No universally applied principle justifies the Israeli attack on Damascus. Only self-flattering tribalism does that

On Sunday, Israel dropped massive bombs near Damascus, ones which the New York Times, quoting residents, originally reported (then evidently deleted) resulted in explosions "more massive than anything the residents of the city. . . have witnessed during more than two years of war." The Jerusalem Post this morning quoted "a senior Syrian military source" as claiming that "Israel used depleted uranium shells", though that is not confirmed. The NYT cited a "high-ranking Syrian military official" who said the bombs "struck several critical military facilities in some of the country's most tightly secured and strategic areas" and killed "dozens of elite troops stationed near the presidential palace", while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that "at least 42 soldiers were killed in the strikes, and another 100 who would usually be at the targeted sites remain unaccounted for."

Israeli defenders claim that its air attack targeted weapons provided by Iran that would have ended up in the hands of Hezbollah. Obama officials quickly told media outlets that "the administration is fully supportive of Israel's airstrikes". Indeed, Democratic Sen. Pat Leahy noted: "Keep in mind the Israelis are using weapons supplied by us." There is, needless to say, virtually no condemnation of the Israeli assault in US media or political circles. At this point, the only question is how many minutes will elapse before Congress reflexively adopts a near-unanimous or unanimous resolution effusively praising Israel for the attack and unqualifiedly endorsing all past and future attacks as well.

Because people who cheer for military action by their side like to pretend that they're something more than primitive "might-makes-right" tribalists, the claim is being hauled out that Israel's actions are justified by the "principle" that it has the right to defend itself from foreign weapons in the hands of hostile forces. But is that really a "principle" that anyone would apply consistently, as opposed to a typically concocted ad hoc claim to justify whatever the US and Israel do? Let's apply this "principle" to other cases, as several commentators on Twitter have done over the last 24 hours, beginning with this:

Nima Shirazi @WideAsleepNima

If Syrian planes bombed Israel's Ramat David Airbase because it houses US-supplied weaponry, what would the appropriate Israeli reaction be?
3:00 PM - 4 May 2013

As more and more studies demonstrating the corrosive effect of psychopathy on government, finance, and business emerge, researchers have begun to explore how our society itself has been molded in the psychopaths' image.

Now, one of those researchers, Stefan Verstappen, shares his insights on psychopathy in modern culture.

This is the GRTV Feature interview on Global Research TV.

Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden revenge-porn flick Zero Dark Thirty was the biggest publicity coup for the CIA this century outside of the actual killing of Osama bin Laden. But the extent to which the CIA shaped the film has remained unclear. Now, a memo obtained by Gawker shows that the CIA actively, and apparently successfully, pressured Mark Boal to remove scenes that made them look bad from the Zero Dark Thirty script.

The CIA's whitewashing effort is revealed in a cache of documents newly released under a Freedom of Information Act request about the CIA's cooperation with Bigelow and Boal. The documents include a 2012 memo - initially classified "SECRET" - summarizing five conference calls between Boal and the CIA's Office of Public Affairs in late 2011.

"The purpose for these discussions was for OPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin operation," according to the memo. (Hundreds of pages of CIA documents about the film were released last year; the memo obtained by Gawker was approved for release late last month.)

During these calls, Boal "verbally shared the screenplay" for Zero Dark Thirty in order to get the CIA's feedback, and the CIA's public affairs department verbally asked Boal to take out parts that they objected to. According to the memo, he did.

A tiny tip of the vast subterranean network of governmental and intelligence agencies from around the world dedicated to destroying WikiLeaks and arresting its founder, Julian Assange, appears outside the red-brick building on Hans Crescent Street that houses the Ecuadorean Embassy. Assange, the world's best-known political refugee, has been in the embassy since he was offered sanctuary there last June. British police in black Kevlar vests are perched night and day on the steps leading up to the building, and others wait in the lobby directly in front of the embassy door. An officer stands on the corner of a side street facing the iconic department store Harrods, half a block away on Brompton Road. Another officer peers out the window of a neighboring building a few feet from Assange's bedroom at the back of the embassy. Police sit round-the-clock in a communications van topped with an array of antennas that presumably captures all electronic forms of communication from Assange's ground-floor suite.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), or Scotland Yard, said the estimated cost of surrounding the Ecuadorean Embassy from June 19, 2012, when Assange entered the building, until Jan. 31, 2013, is the equivalent of $4.5 million.

Britain has rejected an Ecuadorean request that Assange be granted safe passage to an airport. He is in limbo. It is, he said, like living in a "space station."

"The status quo, for them, is a loss," Assange said of the U.S.-led campaign against him as we sat in his small workroom, cluttered with cables and computer equipment. He had a full head of gray hair and gray stubble on his face and was wearing a traditional white embroidered Ecuadorean shirt. "The Pentagon threatened WikiLeaks and me personally, threatened us before the whole world, demanded that we destroy everything we had published, demanded we cease 'soliciting' new information from U.S. government whistle-blowers, demanded, in other words, the total annihilation of a publisher. It stated that if we did not self-destruct in this way that we would be 'compelled' to do so."

"But they have failed," he went on. "They set the rules about what a win was. They lost in every battle they defined. Their loss is total. We've won the big stuff. The loss of face is hard to overstate. The Pentagon reissued its threats on Sept. 28 last year. This time we laughed. Threats inflate quickly. Now the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department intend to show the world what vindictive losers they are through the persecution of Bradley Manning, myself and the organization more generally."

Did you hear the one about part of a Boeing 767 wing and thick rope found wedged between two buildings a block away from the site of the old World Trade Center in Manhattan? No, this isn't a joke - they really did claim last week to find a chunk of one of the hijacked aircraft flown into the Twin Towers over 11 years ago on 9/11. Not only that, it was discovered at 51 Park Place, Lower Manhattan, site of the planned Islamic community center. Talk about "catapulting the propaganda"... or maybe that should be 'lowering the propaganda into place'?...

Coming on the heels of the Boston Drill/Bombings on Patriots' Day last month, as well as a 'ricin poisoned letters' scare that transported us all back in time to that crazy week in September 2001 when letters laced with anthrax were sent to politicians, the spectre of the 9/11 attacks looms large as ever over the U.S. and much of Western civilization.

"9/11 was an inside job," is by now a familiar mantra in the small but active alternative online community. It has even found its way into the mainstream, despite years of ridicule and the heavy presence of COINTELPRO types derailing efforts to investigate and publish the truth of what happened on 9/11.

So, was it really an 'inside job'? Certainly, there is evidence that Israeli intelligence and elements in the U.S. government colluded to cover-up what really happened and used the event for their own gain. We know that prior to 9/11, certain high-level members of Bush Jr.'s administration dreamed of 'a new Pearl Harbor', the catalyst for expanding American hegemony.

But does that necessarily mean they orchestrated it? What about the evidence for 9/11 being an 'outside job'? Many anomalous aspects of the attacks that day have been overlooked. This week we invited Dr. Judy Wood on the show to discuss the compelling evidence she has gathered and analysed in her book Where Did the Towers Go?, pointing to some form of 'exotic technology' may have been responsible for destroying the World Trade Center on 9/11.

In the second part of the show, we tried to look at 9/11 from a broader perspective with Lisa Guliani, former internet-based political talk show host, political writer and SOTT.net editor. As you'll soon discover, however, even over 11 years later, it's no easier today to get a coherent discussion going about Israel and the NeoCons' role in 9/11... can we conclude that 9/11 as a psy-ops has successfully neutralized the so-called 'Truth Movement'?

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Israel used "a new type of weapon", a senior official at the Syrian military facility that came under attack from the Israeli Air Force told RT.

"When the explosion happened it felt like an earthquake," said the source, who was present near the attack site on the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday morning.

"Then a giant golden mushroom of fire appeared. This tells us that Israel used depleted uranium shells."

Depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process that creates nuclear weapons, and was first used by the US in the Gulf conflict of 1991. Unlike the radioactive materials used in nuclear weapons, depleted uranium is not valued for its explosiveness, but for its toughness - it is 2.5 times as dense as steel - which allows it to penetrate heavy protection.

The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.

Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.

On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says Israel may have conducted 'false flag' operation. Describes its government as inept and Netanyahu as 'clueless.'

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who once served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff, believes that the chemical weapons used in Syria may have been an Israeli "false flag" operation aimed at implicating Bashar Assad's regime.

Wilkerson made his astounding assertion in an interview on Current TV, the network once owned by former Vice President Al Gore and recently purchased by Al-Jazeera.

Wilkerson said that the evidence that it was Assad's regime that had used the chemical weapons was "flaky" and that it could very well have been the rebels or Israel who were the perpetrators. Asked why Israel would do such a thing, Wilkerson said: "I think we've got a basically geostrategically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."

Lawyer who drafted White House drone policy says US would rather kill suspects than send them to Cuban detention centre

The lawyer who first drew up White House policy on lethal drone strikes has accused the Obama administration of overusing them because of its reluctance to capture prisoners that would otherwise have to be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

John Bellinger, who was responsible for drafting the legal framework for targeted drone killings while working for George W Bush after 9/11, said he believed their use had increased since because President Obama was unwilling to deal with the consequences of jailing suspected al-Qaida members.

"This government has decided that instead of detaining members of al-Qaida [at Guantánamo] they are going to kill them," he told a conference at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Obama this week pledged to renew efforts to shut down the jail but has previously struggled to overcome congressional opposition, in part due to US disagreements over how to handle suspected terrorists and insurgents captured abroad.

An estimated 4,700 people have now been killed by some 300 US drone attacks in four countries, and the question of the programme's status under international and domestic law remains highly controversial.

In what was a quite astounding statement, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of Staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell under George W. Bush, said that the chemical weapons allegedly used in Syria could in fact be "an Israeli false flag operation."

During his interview with Cenk Uygur on Current TV (now owned by Al Jazeera), Wilkerson said his unnamed sources in the intelligence community told him that the evidence supporting the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government was "really flaky."

"This could have been an Israeli false flag operation," Wilkerson said.

When Uygur asked why Israel would do such a thing and what the motivation would be, Wilkerson said, "I think we've got basically a geo-strategically, geo-political - if you will - inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."

"I think we saw really startling evidence of that in the fact that President Obama had to tell Bibi Netanyahu, 'Pick up the phone, you idiot and call Ankara [Turkey] and get yourself out of this strategic isolation you're in right now,'" Wilkerson said, referring to the situation in March of this year.