government, Islam Times reported Wednesday.

WikiLeaks released a confidential email from an analyst working for the US-based intelligence firm Stratfor, in which he claims to have attended a meeting in the Pentagon with several NATO officials from France and Britain in December last year.

The analyst said he learned that US-led NATO troops are already on the ground in Syria, training armed gangs.

"SOF [special operation forces] teams (presumably from the US, UK, France, Jordan and Turkey) are already on the ground, focused on recce [reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces," the analyst claimed in his letter.

The Stratfor analyst went on to say that "the idea 'hypothetically' is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns" to overthrow the Syrian government.

This fact is revealed despite claims by the Western military alliance denying the deployment of forces to Syria.

Journalist Julien Teil has chronicled the pre-Libyan NATO intervention psy-ops that fooled the world into believing that Gaddafi was evil and Libyans somehow worthy of mass slaughter by airstikes. This installment of his Humanitarian War series dismantles the myth of "Gaddafi's Black Mercenaries":

"In the last analysis, every domination system depends on military force, but it always needs an ideological justification."- Jean Bricmont

This document makes it possible to understand how international law and justice works, but mostly how its basic principles can be bypassed. The resolutions passed against Lybia are based on various allegations : notably on the statement claiming that Gaddafi had carried out jet attacks on his own people and engaged in a violent repression against an uprising, killing more than 6000 civilians. These allegations were spread before they could have been verified. Even though it was on the basis of this claim that the Lybian Jamahiriya government was suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council, before being referred to the United Nations Security Council.

One of the main sources for the claim that Gaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR), an organisation linked to the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH). On the 21st of February 2011, the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, initiated a petition in collaboration with the organisation UN Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy. This petition was signed by more than 70 NGOs. Then a few days later, on the 25th of February, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir went to U.N. Human Rights Council in order to expose the allegations concerning the crimes of Gaddafi's government. In July 2011 we went to Geneva to interview Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir.

A Conversation with Gary S. Corseri

[Intro: I grew up in New York City, and have traveled and lived in different parts of the world, including about 18 years in the "Peachtree State" of Georgia. For almost as long as I lived there, I'd heard of Cynthia McKinney - the first African-American woman to represent Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives. To be honest, a great deal that I heard from the Mainstream Media was negative, portraying Ms. McKinney as a crazy shrew, an over-the-top black radical who questioned the official story of 9/11; opposed the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--and, recently, in Libya; opposed Israeli policies, and supported Palestinian demands for statehood. About three years ago, I heard McKinney speak at a conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Instead of a crazy firebrand, I heard an intelligent, measured, if passionate, presentation of why she challenged US war policies.

When I returned to Geogia, I wrote a friend in the UK about my hope to interview McKinney. My friend related a story about the "Dignity" ship, carrying food and medical supplies to Palestine, in 2008, rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters. McKinney was on that ship, and when it was rammed, she turned to my friend's brother and said, "David, I can't swim." Nothing I had ever heard about McKinney revealed her character more succinctly. This is a woman willing to put her life on the line in support of her principles. Missing from the Mainstream Media depictions were the human and humane aspects of her character. The MSM has too-often portrayed the struggle for justice as irrational, or even fanatical. I needed to know more. - Gary Corseri]