The August chemical weapons attack in the Syrian capital’s suburbs was done by a Saudi Arabian black operations team, Russian diplomatic sources have told a Russian news agency.
“Based on data from a number of sources a picture can be pieced together. The criminal provocation in Eastern Ghouta was done by a black op team that the Saudi’s sent through Jordan and which acted with support of the Liwa Al-Islam group,” a source in the diplomatic circles told Interfax.
The attack and its consequences had a huge impact on the Syrian situation, another source said.
“Syrians of various political views, including some opposition fighters, are seeking to inform diplomats and members of international organizations working in Syria what they know about the crime and the forces which inspired it,” he told the agency.
Liwa Al-Islam is an Islamist armed group operating near Damascus headed by the son of a Saudi-based Salafi cleric. The group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a secret governmental meeting in Damascus in July 2012 that killed a number of top Syrian officials, including Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, his deputy Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani.
The allegations mirror a number of earlier reports, which pointed to Saudi Arabia as the mastermind behind the sarin gas attack, which almost led to US military action against Syrian government. Proponents of this scenario say intelligence services in Riyadh needed a false flag operation to provoke an American attack in Syria, which would tip the balance in favor of the armed opposition supported by Saudi Arabia.
While the majority of Western countries say they are certain that the Syrian government carries the blame for the attack, Damascus maintains that the rebel forces must be behind it. Russia shares this conviction too, calling the incident a provocation.
Back in March US President Barack Obama said the use of chemical weapons would be a ‘red line’ for the Syrian government, crossing which would prompt America’s intervention into the bloody Syrian conflict. After the August attack, which the US believes has claimed some 1,400 lives, the president was called on his words by many supporters of the Syrian opposition both at home and outside of the US.
The plan for military action was put on pause after a Russia-brokered deal with Damascus, which agreed to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons. Experts from OPCW are currently in Syria preparing for the disarmament.
Serbia: Documents Show How Serbian Companies Were Pillaged By Offshore Firms
By the time Agrohem filed for bankruptcy in 2011 (when this photo was taken), the company had long since shut down operations, with 450 workers losing their jobs. (Photo: Zoran Pucarevic)
October 03, 2013
Below is a condensed excerpt from the report that focuses on the defunct Agrohem fertilizer company and its relationship with former Macedonian Economy Minister Zanko Cado. (Read the full report HERE)
During the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, Milojica Hrvacanin was one of the hundreds of thousands of Serbs driven out of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by ethnic and religious violence.
When peace finally came, he resettled in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second-largest city, and in 1998 found a job as an export manager for the Agrohem fertilizer manufacturer. As UN sanctions were lifted and peace returned to the Balkans, Hrvacanin hoped domestic and foreign demand for Agrohem’s products would grow.
After Serbs forced an end to Slobodan Milosevic’s rule in October 2000, a wave of democratic, Western-friendly politicians took power, pledging to bring new prosperity. They began pushing across-the-board privatization of state-run companies like Agrohem, promising to lure foreign investment, expand exports, and boost workers’ pay.
Serbia’s Privatization Agency was responsible for making sure buyers were legitimate investors who wouldn’t strip the companies of their assets. But Serbia’s privatization law was designed with a loophole — buyers weren’t required to fully disclose their identities and ownership structures.
That led to hundreds of auctions, according to reports by Serbia’s Anticorruption Council, in which buyers appeared to be foreign investors, but in reality were well-connected Serbs using front companies to buy state enterprises and milk their assets for large profits.
Almost 2,000 of the 3,017 state-owned enterprises that were privatized between 2001 and 2011 have ceased operations or sunk into bankruptcy or are on the verge of closing down, according to the Social and Economic Council of Serbia, a joint governmental and labor-union body.
Questions about the privatization process have become a roadblock to Serbia’s efforts to join the European Union. The EU says it’s concerned about the “illegal acquisition of public assets by private interests” and has asked the Serbian authorities to review 24 “controversial” privatizations.
Suspicious Transactions
Agrohem isn’t among the companies targeted in the review. But Hrvacanin and other ex-workers argue the company’s privatization and failure also merit attention.
In 2002-03, Serbia’s Privatization Agency arranged to sell blocks of government-owned shares in Agrohem to outside investors. Investors also moved to gain control of Agrohem shares that had been distributed to employees earlier in the privatization process.
The ex-workers’ complaints to Serbian authorities allege that company officials pressured workers to sell their shares to outside investors. Hrvacanin claims that one top Agrohem manager took workers to bars and plied them with beer and brandy, telling them “that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t sell their stock. My colleagues were afraid, so they did that massively.”
Hrvacanin soon became aware of what he describes as a series of unusual transactions. He claims Agrohem began selling off equipment and taking out loans and then transferring the loan proceeds to foreign companies and accounts. He filed a report about these deals with local police, but nothing came of his complaint. He was removed from his job in 2005. Officially, he says, he was part of a large layoff, but he contends he was let go because he had taken his concerns to the police.
The Cado Connection
In the 1990s, Zanko Cado was a director and shareholder of the London-based parent companies of two banks, Almako and Anglo-Yugoslav Bank, that ended up in bankruptcy. By the time Almako’s problems became apparent in early 1999, Cado was serving as minister of the economy in Macedonia. Cado stepped down in April 1999 after just five months, citing “personal reasons.”
Some in the Balkan media asserted there was a scandal looming behind the story of Almako’s demise and Cado’s departure, charging that the bank had lost millions in government deposits by doling out sweetheart loans to Macedonian politicians and businesspeople. Cado has never publicly responded to the claims.
After he returned to the private sector, Cado connected himself to both Pharmachem and SMM, the two firms that gained control of Agrohem. Serbia’s corporate registry indicates Cado was a director of an Antigua-based company, Fer Trade, which controlled Pharmachem and SMM.
Bankruptcy court records show that Agrohem engaged in dozens of transactions with companies in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore havens. The company regularly arranged to purchase raw materials through contracts that called for it to make payments in advance but put off delivery of the materials for months or even years, according to documents filed in court by Ninoslav Simic, the bankruptcy trustee appointed to deal with the Agrohem wreckage. In many cases, the goods that Agrohem paid for were never delivered and the transactions were converted from purchases of goods to loans, according to claims filed by Simic. The offshore companies never repaid the “loans,” stiffing Agrohem out of a total of $4.6 million.
Zanko Cado was a director and shareholder for Alysun Marketing, a British Virgin Islands company to which, according to bankruptcy court records, Agrohem wired $6.9 million in December 2007, ostensibly to buy shares in the Fidelinka food-processing concern.
Simic believes the evidence shows that Cado and others involved in the takeover of Agrohem were less interested in keeping the company operating than in siphoning away the company’s assets. “Obviously, they were not there to produce fertilizer,” Simic said in an interview.
‘Simple Injustice’
By the time Agrohem filed for bankruptcy in 2011, the company had long since shut down operations, with 450 workers losing their jobs. The story of layoffs and misery has been repeated across Serbia. The country’s jobless rate is one of the highest in Europe — 27 percent in February. The Vojvodina region, Agrohem’s home ground, is one of the hardest-hit provinces.
Whether Serbia can turn its economy around may depend in part on whether it can stop money linked to corruption and tax evasion from streaming out of the country. A study by Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy group, estimates that $51 billion in “illicit financial flows” left Serbia from 2001 to 2010, the 16th highest total among the 150 countries surveyed.
Milojica Hrvacanin is among the ex-Agrohem workers who’ve hit hard times. After years of working as a railway economist and export manager, the only job he could find after Agrohem let him go was as a bricklayer. Recently, he got a temporary job as a custodian in Novi Sad. He works from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. but barely earns enough to pay his bills.
But he is hopeful that Serbia’s new leaders will respond to the charges of former Agrohem workers. “We will not stop fighting to expose what happened to us at Agrohem,” he says. “It’s simply injustice.”
Djordje Padejski is an investigative reporter and founder of the FOIA Machine, an online tool for accessing public records. Michael Hudson is a senior editor at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Azerbaijan: Mob Attacks Journalists During Azeri Opposition Rally
October 04, 2013
RFE/RL Azerbaijani Service correspondent Tural Mustafayev was among the journalists, said the October 4 incident took place at an election rally for Azerbaijan’s united opposition presidential candidate, Camil Hasanli.
Mustafayev said some reporters were beaten, while others had their equipment damaged.
The reporter said police officers stood by idly at the scene and made no effort to disperse the attackers.
Some 500 opposition supporters took part in the rally.
Hasanli’s candidacy is backed by the National Council of Democratic Forces, an umbrella organization comprising most of Azerbaijan’s opposition parties and groupings.
He is seeking to unseat incumbent President Ilham Aliyev in the October 9 election.
U.S. Lawmakers Extend Special Iraqi Visa Program
October 04, 2013
Lawmakers from the rival Democratic and Republican parties took a break from their dispute over government spending and voted to extend the Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa program for three months.
The program had expired this week, at the start of the new fiscal year.
Upward of 2,000 visa applications from Iraqis are currently waiting for approval, and some applicants say they fear retribution from some Iraqis for having helped U.S. forces.
The program has so far allowed more than 12,000 Iraqis and family members move to the United States since 2007, according to AP.
Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
Turkey: Writer to be tried on charges of insulting Turkish prime minister
ISTANBUL
An Istanbul prosecutor has demanded the imprisonment of writer Emrah Serbes for from 10 months to 12 years, on accusations of insulting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Istanbul Governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu and Interior Minister Muammer Güler, daily Milliyet has reported.
Serbes had made a pun in a TV show by changing the prime minister’s middle name “Tayyip” to “Tazyik,” a word meaning pressurized water in reference to the police’s excessive use of water cannons and tear gas against protesters during the most recent May Day.
The Istanbul 18th Criminal Court of Peace approved the indictment and commenced proceedings in the case, the report said.
The investigation was launched after an anonymous e-mail was received by the Prime Ministry’s Communication Center (BİMER). The email alleged that Serbes’ words should be considered a crime under the law forbidding “insulting civil servants.”
Serbes said he had attended the May Day protests as a responsible citizen and as a writer.
A total of 14 tons of water mixed with tear gas was used during the police crackdown on demonstrators on May Day in Istanbul, daily Radikal published May 26, citing a lawyer who discovered the figure by using the freedom of information act.
Hundreds were injured in clashes between police and protesters during May Day celebrations, inflamed by a ban on entering the symbolic Taksim Square.
Karabakh president attends conference devoted to liberation struggle
President of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) Republic Bako Sahakyan attended on Friday the international scientific conference entitled “Artsakh’s National liberation Struggle: From Gyulistan to our Days”.
In his speech at the meeting, the president highlighted the importance of international events devoted to the topic, noting that they may promote a deeper understanding of the problem and a more comprehensive monitoring of the developments in the region.
Sahakyan said that the Armenian nation’s desire to live in freedom and sovereignty and to restore its statehood is among most long-lasting national-liberation struggles in the world history.
Speaking of Nagorno-Karabakh’s current state-building efforts, the president said that the country, for which freedom and security are exclusive values, has no right to step back from its achievements.
‘US financial crisis deeper than debt ceiling’ Paul Craig Roberts
Press TV has conducted an interview with Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury from Atlanta, to share his opinions on the shutdown of the US government following the worsening economic situation in the country.
– First of all, tell us what does this government shutdown in essence mean?
Kind of a guide if you can be for us, for non-Americans, as to how many people are affected, what sections of the government, what departments, and if it is a partial shutdown how does that affect the US economy?
– Well, let me say, let me go to the most general level. What this shows is that the superpower, the exceptional country, the indispensable country is not even capable of governing itself and yet it claims to know what is best for Iran, for Iraq, for Afghanistan, for Somalia, for Libya, for Russia, for china, for the whole world and yet it cannot govern itself.
Now this so-called debt ceiling crisis, that is not the real crisis, it would be resolved. In fact, if it is not, Obama under all of the directives that have concentrated power in the executive, doing the war on terror, he can simply declare a national emergency and raise the debt ceiling on his own account.
Congress knows that and they will not want the executive to exercise that type of power, so I do not think that this would be long-lived.
But the real crisis is not the debt ceiling, the real crisis is that for 20 years American jobs have been moved offshore, which in effect means that the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has moved offshore, tax pays have moved offshore; therefore, the revenue flow is impacted and doing much of the same …, Washington has been at war for 12 years and these wars are extremely expensive and distinguished experts have said that the cost of these wars both out of pocket and already incurred future obligations, are in the nationhood of six trillion dollars.
So, the real crisis is the gap, the wide gap that has appeared between expenditures and revenues and that cannot be closed under present circumstances.
So, all solving the debt ceiling crisis, all that does is let them issue more debt in order to continue to bridge the deficit.
Now…, a part of this is that to bridge that deficit, the Federal Reserve is printing one thousand billion dollars a year…, to purchase bonds to finance its deficit and the printing of these dollars is impacting the world’s confidence in the dollar as the reserve currency.
So, if you were to see a movement away from the dollar, the exchange rate would fall and this would then import very high inflation into the American economy, the Federal Reserve loses control of the interest rates and the whole house of cards would come down.
Now that is the real crisis.
– Paul Craig Roberts, can you explain this a little bit for us? Do you agree with some of the viewpoint there made by our viewers on our Facebook page?
– Well, this is a very popular account in conservative circles. What happened with the Federal Reserve, the reason it was said to be owned by private banks, was that there was a strong opposition to having a national bank. It had been always in the United States; so, they disguised this by saying: Well, it is truly just a big bank owned by the banks and this made it more acceptable to the opponents.
I do not think that these owners, as they are called, actually control the policy and if they did, it would not be permitted, there is no reason at all for the United States government to … a few banks.
So, it is true that the Treasury lost its ability to turn up money directly, control the money supply and just transfer it to the Federal Reserve and so now the treasury prints bonds and then use their bonds to Federal Reserve for money, but the interest on these bonds are returned to the Treasury; they do not go to the private owners and the Federal Reserve pays its own expenses out of the interest income, yet, it gets from its holding of Treasury bonds but it returns the rest to the Treasury.
So, it is not the system that it was made out to be and I think that the reason that it is in this form, to repeat myself, is that was a form they had to put in to get around the opposition to having a national bank.
– Paul Craig Roberts, I like to expand more with you on what has been called … , many adjectives but “a political bickering” and some of the headlines that have been noted here on some of the publications there in the US, because as an outsider, you know, many people from around the world are really surprised and some shocked at how this could be going on in the United States, but one of the headline that reads “For House Republicans, confrontation is safer that compromise”, another one: “For most Republicans the only greater parallel than shutting down the federal government would have been fighting to keep it open.”
I mean is this how deep is this? And then what about the American people who are suffering because of this?
– Well, the American people are suffering for a lot of reasons, and it is true that the right-wing Republicans are being silly and I think that they will end up discrediting themselves.
I do not think that this shutdown will last long. It certainly will not be permitted to endanger debt repayment.
In fact, the Federal Reserve can always repay bonds simply by printing the money; there is no limit on the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money. You have to keep in mind that during the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve extended over 16 trillion dollars in loans to the US and European banks and they did this on their own authority, so I assume that they can do this as well for the Treasury.
I do not really think that the debt ceiling is important because, as I have already said, Obama has the power to declare a national emergency and raise it by himself and so people do not really understand that and so if this sort of impacts were to last too long and start causing the kinds of problems that people talk about, I think that the executive branch would simply act independently.
So, if they can throw somebody in prison for the rest of their life without due process of law, without evidence, if they can murder American citizens under the authority of the executive branch without due process of law, they can certainly set aside whatever the debt ceiling law is.
So, I am not in any way worried about that and I think that my main point was missed. The main point is that the real crisis is not the fact that the debt ceiling has been delayed from being raised, it is the fact that there is a huge imbalance now between the expenditures and revenues.
When you offshore a good segment of your economy, you have really hurt yourself. You have deprived yourself of revenues in the long run and when you build in the costs of 12 years of war, you have really hurt the expenditure side.
So, the real crisis is that the gap is so wide, there is really nothing they can do …, they would have to be able to bring the jobs home, they would have to be able to get rid of these … costs and there are powerful vested interests defending both things. So, that is the real crisis, it is not the debt ceiling that is the crisis.
– Paul Craig Roberts, in less than 30 seconds give us your reaction to what Sean O’Grady (other guest of the show) was saying there.
– Yes, jobs offshoring has nothing whatsoever to do with trade. It is not trade, it is when the American corporation locates the production for its domestic markets offshore and uses foreign labor to produce the goods it sells in the United States.
So, it is a substitution of foreign labor for US labor; so, it affects the employment, income, tax-based GDP in the United States.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with free trade, it has no relation to trade. Free trade is based on the comparative advantage. Offshoring is based on the pursuit of absolute advantage, which is an antithesis of free trade.
It is amazing that people do not know this. They obviously mouth ‘free trade,’ but they do not know what it is.
Anyhow, to repeat myself, jobs offshoring is not trade, it is the movement of the production for your home market to a foreign country.
Baku Uses UN Pulpit to Attack Armenia
Azeri fighters are members of a sabotage unit called Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar
Neglects to say Azeri mercenaries’ role in rebel movement.
UNITED NATIONS—A day after assuming its temporary–month-long– seat on the United Nations Security Council, Azerbaijan used its pulpit to attack Armenia by accusing it of settling Syrian Armenian refugees in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, reported Agence France Presse.
Azerbaijan’s UN ambassador said Armenia had started a “very dangerous process” by moving Syrian Armenians into Nagorno-Karabakh.
In August, Azeri news sources, citing Syrian opposition Web sites, reported that there are 60 Azeris among the ranks of the many different armed rebel groups battling the Syrian government army. The sources also reported that some 30 Azeris have been killed during clashes.
According to the same source, the great majority of the Azerbaijani fighters are members of a sabotage unit called Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, whose leader is probably an Azerbaijani, Abu Yahan.
News sources in Azerbaijan reported in mid-July that “There are 400 Azerbaijanis fighting among the terrorist groups in Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, of which 3 are women.”
Armenia says it has accepted more than 10,000 Armenians from Syria. But Armenia’s UN envoy said claims they have been moved into Nagorno-Karabakh are “lies and distortion.”
“We continue to receive the reports testifying to purposeful (Armenian) attempts aimed at encouraging some categories of Syrian refugees to move to other conflict affected areas,” Azerbaijan’s UN envoy Agshin Mehdiyev told a news conference.
“We have information that they already started it — settlement of Syrian refugees in occupied territories — and of course it is a very dangerous process with unpredictable consequences,” added Mehdiyev, who is the UN Security Council president for October.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov raised the Syrian Armenians issue in a speech to the UN General Assembly last week.
Mammadyarov said reports of Syrian Armenians being moved into Nagorno-Karabakh “provide yet more evidence of Armenia’s deliberate policy of annexation of Azerbaijani lands.”
Armenia’s UN ambassador Garen Nazarian told AFP that Azerbaijan was “using the Syrian crisis for political goals.” He described the Azerbaijan claims as “lies and distortion.”
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian told the General Assembly last week that his country was “alarmed” by the crisis in Syria.
“The number of refugees Armenia continues to receive already exceeds 10,000, but tens of thousands of Syrian-Armenians still remain in that country,” he said.
Armenian Church, Survivor of the Ages, Faces Modern Hurdles
ECHMIADZIN, Armenia — In this ancient city, tucked in a valley that has witnessed the rise and fall of empires, King Tiridates III converted to Christianity and declared Armenia to be the world’s first Christian state. The year was 301, more than a decade before the Emperor Constantine put Rome on a similar path.
Since then, the Armenian Apostolic Church, which still has its main cathedral here, has survived conquest and dispersion, genocide and government-imposed atheism during the years Armenia was part of the Soviet Union. It also endured centuries of internal rancor, including a split in 1441 that led to the establishment of a rival leadership now based in Lebanon.
As church leaders gathered here last week for a rare bishops’ conference, they seemed to be ready to put at least some of those differences aside as they confronted a new set of challenges: entrenched secularism at home, assimilation of followers in the large Armenian diaspora abroad and general disaffection with organized religion.
“The church is in dire need of renewal,” Catholicos Aram I, the leader of the Lebanon-based faction of the church, said in an interview as he strolled across the campus here of the Mother See. “And by renewal, I mean the church has to be responsive to the needs and expectations of the people.”
He added, “The church has to respond to the challenges of the present-day world.”
Exactly how the church plans to do that remains elusive, however, and some skeptics said the split within the church leadership remained as divisive as ever, while the number of people regularly attending church has dwindled.
The church has more than nine million adherents worldwide, most outside Armenia. Statistics show that more than 98 percent of Armenians consider themselves Christians, but only 8 percent said they attended services at least once a week — data that suggest the church is still struggling to overcome the legacy of forced atheism 23 years after Armenian independence.
There have also been a number of recent controversies, including the resignation of the head of the church in France, Archbishop Norvan Zakarian, in a dispute over demands by the church leadership to reinstate a priest facing criminal assault charges.
“The whole situation of the division of the Armenian church is not resolved,” said one Western-based archbishop who asked not to be identified to avoid exacerbating tensions. “Yes, this is a conclave, but the church is not unified.”
Aram acknowledged that he claimed the same basic title as Catholicos Karekin II, the church leader based in Echmiadzin, who also has the added designation of supreme patriarch of all Armenians. Still, Aram denied any fissure.
“We don’t have any division in the Armenian church,” he said. “We are one church. We are one people. We are one nation. We are one mission. We have two Catholicoi, and we are rich — this is an expression of the richness of the church.”
For his part, Karekin told his audience of 62 bishops in black hoods and robes with purple accents, who had come from as far away as Australia and Latin America, that it was time to come together.
“All these controversies and administrative divisions did not allow carrying out unified reforms,” Karekin said. “We are an entire century behind the opportunity to modernize the church.”
He added, “The time has come to consolidate all forces.”
To minimize the prospect of sharp disagreements at the conference, a tight agenda was adopted: creating universal practices for baptisms and confirmations, discussing the canonization of victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide in recognition of the 100th anniversary, and planning another conference next year.
In an apparent bid to generate positive publicity around the bishops’ conference, church officials billed it as the first synod of its kind in nearly 600 years — a bit of snappy marketing that was widely repeated by the Armenian news media and in a speech by President Serzh Sargsyan during the opening ceremony.
“Now, we are witnessing the epoch-making event indeed,” Mr. Sargsyan said. “For centuries, due to different circumstances, and particularly in the last six centuries, it was not possible to invite a bishops’ synod of the Armenian Church.”
Experts, however, said that was not quite true.
Noah Sneider contributed reporting.
Stefan Fule EU hopes for conclusion of visa facilitation and readmission agreement with Armenia in Vilnius –
October 04, 2013 | 15:54
EU hopes to celebrate progress on the mobility agendas including conclusion of visa facilitation and readmission agreement with Armenia, Stefan Fule said.
European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy addressed the fifth meeting of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum that is held in Chisinau on October 4-5.
Speaking about the upcoming Eastern Partnership summit, EU Commissioner pointed to the points the EU hopes to celebrate in Vilnius.
“Signing of an AA/DCFTA with Ukraine; initialling of AAs/DCFTAs respectively with Moldova and Georgia; good progress on the mobility agendas including conclusion of Visa Facilitation and Readmission Agreements with Armenia and Azerbaijan; and tangible results of cooperation across key sectors, notably in the transport and education fields,” he said.