Saturday, August 31, 2013

THE TRUTH WILL OUT





CPS-Vancouver is pleased to send this information as a media Release: You now have information Canadians have a right to know. 
John Beeching

Subject: Syrian rebels admit to being behind chemical weapons attack - National Government | Examiner.com
Date: 31 August, 2013 10:54:53 AM PDT


http://www.examiner.com/article/syrian-rebels-admit-to-being-behind-chemical-weapons-attack

Prime Minister, 

Sometimes it is good to get both sides, consider, and then make up you mind. That is of course unless you are following orders and must obey.

John Beeching
4715 Lanark Street
Vancouver,  BC  5N 3R9

WW II veteran.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Media Release: More US Fabrication?


MEDIA RELEASE: CPS – Vancouver is pleased to release this information. We believe Canadians, if given both sides of the story are quite capable of making the right decisions – peace or war! We trust you dear editor have the same point of view – that is good journalism.
John Beeching Hon. Chair CPS

Evidence Indicates that Syrian Government Did Not Launch a Chemical Weapon Attack Against Its People
Global Research, August 24, 2013
Url of this article:
CBS News reports that the U.S. is finalizing plans for war against Syria – and positioning ships to launch cruise missilesagainst the Syrian government – based on the claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people.
The last time the U.S. blamed the Syrian government for a chemical weapons attack, that claim was was debunked.
But is the claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people true this time?
It’s not surprising that Syria’s close ally – Russia – is expressing doubt. Agence France-Presse (AFP) notes:
Russia, which has previously said it has proof of chemical weapons use by the rebels, expressed deep scepticism about the opposition’s claims.
The foreign ministry said the timing of the allegations as UN inspectors began their work “makes us think that we are once again dealing with a premeditated provocation.”
But Russia isn’t the only doubter.
AFP reports:
“At the moment, I am not totally convinced because the people that are helping them are without any protective clothing and without any respirators,” said Paula Vanninen, director of Verifin, the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“In a real case, they would also be contaminated and would also be having symptoms.”
John Hart, head of the Chemical and Biological Security Project at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said he had not seen the telltale evidence in the eyes of the victims that would be compelling evidence of chemical weapons use.
“Of the videos that I’ve seen for the last few hours, none of them show pinpoint pupils... this would indicate exposure to organophosphorus nerve agents,” he said.
Gwyn Winfield, editor of CBRNe World magazine, which specialises in chemical weapons issues, said the evidence did not suggest that the chemicals used were of the weapons-grade that the Syrian army possesses in its stockpiles.
“We’re not seeing reports that doctors and nurses... are becoming fatalities, so that would suggest that the toxicity of it isn’t what we would consider military sarin. It may well be that it is a lower-grade,” Winfield told AFP.
Haaretz reports:
Western experts on chemical warfare who have examined at least part of the footage are skeptical that weapons-grade chemical substances were used, although they all emphasize that serious conclusions cannot be reached without thorough on-site examination.
Dan Kaszeta, a former officer of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps and a leading private consultant, pointed out a number of details absent from the footage so far: “None of the people treating the casualties or photographing them are wearing any sort of chemical-warfare protective gear,” he says, “and despite that, none of them seem to be harmed.” This would seem to rule out most types of military-grade chemical weapons, including the vast majority of nerve gases, since these substances would not evaporate immediately, especially if they were used in sufficient quantities to kill hundreds of people, but rather leave a level of contamination on clothes and bodies which would harm anyone coming in unprotected contact with them in the hours after an attack. In addition, he says that “there are none of the other signs you would expect to see in the aftermath of a chemical attack, such as intermediate levels of casualties, severe visual problems, vomiting and loss of bowel control.”
Steve Johnson, a leading researcher on the effects of hazardous material exposure at England’s Cranfield University who has worked with Britain’s Ministry of Defense on chemical warfare issues, agrees that “from the details we have seen so far, a large number of casualties over a wide area would mean quite a pervasive dispersal. With that level of chemical agent, you would expect to see a lot of contamination on the casualties coming in, and it would affect those treating them who are not properly protected. We are not seeing that here.”
Additional questions also remain unanswered, especially regarding the timing of the attack, being that it occurred on the exact same day that a team of UN inspectors was in Damascus to investigate earlier claims of chemical weapons use. It is also unclear what tactical goal the Syrian army would have been trying to achieve, when over the last few weeks it has managed to push back the rebels who were encroaching on central areas of the capital. But if this was not a chemical weapons attack, what then caused the deaths of so many people without any external signs of trauma?
***
The Syrian rebels (and perhaps other players in the region) have a clear interest in presenting this as the largest chemical attack by the army loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad to date, even if the cause was otherwise, especially while the UN inspectors are in the country. It is also in their interest to do so whilst U.S. President Barack Obama remains reluctant to commit any military support to the rebels, when only the crossing of a “red line” could convince him to change his policy.
The rebels and the doctors on the scene may indeed believe that chemical weapons were used, since they fear such an attack, but they may not have the necessary knowledge and means to make such a diagnosis. The European Union demanded Wednesday that the UN inspectors be granted access to the new sites of alleged chemical attacks, but since this is not within the team’s mandate, it is unlikely that the Syrian government will do so.
Stephen Johnson, an expert in weapons and chemical explosives at Cranfield Forensic Institute, said that the video footage looked suspect:
There are, within some of the videos, examples which seem a little hyper-real, and almost as if they’ve been set up. Which is not to say that they are fake but it does cause some concern. Some of the people with foaming, the foam seems to be too white, too pure, and not consistent with the sort of internal injury you might expect to see, which you’d expect to be bloodier or yellower.
Chemical and biological weapons researcher Jean Pascal Zanders said that the footage appears to show victims of asphyxiation, which is not consistent with the use of mustard gas or the nerve agents VX or sarin:
I’m deliberately not using the term chemical weapons here,” he said, adding that the use of “industrial toxicants” was a more likely explanation.
Michael Rivero asks:
1. Why would Syria’s Assad invite United Nations chemical weapons inspectors to Syria, then launch a chemical weapons attack against women and children on the very day they arrive, just miles from where they are staying?
2. If Assad were going to use chemical weapons, wouldn’t he use them against the hired mercenary army trying to oust him? What does he gain attacking women and children? Nothing! The gain is all on the side of the US Government desperate to get the war agenda going again.
As I type these words, US trained and equipped forces are already across the border into Syria, and US naval forces are sailing into position to launch a massive cruise missile attack into Syria that will surely kill more Syrians than were claimed to have died in the chemical attack.
Last time there was a chemical weapon attack in Syria, Bush administration office Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson said that he thought Israel might have given chemical weapons to the Syrian rebels to frame the government.
British MP George Galloway just floated the same theory in regards to the new chemical weapon attack.
Of course, we don’t know who carried out the attack, or what weapon was used.
But given the well-documented fact that the U.S. has been planning regime change in Syria for 20 years straight – and planned to use false ploys for 50 years – it is worth being skeptical until all of the evidence is in.
Indeed, many are asking whether this is Iraq War 2.0. For example, the Independent writes:
Pictures showing that the Syrian army used chemical weapons against rebel-held Eastern Ghouta just east of Damascus are ... likely to be viewed sceptically because the claims so much resemble those made about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) before the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003.
***
Like the Iraqi opposition to Saddam, who provided most of the evidence of WMDs, the Syrian opposition has every incentive to show the Syrian government deploying chemical weapons in order to trigger foreign intervention.
***
But the obvious fact that for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons would be much against their own interests does not prove it did not happen. Governments and armies do stupid things. But it is difficult to imagine any compelling reason why they should do so since they have plenty of other means of killing people in Eastern Ghouta, such as heavy artillery or small arms, which they regularly use.
***
The evidence so far for the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army is second-hand and comes from a biased source.
Copyright © 2013 Global Research




This email was sent to betjohn@shaw.ca by newsletter@globalresearch.ca |  

GLOBAL RESEARCH | PO Box 55019 | 11 Notre-Dame Ouest | Montreal | QC | H2Y 4A7 | Canada

Sunday, August 18, 2013

WHERE DID OUR RIGHTS COME FROM?

CPS - VANCOUVER suggest The following book is worth reading if you care about our rights. Many are being trampled on now using false nomenclature! I would only add that many of the rights we all, union and non-union, have today were gained through union struggle. Those rights are presently under attack. The time has come to enter the struggle for true democracy. John Beeching, Hon. Char CPS.

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.... What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. if we remember those times and places - and there are many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act." Howard Zinn ( :about rights historian)

It s available in PDF format from - <http://www.caw.ca/assets/images/Part_2_-_Windsor_Strike.pdf>


Latin America condemns US Espionage


“The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” Simon Bolivar

Monday, August 12, 2013

Canadian exports shouldn’t fuel conflict



Ottawa Citizen logo
Canadian exports shouldn’t fuel conflict
 
by Steven Staples
 
Should Canada have an arms industry? It seems that the Harper government thinks so, and it has been taking steps to work closely with the “big guns” of defence companies to support military production in Canada to supply the Canadian Forces and, more alarmingly, sell in the international arms market.
 
Last weekend in these pages, Tim Page, the president of Canada’s largest defence lobby association, applauded the government’s efforts to create a “healthy domestic defence industry.”
 
Mr. Page’s lobby association wants the government to “buy local” to satisfy the need of the Canadian Forces. More than that, he and his colleagues want the government to play a parental role in fostering and developing an entire defence industry in Canada.
 
This will require a significant, long-term commitment of billions of public dollars, in addition to weakened export regulations, and even diplomatic support abroad to promote Canadian-built arms sales. In short, there are few winners from this plan.
 
Unlike the auto industry, for instance, where short-term government assistance can help the industry until its commercial market improves, the arms industry is utterly dependent on government spending, since there are few commercial customers. And it will lobby strenuously to ensure that military spending is not reduced even if the international security environment improves, or if there are other competing government priorities.
 
For instance, in the depths of the financial crisis in early 2010 while government was reducing spending on social services, the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) wrote to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urging him to “confirm the government’s 20 year funding commitment of $240B in non personnel related defence spending…[and] proceed on an expedited basis with land, sea and air defence projects that are in the procurement pipeline.”
 
To the defence industry, a tax dollar spent on a hospital is a tax dollar not spent on a fighter jet.
 
The other side of the arms sales coin is the international weapons marketplace. Selling arms to the Canadian government is merely a launching point to selling arms abroad in the much larger and more lucrative international arms bazaar. That’s why the defence association’s Mr. Page called on National Defence and other trade-related departments and agencies to take a whole-of-government approach to “increase Canadian defence exports.”
 
But is this sound business advice? Scanning the international media it’s easy to see that the global financial crisis has hit European and American defence budgets hard and their militaries are scaling back. If Canadian firms start shifting to defence production, they will find themselves trapped in a declining market and laying off thousands of Canadian workers.
 
This crisis will encourage Canada to relax its export control policies intended to ensure Canadian defence exports don’t end up in war-racked regions or arming human rights abusers.
 
According to the industry, half of Canada’s roughly $6 billion in annual defence exports flow to the United States without any permit requirement at all. Canadian factories have been the number one supplier of ammunition to the U.S. Army, fuelling their bloody invasion of Iraq.
 
Even when export permits are required and authorized, Canadian-made arms find their way to conflicts. For instance, light armoured vehicles produced in Canada and sold to Saudi Arabia in the 1990s were spotted being used by their security forces to suppress the pro-democracy movement in neighbouring Bahrain. Another sale of LAVs to conflict-plagued Colombia has recently been announced.
 
Almost an afterthought is the military itself. The Canadian Forces should be provided with the best equipment at the most reasonable price, as quickly as possible. This is only achieved through an open and fair process. Of course, if two products are equivalent in performance and price, then the benefit to Canadian industry and job creation should be a priority in selecting a supplier, as the process already requires.
 
In fact, foreign defence suppliers are required to make investments in Canada equivalent to the value of the contract, and our system of direct and indirect “offsets,” as they are called, has served Canadian workers and the Canadian Forces well.
 
Above all else is the larger question: what kind of export economy do Canadians want? Many people are already concerned about Canada’s growing oil exports perpetuating unsustainable energy demands. To this will we add arms exports fuelling conflicts and propping up illegitimate governments around the world?
 
Nobody wants an economy that benefits from climate change and war. The government should not pursue a defence strategy designed to build an arms industry in Canada, but should instead focus on building Canadian prosperity on peace and sustainability, in keeping with Canadian values.
 
Steven Staples is the president of the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based research and advocacy group.
 

Saturday, August 10, 2013

IMPORTANT VIDEO


As you are aware the COC supports the expansion of Medicare to include a national Pharmacare program. Canadian Doctors for Medicare talk about the need for such a program in this press release.


August 7, 2013
PRESS RELEASE
VIDEO: Why doctors care about Pharmacare
TORONTO – Doctors are adding their voices to the growing call for a national
Pharmacare program with the release of Canadian Doctors for Medicare’s new
video, “Why doctors care about Pharmacare.”
“We know that medications are an essential, sometimes lifesaving, part of the
treatment that Canadians need when they’re coping with an illness,” said Dr.
Monika Dutt, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare. “But we also know that
many of the patients we see every day can’t afford the treatment they need to
stay healthy, and to avoid coming back to our offices and emergency rooms.”
The video features doctors telling the real stories of the challenges they face with
their patients when affordable medications are out of reach. You can also click on
a doctor at the end of the video to hear more about his or her personal
experiences.
Why doctors care about Pharmacare can be found on YouTube here:
Contact:
Alissa Von Bargen
Office: 416-351-3300
Cell: 647-230-9164

Thursday, August 1, 2013

USERS CALL FOR TRUE "FAIR AND JUST" TRANSIT


OPEN LETTER TO ALL MEDIA: Two Handydart users call for “More Equitable” Transit.
Dear Editor,
When I opened my search engine late yesterday afternoon one of the items on My Telus was about an announcement from TransLink.
The announcement from Telus also included considerable information on TransLink changes, including wages for CEO Ian Jarvis and 6 other executives including annual compensation. But what really drew my attention was – “This and other changes are designed to make the system “more equitable”, TransLink states.”
Is that supposed to placate the ire of middle-class and lower income people on finding that once again cost of transit is going up? More equitable by my dictionary is “fair and just”. What is fair and just about the owning class making mega-super profits and wages while convincing the governments, they are by and large responsible for electing, to lower their taxes while increasing the burden on the middle and lower classes?
To get “fair and just” transit in South Coast BC you should publish our call for a public Audit or Investigation. It is time to give transit users; both able bodied and disabled a voice! That is Fair and Just! Examine the publications or airing of the media and you will find business and high finance information far exceeds the minuscule coverage for those who must work in order to survive.
John Beeching and Elizabeth Beeching