Syrians tested chemical weapons firing systems

Syria tested firing systems for poison gas shells at the country's largest chemical weapons research center at Safira, east of Aleppo, last month, German weekly Der Spiegelreported on Monday, citing statements from various witnesses.

According to the report, Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers were flown in by helicopter to witness the testing.

Several empty shells, designed to carry chemical weapons, were fired by tanks and helicopters in a desert location near the research center, Der Spiegel quoted the witnesses as saying.

According to the report, Syria has reinforced security at the facility and made efforts to safeguard its electricity supply in recent months, in case of rebel attack.

Both the US and Israel have expressed concern over Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons falling into the wrong hands or being used by Syrian President Bashar Assad to quell the uprising in the country.



US President Barack Obama warned last month that any sign that Assad was starting to utilize the weapons, or move them, would constitute a "red line" that could trigger US military intervention in the conflict.

"We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people," Obama told an impromptu White House news conference. He acknowledged he was not "absolutely confident" the stockpile was secure.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in July that Israel would take military action if needed to prevent Syria's chemical weapons from falling into the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

According to Monday's report in Der Spiegel, the Safira chemical weapons research center includes scientists from North Korea and Iran who produce chemical weapons such as mustard gas and sarin which they test on animals.

The German weekly quoted a member of the Free Syrian Army as saying that the rebels are not planning to attack or capture the site.

Jerusalem Post

Nasrallah, in rare public address, hails ‘start of a serious movement in defense of the prophet’

BEIRUT — The leader of Hezbollah made a rare public appearance Monday at a rally in Beirut, calling for sustained protests against an anti-Islam film that already has provoked a week of unrest in Muslim countries worldwide.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public since his Shiite Muslim group battled Israel in a month-long war in 2006, fearing Israeli assassination. Since then, he has communicated with his followers and gives news conferences mostly via satellite link.

On Monday, Nasrallah spoke for about 15 minutes before tens of thousands of cheering supporters, many of them with green and yellow headbands around their foreheads — the colors of Hezbollah — and the words “at your service God’s prophet” written on them.

Police officials estimated the crowd at around 500,000 — an exceptionally large turnout even by standards of the Hezbollah group whose rallies normally draw huge numbers.

Diplomats at the US Embassy in Beirut have started to destroy classified material as a security precaution and sent local Lebanese employees home early amid the anti-American protests.

In Washington, a State Department official said there was no imminent threat to the heavily fortified Beirut embassy, which is about an hour away from where the nearest demonstration is planned. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss security procedures, said the decision to “reduce classified holdings” was routine and made by embassy staff.

Nasrallah, who last appeared in public in December 2011 to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashoura, said the US must ban the movie and have it removed from the Internet and called for his followers to maintain pressure on the world to act.

“This is the start of a serious movement that must continue all over the Muslim world in defense of the prophet of God,” Nasrallah said to roars of support. “As long as there’s blood in us, we will not remain silent over insults against our prophet.”

The crowd chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to the Great Satan America,” reported Israel Radio.

He has called for a series of demonstrations this week to denounce the video.


Hezbollah supporters wave flags and hold up Arabic banners that read, “At your service God’s prophet; America equals terrorism; and America does not equal freedom,” during an anti-US rally in Beirut, Lebanon on Monday (photo credit: AP/Hussein Malla)

Hezbollah’s rallies seem aimed at keeping the issue alive by bringing out large crowds. But the group also appeared to be trying to ensure the protests do not spiral into violence, walking a careful line. Notably, Hezbollah held Monday’s protest in its own mainly Shiite stronghold of Dahieh in south Beirut, far from the US Embassy, in the mountains north of the capital, and other international diplomatic missions.

For the group, anger over the low-budget movie that denigrates the Prophet Muhammad provides a welcome diversion from the crisis in Syria, which has brought heavy criticism on Hezbollah for its support of President Bashar Assad. But stoking riots in Beirut could also bring a backlash in the tensely divided country.

“Some people still don’t know the level of insult done to our prophet,” Nasrallah said. “The world should understand the truth of our relationship and ties to our prophet.”

The movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” portrays Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester. Protesters have directed their anger at the US government, insisting it should do something to stop the film’s distribution, though it was privately produced. American officials have criticized it for intentionally offending Muslims — and in one case, acted to prevent it being shown at a Florida church.

In a televised address on Sunday, Nasrallah had blamed the US for the film, saying, “The ones who should be held accountable and boycotted are those who support and protect the producers, namely the US administration.”

He called for protests on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Protests against the movie were largely peaceful in the Middle East but turned violent for the first time in Afghanistan on Monday as hundreds of people burned cars and threw rocks at a US military base in the capital, Kabul. Many in the crowd shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to those people who have made a film and insulted our prophet.”

Afghan religious leaders urged calm. “Our responsibility is to show a peaceful reaction, to hold peaceful protests. Do not harm people, their property or public property,” said Karimullah Saqib, a cleric in Kabul.

On the main throroughfare through the city, demonstrators burned tires, shipping containers and at least one police vehicle before they were dispersed. Elsewhere in the city, police shot in the air to hold back a crowd of about 800 protesters and prevent them from pushing toward government buildings downtown, said Azizullah, a police officer at the site who, like many Afghans, only goes by one name.

More than 20 police officers were slightly injured, most by rocks, said Gen. Fahim Qaim, the commander of a city quick-reaction police force.

The rallies will continue “until the people who made the film go to trial,” said one protester, Wahidullah Hotak, among several dozen people demonstrating in front of a Kabul mosque, demanding President Barack Obama bring those who have insulted the prophet to justice.

Several hundred demonstrators in Pakistan’s northwest also clashed with police Monday after setting fire to a press club and a government building, said police official Mukhtar Ahmed. The protesters apparently attacked the press club in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province’s Upper Dir district because they were angry their rally wasn’t getting more coverage, he said.

Police charged the crowd in the town of Wari, beating protesters back with batons, Ahmad said. The demonstrators then attacked the office of a senior government official and surrounded a local police station, said Ahmad, who locked himself inside with several other officers.

One protester died when police and demonstrators exchanged fire, and several others were wounded, police official Akhtar Hayat said.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, hundreds of protesters clashed with police for a second day in the southern city of Karachi as they tried to reach the US Consulate. Police lobbed tear gas and fired in the air to disperse the protesters, who were from the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. Police arrested 40 students, but no injuries have been reported, said senior police officer Asif Ejaz Shaikh.

Pakistanis have also held many peaceful protests against the film, including one in the southwest town of Chaman on Monday attended by around 3,000 students and teachers.

In Jakarta, hundreds of Indonesians clashed with police outside the US Embassy, hurling rocks and firebombs and setting tires alight, marking the first violence over the film seen in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

At least 10 police were rushed to the hospital after being pelted with rocks and attacked with bamboo sticks, said Jakarta Police Chief Maj. Gen. Untung Rajad. He said four protesters were arrested and one was hospitalized.

Demonstrators burned a picture of Obama and also tried to ignite a fire truck parked outside the embassy after ripping a water hose off the vehicle and torching it, sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. Police used a bullhorn to appeal for calm and deployed water cannons and tear gas to try to disperse the crowd as the protesters shouted “Allah Akbar,” or God is great.

“We will destroy America like this flag!” a protester screamed while burning a US flag. “We will chase away the American ambassador from the country!”

Demonstrations were also held Monday in the Indonesian cities of Medan and Bandung. Over the weekend in the central Java town of Solo, protesters stormed KFC and McDonald’s restaurants, forcing customers to leave and management to close the stores.

German authorities are considering whether to ban the public screening of the film, titled “Innocence of Muslims” because it could endanger public security, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday. A fringe far-right political party says it plans to show the film in Berlin in November.

Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the West to block the film Monday to prove they are not “accomplices” in a “big crime,” according to Iranian state TV.

Such an appeal falls into the major cultural divides over the film. US officials say they cannot limit free speech and Google Inc. refuses to do a blanket ban on the YouTube video clip. This leaves individual countries putting up their own blocks.

The Times of Israel

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Gerald Celente on Alex Jones Info Wars

'ALLA' god of violence and revolution

A research article posted on the website of terrorist-turned-Christian Walid Shoebat contends the oldest known references to the Islamic deity Allah are not in Arabian records but in Babylonian artifacts.

Ancient tablets describe “Alla” as a deity of “violence and revolution.”

“This link sheds new light since for many years we have been hearing various ideas on where Allah came from. Christian and Muslim scholars – as well as secular professors – presented numerous arguments on just who Allah really is,” wrote Theodore Shoebat, the son of Walid Shoebat.

In his heavily footnoted project, he writes that historians have suggested Islam’s beginnings are found in the Persian religion Zoroastrianism, while others, including Christian writers, argue Allah was a moon-god in Babylon.

The younger Shoebat, who already has published several books, said previously the oldest known reference to “Allah” was in northern and southern Arabia about the fifth century B.C., according to Kenneth J. Thomas.

The new find, however, links the name to the Epic of Atrahasis, chiseled on tablets sometime around 1700 B.C. in Babylon.

“The beginning of the Epic of Atrahasis describes Allah as how all of the gods labored endlessly in grueling work, under the rule of the patron deity Enlil or Elil. But soon revolt of the gods had erupted, and one deity of ‘violence and revolution’ [was] named Allah (spelled by the experts as Alla),” he wrote.

Walid Shoebat said he believes this is the first time the connection has been made.

Theodore Shoebat said one of the early such references in the Epic of Atrahasis states: “Then Alla made his voice heard and spoke to the gods his brothers,’ Come! Let us carry Elil, the counselor of gods, the warrior from his dwelling.”

The younger Shoebat, whose latest book is “For God or for Tyranny,” grew up in Northern California, where he witnessed Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Theodore Shoebat explained that no one had found any ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions that describe Allah being “worshiped purely, without idolatrous connotations.”

“The question remains as to why no expert on Assyriology or Sumerology had even suspected that ‘Alla’ had a connection with the Arabian ‘Allah,’” he wrote. “I checked the work of Thorkild Jacobsen, a foremost authority on Mesopotamian history and the dictionary of the translator, Stephanie Dally, and none make a connection between the Bablylonian ‘Alla’ and the Arabian ‘Allah.’

“Allah of the Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis was most likely kept hidden by researchers who feared controversy or even concealed the find,” he wrote. “In the epic Allah, which translators spelled ‘Alla’ (really pronounced the same way), was never even linked by any of the experts on Assyriology or any of the translators who wrote on the subject to the known Allah of Arabia and Islam.

“To those who accuse me of basing my conclusion, that Alla is Allah, on solely prejudice against Islam, I will present further evidence for my belief. It must be known to the reader that the author of the Atrahasis epic was one Ipiq-Aya who lived under the reign of the Old Babylonian king Ammi-Saduqa, and that he wrote it in the Akkadian language (the tongue of the Old Babylonian kingdom),” Ted Shoebat explained. “The ‘Akkadians’ it must be noted did not originally spring from Iraq, but had migrated from south Arabia, specifically Yemen, into Mesopotamia, where south Arabian inscriptions have been discovered, as in Kuwait on the Arab shores of the Persian gulf close to the borders of Iraq. The deities of Shamash (the Sun), and Ashdar/ Athtar (Venus) were both brought by the Akkadians from South Arabia into Mesopotamia.

“Athtar was originally a male deity of Venus for the Akkadian Arabs, but because when they had settled into Mesopotamia, they had equated Athtar with the Sumerian goddess of Venus Inanna, and would become the Babylonian Ishtar. This Athtar was also identified with the Arabian Allat, the female consort of Allah who was so revered by the Mesopotamians that they had called her Um-Uruk, or ‘the mother of the town of Erech,’ an infamous city of ancient Iraq,” he continued, “Since Allat was the feminine root of Allah, and was worshiped in Mesopotamia, and equal to the Sumerian Inanna, since they were both Venus goddesses, we should be able to find Allah associated with this goddess, based on inscriptions. In fact, we do, a Sumerian verse which directly identifies ‘Alla’ with the bridegroom of Inanna, Dumuzi or Tammuz who was an ancient deified king who once ruled the city-state of Erech, or Uruk, as the fourth king of its First Dynasty.”

He said it appears “Alla” “is an ancestral deity who was worshiped in Mesopotamia.” The writings from the time talk about Allah’s death, he explained.

“By the testimony of the Sumerians, it is clear that this Alla, or Tammuz, was once an infamous king of Erech, to only be deified by the superstitious masses of Mesopotamia.”

WND

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