The Liars of 9/11 : Steve Rannazzisi

The Coming War in Vojvodina

Powder Keg : Refugees of the War of Terror and the Coming War in Vojvodina

The phoney « refugee crisis »

The left-hand part of this photo has been widely published by the Atlantist Press. The victim, a Syrian Kurd child, Aylan Kurdi, is supposed to have been washed up by the sea. However, his corpse is perpendicular to the waves instead of being parallel. On the right-hand part, the presence of an official Turkish photographer reinforces the suggestion of a staged event. In the background we can see people bathing.

A wave of brutal emotion suddenly submerged the populations of the NATO countries. People suddenly realised the drama of the refugees in the Mediterranean - a tragedy that has been going on for years to their complete indifference.

This change of attitude is due to the publication of a photograph showing a drowned child washed up on a Turkish beach. It doesn’t matter that this photo is staged - the sea washes up bodies parallel to the waves, never perpendicular. It doesn’t matter that in less than two days, it was instantly reproduced on the front pages of almost all the newspapers in the NATO zone You have already been advised that the Western Press is free and pluralist.

Continuing in the same vein, television channels multiplied reports on the exodus of thousands of Syrians who were crossing the Balkans on foot. Particular attention was given to the crossing of Hungary, which first of all built a completely pointless barbed-wire fence, then made a number of contradictory decisions which allowed the filming of crowds walking along the railway lines and mobbing their way onto trains.

« Reacting » to the emotion that they had provoked in their citizens, the « surprised and upset » European leaders struggled to find a way to bring help to these refugees. Antonio Guterres, ex-President of the Socialist International, and present UN High Commissioner for Refugees, invited himself to the debate, advocating « the obligatory participation of all the member states of the European Union. According to preliminary estimations, European countries will probably have to expand their relocation opportunities to 200,000 places », he declared.

What is the real problem, who is managing it, and what is their goal ?

The Mediterranean refugees

Since the « Arab Spring », in 2011, the number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean and enter the European Union has augmented considerably. It has more than doubled, and rose to 626,000 in 2014.

Flow of refugees towards the European Union (in hundreds of thousands)

Source : Eurostat

However, contrary to a common misconception, this is not a new and unmanageable wave. In 1992, when the Union numbered only 15 of its current 28 states, it received even more than that - 672,000 refugees for 380 million inhabitants. So there remains a considerable margin before the refugees begin to destabilise the European economy and its 508 million present inabitants.

More than two thirds of the migrants are men. According to their declarations, more than half of them are between 18 and 34 years old. So, generally speaking, this is not a family issue.

Proportion of male migrants who entered the Union in 2014.

Source : Eurostat

Contrary to the information presently being published by the media, less than a third of these are refugees from war zones : 20 % are Syrians, 7 % are Afghans, and 3 % are Iraqis.

The other two thirds do not come from countries at war – they are for the most part economic migrants.

In other words, the migration phenomenon is only marginally linked to the « Arab Spring » and war. These are poor people who leave their countries to try their luck in the rich countries, by virtue of the post-colonial order and globalisation. This phenomenon, after having slowed from 1992 to 2006, has started again, and is progessively growing. It only currently represents 0,12 % per year of the European population, and so – if correctly handled – should present no short-term danger for the European Union.

The President of the German Industrial Federation, Ulrich Grillo, hopes for 800,000 extra foreign workers in Germany. Since European agreements forbid this, and since public opinion is hostile to the idea, he is playing his part in the staged « refugee crisis » in order to force the evolution of the law.

Do the migrants pose a problem ?

This flow of refugees is a worry for the European populations, but is warmly encouraged by German business leaders. In December 2014, the German « boss’s boss », Ulrich Grillo, hypocritically masking his interests behind a trickle of fine sentiment, declared to the DPA : « This counry has been open to immigration for a long time, and it must remain so ». « As a prosperous country, and also out of Christian love for our neighbours, our country should be able to welcome more refugees ». And again : «I want to be clear – I am in no way close to the neo-Nazis and racists who are meeting in Dresden and elsewhere ». More seriously : « Because of our demographic evolution, we are consolidating our growth and prosperity through immigration » [1].

This speech uses the same arguments as those used by the French business leaders in the 1970’s. Even more so today, the European populations are relatively well-educated and qualified, while the great majority of migrants are not, and can easily assume certain types of work. Progressively, the arrival of a non-qualified work-force who would accept conditions inferior to those of Europeans was causing tension on the job market. French bosses then began to push for family regrouping. The law of 1976, its interpretation by the Conseil d’État in 1977, and the jurisprudence by the European Court for Human Rights, deeply destabilised society. Since the adoption of the same dispositions, the same phenomenon can now be observed in Germany, with the inclusion, in 2007, of family regrouping in the immigration laws.

Contrary to a widely-held belief, the economic migrants do not cause an identity problem in Europe, but are missed in their home country. On the other hand, they are causing social problems in Germany, where the working class is already the victim of ferocious exploitation, because of the policies introduced notably by Ulrich Grillo. Everywhere else, it is not the economic migrants who are causing the problem, but the family regrouping.

Who is fabricating the current image of the « refugee crisis » ?

Since the beginning of the year, the passage from Turkey to Hungary, which used to cost 10,000 dollars, has dropped to 2,000 dollars per person. It’s true that certain human smugglers are slavers, but many of them are simply trying to make themselves useful to people in distress. In any case, who pays the difference ?

Furthermore, at the start of the war against Syria, Qatar printed and distributed false Syrian passports to jihadists from al-Qaïda so that they could convince Atlantist journalists that they were « rebels », and not foreign mercenaries. False Syrian passports are today distributed by certain smugglers to non-Syrian migrants. The migrants who accept them rightly believe that these false papers will facilitate their welcome in the Union. Indeed, since the member states of the European Union have closed their embassies in Syria - except for the Czech Republic and Romania – they have no way of checking the validity of these passports.

Six months ago, I was astonished by the blindness of the EU leaders, who failed to understand that the intention of the United States was to weaken their countries, including by means of the « refugee crisis » [2]. Last month, the magazine Info Direkt confirmed that, according to the Austrian Intelligence services, the passage of Syrian refugees to Europe was organised by the United States [3]. This charge still has to be verified, but already constitutes a solid hypothesis.

Moreover, all these events and manipulations would be without gravity if the member states of the EU would put an end to family reunification. In that case, the only real problem would not be the arrival of the migrants, but the fate of those who die on their journey across the Mediterranean. And that is the single reality that no European leader wants to consider.

What is NATO preparing ?

So far, NATO, or in other words the international armed branch of the United States, has not reacted. But according to its most recent missions, the Atlantic Alliance is reserving for itself the possibility of military intervention if the migrations should become important.

Since we know that only NATO is capable of publishing false information on the front page of all the newspapers of its member states, it is very probable that it has organised the present campaign. Besides which, the fact that all migrants are represented as refugees fleeing the war zones, and the insistance about the supposed Syrian origin of these migrants, allows us to suppose that NATO is preparing a public action linked to the war which it is secretly waging against Syria.

The Great Serb Migration of 1690

Hungary’s Viktor Orban: Washington’s New Enemy Image

Hungary and its populist nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban have come into the cross-hairs of Washington’s political elites. His sin? Not buckling under to the often destructive diktats of the Brussels EU Commission; attempting to define a Hungarian national identity. But his cardinal sin is his deepening relationship with Russia and his defiance of Washington in signing an agreement with Gazprom for bringing the Russian South Stream gas pipeline into the EU via Hungary.

Orban has himself undergone a political journey since he was elected as Hungary’s second-youngest Prime Ministers in 1998. Back then he oversaw the entry of Hungary along with Poland and the Czech Republic into NATO over Russia’s protest, and into the EU. As Prime Minister during far more prosperous economic times in the EU, Orban cut taxes, abolished university tuition for qualified students, expanded maternity benefits, and attracted German industry with low-cost Hungarian labor. One of his American “advisers” then was James Denton, linked with the Color Revolution Washington NGO, Freedom House. Orban seemed the darling of Washington’s neo-cons. In 2001 he was given the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute’s Freedom Award.

But in 2010 after six years in the opposition, Orban returned, this time with a resounding majority for his Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union Party, Fidesz for short. In fact Fidesz won a 68% supermajority in Parliament, giving it the necessary votes to alter the Constitution and pass new laws, which it did. Ironically, in a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the United States Obama Administration and the European Parliament for placing too much power in the hands of Fidesz. Orban was accused by Daniel Cohn-Bendit of the European Greens of making Hungary on the model of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. He was definitely not playing by the approved Brussels Rulebook for politically submissive EU politicians. Fidesz began to be demonized in EU media as the Hungarian version of United Russia and Orban as the Hungarian Putin. That was in 2012.

Now its getting alarming for the Atlanticists and their EU followers. Orban has defied EU demands to stop construction of Russia’s important South Stream gas pipeline.

Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline would guarantee EU gas together with German-Russian Nord Stream that could bypass the war in Ukraine something Washington bitterly opposes for obvious reasons

Last January Orban’s government announced a € 10 billion deal with the Russian state nuclear energy company to refurbish Hungary’s only nuclear power plant at Paks, originally built during the Soviet era with Russian technology.

That caused some attention in Washington. Similarly when Orban criticized the United States this past summer for failing to ultimately resolve the global financial crisis its banks and its lax regulation caused, and praised China, Turkey and Russia as better models. He declared in words not too different from what I have often used that Western democracies, “will probably be incapable of maintaining their global competitiveness in the upcoming decades and will instead be scaled down unless they are capable of changing themselves significantly.” In addition, Orban’s government managed to free Hungary from decades of devastating IMF bondage. In August 2013, the Hungarian Economic Ministry announced that it had, thanks to a “disciplined budget policy,” repaid the remaining €2.2 billion owed to the IMF. No more onerous IMF-forced state privatizations or conditionalities. The head of the Hungarian Central Bank then demanded the IMF close its offices in Budapest. In addition, echoing Iceland, the State Attorney General brought charges against the country’s three previous prime ministers because of the criminal amount of debt into which they plunged the nation. That’s a precedent that surely causes cold sweat in some capitals of the EU or Washington and Wall Street.

But the real alarm bells rang when Orban and his Fidesz party approved a go-ahead, together with neighboring Austria, of the South Stream Russian pipeline, ignoring EU claims it violated EU rules. Orben proclaimed at a meeting with Germany’s Horst Seehofer in Munich on November 6, “”Es lebe die österreichisch-ungarische Energiemonarchie” („The Austro-Hungarian Energy Monarchy Lives.“)

The US elites sounded the alarm immediately. The ultra-establishment New York Times ran a lead editorial, “Hungary’s Dangerous Slide.” They declared, “The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary is sliding toward authoritarianism and defying the fundamental values of the European Union — and getting away with it.”

The Times revealed the real cause of Washington and Wall Street alarm: “Hungary’s most recent expression of contempt for the European Union is its passage of a law on Monday that clears the way for Russia’s South Stream natural gas pipeline to traverse Hungary. The new law is in clear violation of the European Parliament’s call in September for member states to cancel South Stream, and of the economic sanctions against Russia imposed by the European Union and the United States after Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Instead of issuing tepid expressions of concern over antidemocratic policies, the European Union should be moving to sanction Hungary. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, should exercise his power to force Mr. Navracsics to resign.” Tibor Navracsics, has just been named the new European Commissioner of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, a post in Brussels that has arguably little to do with gas pipelines.

Next we can expect the National Endowment for Democracy and the usual US Government-backed NGO’s to find an excuse to launch mass opposition protests against Fidesz and Orban for his unforgivable crime of trying to make Hungary’s energy independent of the US-created insanity in Ukraine.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

Tsipras front confronts EU brutal austerity

Washington DC, February 17, 2014 – Can an effective European-wide political front be quickly improvised in opposition to the brutal austerity policies dictated since 2008 by the infamous Troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund?  

This is the question which will be answered between now and May 22-25 in response to an effort led by Alexis Tsipras, who is also the candidate for prime minister of Greece put forward by the Syriza left party.  Late last year, Tsipras was officially nominated as a candidate for the presidency of the Brussels European Commission by the European Left Party in the context of the upcoming elections for the European Parliament.  During February, Tsipras has taken his campaign to the Netherlands, France, and Italy, with further appearances planned in Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ireland, Great Britain, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain. 

Thanks to this campaign by Tsipras, there is now new hope, after years of fragmentation and impotence, of assembling a coherent European-wide programmatic alternative to the three headed Cerberus of European austerity, deflation, and anti-worker measures.

 As he steps onto the European stage, Tsipras’ authority is bolstered by the unique success of Syriza under his leadership in recent years.  As of now, he is well on his way to becoming prime minister of Greece.  In late November 2013, Syriza passed several percentage points ahead of the ruling New Democracy party of the current Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had was installed in Athens by the Troika as its austerity enforcer.  So far, this lead has held up.  

Tsipras has pointed out that the success of Syriza in the 2012 Greek parliamentary elections led to the partial collapse of the discredited social democratic PASOK party of the Papandreou family, and he is predicting that the New Democracy, which has presided over an increase of Greek unemployment to the record depression-level high of 28%, will collapse in the next election -- which could come at any time between now and 2016.  If New Democracy is in trouble, this parallels the recent split of the Berlusconi party in Italy, and factional warfare among US Republicans.
 
Tsipras starts with an uncompromising rejection of neoliberal austerity measures of the type which have so obviously made the Greek crisis much worse.  He takes a strong stand against the Troika and its so-called Memorandum, referring to the letters of intent submitted by the Greek government to the International Monetary Fund, detailing the various budget cuts, mass firings of public workers, and reductions of public services which Greece is supposed to carry out in order to secure the position of the zombie bankers.  Needless to say, the political parties which have most reliably tried to enforce the IMF dictates are those of the so-called Socialist International (or Second International).

An International Conference to Reduce Debt, Launch a New Deal

Across all of Europe, but especially in the southern tier and among nations who have undergone bailouts by the troika -- including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus -- national debt represents a crushing and unmanageable burden.  The bailouts have not helped the national economies, but have been designed solely to save the zombie bankers from insolvency. 

Tsipras’ answer is the convening of an international debt conference along the lines of the London debt conference of 1953, which dealt with the residual debt of Germany left over from World War I reparations under the Young Plan, and other payments.  Germany’s creditors agreed to cancel about 50% of the country’s outstanding international financial debts, while rescheduling payments for the remainder over 30 years.  Some payments were postponed until such time as the country might be reunified, which did not happen for almost 40 years.  This result helped foster the successful of the West German economy in the years after 1953.

An international debt conference of this type held today could have highly beneficial effects on the world economy.  Even some financiers are prepared to concede that haircuts and debt write-downs of debt are inevitable.  In addition to reducing the debt burden on many European countries, the conference could be used to promote international bans on the most toxic derivatives, such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.  It could also become a vehicle for at least the partial de-privatization of the European Central Bank, by forcing this institution to open a credit stimulus window offering trillions of euros in financing for job creation in infrastructure, education, and science.  African countries, Eastern European countries, and indeed a wide range of states from around the world might be interested in attending.  

 Tsipras also calls for a post-writedown New Deal of development investments to revive the stricken economies and allow them to stay viable into the future.  (We note that if private bankers should refuse to make these investments, then institutions like the European Central Bank will have to be pressed into service.)  Tsipras makes clear that if European bankers and the politicians they control, such as Merkel, refuse to cooperate in common-sense reforms, Greece and other countries would reluctantly have to resort to unilateral debt cancellations.  

Unilateral Debt Moratorium Only If Creditors Get “Violent”

In a recent interview with the Greek leader we read:  “Tsipras said German Chancellor Angela Merkel would come to realize that an organized debt write-off was a more sustainable solution for Germany than continuing to pour loans into countries that could never repay them because austerity policies were causing endless recession.  Asked whether a Syriza-led government would unilaterally default if other powers refused to negotiate a debt write-off, Tsipras said he would prefer to avoid unilateral action, but Athens might have to declare a moratorium on interest payments.  ‘One weapon we could use if our partners are very, very violent (tough) is to stop repaying interest in order to finance the Greek economy. But this is not our intention,’ he said, speaking in English.” Paul Taylor, “Greek leftist seeks negotiated debt write-off,” Reuters, February 4, 2014)

In an op-ed published in Le Monde of Paris, Tsipras mocked German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the “Sleepwalker of Europe,” urging her to realize that her characteristic methods of deflation and ultra austerity are failing everywhere, and actually represent a threat to Germany’s economic future as well.  Tsipras is thus not a priori against the euro, and this sets him apart from the right-wing populists.  In Rome he stressed that Europe is the battlefield where the class struggle of our time is being fought out, whether individual leftists like it or not.  The European nations are interdependent, and the need for solidarity among them is greater now than at any time since World War II.  The Tsipras list, he indicated, will defend Europe against conservatives, neoliberals, and pro-austerity social Democrats.  It will not be the Europe of austerity, but a humanist and humanitarian Europe, concerned about the lives of immigrants.

In France, Tsipras will receive the backing of the Parti de gauche, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who took about 11% of the votes in the first round of the last French presidential election.  In Germany, Tsipras should be supported by Die Linke, which got almost 9% in last year’s general election.  In Italy, there are no left wing parties in the 8 to 10% range, so Tsipras will have to rely on an ad hoc list including such figures as Guido Viale, a former leader of the anarcho-Maoist Lotta Continua, and Barbara Spinelli, the daughter of a leading Eurogarch and European federalist. Dubious figures like the anarchosyndicalist Toni Negri, formerly of Potere Operaio, are also circling in hope of increasing their own gate receipts through the prestige of Tsipras. 

In introducing Tsipras in Rome, Viale stressed green and ecological themes, which Tsipras would be well advised to soft-pedal.  Tsipras has shown great dexterity in purging Syriza of discredited leaders responsible for past defeats.  Over time, he may be able to apply the same talents to the mixed bag of figures who are now joining his effort.  In any case, European voters need to look beyond individual personalities or even individual national parties to recognize the urgent historical necessity of what Tsipras is doing, and support him wholeheartedly. 

It is notable that Tsipras does not waste much time reciting the usual impotent litany of radical environmentalists and ecologists, whose concerns are often viewed as diversions for the affluent by desperate working families fighting for survival in this depression.  Environmental concerns are quickly mentioned, but they get short shrift.  That rhetoric will be largely relegated to the right wing European Greens.  In this way, Tsipras can avoid the Malthusian blind alley of “green jobs” based on primitive windmill and solar cell technology which has done so much to cripple the left wing of the US Democratic Party.  Tsipras must also take care to steer clear of the anti-infrastructure demagogy pedaled by the Italian Beppe Grillo and various anti-development or atrophy economists.

 The Tsipras candidacy represents an important contribution to the potential success of the mass strike wave of 2014-2015 in Western Europe and North America which is now getting underway.  It is a key step towards the creation of a European-wide anti-banker movement to seize control of the European Central Bank and to mobilize the credit-creating power of that institution for a vast infrastructure and science program capable of creating the 40 million new productive jobs Europe needs to exit from the current economic depression.

The Competition: Eurogarchs and Eurocrats on Parade

The outgoing president of the European Commission whom Tsipras wants to replace is the Portuguese José Manuel Barroso, a Bilderberg stalwart who traces his political lineage back to the fascist Salazar dictatorship which ruled in Lisbon for half a century up until 1975.  Tsipras will be running for EU Commission chief against an array of the Eurogarchs and Eurocrats who have fought any vestiges of European social and economic justice left over from the Treaty of Rome, in line with their toxic neoliberal and pro-financier ideology favoring a Europe of the banks and cartels.

A leading adversary for Tsipras will be the current European Parliament president Martin Shultz of the social democratic block, a current which is in the midst of a hard pro-austerity and anti-worker right turn.  The flagship German SPD has just entered a grand coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of the austerity Valkyries.  In France, the socialist President François Hollande has totally repudiated his anti-austerity promises, and is launching new attacks on the standard of living of French working people, even as he promises to cut taxes on banks and corporations, to say nothing of planning a new Middle East war with Obama.  In Italy, the vaguely socialist Democratic Party (which contains the remnants of the old PCI) has just the propelled the pro-austerity Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, into power – a politician notorious for his opposition to unions and his plan to make Italy a hire and fire labor market on the worst American model.

 Also in the running for the post of EU commission president for the Malthusian European Green Party of Germany will be Ska Keller, a former punk-rock devotee and opponent of coal mines in Brandenburg, and José Bove, the veteran anti-globalization activist who now likes to present himself in typical Rousseauvian fashion as a peasant.  Only about 22,000 voters took part in the European Green internet primary, suggesting dwindling support for this right-tending formation.  Working families looking for help will not find it here.

 The explicitly pro-banker Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) has nominated former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt of the Bilderberg group, who narrowly edged out current EU Commission Vice President and economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn of Finland, also of Bilderberg, who has aggressively represented the interests of European zombie bankers in Brussels. Rehn will likely now be a candidate to become the EU’s foreign affairs boss the post currently held by the unfortunate Lady Ashton. 

 The biggest caucus in the European Parliament is currently the European Popular Party, which is dominated by austerity ghoul Merkel, whose favored candidate is Jean-Claude Juncker, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, a tiny nation dominated by its offshore banking center.  The candidate will be chosen on March 6-7 in Dublin.  Austerity enforcers like Greece’s Samaras, Mariano Rajoy of Spain, Victor Orban of Hungary, and Donald Tusk of Poland are members of this grouping.

US-UK Media Tout Right-Wing Racist and Anti-Euro Parties

 So far, the Anglo-American news media have focused their attention on the supposed momentum being built up by racist, xenophobic, and anti-European parties.  There is indeed a European tradition of using the European Parliament elections for protest votes.  In the hopes of wrecking the euro as a rival to the dollar and the pound, the Anglo-Americans have been touting the potential of a xenophobic block (or “brownshirt international”) around Marine Le Pen of the French National Front and the Dutch Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders, who have come together on a platform of wrecking the European Union from within.  Le Pen is indeed likely to benefit from voters horrified by the failure of French President Hollande, but forming a parliamentary group at the European level requires 25 members from at least seven countries.

According to University of Georgia professor Cas Mudde, “eleven far right parties will (re-)gain entry into the next European Parliament: the Austrian FPÖ (long led by the late Jörg Haider), the Belgian VB, the Bulgarian Attack, the Danish People’s Party (DFP), the Dutch PVV (Wilders), the French FN, Greek Golden Dawn (CA), the Hungarian Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), the Italian Northern League (LN), the Latvian National Alliance (NA), and the Sweden Democrats (SD)” plus perhaps the Slovak People’s Party-New Slovakia (LSNS), for a total of between 40 and 50 seats. (Washington Post, February 11, 2014)  Attack, Jobbik and Golden Dawn are more or less explicitly fascist.  The UK Independence Party (UKIP), while thoroughly xenophobic and reactionary, is likely to remain in splendid isolation.  

Also standing alone so far is the anti-immigrant Five Star movement of Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo, who is attempting to resurrect his sagging fortunes with a breakthrough in the European elections.  According to Marine Le Pen, Grillo sought contact with her with a view toward some kind of an alliance, but these talks broke down.  These are the groupings which Tsipras has in mind when he condemns right-wing populist leaders who, like the Ron Paul libertarians in the United States,  claim to be opposed to the banker-dominated system, but who in reality function as the “reserve army” of the financiers’ system.  In Italy, Tsipras is likely to take votes from Grillo.

 Unlike these politicians, who are eager to serve London and Washington by developing a strident anti-euro demagogy, Tsipras recommends a struggle against the bankers on the existing European battlefield, rather than first retreating into the national isolation of small states where post-euro resistance against J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs would be even more difficult.

The European Left won about 4.5% of the votes in the last European Parliament election in 2009.  This was approximately the strength of the Synaspismós party (the forerunner of Syriza) when Tsipras became its leader.  Within a few years, Tsipras’ 4.5% had become 27% on the way to becoming the largest Greek party.  We will soon see whether this exploit can be repeated at the European level.

Richard Branson

DICK BRANSON is a dead groovy guy. All ready famous as a pickle mogul, a music baron and a record breaker, the world's richest bearded git now moves into the world of Giant Robot Destroying! Yes, those wicked shape-changing Decepticon robots really meet their match when they cross dicks with Dick in issue 160 of the crap comic Transformers. Basically this giant robot shark is well pissed off with Dick and tries to do him but Dick's too hard. Does this mark a new era of Dick style superheroes? Superdick? The Incredible Hippy? Spider Branson? Captain Capitalist? Thrills hopes not.

Steven Wells, New Musical Express

Taking Back the FDA by Dr Marcia Angell, MD

Taking Back the FDA

by Marcia Angell

Boston Globe

Monday, February 26, 2007

It’s time to take the Food and Drug Administration back from the drug companies.

Before a prescription drug can be sold, the manufacturer must conduct clinical trials to prove to the FDA that the drug is safe and effective. Without that, doctors have no way of knowing how good or bad a drug is. Just trying it out would be not only risky, but unreliable, since individual experience can be misleading. The scrutiny that this agency exists to provide is vital to our health.

But in 1992, Congress put the fox in the chicken coop. It passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which authorizes drug companies to pay “user fees” to the FDA for each brand-name drug considered for approval. Nearly all of the money generated by these fees has been earmarked to speed up the approval process.

In effect, the user fee act put the FDA on the payroll of the industry it regulates. Last year, the fees came to about $300 million, which the companies recoup many times over by getting their drugs to market faster.

But while it’s a small investment for drug companies, it’s a lot of money for the agency, and it has drastically changed the way it operates — creating a disproportionate emphasis on approving brand-name drugs in a hurry. Consequently, the part of the agency that reviews new drugs gets more than half its money from user fees, and it has grown rapidly. Meanwhile, the parts that monitor safety, ensure manufacturing standards, and check ads for accuracy have languished or even shrunk.

Most tellingly, the office that approves generic drugs is so small that approval time for generics is twice as long as for brand-name drugs. There is now a backlog of more than 800 generics. That delay is worth billions of dollars to the drug companies whose high prices depend on not having generic competition.

As part of the emphasis on speed, the FDA often approves brand-name drugs on the basis of less evidence than in the past. In these cases, approval may be contingent on companies conducting further safety studies after the drugs are on the market. But the companies usually don’t honor that commitment. Of the roughly 1,200 such studies outstanding — some for years — over 70 percent haven’t been started.

The FDA is strangely silent about this inexcusable dereliction. When questioned, it weakly protests that it doesn’t have the authority to compel the research. In fact, it has enormous leverage, since it can withdraw drugs from the market.

The FDA also refuses to release unfavorable research results in its possession without the sponsoring company’s permission. Here again, it contends not to have the authority to do so, but providing evidence of side-effects or negative results would seem to be an integral part of its job. It’s no wonder that serious safety concerns about drugs such as Vioxx, Paxil, and Zyprexa have emerged very late in the day — years after they were in widespread use.

The agency’s coziness with industry is underscored by the composition of its 18 advisory committees — outside experts who help evaluate drugs.

Incredibly, many of these advisers work as consultants for drug companies. Although they are supposed to recuse themselves if there is a direct conflict of interest, the FDA regularly grants exemptions from that requirement. Of the six members of the advisory committee that in 1999 recommended approving Vioxx — the arthritis drug pulled from the market in 2004 because it caused heart attacks — four had received waivers from the conflict-of-interest rule.

The FDA now behaves as though the pharmaceutical industry is its user, not the public. Fortunately, the user fee law is subject to renewal every five years, and this is one of those years.

Congress should let the law die this time around and substitute its own support — which ought to be increased. Other reforms recently proposed, such as administratively separating drug approval from safety surveillance, will not mean much as long as this law is in effect.

At $300 million to $400 million a year, the equivalent of about a day in Iraq, Congress can easily afford to buy this vital agency back for the public, and it should.

Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, is a guest columnist.

Grecian Lions

"As he [Xerxes] was proceeding by this way, lions attacked the camels which carried his provisions; for the lions used to come down regularly by night, leaving their own haunts, but they touched nothing else, neither beast of burden nor man, but killed the camels only: and I marvel what was the cause, and what was it that impelled the lions to abstain from all else and to attack the camels only, creatures which they had never seen before, and of which they had had no experience."

Hurrah for Karamazov

"It's all part of my theory," Kinderman said.

"Lieutenant?", said Atkins, holding up a forefinger, pausing to chew, and then swallow a mouthful. He pulled a little white paper napkin from its dispenser, wiped his lips, and then leaned his face in closer to Kinderman's; the babble in the room had grown excited. " Would you do me a favour, Liuetenant?" 

"I am here but to serve, Mister Chips. I am eating, and therefore expansive. Let me have your petition. Is it properly sealed?"

"Would you please explain your theory?"

"Impossible, Atkins. You will put me under House Arrest."

"You cant't tell me?"

"Absolutely not." Kinderman took another bite of his burger, washed it down with a swaow of Pepsi and then turned to the sergeant. "But since you insist. Are you insisting?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. First take off the tie."

Atkins smiled. He unknotted the tie, and slipped it off.

"Good." Said Kinderman. "I cannot tell this to a perfect stranger. It's so huge. It's so incredible." His eyes were agglitter.

"You're familiar with The Brothers Karamazov?", he asked.

"No, I'm not," Atkins lied. He wanted to sustain the detective's giving mood.

"Three brothers," said Kinderman; "Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha. Dmitri is the body of man, Ivan represents his mind, and Alyosha his heart. At the end - the very end - Alyosha takes some very young boys to a cemetery a d the grave of their classmate, Ilusha. This Ilusha they treated very meanly once because - well, because he was strange, there was no doubt about it. But then later when he died they understood why he acted the way he had and how truly brave and loving he was. So now Alyosha - he's a monk, by the way - he makes a speech to the boys at the gravesite and mainly he's telling them that when they're grown up and face the evils of the world they should always reach back and remember this day, remember the goodness of their childhood, Atkins; this good was that is basic in all of them; this goodness that hasn't been spoiled. Just one good memory in the world. What's the line?" 

The detective's eyes rolled upwards and his fingertips touched his lips, which were smiling already in anticipation. He looked down at Atkins. "Yes, I have it! 'Perhaps that one memory will keep us from evil and we will reflect and say : Yes, I was brave and good and honest then.' Then Alyosha tells them something that is vitally important. 'First, and above all, be kind,' he says, and the boys - they all love him - they all shout, 'Hurrah for Karamzov'"  

Kinderman felt himself choking up. "I always weep when I think of this," he said, "it's so beautiful, Atkins. So touching."

The students were collecting their bags of hamburgers now and Kinderman watched them leaving. "This is what Christ must have meant," he reflected, "about needing to become little children before we can enter the kingdom of heaven. I don't know. It could be." 

He watched the counterman lay out some patties on the grill in preparation for another possible influx, then sit on his chair and begin to read a newspaper. Kinderman returned his attention to Atkins. 

"I don't know how to say this," he said. "I mean, the crazy, incredible part. But nothing else makes sense, nothing else can explain things, Atkins. Nothing. I'm convinced it's the truth. 

But getting back to Karamazov for a moment. 

The main thing is Alyosha, when he says 'Be kind'. Unless we do this evolution will not work; we will not get there", Kinderman said.

"Get where?" asked Atkins.

"The White Tower" was quiet now; there was only sizzling from the grill and the sound of the newspaper turning now and then. Kinderman's stare was firm and even. 

"The physicists are now certain," he said, "that all the known processes in nature were once part of a single, unified force." 

Kinderman paused and then spoke quietly. 

" I believe that this force was a person who long ago tore himself into pieces because of his longing to be his own being. That was The Fall.", he said : "the 'Big Bang' : the beginning of time and the material universe when one became many - legion. 

And that's why God cannot interfere : evolution is this person growing back into himself."

The sergeant's eyes were a crinkle of puzzlement. "Who is this person?" he asked the detective .

"Can't you guess?" Kinderman's eyes were alive and smiling. " I have given you most of the clues long before"

Atkins shook his head and waited for the answer.

"We are The Fallen Angel," said Kinderman. "We are the Bearer of Light. 

We are Lucifer."

Kinderman and Atkins held each other's gaze. When the door chime sounded, they glanced to the door. A disheveled derelict walked in. His clothing was shredded and thick with soil. He walks towards the counterman, and then stood with his eyes upon him in a meek and silent plea. The counterman glowered at him over his newspaper, stood up, prepared some hamburgers, bagged them, and gave them to the bum who silently shuffled out of the shop.

"Hurrah for Karamazov", Kinderman murmured.

Grey September : Lufthansa, The Germanwings Disaster and the Deep State

Grey September : Lufthansa, The Germanwings Disaster and the Deep State

from Spike1138 on Vimeo.

Q: What is 'droning an aircraft'?

Wayne Madsen : "Well, taking a commercial plane and putting drone technology on it so that you can fly it remotely... And Lufthansa, apparently, had developed that technology back with their anti-hijacking efforts, back when they had a couple of planes hijacked by Palestinians.."

Goth Counselling with Grant Morrison

Perfidious BBC : A Fresh Wave of Syrian CW Blood Libel

ARMS CONTROL TODAY 

December 2014 

By Paul F. Walker

Just one year after Syria’s formal accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international body responsible for implementing the treaty, announced this October that almost all of Syria’s declared chemical agents and precursor chemicals had been safely and irreversibly destroyed.[1]

Workers in protective clothing carry a dummy grenade into a bunker during a media day at the GEKA facility in Münster, Germany, on March 5. The liquid waste from the neutralization of Syrian sulfur mustard agent aboard the MV Cape Ray was brought to the GEKA facility last summer for further treatment. (Nigel Treblin/Getty Images)

This was an enormously ambitious and difficult effort, especially in light of the ongoing civil war in Syria, the refusal of Syria to cover the costs of demilitarization, the strong reluctance of any other country to destroy the Syrian chemical stockpile on its territory, and the ongoing allegations of continued and indiscriminate chemical weapons use against rebel forces and civilian populations in Syria.

As of October 20, according to the OPCW, almost 98 percent of Syria’s declared stockpile of 1,308 metric tons of sulfur mustard agent and precursor chemicals had been destroyed in four countries and on board the MV Cape Ray, a U.S. Merchant Marine vessel uniquely outfitted in late 2013 to neutralize about half of the stockpile. The success of this disarmament effort, spearheaded by the OPCW and the United Nations in a unique joint mission, represents a historic breakthrough in establishing a world free of chemical weapons, in strengthening the CWC and the OPCW, and in building momentum toward accession to the treaty by Egypt and Israel, the two remaining nonmembers in the Middle East.

Demilitarization in Syria
Egypt, Israel and Syria had long been suspected of harboring chemical weapons stockpiles. Their reluctance to join the CWC stems from the linkage politics in the Middle East, identifying chemical weapons as a possible deterrent to Israel’s nuclear arsenal. The violence of the civil war that has engulfed Syria since 2011 brought attention to the potential use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government or by rebel forces taking over Syrian military sites.

Reports of attacks in Syria allegedly involving chemical weapons began in December 2012 and continued through the summer of 2013. The final report of the review conference for the CWC in April 2013 noted the parties’ “deep concern that chemical weapons may have been used in the Syrian Arab Republic and underlined that use of chemical weapons by anyone under any circumstances would be reprehensible and completely contrary to the legal norms and standards of the international community.”[2]

Yet, the issue of chemical weapons use did not seize world attention until August 21, 2013, when a massive, nighttime attack on civilians took place in a rebel-held area, Ghouta, just east of Damascus, with the nerve agent sarin. Early reports by rebel forces described the deaths of some 1,400 people, including several hundred children, overcome by clouds of yellowish vapor in the middle of the night. Pictures of victims showed frothing at the mouth and suffocation, with none of the visible bullet or shrapnel wounds that one would expect from typical aerial or artillery bombardment.

The UN, at the request of the Syrian government, had dispatched a team of experts to Damascus on August 18 to investigate prior allegations of chemical weapons use. The UN team, led by Åke Sellström of Sweden, included nine OPCW experts and three from the World Health Organization (WHO). After the August 21 attack, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon requested that the team change plans to investigate that attack.

The Sellström team’s September 13 report confirmed that “chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.”[3] The following day, Syria deposited its instrument of accession to the CWC with the UN. Largely the result of Russian political intervention with Syria, this disarmament step precluded a threatened U.S. military strike against Syria’s chemical weapons program, made Syria the 190th state-party to the CWC, and set in motion the efforts to safely destroy Syria’s chemical stockpile. On September 17, Russia and the United States announced a framework agreement for elimination of Syria’s chemical arsenal.[4]

The OPCW Executive Council issued a decision on September 27 noting that the treaty would enter into force for Syria on October 14 and calling for a full declaration of Syria’s chemical weapons program, including all weapons, agents, chemicals, laboratories, production plants, and storage facilities as required by Article III of the CWC. In addition, the council required that all mixing and filling equipment, used to fill delivery systems with chemical agents just before launch, be destroyed by November 1 and that “all chemical weapons material and equipment [be destroyed] in the first half of 2014.” It also stipulated that OPCW inspections would begin by October 1, 2013.[5]

Hours after the Executive Council decision, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2118, endorsing the OPCW plan.

The very ambitious schedule, based largely on the bilateral U.S.-Russian framework agreement, would require expedited transport and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, far faster than any other declared stockpile had been eliminated to date. The first planning decision by the OPCW made in the fall of 2013 was that it would be too risky to set up a destruction facility in Syria in the middle of an ongoing, very violent conflict.

Throughout the OPCW’s 5,500 inspections at 265 chemical weapons-related facilities and more than 2,000 industrial sites in 86 countries, its inspectors had never had to face armed enemies. Syria, however, presented a different situation. The OPCW’s early inspections of Ghouta and other areas demonstrated that its inspectors would likely come under live fire. After August 2013, all inspectors were fitted with bulletproof vests for the first time in the OPCW’s 16-year history.[6]

All declared chemical weapons stockpiles until 2013 had been destroyed within the possessor country, usually very close to the existing storage facilities. The CWC, under Article III and the Verification Annex, assumes that destruction will take place within the possessor country. In the case of Syria, it was decided, for reasons of safety and security, that the chemicals themselves should be removed from Syria and destroyed in a foreign country. The OPCW, UN, and United States proceeded to inquire if any Mediterranean or European countries might be willing to receive the chemicals and have them destroyed on their territory.

No country responded positively to this request. Most of them cited environmental and regulatory requirements that would inhibit meeting the tight timeline established by the OPCW and the framework agreement. Eventually, Finland, Germany, and the United Kingdom declared their willingness to accept limited amounts of precursor chemicals and the larger volume of toxic effluent from first-stage neutralization.

Albania had been proposed as a possible recipient country, perhaps primarily because it had destroyed 15 metric tons of declared mustard agent during 2006 and 2007, but Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in mid-November 2013 flatly rejected all requests to destroy Syrian chemicals on its territory. News reports cited ongoing frustration by the Albanian government with the failure to clean up toxic waste still remaining from the mustard incineration effort, which Germany, the United States, and other countries had supported.

In December 2012, during the first alleged uses of chemical agents in the Syrian conflict, the U.S. Department of Defense had begun investigating options for destroying chemical stockpiles abroad, long before there was much public discussion about Syria’s chemical arsenal. The chemicals held in the Syrian stockpile were sulfur mustard agent (HD), sarin nerve agent (GB), and precursor chemicals such as methylphosphonyl diflouride (DF), the specific targets of the new U.S. technology development effort. By early February 2013, the Defense Department had committed funding to developing semi-mobile platforms for the neutralization of such agents and chemicals in remote areas. Four months later, in June, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Aberdeen, Maryland, conducted a prototype demonstration.

In light of the political progress made with Syria’s decision to join the CWC and the lack of progress made with European countries in persuading them to accept Syrian chemicals, the United States sent a team to Baltimore  and Portsmouth, Virginia in September 2013 to consider U.S. ships for possible sea deployment of a neutralization facility, something never done previously. The MV Cape Ray, an older roll-on/roll-off freighter, was chosen in November 2013 as a suitable platform for utilizing the new Field Deployable Hydrolysis System, a neutralization unit developed at the Edgewood facility.

The fitting of two of these hydrolysis units aboard the Cape Ray began in Portsmouth on December 2 and was completed six weeks later. After sea trials, the ship departed on January 27, 2014, for the U.S. Navy base in Rota, Spain, where it remained until the last chemicals left Syria. The ship also carried a third hydrolysis unit for spare parts.

Each of these unique chemical hydrolysis systems was designed to fit on two large flatbed trucks for ease of transportation and deployment. Back at Aberdeen, Maryland, the plan was to produce another three hydrolysis units for future use. These systems all reused titanium-lined mixing tanks that had been part of the neutralization process for the 1,471 metric tons of bulk mustard agent from the U.S. chemical stockpile at Aberdeen from 2003 to 2005.

The OPCW-approved plan for destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile involved transporting all chemicals from more than 20 sites to the port of Latakia in northwestern Syria and transferring them to two freighters, the Ark Futura from Denmark and the Taiko from Norway. Once the ships had received all of Syria’s declared chemicals, they would deliver the more dangerous (“Priority 1”) chemicals, mustard and DF, to the Cape Ray for onboard neutralization in the Mediterranean Sea and the less dangerous (“Priority 2”) precursor chemicals to land-based incinerators in Finland, the UK, and the United States. The original deadline for completing the shipments out of Syria was February 5, 2014, but this process required another five months due to concerns expressed by the Syrian government over security along the land-based shipment routes.

The first shipment of chemicals left Latakia on January 7. After several new deadlines were also missed, the 19th and final shipment, about 100 metric tons, of declared chemicals left Latakia on June 23 aboard the Ark Futura. The Taiko had departed Latakia in early June and delivered 130 metric tons of precursor chemicals to the port of Hamina Kotka in Finland, to be incinerated by the company Ekokem, in the town of Riihimaki, just north of Helsinki. The ship then sailed to Port Arthur, Texas, with several hundred tons of precursor chemicals to be incinerated at a Veolia Environmental Services facility just outside Houston.[7]

ashar Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the media about Syrian chemical weapons outside the Security Council chamber on September 12, 2013, two days before Syria deposited its instrument of accession to the Chemical Weapons Convention with the UN. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

With all declared chemicals out of Syria, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü praised the “extraordinary international cooperation” involved in the effort and reiterated that “never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict.” In a June 23 statement, he said that although a “major chapter” in his organization’s effort was closing, the “OPCW’s work in Syria will continue.”[8] This last phrase was a reference to the continued discussions with Syria about destruction of declared production and storage facilities, apparent discrepancies in the country’s declaration of its stockpile to the OPCW, and alleged attacks during the Syrian civil war with chlorine, a dual-use chemical not banned by the CWC but prohibited in warfare.

Destruction at Sea 
Because the Cape Ray was never allowed into Syrian territorial waters, it needed a Mediterranean port where it could receive the 600 metric tons of mustard agent and sarin precursor from the Ark Futura. After some extended negotiations, the port of Gioia Tauro in southwestern Italy agreed to receive the two ships, and the transfer took place without incident over a half day spanning July 1-2. The Ark Futura sailed to the UK and off-loaded some 150 metric tons of other Priority 1 chemicals to be destroyed at a Veolia Environmental Services incinerator at Ellesmere and at a second company, Mexichem UK Limited.

On July 7, the Cape Ray began neutralizing 19.8 metric tons of sulfur mustard and 581 metric tons of DF in the two hydrolysis units, operating eventually 24 hours a day, six days a week at sea, with a seventh day set aside for maintenance and repair.[9] Original schedule projections indicated that the job would require 60 to 90 days. Those projections assumed that the units would be down for 40 percent of the time due to high seas and bad weather. This would calculate to a throughput rate of 11 to 17 metric tons per operating day of Syrian chemicals. Fortunately, the weather remained very good and the seas very low, allowing the hydrolysis process to finish on August 17, after just 42 days of operations. This indicates an average throughput rate of more than 14 metric tons per day, right in the middle of the range of original projections, but without any unplanned operating downtime.

Operations aboard the ship went very well, with no major incidents. A few minor mishaps took place—a small fire in the kitchen, which was extinguished quickly; a minor leak of reagent, which never escaped the protective enclosure for the hydrolysis system and was easily cleaned up; and a few minor bumps and bruises, as well as dehydration, for the crew. The whole at-sea operation, which raised many concerns around the Mediterranean, appears to have fully met the requirements of the CWC, which states that “during transportation, sampling, storage and destruction of chemical weapons, [each state-party] shall assign the highest priority to ensuring the safety of people and to protecting the environment.”[10]

During the spring of 2014, large citizen demonstrations with more than 10,000 protesters had taken place in Athens, Istanbul, and Cyprus, and a flotilla of boats sought to demonstrate in July. Üzümcü wrote a formal response to a June 2014 letter from the Pancretan Commission Against the Destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons in the Enclosed Sea of the Mediterranean. He reassured the signers that “the safety of people and protecting the environment has been one of the foremost considerations in all activities relating to the transportation and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons” and that “[a]ll of these activities…have occurred in accordance with international and national regulations, and without mishap.”[11]

After six weeks in the Mediterranean, the Cape Ray delivered its neutralized sulfur mustard effluent, no longer a chemical weapon but still quite toxic and about 15 times its original volume, to Bremerhaven, Germany. The company GEKA, located outside Hamburg, known for handling military weapons and waste, would receive the 350 to 400 metric tons of waste and burn the material in its incinerator.[12] The ship then sailed to Finland and off-loaded the neutralized DF effluent, about 6,000 metric tons, to be burned at the Ekokem facility.

The Cape Ray returned to Virginia in mid-September. The two hydrolysis units are currently being cleaned and dismantled for possible use elsewhere.

As of October 20, 100 percent (1,047 metric tons) of “Category 1” chemicals and 89 percent (232 metric tons) of “Category 2” chemicals had been destroyed, a total of 98 percent safely eliminated in less than a year of demilitarization operations. The remainder, about 29 metric tons, will be destroyed in the next few months, along with some 6,000 metric tons of toxic effluent.

Click image to enlarge.

Impact and Lessons
The Syrian chemical weapons destruction process in 2013 and 2014 has been a remarkable example of successful multilateral disarmament operations in the middle of a costly and dangerous civil war. It has removed not only the threat of mass-casualty attacks with deadly nerve agents against soldiers and civilians in the Syrian civil war, but also the threat of chemical weapons use against neighboring countries. Furthermore, it has set a precedent for Egypt and Israel, the other two suspected chemical weapons possessor states in the region, to join the near-universal CWC. The complete abolition of chemical weapons in the Middle East will be an important confidence-building measure for negotiations on a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the region, as proposed by the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

In addition to the political momentum generated for further disarmament efforts focusing on nonconventional weapons in the Middle East, several other important related issues and goals should be noted.

Strengthening the OPCW. With a 500-person staff and a budget of about $88 million, the OPCW, which is based in The Hague, remains much smaller than many of its counterparts in Geneva and Vienna.[13] Yet, it has successfully facilitated and verified the safe elimination of more than 62,000 metric tons of deadly chemicals from millions of weapons at hundreds of sites across the globe. With Syria, which had been one of the last seven nonmember countries, suddenly acceding to the CWC in 2013, momentum has quickened toward “universality”—complete global membership—for the abolition regime. This will not only help prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons, but will also provide encouragement to the Biological Weapons Convention, with 170 states-parties, and the NPT for abolishing the remaining two classes of nonconventional weapons.

The Chemical Weapons Convention After more than a dozen years of negotiations, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was opened for signature in January 1993, with 158 countries signing the treaty in the first year. By July 1997, just three months after its entry into force, 98 countries had ratified the CWC. The two largest possessor countries, Russia and the United States, ratified the CWC on November 5, 1997, and April 25, 1997, respectively.1 The CWC is unique as an arms control and disarmament treaty in that it bans the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention, transfer, or use of chemical weapons by all states-parties. It establishes an international verification and inspection regime for declared stockpiles and the chemical industry, and it requires all declared chemical weapons, as well as facilities and laboratories related to chemical weapons production, to be safely destroyed within certain deadlines.2 Therefore, it differs from the Biological Weapons Convention by establishing a strict verification regime and from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by crafting a nondiscriminatory regime, one in which all member countries abide by the same rules requiring verified abolition of chemical weapons programs. Syrian accession to the CWC in September 2013 expanded the membership to 190 countries, leaving just six—Angola, Egypt, Israel, Myanmar, North Korea, and South Sudan—outside the treaty. At least two areas of the world, Taiwan and the Palestinian territories, are not yet covered by the CWC due to their unique political situations and lack of UN membership. Taiwan in particular, with a large chemicals industry, will be important to bring under verification in the near future. Eight countries have declared chemical weapons stockpiles to date: Albania, India, Iraq, Libya, Russia, South Korea, Syria, and the United States, with Russia and the United States accounting for 95 percent of the declared chemical agent tonnage.3  The implementing body for the CWC is the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an entity created by the treaty. In the more than 17 years that the CWC has been in force, the OPCW has overseen and verified the safe destruction of 85 percent of the world’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles. This means that more than 62,000 metric tons of deadly chemical agents and millions of weapons (landmines, bombs, rockets, spray tanks, missile warheads, and artillery shells) in seven countries have been destroyed, an enormous step forward in improving global security. Russia still has 8,000 metric tons of chemical weapons to destroy, and the United States has 2,800 metric tons. Libya has about 850 metric tons of precursor chemicals. Iraq continues to have an unknown quantity of chemical agents and precursor chemicals left in two large bunkers at the site in Fallujah known as al Muthanna. Sealed in the mid-1990s by UN inspectors, these bunkers were reportedly captured by the Islamic State militant group in June 2014. According to recent reports, the group might have used chemical weapons in the siege of Kobani in the Kurdish area of northern Syria.4 ENDNOTES 1. For an excellent history of the long negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), see Daniel Feakes and Ian Kenyon, eds., The Creation of OPCW: A Case Study in the Birth of an Intergovernmental Organization (The Hague: TMC Asser Press, 2007). 2. For the text of the CWC, see http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/. 3. For a history of chemical weapons destruction, see Paul F. Walker, “Abolishing Chemical Weapons: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities,” Arms Control Today, November 2010.  4. Joseph Cirincione and Paul Walker, “Is ISIS Using Chemical Weapons?” Defense One, October 14, 2014, http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/10/isis-using-chemical-weapons/96425/?oref=search_Walker.

None of this will happen automatically. In order to bring the remaining six countries (see box) into the treaty regime, there must be a determined effort by the OPCW, CWC states-parties, the UN, and civil society to press these countries to join the CWC and other arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation regimes. Countries that acceded to the CWC in recent years, such as the Bahamas in 2009, required direct visits by high-ranking OPCW officials and technical support with convention declarations and national implementation. Although the OPCW has specific plans for promoting universality, national legislation, and assistance and cooperation, the states-parties need to take an active role in persuading countries to join. The CWC Coalition, an active network of some 150 nongovernmental experts and organizations across the globe, should actively work with civil society in these nonmember countries to build a public discussion about their lack of membership.[14]

There needs to be careful reconsideration by states-parties of the OPCW annual budget, which has fallen from a peak of more than $100 million annually during the 2007-2011 period to a low of less than $93 million projected for 2015. This decline has forced reductions in the size, seniority, and experience of the organization’s staff. The costs for OPCW inspections and verification for 2013 and 2014 in Syria alone, not projected in the earlier budget plans, were $5.5 million; these funds were fortunately raised through a special voluntary fund.

Multilateralizing disarmament. The role of the OPCW is to implement the CWC and verify stockpile destruction; there is very little it can do to enforce the regime other than refer violations to the UN. The joint efforts among the OPCW, the UN, and the WHO to investigate the alleged use of chemical agents in the Syrian civil war and to remove Syrian chemicals from the country were very successful. This OPCW-UN joint mission, headed by Dutch diplomat Sigrid Kaag, worked out very well. There were some issues of miscommunication and competing leadership early in the operation, but in the end, this multiagency effort demonstrated that large, multilateral bureaucracies can indeed work well together.

This joint mission also underlined the importance of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which establishes legally binding obligations on all states under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their means of delivery to other countries and nonstate actors. The UN must press this national obligation on CWC nonmembers.[15]

Building transparency. Early in the Syrian chemical demilitarization operations, very little information was made available to the public and interested nongovernmental stakeholders. This led to unnecessary suspicions about what was actually happening to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and what risks might arise, especially for Mediterranean countries. Syria had reportedly requested confidentiality from the OPCW regarding its declaration and stockpile figures, and other countries were very sensitive about their role in the operation. For example, Italy did not reveal until mid-January that Gioia Tauro would be used for the transfer of Syrian chemicals from the Ark Futura to the Cape Ray. The mayor of Gioia Tauro complained at the time that the national government had not informed him of the decision, that he and his colleagues had “received no official information,” and that they were “stumbling around in the dark.” He also warned that they would “pursue all legal means” to prevent the port operation.[16]

Eventually, the OPCW decided to post summary figures of the Syrian declared stockpile and to update destruction figures monthly on the OPCW website. This latter effort helped alleviate some public anxiety and build confidence in the process.

Engaging stakeholders. Quiet and productive international discussions had been continuing since at least 2011 at governmental and nongovernmental levels to prevent the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, to prevent a foreign military attack on Syria, and to bring Syria into the CWC. Once Syria acceded to the CWC, the process of the country’s declaration, the required on-site inspections, and the demilitarization plans were closed to public scrutiny. By late 2013, it became known that Syria’s chemicals would be shipped out of country and half of the exported tonnage would be destroyed at sea. Public protests began to mount in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere, and national governments demanded to be more informed about the process.

On February 3, 2014, a dozen chemical demilitarization experts, including this author, from the nongovernmental sector wrote to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel suggesting a more robust public outreach effort, including several “national dialogues” in the Mediterranean region and real-time updates from the Cape Ray while it was operating in the sea. This letter also was sent to officials such as Kaag, Üzümcü, and Angela Kane, head of the UN Office of Disarmament Affairs. The letter stated that “[e]ngaging potentially impacted communities in a timely and transparent way will not only strengthen the protection of public health and the environment, but it will help alleviate public concerns that could otherwise undermine this historic and important demilitarization mission.”[17]There was no reply to this letter.

Although the State Department organized several invitation-only, off-the-record discussions for Washington-based stakeholders and the OPCW organized two invitation-only conference calls for a select group of European nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the public outreach effort was never sufficient to satisfy concerned organizations and citizens, especially those in the Mediterranean region most likely to be affected by any accidents. The Defense Department organized an “open house” for media and NGOs on the Cape Ray while it was docked in Rota, Spain for more than three months prior to the destruction efforts, but this was done on a last-minute basis with no travel support and failed to attract NGOs.[18]

The failure to produce an integrated plan to inform and involve the public was partly due to the multilateral process, with many senior players pointing the finger of responsibility at other colleagues, but it clearly undermined public confidence in the demilitarization plan. The ambitious schedule also caused national and multilateral bureaucracies to shortcut public outreach efforts. Nevertheless, the many delays in the process of removing the chemicals from Syria provided opportunities for much more coordinated outreach and public information if the responsible officials had been inclined to take advantage of those opportunities. Such action would have reduced the mistrust with which the public and governments approached the removal and destruction operations.

Financing demilitarization. Syria made it known very early in the process that it could not afford to pay the costs of its demilitarization plan. It covered some of the costs for aspects such as land-based transportation, security, and facility destruction, but would not pay for out-of-country chemical destruction or for the verification work by the OPCW, although the CWC requires state-parties that possess chemical weapons to pay these costs.[19]

Fortunately, some three dozen countries made financial or in-kind contributions or both to support the disarmament operations and inspections. Üzümcü reported to the OPCW Executive Council in early October that the trust fund established for that purpose had received almost $65 million from 24 states-parties and the European Union.[20] In addition, U.S. operations aboard the Cape Ray, the use of Danish and Norwegian freighters, and the convoy that provided security for the three ships must have totaled several hundred million dollars. Although at least three countries—India, South Korea, and the United States—have covered their chemical weapons demilitarization costs, another three—Albania, Libya, and Russia—have relied on outside funding to cover at least part of their costs. This may argue for an ongoing OPCW trust fund for operations to be used in cases of demilitarization, challenge inspections, and other urgent tasks.[21]

Inspecting demilitarization. The OPCW has been under pressure from states-parties, especially the major bill payers such as the United States, to reduce its annual budget for the last several years. This had led to major staffing reductions in the inspectorate from about 175 inspectors to fewer than 125, with much less experience. When the Syrian operation arose in 2013, the OPCW had to scramble to rehire some 50 inspectors, many of them having been out of the job for several years. These returning inspectors substituted for the many active OPCW inspectors needed for the Syrian teams. In the end, this worked out well, but it raises questions about the future size of the OPCW inspectorate and how best to ensure readiness to carry out urgent missions in a timely way.[22]

The OPCW and the CWC states-parties should reconsider the current plans for the standing size of the OPCW inspectorate, which would be available for demilitarization operations and industry inspections. Chemical industry inspections are becoming much more important as the OPCW seeks to prevent the re-emergence of chemical weapons and to promote peaceful uses of chemistry. The OPCW should consider developing an ongoing active-reserve inspectorate that would be on call for urgent and unpredictable operations such as the one in Syria. Funding for such a reserve force should be part of the budget reconsideration discussed above.

Conclusion
After a year of active and ongoing demilitarization operations, with almost all of Syria’s declared chemicals destroyed, the UN, the OPCW, and contributing countries can declare a large if not yet total success. Syria has recently revealed at least two new canisters of sarin discovered in “rebel-held territory” and four additional facilities related to chemical weapons—three research and development facilities and one production site for ricin. In addition, there have been new allegations of attacks with chlorine on rebel forces in Syria.[23] These issues demonstrate that the demilitarization process is not yet finished and that the OPCW must continue its inspections and fact-finding missions. Moreover, this multilateral disarmament effort has not put a stop to the ongoing and widespread violence in Syria.

Yet, the laudable and costly efforts to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons program over the past year have demonstrated that the world is very close to eliminating an entire class of weapons of mass destruction from the globe. This alone is a very worthy step forward in global security and most appropriate as the world approaches the 100th anniversary of the first massive use of chemical weapons in warfare.

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Paul F. Walker is director of environmental security and sustainability with Green Cross International. He holds a Ph.D. in international security studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a former professional staff member for the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. He was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2013 for his work to press for the elimination of chemical weapons. He serves on the Arms Control Association Board of Directors.

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ENDNOTES

1. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), “Syrian Chemical Destruction Data,” October 20, 2014, http://www.opcw.org/special-sections/syria/destruction-statistics/. 

2. OPCW Conference of the States Parties, “Report of the Third Special Session of the Conference of the States Parties to Review the Operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” RC-3/3, April 19, 2013. 

3. UN General Assembly and UN Security Council, “Report of the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic on the Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area of Damascus on 21 August 2013,” A/67/997-S/2013/553, September 16, 2013. See OPCW, “UN Investigation Team Returns to The Hague From Syria,” September 2, 2013, http://www.opcw.org/news/article/un-investigation-team-returns-to-the-hague-from-syria/.

4. OPCW, “Joint National Paper by the Russian Federation and the United States of America: Framework for Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” EC-M-33/NAT.1, September 17, 2013.

5. OPCW, “Decision: Destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” EC-M-33/DEC.1, September 27, 2013.

6. OPCW, “OPCW Director-General Condemns Attack on UN Inspection Team,” August 26, 2013, http://www.opcw.org/news/article/opcw-director-general-condemns-attack-on-un-inspection-team/. 

7. For a weekly blog on the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons, see Green Cross International, http://www.gcint.org/green-cross-blog/.

8. OPCW, “Announcement to Media on Last Consignment of Chemicals Leaving Syria,” June 23, 2014, http://www.opcw.org/news/article/announcement-to-media-on-last-consignment-of-chemicals-leaving-syria/. 

9. See Daniel Horner, “Syrian Chemicals Destroyed on U.S. Ship,” Arms Control Today, September 2014. 

10. Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), art. IV, para. 10.

11. Ahmet Üzümcü, Letter to the Pancretan Commission Against the Destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons in the Enclosed Sea of the Mediterranean, L/ODG/192695/14, July 29, 2014. 

12. See Annette Langer, “Kampfstoff-Entsorgung: Syrische Chemiewaffen in der Heide,” Der Spiegel, April 9, 2014, http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/giftgas-aus-syrien-geka-in-munster-entsorgt-senfgas-von-der-cape-ray-a-963357.html. 

13. For the latest OPCW financial report, see OPCW, “Financial Statements of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and Report of the External Auditor for the Year Ending 31 December 2013,” EC-77/DG.1, July 14, 2014; OPCW, “Draft Decision: Draft Program and Budget of the OPCW for 2015,” EC-77/DEC/CRP.7, October 2, 2014.

14. The author is the coordinator of this coalition, which held a roundtable in Tel Aviv and met with Israeli parliamentarians in November 2014.

15. See Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, U.S. Department of State, “United Nations Security Council Resolution 1540,” n.d., http://www.state.gov/t/isn/c18943.htm. 

16. Lizzy Davies, “Italian Mayor Dismayed as Port Chosen for Syrian Chemical Weapons Transfer,” The Guardian, January 16, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/italian-mayor-port-gioia-tauro-syrian-chemical-weapons. 

17. For the text of the letter, see Green Cross International, “Public Outreach and Stakeholder Involvement in Destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons,” February 4, 2014, http://www.gcint.org/public-outreach-and-stakeholder-involvement-destruction-syrian-chemical-weapons.  

18. The open house produced several stories in the press. For example, see Frank Gardner, “Syria Chemical Weapons: Time Running Out for Destruction,” BBC, April 10, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26979101. 

19. Paragraph 16 of CWC Article IV specifically states: “Each State Party shall meet the costs of destruction of chemical weapons it is obliged to destroy.” 

20. OPCW, “Note by the Director-General: Progress in the Elimination of the Syrian Chemical Weapons Program,” EC-77/DG.22, September 24, 2014, para. 14. 

21. For example, Libya is now asking for the financial and technical support of the OPCW and CWC states-parties to remove and destroy its remaining precursor chemicals.

22. In a recent interview, Üzümcü said that the number of inspectors would be further reduced to “90 or so.” See Jean Pascal Zanders, “Üzümcü: ‘After Syria I Do Not See Any Country Able to Use Chemical Weapons Anymore,’” The Trench, November 17, 2014, http://www.the-trench.org/uzumcu-interview/. 

23. See OPCW, “Update on Syrian Chemical Weapons and the Fact-Finding Mission Into Alleged Chlorine Gas Attack,” May 22, 2014, http://www.opcw.org/news/article/update-on-syrian-chemical-weapons-destruction-and-the-fact-finding-mission-into-alleged-chlorine-gas/.