Perilous
Times
The Burden of Damascus, Brace for another U.S.-Mideast war -
First Libya, now sources say next country warned of NATO
attack
Posted: August 15, 2011
8:31 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – Turkey secretly passed a message to Damascus last week
that if it does not implement major democratic reforms, NATO may
attack Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime, according to
Egyptian security officials.
The Egyptian security officials said the message was coordinated
with NATO members, specifically with the U.S. and European Union.
Assad has been widely accused of ordering massacres on militants
and protesters engaged in an insurgency targeting his regime.
The Egyptian officials said Turkish leaders, speaking for NATO,
told Assad that he has until March to implement democratization
that would allow free elections as well as major constitutional
reforms.
Read what we'll need to accomplish to restore America to
greatness.
The officials said the NATO message demanded Assad halt attacks
against the insurgency and begin the process of democratization
immediately.
Last week it was widely reported Turkey gave the Syrian government
a two-week ultimatum to come up with a set of reforms and asked
Assad's regime to withdraw its security forces from protest
cities.
The reports, however, did not mention any message passed to Assad
on behalf of NATO.
Yesterday, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported Spain sent a
secret mission to Syria in July to attempt to find a solution to
the current conflict there and offer asylum to Assad and his
family.
While it is not clear what form any NATO military action would
take against Assad's regime, the Egyptian security officials told
reporters that they would expect such action to mimic the
international coalition that has been targeting Libyan leader
Muammar Gadhafi.
Soros-funded doctrine with White House ties
The Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of a
military doctrine called Responsibility to Protect.
In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign
in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for
U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by
Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations,
based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a
responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war
crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic
cleansing."
The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by
various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the
International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli
anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the
ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.
The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world's
leading champion of the military doctrine.
As we reported, Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the
Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect.
Several of the doctrine's main founders sit on boards with Soros.
We reported that the committee that devised the Responsibility to
Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre
Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch
denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late
Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the
advisory board of the 2001 commission that original founded
Responsibility to Protect.
The commission is called the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term
"responsibility to protect" while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights
located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to
Obama on human rights, was Carr's founding executive director and
headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of
Responsibility to Protect.
With Power's center on the advisory board, the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the
Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading
to the decision to bomb Libya.
Two of the global group's advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur
and Gareth Evans, are the original founders of the doctrine, with
the duo even coining the term "responsibility to protect."
As was reported, Soros' Open Society Institute is a primary funder
and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to
Protect. Also, Thakur and Evans sit on multiple boards with Soros.
Soros' Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders
of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government
sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands,
Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.
Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South
African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently
made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as
members of a group called The Elders, which includes former
President Jimmy Carter.
Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic
sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of
globalization and international co-operation. States are ...
instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."
Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states'
Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to
Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The
People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect
the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."
In the article, Soros said "true sovereignty belongs to the
people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."
"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens
have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference
is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is
based on the people, the international community can penetrate
nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.
"In particular, the principle of the people's sovereignty can help
solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid
effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global
collective action dealing with states experiencing internal
conflict."
More Soros ties
"Responsibility" founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chairman
with Gregorian on the advisory board of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented
the term "responsibility to protect."
In his capacity as co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role
in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to
"sovereignty as responsibility."
Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009,
United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider
the principle.
Thakur is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance
Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute
founded by Soros.
Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group,
a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as
president-emeritus.
WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the
U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main
opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was
recently toppled.
Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board
Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other
personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot
of the Muslim Brotherhood.
WND also reported the crisis group has petitioned for the Algerian
government to cease "excessive" military activities against
al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to
create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.
Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups
across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations
involved in the current chaos.
'One World Order'
We reported that doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a
"global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create
a "New World Order."
In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Toward a
new world order," Thakur wrote, "Westerners must change lifestyles
and support international redistribution."
He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international
climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must
reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."
In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military
engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.
"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work
anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote.
"A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train," he added.
Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to
set standards and rules of behaviour for the world. Unless they
recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making
significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."
Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO
power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of
'superior' western power."