Far from providing the audacity of Hope, the Obama regime has been flirting with fascism and is audacious in its contempt for legality and standards of civilisation. Stop whining about "the war on terror", recognize we've faced far greater threats in the past and didn't need to turn ourselves into a police state to fight threats real and imagined.

NSA collecting phone records of millions daily, court order reveals

Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama

• Read the Verizon court order in full here

Glenn Greenwald 

The Guardian, 

Wednesday 5 June 2013

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.

Under the Bush administration, officials in security agencies had disclosed to reporters the large-scale collection of call records data by the NSA, but this is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.

The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Fisa court orders typically direct the production of records pertaining to a specific named target who is suspected of being an agent of a terrorist group or foreign state, or a finite set of individually named targets.

The Guardian approached the National Security Agency, the White House and the Department of Justice for comment in advance of publication on Wednesday. All declined. The agencies were also offered the opportunity to raise specific security concerns regarding the publication of the court order.

The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.

"We decline comment," said Ed McFadden, a Washington-based Verizon spokesman.

The order, signed by Judge Roger Vinson, compels Verizon to produce to the NSA electronic copies of "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls".

The order directs Verizon to "continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this order". It specifies that the records to be produced include "session identifying information", such as "originating and terminating number", the duration of each call, telephone calling card numbers, trunk identifiers, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, and "comprehensive communication routing information".

The information is classed as "metadata", or transactional information, rather than communications, and so does not require individual warrants to access. The document also specifies that such "metadata" is not limited to the aforementioned items. A 2005 court ruling judged that cell site location data – the nearest cell tower a phone was connected to – was also transactional data, and so could potentially fall under the scope of the order.

While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.

It is not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone provider to be targeted with such an order, although previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks. It is also unclear from the leaked document whether the three-month order was a one-off, or the latest in a series of similar orders.

The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.

For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on "secret legal interpretations" to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be "stunned" to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.

Julian Sanchez, a surveillance expert with the Cato Institute, explained: "We've certainly seen the government increasingly strain the bounds of 'relevance' to collect large numbers of records at once — everyone at one or two degrees of separation from a target — but vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretence of constraint or particularized suspicion." The April order requested by the FBI and NSA does precisely that.

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act, 50 USC section 1861. That is the provision which Wyden and Udall have repeatedly cited when warning the public of what they believe is the Obama administration's extreme interpretation of the law to engage in excessive domestic surveillance.

In a letter to attorney general Eric Holder last year, they argued that "there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows."

"We believe," they wrote, "that most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted" the "business records" provision of the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocates have long warned that allowing the government to collect and store unlimited "metadata" is a highly invasive form of surveillance of citizens' communications activities. Those records enable the government to know the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication.

Such metadata is what the US government has long attempted to obtain in order to discover an individual's network of associations and communication patterns. The request for the bulk collection of all Verizon domestic telephone records indicates that the agency is continuing some version of the data-mining program begun by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack.

The NSA, as part of a program secretly authorized by President Bush on 4 October 2001, implemented a bulk collection program of domestic telephone, internet and email records. A furore erupted in 2006 when USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth" and was "using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity." Until now, there has been no indication that the Obama administration implemented a similar program.

These recent events reflect how profoundly the NSA's mission has transformed from an agency exclusively devoted to foreign intelligence gathering, into one that focuses increasingly on domestic communications. A 30-year employee of the NSA, William Binney, resigned from the agency shortly after 9/11 in protest at the agency's focus on domestic activities.

In the mid-1970s, Congress, for the first time, investigated the surveillance activities of the US government. Back then, the mandate of the NSA was that it would never direct its surveillance apparatus domestically.

At the conclusion of that investigation, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho who chaired the investigative committee, warned: "The NSA's capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter."

Additional reporting by Ewen MacAskill and Spencer Ackerman

Baa, baa, black sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes sir, yes sir,

Three bags full.

One for the master,

One for the dame,

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.

Syrian army regains strategic city of Qusayr - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Syrian army regains strategic city of Qusayr - Middle East - Al Jazeera English




Syrian government forces and Hezbollah guerrillas took control of most of the strategic crossroads town of Qusayr early on Wednesday, in a painful defeat for outgunned rebels that gave new momentum to the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and was likely to further dampen prospects for peace negotiations planned for this month.

The old sarin gas trick: The usual regimes, the UK and France, are still looking for an excuse to intervene in Syria.

France Confirms Sarin Gas Has Been Used in Syria

Matthew Feeney|Jun. 4, 2013 2:37 pm

REASON

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has said that tests conducted in Paris on samples taken from Syria confirm that sarin gas has been used "several times and in a localised manner" during the Syrian conflict.

The announcement comes shortly after United Nations investigators said that they had “reasonable grounds” to believe that chemical weapons were being used in the Syrian conflict by government and rebel forces.

The White House has said that U.S. is continuing to gather evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Because the European Union’s arms embargo on Syria was not renewed at the end of last month it would be easier for France and other countries that have advocated for increased involvement in Syria to assist Assad’s opposition by sending them weapons. The recent news will almost certainly be used as the latest argument for intervention.

In August 2012 Obama said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be considered a “red line.” Given that tests from Paris have confirmed that sarin gas was used the Obama administration will be under pressure to increase involvement in the conflict.

If the Obama administration does not react to the confirmed use of chemical weapons in some way it could be interpreted by Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government to mean that when it comes to Syria Obama is all bark and no bite. This is not a perception that Obama will be keen on fostering, especially given the bipartisan support for intervention on Capitol Hill.

The Syria Transition Support Act of 2013, which would allow the Obama administration to arm “vetted” rebels in Syria was passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month. It is now awaiting action in the Senate.

WHY THE NEWLY REDISCOVERED SARIN GAS IN SYRIA? LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THIS BEING REPORTED THIS MORNING:

The Syrian army has regained control of the strategic city of Qusayr on the border with Lebanon, Syrian state television has reported.

"Our heroic armed forces have returned security and stability to all of the town of Qusayr," a statement carried by the station said on Wednesday.

Government and rebel forces have been fighting a fierce battle for the control of the city for more than two weeks. The city is on a critical cross-border supply route between Lebanon and Syria.

Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from the Lebanese capital Beirut, said the report was "just a claim" from a pro-government TV station,  but added that it had been preceded by regime forces' gains on the battle field.

"What we know is that the government made significant advances yesterday," she said, adding fighting was continuing as there were still "pockets of resistance" in the town.

Qusayr remains a strategic town for government troops and the Lebanese Hezbollah fighters battling alongside regime forces, said our correspondent.

Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters have besieged the town, which controls vital supply routes from Lebanon and access between the capital Damascus and the coastal heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite sect.

In Istanbul, people have begun whispering that the military is distributing gasmasks -- but to the demonstrators rather than to the police. The message is clear: The military supports the protests. - Meanwhile McCain’s buddies, al Qaeda, have been found with sarin gas in Turkey! Not a peep from the usual subjects.

DIRTY TURKISH COP PEPPER SPRAYING AN ELEGANT WOMAN

Revolt in Turkey: Erdogan's Grip on Power Is Rapidly Weakening

By Özlem Gezer, Maximilian Popp and Oliver Trenkamp

SPIEGEL

For a decade, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had a tight grip on power. But it suddenly looks to be weakening. Thousands have taken to the streets across the country and the threats to Erdogan's rule are many. His reaction has revealed him to be hopelessly disconnected.

The rooftops of Istanbul can be seen in the background and next to them is a gigantic image of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey's powerful prime minister is watching over the city -- and is also monitoring the work of the political party he controls. At least that seems to be the message of the image, which can be found in a conference room at the headquarters of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP).

These days, though, Istanbul is producing images that carry a distinctly different meaning -- images of violent protests against the vagaries of Erdogan's rule. And it is beginning to look as though the prime minister, the most powerful leader Turkey has seen since the days of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, might be losing control.

As recently as mid-May, Erdogan boasted during an appearance at the Brookings Institute in Washington D.C. of the $29 billion airport his government was planning to build in Istanbul. "Turkey no longer talks about the world," he said. "The world talks about Turkey."

Just two weeks later, he appears to have been right -- just not quite in the way he had anticipated. The world is looking at Turkey and speaking of the violence with which Turkish police are assaulting demonstrators at dozens of marches across the country. Increasingly, Erdogan is looking like an autocratic ruler whose people are no longer willing to tolerate him.

For years, Erdogan seemed untouchable and, at least until the recent demonstrations began, was the most popular politician in the country. He entered office amid pledges to reform the country and introduce even more democratic freedoms. In his gruff dealings with foreign powers, he gave Turkey a new kind of confidence. He broke the grip on power held by the country's old elite, he kick-started the economy and he calmed the conflict with the country's Kurdish minority.

Democracy Lost

But one thing got lost in the shuffle: Democracy. Success made Erdogan even more power-hungry, thin-skinned and susceptible to criticism. Indeed, he began governing in the same autocratic style for which he had bitterly criticized his predecessors. And now, he is faced with significant dangers to his power from several quarters.

The biggest danger facing the Turkish premier is his own high-handedness. Though he said on Monday that he understood the message being sent by the protesters, there is little evidence that is true. Indeed, his response thus far has shown the degree to which he has become distanced from realities in his country. With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, Erdogan has opted for confrontation rather than de-escalation. On Monday morning, he threatened that he would be unable to keep the 50 percent of Turks who voted for him from taking to the streets themselves. Critics see the comment as nothing less than a threat of civil war.

He said that he won't allow "a handful of plunderers" to dictate policy. He also branded the marches as being ideological and said that they have been "manipulated by the opposition." Twitter, he said, is the "greatest threat to the society." Such sentiments are reminiscent of those Arab dictators who were overthrown in the Arab Spring of 2011.

Erdogan has recently shown a complete inability to gauge the anger of the country's Kemalists. He recently offended the secular followers of Atatürk with comments regarding a law aiming to reduce the consumption of alcohol. During a party meeting, Erdogan painted a rhetorical picture of an alcoholic populace: He spoke of police who continually find empty bottles in people's cars, of husbands who beat their wives and of fathers who are a poor influence due to their consumption of beer.

Most pointedly, however, he asked if Turkey wanted to follow a law passed by two drunks or the law of God. Since then, the country has been filled with speculation as to who Erdogan may have been referring to. Many believe it was an attack on Atatürk and his Prime Minister Ismet Inönü, who were in office when the ban on alcohol in the country was lifted in 1926. Furthermore, Atatürk is rumored to have died from cirrhosis of the liver. As such, Erdogan's comments are seen as an attack on a national hero.

Diverse Protests

But it isn't just the Kemalists who are now venting their rage at the Turkish prime minister. Demonstrations have been reported in more than 40 cities, and they are drawing more than students and intellectuals. Families with children, women in headscarves, men in suits, hipsters in sneakers, pharmacists, tea-house proprietors -- all are taking to the streets to register their displeasure.

Thus far, no opposition party has sought to claim the protests as its own. There have been no party flags, no party slogans and no prominent party functionaries to be seen. Kemalists and communists have demonstrated side-by-side with liberals and secularists. Simply calling them all "marauders and extremists," as Erdogan has sought to do, will not be enough.

Another threat may also be lurking. In Istanbul, people have begun whispering that the military is distributing gasmasks -- but to the demonstrators rather than to the police. The message is clear: The military supports the protests.

The story is certainly consistent with the Turkish military's traditional role in society. The generals have long seen themselves as protectors of Atatürk's legacy and as protectors of a secular Turkey. Indeed, the military has staged three putsches in its history to guarantee Kemalist values: in 1960, in 1971 and again in 1980.

Erdogan, to be sure, has done his best to reduce the military's power. He has removed some officers and had others locked away, convicted of conspiracy. It is difficult to predict how the military might now react to the protests. But Erdogan certainly cannot rely on them remaining in their barracks.

Visit to Tunisia

Even within his own party, the AKP, Erdogan's rule has become contentious. Turkish President Abdullah Gül, likewise of the AKP, has been careful to distance himself from Erdogan's comments over the weekend that citizens should express their opinions at the ballot box. Gül responded that "democracy doesn't just mean casting a ballot.

Turkish law prohibits Erdogan from running for another term. In response, however, he appears to be leaning toward the model followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Erdogan is currently seeking to increase the powers of the Turkish presidency, preparatory to taking over the position himself in 2014. Not everyone in the AKP is behind the plan and speculation of an internal power struggle is rife.

On Monday morning, after a weekend full of some of the most intense protests Turkey has seen, Erdogan spoke yet again, saying he suspects that "foreign powers" are behind the demonstrations and that Turkish intelligence is investigating. "It is not possible to reveal their names, but we will have meetings with their heads," Erdogan said, according to the English version of the Turkish daily Hürriyet. The strategy is transparent: The prime minister is doing all he can to portray the protests as an attack on Turkey.

Erdogan is hoping that will be enough to keep the situation under control for now. This week he embarks on a trip through North Africa. And, after a visit to Morocco, the Turkish premier is scheduled to visit Tunisia -- where not so long ago, the people rose up against their autocratic rule

What do the Republicans see in Marco Rubio?

Manning is not the problem. What Manning reported is the problem. It is a problem for the people that are prosecuting Manning. The wrong person is on trial.

Bradley Manning WikiLeaks trial ‘dangerous' for civil liberties – experts

Soldier faces charge of 'aiding the enemy' by downloading and leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents

GUARDIAN

The trial of Bradley Manning, the US soldier who leaked a trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, could set an ominous precedent that will chill freedom of speech and turn the internet into a danger zone, legal experts have warned.

Of the 21 counts faced by the Army private on Monday, at his trial at Fort Meade in Maryland, by far the most serious is that he knowingly gave intelligence information to al-Qaida by transmitting hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the open information website WikiLeaks. The leaked disclosures were first published by the Guardian and allied international newspapers.

Manning is accused of "aiding the enemy", in violation of Article 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. By indirectly unleashing a torrent of secrets onto the internet, the prosecution alleges, he in effect made it available to Osama bin Laden and his cohorts, for them to inflict injury on the US.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be the foremost liberal authority on constitutional law in the US and who taught the subject to President Barack Obama, told the Guardian that the charge could set a worrying precedent. He said: "Charging any individual with the extremely grave offense of 'aiding the enemy' on the basis of nothing beyond the fact that the individual posted leaked information on the web and thereby 'knowingly gave intelligence information' to whoever could gain access to it there, does indeed seem to break dangerous new ground."

Tribe, who advised the department of justice in Obama's first term, added that the trial could have "far-reaching consequences for chilling freedom of speech and rendering the internet a hazardous environment, well beyond any demonstrable national security interest."

"Aiding the enemy" carries the death penalty. Though the US government has indicated it will not seek that ultimate punishment, Manning still faces a maximum sentence of life in military custody with no chance of parole.

Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 was subjected to an aborted trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War to the New York Times, said that the Manning prosecution was far tougher than anything that he had endured.

"This is part of Obama's overall policy of criminalising investigative reporting on national security," he said. "If the government has its way, it will become very hard in future to expose official corruption or disclose information in the public interest other than leaks made by the administration itself."

Manning's trial, which is slated to last three months, opens against a backdrop of mounting unease about the increasingly aggressive stance the US government is taking against official leakers. The Obama administration has launched six prosecutions under the Espionage Act, twice as many as all previous presidencies combined, of which only Manning's has gone to trial.

The Department of Justice is already under fire for its controversial secret seizures of phone records of Associated Press reporters and of a Fox News reporter, James Rosen, investigating North Korean nuclear tests.

In the course of pre-trial hearings, military prosecutors have outlined the basic skeleton of their case against Manning. They will seek to show that Osama bin Laden personally instructed an aide to download elements of WikiLeaks, including the Afghan war logs, on to digital storage devices so that he could read them.

The court will hear – either in person at a secret session of the trial, or in an affidavit – from an anonymous witness called only "John Doe", who is believed to be one of the 22 US Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden in a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011. The witness will testify that he retrieved from the compound three items of digital media that contained WikiLeaks material.

The prosecution will present evidence to the court that the items retrieved from Bin Laden's compound included a letter written by the al-Qaida leader to an aide, asking for them to download US defence information from WikiLeaks. The same al-Qaida operative then replied to Bin Laden attaching the Afghan war logs and department of state information released by WikiLeaks.

Colonel Denise Lind, the judge presiding over the court martial in the absence of a jury, has ruled that for Manning to be found guilty of "aiding the enemy" the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly gave helpful information to al-Qaida, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and a third terrorist group whose identity remains classified. The route by which Manning communicated with al-Qaida can be indirect, through Wikileaks, the judge has directed, though the soldier must have had a "general evil intent in that he had to know he was dealing with an enemy of the United States".

A defence motion calling on all reference to al-Qaida to be ruled inadmissible on grounds that it was irrelevant and prejudicial was denied by Lind in an earlier hearing.

Manning has already pleaded guilty to lesser offences, that he transmitted classified information to WikiLeaks carrying a possible maximum sentence of 20 years. Between November 2009 and May 2010 he downloaded massive files, stored in secure US intelligence databases, from his computer at an army operating base in Iraq, where he was working as an intelligence analyst. He then transmitted the files to an encrypted whistleblower channel set up by WikiLeaks.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, who represented two of the six leakers who have been prosecuted – National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake and former CIA operative John Kiriakou – said the broad legal implications of Manning's trial were frightening. "If Osama bin Laden or any other suspected terrorist happens to have read a New York Times article on the internet, the government can now go after the paper for 'aiding the enemy'. That's a big problem."

In the course of legal argument in pre-trial hearings, one of the prosecution lawyers was asked whether Manning would have been prosecuted in the same way had he leaked to the New York Times as opposed to WikiLeaks. The prosecutor replied: "Yes."

Radack said that the case has sent a chill through investigative reporting. Several potential whistleblowers have approached her in recent weeks, she said, expressing great trepidation about leaking to any news outlets because "they fear they will become the next Bradley Manning".

A bill authorizing the Obama administration to send weapons to “vetted” rebels recently passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and, in the wake of unconfirmed reports that either Assad or the rebels used chemical weapons, and thus crossed a U.S.-established "red line," a bipartisan coalition is calling for intervention—if only to show Iran that when the U.S. establishes a red line, there are real consequences for crossing it.

The Situation in Syria Provides an Unwelcome Setting For Intervention

The complexity of Syria's civil war makes a successful intervention unlikely.

Matthew Feeney | May 30, 2013

REASON

The European Union lifted its embargo earlier this week on sending weapons to Syria, thereby allowing its members to send arms to Assad’s opposition, who have been facing a renewed assault from government forces. Shortly after the EU announced its decision, the Russian government confirmed that it would be sending the Assad regime anti-aircraft missiles, news that was not received well in Israel, whose defense minister said that Russian shipments to Syria (and possibly the pro-Assad Hezbollah) could be targets of Israeli strikes. Assad recently told a Hezbollah-owned TV station that the missiles had arrived. 

To put it bluntly, a messy situation is being made much messier by intervention. And the U.S. hasn't even gotten involved. That could soon change. A bill authorizing the Obama administration to send weapons to “vetted” rebels recently passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and, in the wake of unconfirmed reports that either Assad or the rebels used chemical weapons, and thus crossed a U.S.-established "red line," a bipartisan coalition is calling for intervention—if only to show Iran that when the U.S. establishes a red line, there are real consequences for crossing it. 

Needless to say, there are also real consequences to wading into a complex civil war. The diplomatic, geopolitical, ethnic, and security considerations are vast and discouraging.  

Diplomatically, some of the most significant barriers to intervention have been the Assad regime’s relationships with Iran and Russia. More direct involvement in Syria could possibly derail negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and could wreak havoc on America’s ever-delicate relationship with Russia. While Assad alone does not pose much of a diplomatic threat, backing the rebels over the ruling regime would worsen America's already precarious relationships with Russia and Iran.

Another diplomatic matter to consider is that past interventions have been carried out in cooperation with international bodies. The intervention in Libya was done through the United Nations and NATO, whose leadership ruled out intervention in Syria back in March. Without the backing of an international body (the E.U., U.N., NATO etc.) any government that wants to send weapons to Assad’s regime or intervene directly will could have its reputation tarnished and must be prepared to deal with the potential negative consequences. While the E.U. sanctions on sending arms to Syria may have been lifted, this is not the same thing as saying the E.U. backs member countries sending arms to Syria. 

In addition to incurring diplomatic risks, intervention in Syria also could lead to further geopolitical destablization. Every one of Syria’s neighbors has been affected by the civil war, be it by having to accommodate refugees or by having to deal with the conflict’s overspill. The conflict has the potential to impact even more countries in the region, particularly by broadening the launch pad for jihadists who are abetting the rebels. 

Nevertheless, interventionists are full of good ideas about how to "help" Syrians. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has argued that selective airstrikes like those used during the intervention in Libya could be used against the Assad regime. Elizabeth O’Bagy, political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, and Gen. Salim Idriss, leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, have asked for a no-fly zone to be put in place, another strategy that was implemented in Libya.

Would these tactics help bring down the Assad regime? Probably. That leaves America in the impossible position of predicting what Al Qaeda-backed rebels would do to the Syrian goverment, let alone Syrians who are members of religious minorities. The most prominent member of Congress to express these concerns is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), but he can't stop an intervention all by himself. 

By itself, the complexity of the situation is not an argument against intervention. Yet, considering the questionable success of interventions in places like Libya, which appeared to all the world to be a much simpler operation, it's up to interventionists to sell the rest of us on yet another war. How exactly, will they separate the good rebels from the bad ones? How, exactly, will they keep the bad rebels from access stockpiles of Assad regime weaponry? What are the conditions of victory? If the rebels do route Assad, do we stick around and help them rebuild? If so, for how long? 

Lastly: Why should we? 

Turkey may just want to rethink its ardor for causing more problems for Syria

1000 Arrested in Turkey

By Guldenay Sonumut in Istanbul

SKY NEWS

Authorities in Turkey have arrested almost a 1,000 people across the country in the fiercest anti-government demonstrations the nation has seen for years.

Police withdrew from a main Istanbul square to allow in tens of thousands of protesters, as clashes spread to the capital Ankara and other towns and cities.

Officers removed barricades - some of which had been set alight - in a bid to calm tensions after days of clashes with demonstrators who hurled objects including fireworks at them.

Riot police backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters in Istanbul had for much of Saturday fought running battles with thousands of people who turned out to protect a park in the city's central Taksim Square.

Police, who have been accused of using disproportionate force to quash the demonstrations, attempted to disperse crowds with water cannon and tear gas.

What started as a peaceful environmental protest over plans to redevelop the Gezi Parka has turned into a national demonstration against the Islamist-rooted government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that is seen by many as authoritarian.

In a surprise move last week, the government quickly passed legislation curbing the sale and advertising of alcoholic drinks, alarming secularists. Many felt insulted when he defended the legislation by calling people who drink "alcoholics."

Crowds of protesters chanting "shoulder to shoulder against fascism" and "government resign" marched on Taksim Square, littered with broken glass, rocks and an overturned vehicle.

A defiant Mr Erdogan said the redevelopment would go ahead despite the opposition and vowed to bring the unrest under control.

"Police were there yesterday, they'll be on duty today and also tomorrow because Taksim Square cannot be an area where extremists are running wild," he said in televised remarks.

"If this is about holding meetings, if this is a social movement, where they gather 20, I will get up and gather 200,000 people. Where they gather 100,000, I will bring together one million from my party.

"Every four years we hold elections and this nation makes its choice. Those who have a problem with government policies can express their opinions within the framework of law and democracy."

Support rallies have gathered in Ankara, Izmir, Kocaeli and Adana and their numbers are increasing.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said 939 arrests had been made in more than 90 separate demonstrations.

As in Istanbul, water cannon and tear gas were also used to stop protesters from reaching the parliament building in the capital, Ankara.

First pictures, then videos of brutal police attacks on unarmed protesters in Istanbul caused the protests to spread to other towns and cities.

Earlier in the week on Thursday morning, riot police were sent to disperse the sleeping protesters camping in the park. Videos of masked police burning down tents and firing tear gas at unarmed people shocked the public.

The protesters rallied once more on Thursday night and the situation got worse on Friday morning.

The police raid was more brutal than the previous day and people who were trying to escape police got crushed under a wall they were trying to climb.

The videos spread quickly through social networks while news channels and mainstream media failed to report on what was starting to become a social resistance movement.

Throughout Friday, protesters tried re-entering the park that had been sealed off by police barricades.

People from all walks of life rallied around this seemingly unimportant protest. University students, actors, journalists, artists, young or old, conservative or liberal, were all united in the movement.

Social media has become the main source of information and people are now afraid the government will shut down the internet.

Twitter has become the eyes and ears of the Gezi movement. Protesters relay crucial information about police barricades, open roads, injury status or emergency situations.

Police closed access to ambulances on Friday and protesters who were injured asked for medical help via Twitter or Facebook.

A group of medical students and doctors volunteered and their names and numbers were quickly broadcast on Twitter, urging protesters to call them if anyone was seriously injured.

Lawyers have volunteered their services to those who have been arrested.

When police started using jammers to stop communication in Taksim, shops, cafes and businesses shared their wifi passwords on Twitter to help everyone share their pictures and videos.

The UK Foreign Office called for restraint and urged the government not to use tear gas "indiscriminately".

"We encourage the Turkish authorities to respect the right to peaceful protest and freedom of assembly, which are fundamental human rights in any democratic society," a spokesman said in a statement.

It also urged British travellers to avoid the protests.