LEAKED STRATFOR EMAILS: Source Says Several Countries Already Have Forces In Syria

From The Business Insider: 

Special Operations Forces from numerous countries were on the ground in Syria as of December and the island of Cyprus would be the main base for an air strike against Bashar Assad's Syrian regime, according to internal Stratfor emails leaked by WikiLeaks.
An email dated Dec. 7 of last year recaps meetings attended by an analyst that day.
The analyst writes that he spent most of the afternoon at the Pentagon with the U.S. Air Force strategic studies group— "guys who spend their time trying to understand and explain to the USAF chief the big picture in areas where they're operating in"— that consisted of four men at the Lieutenant Colonel level, including one French and one British representative. 
"After a couple hours of talking, they said without saying that SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce [i.e. reconnaissance] missions and training opposition forces... They have been told to prepare contingencies and be ready to act within 2-3 months, but they still stress that this is all being done as contingency planning, not as a move toward escalation."
They then discuss the option of an air campaign in Syria and what its objectives would be, saying the situation makes "Libya look like a piece of cake" because of the geography and Syria's robust air defenses. 
"The main base they would use is Cyprus, hands down. Brits and French would fly out of there. They kept stressing how much is stored at Cyprus and how much recce comes out of there... There still seems to be a lot of confusion over what a military intervention involving an air campaign would be designed to achieve."
As more emails are published, the potential credibility of Stratfor's network of informants becomes clearer. Reports with information attributed to a source often come with a name, description, source reliability rating, item credibility rating, special handling and a handler.
One email report (sent on Dec. 10) describes its source as "Former NSC official in Turkey, adviser to Erdogan" and provides detailed information about Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's operation for colon cancer as well as Turkey's plan to create conditions for civil war in Syria (by deploying Special Operation Forces).
Another from the same day cites a Reuters correspondent of Syrian-Jordanian heritage when passing along information about Syrian President Bashar Assad's mother being "disappointed in Bashar and [his brother] Maher for the mess that they have created."
Stratfor provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
WikiLeaks has published 712 out of what they say is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails dated between July 2004 and December 2011 obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.



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Explaining The European €2.5 Trillion Liquidity Catch 22 Closed Loop

From Zero Hedge, by Tyler Durden

If anyone is confused about what the real issue in Europe is, the following two charts should explain it all.

Because stripping all the recent rhetoric and bluster about this insolvent nation or that, the real explanation for Europe's troubles, and the real reason why virtually every country except for Germany, is essentially insolvent (something that has absolutely nothing to do with how much liquidity the ECB can provide, and in fact by making liquidity free to fill transitory needs, the ECB enables even more destructive behavior that does nothing to fix the cause), has to do with the flow of cash. And specifically the transfer of cash within the mercantilist union.
The first chart below summarizes the various individual current account deficits within the Eurozone, and how it is clearly in Germany's best interest to perpetuate a common currency, which prevents its legacy currency, the DEM from soaring, and thus crippling intraunion current account flows that benefit Germany. As for external trade flows: the weaker the Euro, the better so Europe can export its stuff to China and the US (hence the need for a perpetual threat of a PIIGS Implosion, which prevent the EUR from rising on endless concerns foa default).

Source: Diapason
Now this plan worked for many years, until about 5 years, the debt capacity of the Periphery started getting filled, and instead, via the Eurosystem Banks hub and spoke system, of which the ECB is at the hub, those countries with current accounts had to start funding indirectly, via TARGET2, the capital deficiancy of the big CA deficit countries. The second chart below shows just how far this divergence has gotten.

Source: Goldman


The problem, as we noted last year, is that the system may have crossed a threshold where Germany's explicit funding of the CA deficit transgressors is now far too large for it to be sustainable (as Jens Weidmann has now confirmed).
Alternatively, should the status quo continue, and it very well may with just bailout after bailout in store - in other words the same defection-encouraging game theory stance - the only way it can work is if Germany continues to recycle the CA surplus right back into the European periphery. There is, however, no ceiling to this activity, and in several years, the German TARGET2 "receivable" will be in the trillions, or well greater than its entire GDP.
And that, in a nutshell, is what is happening in Europe.
Everything else is merely noise masking the expansion of the relationship whereby Germany pretends its increasing losses, in the form of recycled sunk Current Account "costs" as a victory.
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Related:
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The Hundred-Billion-Euro Bomb: Euro-Zone Central Bank System Massively Imbalanced

Spain's sovereign thunderclap and the end of Merkel's Europe

Dutch Freedom Party pushes euro exit as €2.4 trillion rescue bill looms

Catch 22 for Western Democracies

Syria, MISO And Other Distasteful Spin

From NSBC, March 6, 2012 

By Christof Lehmann – The proverb “the first victim of war is truth” has proven to be one of the most reliable constants of warfare. Deceit is another of the constants, and in the war on Syria both have proven their reliability. The extent, however, to which everything from strongly biased reporting, to plainly manufactured lies have been sold as truth by Western and Arab Media, including so called “progressive media” such as Democracy Now or Al Jazeera, is astounding, and has endowed the proverb the first victim or war being the truth, and the strategy of war by deceit with a new dimension of mass manipulation.

If one is asking the question if the US Military made the decision to re-define PSYOP, orPsychological Operations as MISO, Military Information Support Operation in 2011 because Western Main Stream Media had been catching up with Western Civilian and Military Intelligence Services and Armed Forces Propaganda, one may risk to intellectually give the impression of being the proverbial dog that is trying to catch his own tail.

The saddening truth is, that even most of the so called progressive media, humanist media, and by what other name they sale themselves to a public that is willing to look beyond the obvious propaganda, have been co-opted, reigned in, and become part and parcel with NATO´s war´s under the pretense of  being humanitarian, supporting legitimate opposition that is being brutally oppressed by the dictator Assad.

One question that begs serious consideration for citizens in so called Western Democracies is, if a participatory political system can function when media has been co-opted by the very institutions that it is supposed to be a watchdog against. The question is rhetoric, true. But the question needs to be urgently answered, and the question that arises as a consequence of the answer needs to urgently debated and more importantly, it needs to be acted upon. “What moral and ethical right does any US-Administration, EU-Member States Government have to promote Democracy in Syria, as long as the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, E.U. Terror Laws, and National European Nations anti terror laws based on them, have undermined each and every of the checks and balances, civil liberties and rights, that distinguish democratic, participatory systems from tyranny and fascism ? “A relatively correct answer would be ” as much as the totalitarian regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose citizens never had the privilege of being able to vote for their governments” but then comes the big BUT.

BUT, when you spice tyranny with a sufficient amount of MISO, people don´t realize that they are tasting a fascist boot in their face. In fact one of the greatest successes of NATO`s political and military leadership is, that they have succeeded at co-opting so called progressive media with the result that even parties under the International Humanist umbrella and national peace movements are decrying anyone who opposes yet another humanitarian war as “supporter of tyranny“, “the fourth column of Assad and Russia”, and what not.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that NATO is waging an illegal and dangerous war on Syria, that it has plans to wage a war on Iran and Hezbollah, the fact that the ongoing war has the potential to develop into a regional and global armed conflict at any given moment. The criminal energy, the criminal network, and the criminal intention are as present in NATO`s political and military leadership today as they were present in Nazi Germany. To make matters worse, the populations of NATO member states are as well trained and conditioned to ask for a war as the population of Germany was when Hitler asked “An thus I ask You, People of Germany, do You want the Total War” and the crowds where cheering, “Yes, Sig Heil”.

Propaganda has developed into Social Engineering, Social Engineering into PSYOP, PSYOP has developed into MISO, but beyond the difference in flavor and appearance we can taste the same tyranny and we the people seem to like it. That is, we do until the war is brought to our own doorstep.As long as the war is kept far enough away from our own doorstep those disputed figures, 2000 dead, 5000 dead, and how many of them are actually peaceful protesters, how many of the peaceful protesters were murdered by the Syrian Military, and how many of them are actually armed insurgents are entertaining at our work places. And some of us with lefty tendencies, who feel oh so liberated and progressive may even subscribe to such intellectual marvels of media who question if not many of the casualties are armed insurgents and Syrian Military forces. As long as the status quo of Propaganda is maintained everything is fluffy and fine.

So who is supposed to ask the tough questions then ? Amie Goodman ?

Here is a number of questions that somewhat awake journalists could try to answer if they dare.

After the Syrian military has succeeded in liberating the city of Homs and Baab Amr from the grabs of NATO trained, payed, and armed mercenaries, the bulk of the armed insurgents are located in Idlib, near the border o Turkey, in Hama, near the border to Lebanon, and in Dara, near the border to Jordan. What international law is applicable for Jordan`s hosting of some 40.000 foreign fighters who are infiltrating the region around Dara, murdering Syrians, and when will we see a war crimes tribunal where King Abdullah is indicted ?

What international law is applicable for Saudi Arabia`s material support of Al Qaeda, and it´s Omar Brigade that has been deployed to Syria in September 2011, and when will we see a war crimes tribunal against the Saudi Minister of the Interior who is their controller ?

What international law is applicable for Turkeys housing, training, financing and arming Muslim Brotherhood fighters on Turkish / NATO military bases; insurgents who are infiltrating and murdering Syrians in and near Idlib. What law is applicable for Turkey having established an operations room and recruitment office for mercenaries in Amman, Jordan, sending foreign fighters to murder Syrians. When will we see a war crimes tribunal against Turkish political and military leaders.

What international law is applicable for Qatar´s and the USA´s massive material, military and financial support of the Al Qaeda associated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the at least 18.000 LIFG / NATO mercenaries that have been deployed under the command of known terrorist and NATO asset Abdelhakim Belhadj, who are murdering Syrian citizens in the Dara and Dara region of Syria, and when will we see Qatari, US, and Libyan political and military leaders at a war crimes tribunal ?

What international law is applicable for the case of Saudi-Lebanese citizen Saad Hariri and the leader of the Druze community in Lebanon, Walid Jumblatt, who both are heavily involved in financing and arming insurgents in Syria, who murder Syrian citizens, and when will we see a war crimes tribunal against them ?

Since the establishment of a separate contract between the UN and NATO, providing NATO a de facto privilege as UN´s official world military force, and the subsequent NATO abuses of the UNSC, is the ICC at the Haag credible and can it legally indict anyone who has been suffering a UN or NATO sanctioned aggression ? Do we need to re think the UN and international law ? Do we have a de facto world wide, NATO dominated state of legal tyranny ? And what should be done about it ?

Another question the so called progressive press fails to ask is, how it can be that we are publishing casualty figures after casualty figures, without asking the question how those casualty figures might be related to the massive number of foreign insurgents who murder Syrian citizens. Another relevant question would be, where precisely NATO is treating it´s wounded mercenaries and or hire murderers who are getting wounded. Are they included in the figures that are provided by the one or the other Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and if so, are they counted as peaceful protesters ?

But – I doubt that Amy Goodman and colleagues will ask those questions. Rather decry people who ask those kind of questions as supporters of tyranny while demanding Democracy. Now! Sadly, it seems that democracy Amy Goodman and Al Jazeera style has been co-opted for propagating democracy Qatar and Saudi Style – So when will we have a chop chop square in London, Paris, New York ? It seems the fashion of the day, and after all there are a lot of dangerous elements out there, who are attempting a subversion of the prevalent fascism. Radicals who demand that war criminals are brought to justice, NATO criminals included, and not at a ICC Kangaroo Court. Dangerous elements who refuse to sing “Long Live The Humanitarian War – War Is Peace – Long Live Comrade Belhadj”. It´s for those dangerous elements that we need a Patriot Act, A National Defense Authorization Act, EU Anti Terror Laws. Let´s lock them away forever, throw away the key. Murder them with impunity, those radicals. Let`s live in our brave new world of Democracy. NOW.

PEPE ESCOBAR: PUTIN NOT PART OF THE NWO, LABELLED EVIL BY ELITES