So Joe Biden is 81 now! Never saw that one coming.

Warren Buffet, 93

At 93, Warren Buffet is 12 years older than Joe Biden, but you don't see a lot of people pleading with him to step down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. That's because he's still making money for himself and the capitalists associated with him, and they value his 57+ years of experience as its CEO. Every year thousands flock to his annual meeting, and hundreds of thousands watch it online, because they value his capitalist wisdom, born of the better part of a century spent becoming a very successful businessman. They don't mind that his speech maybe rough and slow. They are there for the content.

Buffet isn't the only Fortune 500 CEO older than Biden, like Robert Greenberg, 83, who runs Skechers, and Roger Penske, 87 of Penske Automotive. Corporate shareholders tend to select their CEOs based on earnings, not age. Given how much the US economy has turned around since Covid-19 was sent to the background, the stock market has never been higher, Biden should be a shoe in with the donor class. But we are told that some big donors are now abandoning Biden, while at the same time others are embracing Trump for the first time. Are we witnessing a shift in the capitalist class, or a part of it, away from traditional bourgeois democracy, and in favor of authoritarianism, less regulation, and lower taxes for the rich? We all know the lousy debate performance was the trigger, but are there unspoken motives behind the movement to oust Biden suddenly?

How did we get here? When did the presidency become performance art?

Under the careful tutelage of the mainstream media (MSM), much of the public, including the Left, has lost sight of what the real requirements of a good POTUS, i.e. CEO of the United States are, or in anycase, should be. Ever since the 1962 Kennedy-Nixon debates, having the best screen performance has had an outsized influence on our choices. And since then, the right wing has refined the art of selling contentless candidates with on-camera performances. Ronald Reagan would never have been able to sell himself into the presidency without his decades of movie and TV exposure, and performance practice. And now we have Donald Trump, a grifter who honed his craft before the NBC TV audiences before selling it to the most backwards Americans to become the first US president to be branded as a felon or a rapist.

My take on The Economist July cover

Obviously, we live in an age where a bad TV performance is enough to get some key leaders and donors in one's own party to call for your head. We also live in an age where one party to a debate can spew nonstop lies and hate:

We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world – considered the most dangerous place anywhere in the world.

Oh, really? More dangerous than Gaza, Sudan, or Ukraine? CNN did him a real service by refusing to fact check him. If the moderators feared they would have to interrupt too often, they could have just noted when he said something that was true. That would have eased their burden considerably.

Trump mixed his vitriol with the occasional nonsense such as "So, I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever," and the other guy is considered to have the bad performance because his voice is soft and slow, and makes the occasional gaffe. Well, guess what? Joe Biden has been making these verbal gaffes his whole career, that's why they call him the Gaffe Factory. In this 5-year old Guardian article he calls himself the "gaffe machine." Here's a YouTube video of his 10 biggest gaffes of 2020, to refresh your memory—and remember, he won that campaign.

Joe Biden has also had a lifelong struggle with stuttering. This is also something mocked by many. for example Oakland Socialist, which wrote recently, commenting on his ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos, who the post mistakenly, and embarrassingly, referred to as "Democrat Stephen Stephanopoulos":

He once again had trouble putting sentences together. “After that debate, I did 10 major events in a row, including until 2 in the morning after the debate," he said. “I did events in North Carolina. I did events in — in — in Georgia, did events like this today, large crowds, overwhelming response, no — no — no slipping. And so, I just had a bad night. I don’t know why.”

Obviously, a problem with stuttering is a serious defect for any politician in our media performance driven world. Could it also be an asset, in curious way, in a president? I have found, in my 75 years, that a white person saddled with a disability may often, through that disability, gain valuable insight and solidarity with other people seen as less than the social norm. They may come to know what white men, like Trump, may otherwise never know. They come know what it's like to be discriminated against, and that's an important life lesson for anyone that aspires to be president of these United States. Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, and having to listen to a stutterer seems a small price to pay if it contributes to a president's humanity. Some of our most consequential presidents have had issues;  Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression, Dwight Eisenhower had dyslexia and John F. Kennedy wore a back brace.

Addressing that old age question: What are the chances either one will live another 4 years?

After consulting life expectancy tables and actuarial data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ChatGPT told me:

An 81-year-old white male in good health has approximately a 79% chance of living another 4 years, based on current life expectancy data and survival rates.

After I rephased my question slightly, ChatGPT did the math, showed me its work, gave me this conclusion:

An overweight 78-year-old white male has approximately an 83.1% chance of living another 4 years, based on current life expectancy data and adjusted survival rates for overweight status.

That's a 4.1% difference in the probability that either of these presidential candidates will be able to complete his term in office. That's already within the margin of error in some polls. When I ask ChatGPT to factor in Donald Trump's known health issues, I get back this conclusion:

Given his age and health issues, Donald Trump has approximately a 78.3% chance of living another 4 years, based on adjusted survival probabilities. This estimate reflects the impact of his cardiovascular health, obesity, and other factors while considering the general life expectancy for his age group.

When I ask it the same questions about Joe Biden, it comes back with this conclusion:

Given his age and health issues, Joe Biden has approximately a 75.5% chance of living another 4 years, based on adjusted survival probabilities. This estimate reflects the impact of his managed cardiovascular and chronic health conditions while considering the general life expectancy for his age group.

So, when perceptions aren't influenced by hair dye, fake tans, and the manic energy that hate can generate, and the question is looked at cooly and objectively by an AI bot consulting real data, we find that Donald Trump, who isn't as healthy as Joe Biden, has only a 2.8% greater chance of completing his term, even if he's willing to leave after four years. When the fact that a POTUS gets much better healthcare than even the average white man (AWM) is factored in, I assume the likelihood that either of these candidates will complete his term in office goes up, but the differences will remain.

2.8% is well within the margin of error in anybody's poll. I think that pretty much takes the question of age off the table as an issue in any rational employee selection. Especially when the job is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," and the slightly younger applicant is vowing to tear up the Constitution! More on that in:

A few thoughts on the question of Biden's age

Stephen Hawking c. 1980

So, Joe Biden is 81. He has had a long history of gaffes, and a long struggle against stuttering, and those problems aren't getting better with age. He's also prone to tripping when very low barriers are placed in his path—thank you, Secret Service. None of this supports claims that he's suddenly "losing it" or going senile. None of that  justifies calls for him to step down, or for his cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. At the almost hour long press conference after the NATO gathering he gave a master class in foreign policy that the other guy couldn't do in his dreams. I don't agree with that foreign policy—I think he's held Ukraine back with the weapons he's given them, and how he's allowed it to use them, and I think he's earned the appellation "Genocide Joe" for his support for Israel's massacres of Palestinians—but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about his command of the facts, broad overview of the overall situation, and ability to provide leadership. That's the kind of thing you need for a good CEO; media performance ability should be well down the list. Hell, If Stephen Hawking were an American, I'd voted to elect him president, if I agreed with his politics and his genius was in politics, rather than physics. Nevermind that he needs a wheelchair and an artificial voice.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, arguably, the most consequential US president of the twentieth century—he served 12 years, led the US out of the Great Depression, and then led the world in the defeating fascism in WWII, and he did it all from a wheelchair. That's why I mock the recent Economist cover by replacing their walker accompany the statement "No way to run a country," with a wheelchair.

So, what's going on here? 

Why did all of MSM focus on Biden's poor debate performance to the exclusion of Donald Trump's lies and hate? I've grown even more suspicious of them after seeing them all move in lockstep to defend Israel, and cover up a genocide. Do they have other motives for wanting to ease Biden out of the White House that aren't age and gaffe related? Why suddenly the panic among some big Democratic politicians and donors, i.e. representatives of the capitalist class? Why are they all arguing that in order to save democracy they need to so by the undemocratic method of forcing out the candidate that got 87% of the popular votes in the Democratic primaries? It can't be that they are surprised that Biden is 81 suddenly. If age is a problem, it was entirely predictable, and those that thought it a problem had plenty of time to field candidates to challenge Biden in the primaries, and give Democratic voters a democratic choice of a younger candidate. But to pull this stuff now only helps Trump, and lessens the chance that any Democratic candidate can defeat him.

We should question whether there are ulterior motives for pushing Biden out among some Democratic members of the capitalist class. It seems like a kind of herd mentality took over where MSM suddenly focused on Biden's age and mental fitness to hold office, to the exclusion of almost everything else, including the on going genocide in Gaza. FoxNews, and that whole crowd, has been pushing this stuff for years. If you'll remember, it was a big part of their playbook against Biden in 2020. Now all of MSM is piling on, and mostly ignoring the worst of Trump. It's almost like they feel that Biden's pro-labor policies in his 1st term, and the promise to do more in a 2nd term, are a little too much for them. They have warmed to Trump, and his pro-business policies in Project 2025, and are using the manufactured "Biden age crisis" to put their fat thumbs on the scale for Trump.

What about Kamala Harris?

For those looking to bump Biden, there's also the sticky question of who will replace him. It's not like the party is united around an alternative. Kamala Harris is the obvious choice in many eyes, but other politicians and donors are calling for an open convention—meaning they want to put somebody else in. That's problematic. If they push out Harris, as well as Biden, they will alienate many of African American women and other core constituencies of the Democratic victory in 2020. And if not Harris, who? CA governor Gavin Newsom? He came in 2nd with 7% behind Harris's 29% in a recent poll comparing 30 Biden alternatives, and he also says he doesn't want the job. So, who else? Plus, I'm not so sure that an America where Trump may even be ahead is ready to elect its first woman president, and second black president this year. So, while Harris is obviously much younger than Biden, she comes with her own demographic issues.

So, it's my advice to all those that see the imperative of defeating Trump and his Project 2025 that they put aside all this defeatist talk about replacing Biden at this late date, focus their fire on the forebearer of fascism, and get behind the last man standing after the Democratic primaries. Those who favor replacing Biden with Harris should see that they campaign as a team, and that she is put out front where the nation can get to know her as an able leader more than qualified to fill the shoes of the presidency should Biden not hit the tape on this track. That would seem like a win-win for the Democrats because no matter how the second Biden term ends, Kamala Harris will be well positioned to succeed him with two full terms.

my 2¢
Clay Claiborne

14 July 2024

Some preliminary thoughts on Donald Trump assassination attempt 

I was working on this post yesterday and had the Butler, PA Trump rally on in background, so I heard it in real time, and started watching immediately. Based on what little I've heard so far, I wonder if the point of the operation by the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was to commit suicide by Secret Service. From his perch on the roof of a building just outside of the rally perimeter he was in a good position to target the former president, but he had to know that as soon as he fired, hit of miss, he would be killed by devastating return fire from the SS counter-snipers positioned on other roofs with better equipment.

If he felt so strongly that Trump had to be assassinated that he was willing to give his own life to do so, that's a level of fanaticism that has yet to be revealed. If he was just looking to go out in a blaze of glory, that might explain why he used an AR-15 type weapon, when a hunting rifle would have been better for the long range work, and why he didn't use a scope, for the most important shot of his life. Is it possible that he was more interest in killing himself than killing Trump? Either way, it's important to understand his motivation. Violence in this country has many.

 

A few thoughts on the question of Biden's age

Ten years ago I was looking for a job as a Linux Systems Administrator and already 64 years old. Before I found the position at Rackspace Hosting that I would work for six years, I suffered a number of rejections that I suspect were age related. I get that. If an employer is faced with a choice between two applicants with comparable skill sets. i.e. either would make a capable Linux Systems Administrator, the vote may go to the younger applicant, even after much internal debate over the age question, for reasons I see no need to detail. I'm now retired, yet I still get job offers—because the IT industry has failed to train enough good Linux people, and BECAUSE, and this is the important point for our present discussion—

In a contest between an applicant who knows Linux, and one who doesn't, the question of age doesn't even come up!

Surprise! Surprise!

The main job of the President of the United States is to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If one candidate, namely Joe Biden, vows to do just that, and has already done a pretty good job of it, and the other candidate, namely Trump, or one of his mini-mes, thinks the Constitution can, and should be "suspended," and has already taken many measures to undermine and circumvent it, the question of age shouldn't even come up.

It's like if you were looking to hire a Linux Systems Administrator, and you interviewed a guy who said: "Look, I don't know the Linux operating system, don't even like it, but I think you should be running everything on Windows, and I really know Windows." You might even entertain his ideas for changing the system. But your decision about whether to hire a Linux person or this Windows guy would depend on him convincing you to throw out the system you've been using, and buying his. Again, applicant age considerations would fade into the background.

The paramount point here is that the two candidates represent two radically different visions of the United States. A vote for Biden is a vote for keeping the US the constitutional bourgeois democracy it has been for more than 200 years. A vote for Trump is a vote for replacing that with a white supremacist, misogynistic, autocracy and a mob boss operating as a virtue king.

Now I ask you: Where does age even enter into the equation on that question?

Anyone arguing that Biden's age should play a big role in this election is actually arguing for ending the US tradition of being a constitutional democracy, and using Biden's age as a way to get there.

my 2¢ worth..

Clay Claiborne

10 September 2023

Ten Years Ago Today: How the Left supported Assad's use of sarin against Syrians

More of today's world than most people realize was shaped ten years ago when the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad challenged the conscious of the world by murdering more than 1400 Syrians, including hundreds of children, with the deadly nerve agent sarin. Much of what has happened since, has happened because of what he was allowed to get away with then.

That being the case, this would seem to be a good time to review my extensive contemporary writings on the subject:

Eleven years ago yesterday, US President Barack Obama made the famous "red-line" threat that he was to renege upon ten years ago. Within hours of his "threat," I wrote this:

08/20/2012 Obama "green lights" Assad's slaughter in Syria

In our culture a "green light" tells you when it is safe to do something, and while it can't be said that what Assad is doing has Obama's approval, he would prefer that he resigns, it can at the very least be said that he has Obama's acquiescence.

originally published on the Daily Kos, as was what followed:

08/23/2012 Assad's Redline and Obama's Greenlight! In that, I wrote:

My Monday diary, UPDATED: #Obama "green lights" #Assad's slaughter in #Syria, has been roundly condemned among Kossacks here, earning it an unprecedented 31 donuts.

However, it has been much appreciated by others much closer to the struggle and shared, liked or tweeted more than 200 times and the idea is finding resonance among Syrian activists as exampled by the articles below...

I also promised this exhaustive original research, which I published three weeks later:

09/14/2012 Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad

This history of the relationship between the Obama administration and the regime of Bashar al-Assad has been done as an investigative partnership organised by WikiLeaks. I have been privileged to have access not only to the usual open source medias but also to three generally "closed source" databases highly relevant to my search, thanks to Wikileaks.

On the day of the attack, I published these:

08/21/2013 1300+ Dead after Obama "Green-lights" new CW attack in Syria

After the top US General, Martin Dempsey, told US Representative Eliot Engel on Monday that the Barack Obama administration opposes intervening militarily in Syria, the Assad regime today slaughtered over a thirteen-hundred Syrians with a chemical weapons attack, most of them women and children.

A mother in Damascus, found her child among a row of dead children | 21 Aug 2013

08/21/2013 Assad Knows: Chemical Attacks Kill Children First!

A few late night thoughts.

Clearly these latest chemical attacks are the most terrible the Syrian people have witnessed. But there is something else about them. Something about the timing. They come almost a year to the day of Obama's famous "red-line" proclamation, almost as if Assad was mocking him.

There is something else. Something much darker.

I wrote Assad's New Strategy: Nothing Makes People Flee Like Murdering Their Children three weeks ago and it is terrible but it is true.

There is something else I realized this evening, as I posted the pictures of the dead and dying children: A chemical attack disproportionately affects children, it has a definite bias in favor of killing them - and Assad knows this!

Followed in quick succession by these:

08/22/2013 AntiWar.com Disparages Chemical Attack in Syria

I am reprinting an AntiWar.com blog post in full because I think this one should haunt them forever:

08/29/2013 Obama's Dilemma and Assad's Opportunity

Obama's current dilemma is of his own making. He set it up almost precisely a year ago when he stumbled into the White House Press room and warned Assad not to cross his red-line. Obama has had a long working relationship with Assad and has never supported regime change in Syria but for political reasons he has been forced to feign support for the democratic struggle and opposition to Assad's use of military power to suppress his people.

08/29/2013 Bashar al-Assad is a Brutal Mass Murderer

Those like Amy Goodman and her guest yesterday on Democracy Now, Phyllis Bennis, try to obscure who is slaughtering Syrians by blowing smoke around this latest chemical attack, should consider that they are defending a mass murderer who has killed tens of thousands with conventional weapons and is actively killing children even as they mount a defense of him.

08/30/2013 Obama Denied Gas Masks to Assad's Victims

Knowing that Assad is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrians and laying waste to some of the oldest cities on Earth, it saddens me greatly to see members of the US peace movement marching under the banner of this dictator, as was the case yesterday:

"Peace activists" marched with the pro-Assad reactionaries

08/31/2013 The case for ‘Hands off Syria’

Racan Alhoch: It comes as no surprise to me that the proponents of ‘Hands off Syria’ have been keeping their hands off Syria for almost three years now.

08/31/2013 Win-Win for Assad as Obama Response to CW Put on Hold

Is there any thing else Barack Obama could do to make things better for his good buddy Bashar al-Assad?

09/01/2013 The Courtship Continues: Obama's New Gift to Assad

My display on Venice Beach Ocean Front Walk

09/01/2013 Anti-War in Form, Pro-War in Essence

G. Sabra Jr.: "No war with Syria" is something a progressive like Phyllis Bennis and a reactionary like Rand Paul -- who wishes Bennis didn't have abortion rights, the right to vote, or enjoy affirmative action -- can get together on.

09/02/2013 How Obama Helped Assad Kill with Poison Gas in Syria

The United States has an excess supply of gas masks left over from the Iraq War filling up warehouses all over the region and yet Obama turned down persistent requests for them from the people Assad was killing even after he started killing them with gas.

09/03/2013 Who Used Sarin in Syria?

Still there have been strong currents on the Left who claim that they are clueless about who could be behind this genocidal attack. They dismiss the prima facie evidence as they dismiss the pictures of dead children. They talk like lawyers for Assad, demanding he be given the benefit of the doubt, no matter his other crimes. They counsel nothing should be done until all are satisfied by indisputable proof. They wonder "Why the rush?" They are not very concerned with preventing future attacks.

There is another strong current on the Left that is striving to blame the victims. They are trying desperately to exonerate the Assad regime and come up with some theory on how Assad's opposition, the "rebels" are behind all of the chemical attacks, including this most recent one,..

09/07/2013 My dare to Ray McGovern & VIPS on Syria CW attack

[Y]ou absolve the Assad Regime of responsibility for the chemical weapons attacks that took place in the Damascus area on 21 August without ever referencing the vast amount of carnage caused by aircraft, Scud missiles and heavy artillery that the Assad regime is solely responsible for.

That alone, makes your chemical weapons memo a depraved defense of a mass murderer!

09/08/2013 Why would Assad use CW with UN Inspectors in Syria?

After the attack, the UN investigators weren't allowed to go anywhere near Ghouta. They couldn't even leave their hotel without Syrian government permission and their Syrian government minders. This is the key fact that undermines the claim that Assad wouldn't do it because the UN investigator were in town. What real difference did it make? They could have been on the other side of town or the other side of the planet; it would have made no difference since it would be four days before they were allowed to access the chemical weapons attack sites in Ghouta.

09/08/2013 Dr. Zaher Sahloul on the CW Attacks in Syria

1. The regime should have held a press conference next day blaming the attack on the rebels, the terrorists, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey as it has done after Khan Alassal CWA attack in Aleppo in April 2013. This is a great chance for the regime to discredit the rebels once and for all. Instead the regime denied the attack completely as if it did not happen for the first 3 days.

09/09/2013 Witness to CW Attack: When Paradise turned to Hell.
This was written by Luna Watfa and published anonymously before she was arrested and tortured by Assad's thugs for photographing the children he murdered with sarin, and transmitting those pictures to media Assad didn't control:

Eastern Ghouta became today a symbol of death for the whole world to see. It has become a living hell in which souls die silently, along with all the details of a previous life, humans, trees, and stones.

Eastern Ghouta woke up on 13 / Shawal / 1434, corresponding to August 21/2013 because of the sound of rockets fired from the brigade 155. The 12 rockets fell in Zamalka and Ain Tarma around two-thirty in the morning (2:30 A.M). These towns have high population density and they are far from the military front-line. Most people were asleep and they awoke to an enormous tragedy, people fell dead and those who were asleep, did not ever wake up. The scene was very painful.

09/09/2013 Why did Assad Regime first Deny CW Attack if Blameless?

In the immediate aftermath of the chemical attack, the Syrian government didn't act like an injured party. It acted like a guilty party. It hoped that it could cover up the chemical attack completely. Rather that act to rescue the injured and preserve the evidence for the UN investigators, it denied the investigator access for four days while it bombarded the area, destroying evidence and killing witnesses.

09/11/2013 Secret Intel Source of Ray McGovern & VIPS Revealed!

So it would appear that the source of VIPS intelligence is not active CIA case officers speaking to old colleges like Ray McGovern, Philip Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Ann Wright on the q-t, it is Yossef Bodansky writing for the pro-Assad, pro-Qaddafi, pro-Russian website Global Research.

09/12/2013 BREAKING: New Chemical Attack reported in Syria

The use of chlorine clearly sets up this attack to be blamed on the opposition and the silence on this attack by the mainstream media and the Obama administration (In the hope that they could just sweep this inconvenient attack under the carpet, so to speak?) now allows the Assad regime and friends to "reveal" this attack in a manner of their choosing. Obama is being so played on this!

09/16/2013 UN hints Assad used Russian rockets in sarin gas attack

The United Nations has this day released a report on its investigation into the attack that took place in the Damascus suburbs in Syria on 21 August 2013. The investigation found that sarin gas rockets were used to kill hundreds while they slept. While the report was not allowed to name the perpetrator, all the evidence points to the Assad Regime. Furthermore, it would appear that the source of some of the rockets used in the chemical attack is the very country that is expected to oversee Assad disarmament of chemical weapons, Russia!

Graphic from UN Report

09/18/2013 Obama blocks ICC war crimes prosecution of Assad

Confirming what I wrote a year ago in Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad, the Obama Administration is now joining with Russia and China in blocking the International Criminal Court prosecution of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for war crimes.

09/25/2013 Where Robert Fisk's defense of Assad falls down

When that story could no longer cut the mustard sarin, the Russians bought into the Mint Press story about how rebels in a tunnel bungled a bottle of gas given them by Saudi Prince Bandar and caused all the deaths, still without rockets. Now that story has been completely discredited. So finally they admit that Russian rockets were involved, just as I wrote on the day the UN report came out.

09/26/2013 More on ex-journalist Robert Fisk's defense of Assad

When Robert Fisk advances this thesis, he does it with a flourish worthy of an ex-journalist turned propagandist and he does it in the name of unnamed UN employees...

10/02/2013 The Courtship Continues: Obama stopped French strike on Assad

It seems that the French, which did their own investigation of the chemical attack in Damascus, [ see this and this in English, and official report in French here ], and drew their own conclusions, were already warming up jets for a strike against Assad's missile batteries and command centres of the 4th Armoured Division in charge of chemical weapons, when US President Barack Obama made them call it off. 

10/07/2013 The Courage of Ghouta in a Craven World

The bombardment of the rebellious communities of East and West Ghouta continues today just it did for months before the sarin gas attack of 21 August brought these neighbourhoods to the attention of the world. Now, in return for a promise to give up his chemical weapons, Assad is being welcomed in from the cold. Meanwhile, he has tightened his siege of those communities to the point were he has cut off all food and medical supplies, electricity and telephone, and a craven world looks the other way as he is being allowed to starve to death the children who survived his poison gas attack.

10/14/2013 Why the return of chemical weapons is a big deal

One day people will rue the day that poison gas was re-introduced into class warfare and the antiwar movement sat on its hands.

Poison gas is the perfect ultimate weapon for the bourgeois to use against the proletariat. That is why Assad is using it now.

10/18/2013 Disillusion in Syria’s Armed Opposition

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, Syrian American Council: As top politicians representing the Syrian opposition pushed their case with world leaders on the sidelines of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, a dozen rebel brigades inside Syria, fed up with waiting for elusive Western support, issued a joint statement rejecting their political leaders and called on both military and civilian groups in Syria to “consolidate under an Islamic framework ... with Sharia as the main source of legislation.”

11/24/2013 How Obama has supported Assad's gas murder always

The facts and history described in this article reveals a US government that had come to accept the routine "tactical" use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime against his opposition, and indirectly supported their effective use both by denial of basic protective devices to those being gassed and by a public denial of the fact that they were being gassed. This story reveals a damning history of US government complicity with the Assad Regime's gas murder and its biggest flaw is that it tries to excuse this trail of evidence as "missteps" and "miscalculations."

The struggles against the Assad apologists for his sarin murders continues to this day:

12/09/2013 Whose Seymour Hersh?

[Hersh] agrees with Assad that the only real choice for Syria's future is between the jihadists and his regime, and given those choices, he favors the Assad Regime.

It is important to understand that this is where Seymour Hersh is coming from in evaluating Whose sarin?, because, for all of Seymour Hersh's historic accomplishments, it is little more than another poorly written and poorly sourced piece designed to muddy the waters as to who is responsible for the sarin gas attack in Ghouta on 21 August this year. 

01/28/2014 Ex-journalist Robert Fisk: One is reminded of Goebbels

Joseph Goebbels was Adolph Hitler's chief propagandist, and while Assad is no Hitler and Fisk is no Goebbels, it should be remembered that Goebbels was a journalist who fashioned himself a left-winger before he started shilling for a fascist dictator.

03/09/2014 UN: Assad sarin used in attacks | The Left's response?

Flying under the headlines this week, while all eyes are focused on the clouds gathering over Ukraine, the United Nations published the 7th report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic. This report was published on 5 March 2014 although it is dated 12 February 2014. This report goes further than the UN has ever gone before in placing the blame for the use of poison gas in Syria squarely on the Assad Regime. 

Almost a decade before Sy Hersh attempted to exonerate Putin for any responsibility for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sabotage, he busied himself attempting to exonerate Assad for the sarin murders. I took him on with a vengeance! 

04/08/2014 Seymour Hersh's Believe It or Don't

Repetition is at the heart of the Assad-Putin propaganda method, what might also be called the RT method. It is widely supported by the "non-(NATO) interventionist" Left. You make up a lie and you keep repeating it. Lack of proof is not an obstacle, just keep repeating it. Anonymous sources won't impeach its credibility as long as you keep repeating it. Even after it has clearly been disproved, you pay that no never mind and you keep repeating it.

04/10/2014 Seymour Hersh's chemical weapons fetish

The purpose of this essay is not to add more proofs of Assad's responsibility for the poison gas attacks, but put that in a larger context and to point out that most of those killed in the Syrian conflict have been killed with conventional weapons and the vast majority of those have been killed by the Assad regime, so no matter how you slice it, Hersh et al are defending a mass murderer while ignoring all those murders by non-chemical means.

04/13/2014 After Hersh lays smoke screen, Assad lobes gas bombs

His piece became like a call to action for Assad supporters everywhere to renew the claims that Assad didn't do it, repeat all the Fall conspiracy theories, and try to build unity among the conflicting versions. For example, Mint Press came out in support of Hersh, in spite of the fact that they had been supporting a version of how the rebels gassed themselves that involved untrained rebels in a tunnel bungling a big tank of sarin given to them by Saudi Prince Bandar. Hersh's current version has the Turks ramroding al Nursa, and using missiles, no Bandar, no tank, no tunnel. But nevermind about that, these Assad supporters are flexible, the main point is that Assad didn't do it and the rebels did. That is why all those that had formerly promoted a version that had the CIA and/or Qatar masterminding the chemical attacks were as quick as Mint Press to jump on the Hersh campaign bus.

05/10/2014 The appeasement of Putin began in Syria

My hands-down favorite gangster movie is The Godfather and when we speak of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin we are definitely in gangster territory. There is a famous scene when Don Vito Corleone, the Godfather, realizes who his real nemesis is: “Tattaglia is a pimp. He never could have outfought Santino. But I didn't know until this day that it was Barzini all along.”

One day soon Obama will come to realize that Assad is a pimp and it has been Putin all along. 

11/16/2015 The Imperial Left's sarin song: still "Regime Change" after all these years!

The revolution was less than two weeks old, 27 March 2011 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked on Face the Nation, "Can we expect the United States to enter the conflict in the way we have entered the conflict in Libya?" Her answer was "No. Each of these situations is unique, Bob." The headline that went out the next day was: Clinton: No attack on Syria.

12/14/2015 From Luna Watfa: Death accompanies you on every step This was written after she was released from Assad's custody, and was making her way to Germany:

To die in Syria is very likely. However, at least you have a fighting chance on this horror trip. Therefore, you take that chance and put the most valuable thing on the line that you have: yourself, in the hope to being able to start a new life.

12/15/2015 Truth Revealed: 2013 East Ghouta sarin attack was done by aliens!

Anyone who's ever seen Invasion on the Body Snatchers knows what's going on here.

12/24/2015 From Luna Watfa: "Do not stop, keep going ... keep moving!"

It took me two weeks to reach Germany. I thought the waiting and suffering would now have an end - but I was wrong. 

01/05/2016 Luna Watfa: Enemy of Syrian State admitted sarin photos were fakes!

Most in the opposition couldn't understand why Obama would renege on his promise and fail to strike Assad. Luna's SNC contact was so confident that the US was about to act that he told Luna that no more photographs would be required. When the US and other world powers failed to act after Assad's big sarin attack, it had a devastating impact on the morale of his opposition. Beyond Assad, those extremists that had long warned against western treachery were the biggest beneficiaries. 

Luna was finally released 25 February 2015 from the women's prison in Adra after more than a year in the regime's custody. She then reunited with her husband Basel in Turkey and they have since made their way to Germany. Luna is still looking forward to being reunited with her children - Sara, 13 and Obada, 16.

After all this, Patrick McCann now thinks that Assad is responsible for the sarin murders. He wrote me, 11 November 2015:

Despite being unsure of the veracity of those who report it (e.g. John Kerry), I believe that Assad may very well be guilty.

He still doesn't understand that is was not John Kerry but Luna Watfa that he was calling a liar, and it was Luna Watfa that paid the price.

02/01/2016 From Luna Watfa: Under The Mercy of Potentials 2

Brothers and sisters from Syria, Aleppo. Happily waiting 

at Budapest train station to move towards Austria the day 

when Germany closed its borders at night. Hungary. 13/9/2015.

04/29/2016 Robert F. Kennedy's Jr. Andromeda Strain

He seems to equate Arab with Islamic which is odd since the Arab that murdered his father, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was a Palestinian Christian. 

07/19/2016 In spite of UN deal Assad continues to make & use chemical weapons

Obama never planned to carry out his red-line threat, and so this Left opposition was helpful. Instead he supported a Russian program that required Assad to give up all the CW weapons and production facilities he was willing to admit to having.

09/29/2016 Chemical Weapons attacks expand beyond Syria

When most of the Left supported US President Barack Obama's decision to renege on his promise to take military action if Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons on his people, others warned that this acceptance of the re-introduction of the formerly banned weapons against mass rebellion would be followed by a wider use and a darker future. Now Amnesty International is reporting that Sudanese dictator, Omar al-Bashir, has been using chemical weapons for the first time in the Darfur conflict.

04/05/2017 Noam Chomsky regurgitates 2012 Putin propaganda to excuse latest sarin murders

He seems to hold the US responsible for all acts of violence committed by the Assad regime in the past four years because, according to the Russians, it miss an opportunity to get Assad out in 2012:

04/16/2017 Why would Assad use sarin in Syria now?

Ajamu Baraka thought Hillary Clinton much more dangerous than Donald Trump. Last year he was the Green Party vice presidential candidate and together with his running mate, Jill Stein, they diverted enough progressive votes to put Trump in the White House, but in 2013 he was part of the Assad didn't do it chorus,...

04/26/2017 Sincerely yours, Theodore A. Postol

"Sincerely yours?" Really? Who signs a scientific paper about a chemical weapons attack "Sincerely yours?" The answer is Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when he is trying to use the mantles of science and position to pull the wool over our eyes.

04/28/2017 Please Re-Tweet as Ted Postol beats a hasty retreat

Poor Postol. He wants so badly to please his Syrian Sister, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't seen to get it right. First he rushes to press with his own theory of how Assad didn't do it, only to discover his theory blows their alibi. So he ditches his theory to back their alibi, and in his zeal to find new proofs for them, ends up calling them out for lying again.

04/30/2017 Dr. Postol's "correction" shows he still needs Reading Comprehension 101

Doctor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a "correction" yesterday. This correction didn't explain the apparent contradiction between his earlier theory that jihadist terrorists set off a chemical pipe-bomb in the street and his current support for claims by the Russians and the regime that they bombed a terrorist arms depot that stored chemical weapons. 

05/01/2017 Postol's Apostles & the normalization of chemical weapons use

Human Right Watch published this May Day a four minute video that graphically documents what I have feared most would result from the world's indifference to the suffering of the Syrian people. That has been the normalization of the use of chemical weapons against rebellious civilian populations. The HRW reports how the Assad regime has regularized the use of chemical weapons in the past six months while the world paid it no never mind. Only with the 92 sarin murders at Khan Sheikhoun has the matter made the news again, and this has again brought out Assad's defenders to blame the victims and "question the evidence." In the cases of attacks that don't make the news they don't question the evidence because they don't have to be bothered.

05/03/2017 Reading Comprehension 101 for MIT Professor Dr. Ted Postol

I know you faced a certain amount of ridicule along these lines because in critiquing the French Report, you "missed" that when they referred to the sarin attack that occurred on 29 April 2013 in Saraqib, they were talking about a different attack than the one that occurred in Khan Sheikhoun last month. So I'd like to begin with some words of encouragement. When last you wrote and made a "correction" to that original critique of the French report, you said you thought that report focused on the sarin attack of 29 August 2013, and "does not report on the details of the attack on April 4." With this new paper from you, I see that you have found those details. This shows that you are making progress already!

05/05/2017 Who runs Syria? Why are more sarin attacks coming?

05/10/2017 Are Scott Horton & Ted Postol holocaust enablers?

There are forces, some on the Right and some on the Left, that speak out on questions related to Syria only when the slaughter that has been raging for the past five years rises to a level that floods it into the mainstream media. Then they jump into action to defend those that have unquestionably been responsible for the overwhelming proportion of murders in Syria by arguing that it can't be proven that these particular murders were committed by regime forces. These people are what I call

HOLOCAUST ENABLERS.

05/12/2017 Dr. Ted Postol misreads the HRW Report on Khan Sheikhoun

Doctor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes these local residents don't know what they are talking about, or worst, they are part of a deep state conspiracy that involves obviously the White House, as usual, the French, a couple of guys in England, and now apparently also Human Rights Watch.  In spite of those odds, his Syrian Sister can rest assured that Dr. Ted is as yet undaunted in his defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

06/27/2017 Putin: More chemical attacks being prepared in Syria

When this headline appeared in Russian media just days after the sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun killed over a hundred civilians it got almost no notice in the United States.

07/04/2017 Sy Hersh's incredible secret source

Sy Hersh's latest defense of Assad, Trump's Red Line, published by Welt, 25 June 2017, makes the bold claim that we are the victims of fake news and there really were no victims of a sarin attack in Khan Sheikhoun in April. His claim has been lauded and repeated by a number of commenters, including Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, who like Hersh himself, are people I use to admire.

07/06/2017 Syria, Seymour Hersh and the Sarin denialists

An important post by Brian Whitaker, Former Middle East editor of The Guardian, 1 July 2017. Republished from his website www.al-bab.com.

07/07/2017 Seymour Hersh exposes Russian & Syrian lies about sarin attack

Dr. Ted said that jihadist terrorists set off a sarin pipe bomb in the middle of the street. He said they staged it as a "false flag" attack while a Syrian war plane was overhead, however he did agree with just about every other investigation, including now the OPCW, on one important point - that there was a chemical attack. Hersh denies even this! Postol said in his initial report: 

The only indisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning.

Now Hersh and his supporters dispute what even Ted Postol found indisputable! We've come a long way in two months. What's the saying?: "Like it never even happened!"

07/10/2017 Russia admits sarin used in spite of Sy Hersh fantasy

If Hersh is right about the original target and reason for hitting it, and he is also speaking truth when he says both the Russians and Syrians made sure this was well known my all players in the region, why have they never made these claims and in fact made quite contradictory claims?

Why is this story a Hersh exclusive? It's because he is feeding us the whole cloth.

Can we finally put to rest any reverence for Seymour Hersh's Pulitzer?

05/31/2019 Lies, damned lies, and engineering sub-team reports

Lately, many on the “anti-imperialist” Left have been slaphappy about a “leaked” OPCW engineering sub-team report they think exonerates Bashar al-Assad of the chlorine mass murder that took place in Douma, Syria, 7 April 2018. Like the Trump cabal after Attorney General William Barr said that Robert Mueller found no obstruction, their delight will soon fade when it is shown that the 15-page note to the OPCW is about as valuable as Barr's 4-page “summary” of the Mueller report. I will show why all the theatrics surrounding this 15-page note is much ado about nothing, but first I must set the stage by going into a little history.

06/05/2019 Dr. Ted Postol rides again - right into the OPCW "leak" controversy

The way they talked about this one attack, you should be forgiven for not knowing this was just one of more than 300 chemical attacks in Syria since 2012. Maté, says dozens were killed, so you should be forgive for not knowing that 70 were killed, and over 500 were injured. They made no mention of the current carnage Assad and his Russian patron are causing in Idlib today, even as Grayzone seeks to exonerate them for the war crimes they committed a year ago.

06/25/2019 Russian's War on the OPCW— Putting the Henderson "leak" in context

That international ban has largely held, with a few notable exceptions, for more than 85 years. However, now it would seem that chemical weapons are on something of a comeback. This started in 2012 in Syria, where there have been more than 300 reported chemical attacks linked to the Assad regime. But CW hasn't been just for Syria anymore. Since 2012, CW attacks have also been reported in Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Iraq, the UK, and Sudan.

This is a worrying trend that should concern us all.

06/27/2019 “Working Group” Can you find Henderson or “leak” his full OPCW report?

United States Attorney General William Barr has recently shown us how much we should trust an “Executive Summary” while we are being denied the full report. No one should continue to give this so-called "Executive Summary" a minutes attention as long as the document being summarized is missing and the author is unavailable to validate his work.

Before Ukraine, there was Syria—Hilary has passed.

Clay Claiborne

20 August 2023