Gagrule.net News, Views, Interviews worldwide
Featured CampaignsThe 30-second ad, called “Not Again,” will run this week on MSNBC.
Assad told CBS Television on Monday that Washington should “expect everything” if US forces attack his country.
“You’re going to pay the price if you’re not wise. There are going to be repercussions,” Assad said, adding, “It’s an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.”
Assad also stated that in the case of a US attack, the Syrian government will not be the sole party to respond.
“You should expect everything…. The government’s not the only player in this region. You have different parties, different factions, different ideologies. You have everything in this decision now,” Assad added.
The Syrian president also said any strike on Syria will provide direct support for al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups operating in the country.
He denied allegations that the Syrian government was responsible for a deadly chemical attack near Damascus on August 21, over which Washington is calling for military action against Damascus.
- “There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people,” Assad added.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry has claimed that not responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria would be riskier than taking military action.
“I don’t believe that we should shy from this moment: the risk of not acting is greater than the risk of acting,” Kerry said in London, adding that Assad could avert an attack by giving up his chemical weapons.
The US Senate will vote on authorizing military intervention in Syria later this week.
The White House has admitted it has no “irrefutable” evidence of Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons, but said a “strong common-sense test irrespective of the intelligence” suggested the Syrian army was responsible for the August poison gas attack.
4-Star General Wesley Clark was told – right after 9/11 – that Pentagon officials planned to attack 7 countries in 5 years … including Iraq, Libya and Syria:
I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.
***
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
File photo shows the Syrian Christian village of Maalula
According to the so-called Syrian Observatory as well as the residents of the historic town located some 70 kilometers northeast of the capital, Damascus, the militants are currently in control of the entire village.
The British-based group said the militants have sent reinforcement to the area, forcing Syrian Army to leave the mountain village.
“The rebels are inside Maalula, all of Maalula. The government troops have pulled out of Maalula,” a resident said on condition of anonymity.
The reports come after days of clashes between Syrian army forces and militants mostly from the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front in the Christian village.
Many of the town’s 5,000 Aramaic-speaking residents have fled their homes since the militants, known for killing minorities, arrived in the area.
Maalula is of strategic significance to the foreign-backed militants who have been trying to gain control of key areas surrounding Damascus.
The Al-Nusra Front militants attacked the village on September 4, seizing a hotel and shelling one of its communities.
The recent war rhetoric against Syria first gained momentum on August 21, when the militants operating inside the country and its foreign-backed opposition claimed that over a thousand people had been killed in a government chemical attack on the outskirts of Damascus.
Damascus categorically rejected the accusation, but a number of Western countries, including the US, France, and the UK, quickly started campaigning for war.
Since then, media outlets have reported US plans for likely surgical attacks, which would be in the form of “cruise-missile strikes,” and “could rely on … US destroyers in the Mediterranean.”
As President Barack Obama prepares to address the nation, once again, on his intention to attack Syria, Armenian-Americans must unequivocally oppose the administration’s plans to engage in yet another war in the Middle East, keeping in mind the definitive impact such an attack will have on the Syrian-Armenian 
community.
The tactic adopted by the Obama Administration to convince the American people of the righteousness of an attack on Syria is reminiscent of when President George W. Bush wanted to secure—at all costs—approval to attack Iraq in 2003, heralding claims of the existence of weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s role in the 9/11 attacks, all of which proved to be false.
The cost of attacking Syria is high. Although the US claims it plans to strike Syria’s military and alleged chemical weapons targets, the loss of civilian life is imminent. The Christian minority population, which includes the large Syrian-Armenian community, will be directly in harm’s way.
Throughout the Syrian conflict, the Armenian community there has weathered enormous losses and continues to live in unbearable conditions, while steadfastly defending the cities and neighborhoods that are populated by Armenians, especially in Aleppo.
Syria has immense significance to the entire Armenian nation, not only as a safe-haven for survivors of the Armenian Genocide, but also as a crossroads of civilizations. Before the crisis began, the present-day Syrian-Armenian community was an integral part of Syria’s development and contribution by Armenians to civil society propelled a safe and secure existence for the community.
The Obama administration is out to teach a lesson to Syria and to assert its role as a superpower. However, in this case, its calculations are simply wrong, because, in its rabid effort to topple the current regime, the US is aiding and abetting groups whose ultimate intentions are to destroy America and cause harm to American interests.
If Obama’s intentions are to punish those who have caused the loss of so many civilian lives, especially after the alleged chemical weapons attacks late last month, perhaps it could take a moment to look inward and assess the volume of casualties caused by US-led drone attacks across the world. To whom is the US accountable for these atrocities?
According to media reports, the majority of Americans are opposed to US intervention, in any form, in the Syrian conflict. If Congress is truly representative of the popular will, then it will oppose the proposed US strikes against Syria.
Earlier this week, the Armenian National Committee of America launched a campaign to make Armenian-American opposition to the Syria attacks known to members of Congress. Take a moment to voice your opposition to US airstrikes.
The proposed US airstrikes against Syria will not resolve the ongoing crisis in that country, nor will they benefit the international community. From our perspective, they will further deteriorate the conditions for our Armenian brothers and sisters in Syria. Let us collectively oppose US airstrikes on Syria.
Americans peoples are confronting the politicians
You Tube
September 7, 2013
A local Prescott man called for John McCain to be arrested and tried for treason.
Syrian question is dominating the G20 summit. Is this a chance for world leaders to achieve a resolution? Can military intervention still be stopped? And is this really about Syrian people and democracy? CrossTalking with Michael Maloof and Brian Becker.
Tokyo was selected on Saturday to host the 2020 Olympic Summer Games, beating out Istanbul and Madrid in a major victory for a country still recovering from a nuclear plant meltdown.
Tokyo, which hosted the 1964 Summer Games, was seen as the safest course for the International Olympic Committee, because of its experience organizing major events and its sense of economic security in a time of political and financial uncertainty across the globe. Japan has twice hosted the Winter Games, most recently in Nagano in 1998, and it co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with South Korea.
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=edit_na_20130907
September 07, 2013 National Security Ministry official Turac Zeynalov claimed to have seen an Azerbaijani arms shipment destined for the PKK. Then he was 
arrested, and died in custody.
In what may be a further sign of the newly cozy relations between Moscow and Baku, a Yaroslavl court has given the green light to the extradition to Azerbaijan of a former National Security Ministry official from Azerbaijan’s exclave of Naxcivan who had sought asylum in Russia.
Ibragim Musayev says he fell foul of his superiors after learning from a colleague of a clandestine shipment of weapons from Baku via the Naxcivan airport to Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). That colleague was arrested and killed.
In a long interview with the news portal Kavkaz-Uzel.ru, Musayev describes his recruitment by Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry, and how he ran a network of agents who supplied information on developments in the northwestern regions of Iran.
He also recalls how a colleague, Turac Zeynalov, told him about a consignment of arms transported by air from Baku to Naxcivan and destined for the PKK, which was then still enmired in a decades-old armed conflict with Azerbaijan’s strategic partner, Turkey. Zeynalov said he had seen in a car placed at his disposal by the drunken army officer accompanying the arms shipment papers, which he scanned, detailing the type and quantity of weaponry and the intended recipient. The involvement of the military tends to substantiate Zeynalov’s stated conviction that such shipments could only have taken place with the connivance of senior officials in Baku.
Zeynalov gave Musayev copies of those papers on August 2, 2011; on August 24, he was arrested and charged with espionage. He was killed just days later; the official cause of death was given as skin cancer.
Musayev was then tasked with seducing Zeynalov’s widow, which he admits to having done. National Security Ministry personnel photographed her naked in bed with him and then blackmailed her into abandoning her protests over her husband’s death. Sickened by the demands made on him, Musayev left Azerbaijan for Russia in September 2012, and in early January 2013 formally requested refugee status there. By that time Azerbaijan had already issued an international warrant for his arrest, which took place one month later.
The documentary evidence Musayev claims to have obtained from Zeynalov of Azerbaijani government involvement in supplying weaponry to the PKK serves yet again to highlight Azerbaijan’s seemingly ambivalent relationship with that organization.
Unsubstantiated allegations of links between the Azerbaijani leadership and the PKK, and/or of the presence of PKK members or even training camps on Azerbaijani territory, appeared regularly in the Azerbaijani opposition press in the early 2000s. Among the officials named in this connection were senior members of the Sumgait municipal council and Baylar Eyyubov, who headed then-President Heydar Aliyev’s personal security service and is said to be of Kurdish origin.
In June 2002, the National Security Ministry finally issued an official statement denying that there was a PKK presence in Azerbaijan. But at the same time, that statement revealed that no less than 33 members of the PKK had been apprehended on Azerbaijani territory in the previous few years.
Opposition parliament deputies have demanded on at least three occasions since 2002 that the parliament formally designate the PKK a terrorist organization, but the ruling Yeni Azerbaycan Party consistently blocked a debate on the issue. The most recent effort, in December 2009, was spearheaded by Camil Hasanli, who was selected last month by the opposition National Council of Democratic Forces as its reserve candidate for the October 9 presidential election. On that occasion, parliament speaker Oktay Asadov responded that once the Turkish parliament declares the PKK a terrorist organization, Azerbaijan will follow suit.
Finally, it should be noted that some Azerbaijani politicians have publicly suggested that Heydar Aliyev was a Kurd. That belief was based partly on his physical appearance, and partly on newspaper reports identifying his elder brother Hasan as the first Kurd in Soviet Azerbaijan to embark on postgraduate study and defend his dissertation.
Prominent members of Azerbaijan’s Kurdish minority, according to a Moscow blogger quoted by veteran analyst Paul Goble, include the mayor of Baku and the head of the state oil company SOCAR. That blogger estimated the number of Kurds in Azerbaijan at 150,000, compared with the official figure of 70,000. Which figure is closer to the truth is impossible to say, given that the Kurds have not been listed as a separate ethnic group in Azerbaijan since the 1959 Soviet census.
Source: RFE/RL
A group of Islamist militants from Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region fighting in Syria say they have split with a major Al-Qaeda-linked rebel unit.
The group, calling itself the Mujahedin of the Caucasus and the Levant, announced its decision to split from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in a video posted on YouTube on September 3.
The video’s authenticity could not be immediately verified.
The announcement in the video was made by a bearded man standing among some 40 fighters and speaking in halting Russian.
It was translated into Arabic by another fighter.
Islamist militants from Russia’s North Caucasus are known to have been involved in some of the major attacks against Syrian government forces over the past year.
Russia is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally.