zaterdag 26 maart 2016

Zionist Fascism

9-minute video: Dr. Dahlia Wasfi documents US/UK/Israel unlawful Mid-East war history. Either demand arrests, or be complicit for ongoing slaughter of millions

Among hundreds in alternative media, I’ve documented several areas of Emperor’s New Clothes obvious facts:
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s 9 minutes to explain some of this history during the W. Bush administration:
We’ve documented and proven that US “officials” outrageously lie to demonize Russia (and here) acting at the request of Syria’s government for military operations within their own borders against rogue terrorists. These terrorists apparently are agents of the US/UK/Israel illegal Wars of Aggression for empire (also hereherehere).
Global polling proves demand for these “leaders’” arrests are near: the US is recognized as Earth’s greatest threat to peace; voted three times more dangerous than any other country.
The data confirm this recognition:
Dahlia’s powerful 4 minutes featured in TheParadigmShift 2009 video. (transcript here)
What is a solution?
I continue to assert a proven, obvious, and legal method:
We know for certain that until these .01% “leaders” are stopped, all we’ll have is ongoing lies, crimes, and immense suffering.
The arrests will happen from:
  1. Growing demand for arrests from those of us sufficiently educated that the facts prove obvious crimes. This is as easy as being the person in the Emperor’s New Clothes pointing-to and stating what anyone can see who looks.
  2. Law enforcement and military’s organic responses to honor their Oaths to arrest .01% literal criminal psychopaths (and here) who ongoingly commit the worst crimes possible for nations.
None of us has the power to make this happen on our own, AND all of us have the power for honest full self-expression in good-faith effort.
In just 90 seconds, former US Marine Ken O’Keefe powerfully states how you may choose to voice “very obvious solutions”: arrest the criminal leaders (video starts at 20:51, then finishes this episode of Cross Talk):
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Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
Note: Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: herehere).
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U.S. Supports Terrorists

Reporting (or Not) the Ties Between US-Armed Syrian Rebels and Al Qaeda’s Affiliate

A crucial problem in news media coverage of the Syrian civil war has been how to characterize the relationship between the so-called “moderate” opposition forces armed by the CIA, on one hand, and the Al Qaeda franchise Al Nusra Front (and its close ally Ahrar al Sham), on the other. But it is a politically sensitive issue for US policy, which seeks to overthrow Syria’s government without seeming to make common cause with the movement responsible for 9/11, and the system of news production has worked effectively to prevent the news media from reporting it fully and accurately.
The Obama administration has long portrayed the opposition groups it has been arming with anti-tank weapons as independent of Nusra Front.  In reality, the administration has been relying on the close cooperation of these “moderate” groups with Nusra Front  to put pressure on the Syrian government. The United States and its allies–especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey–want the civil war to end with the dissolution of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by US rivals like Russia and Iran.
Reflecting the fact that Nusra Front was created by Al Qaeda and has confirmed its loyalty to it, the administration designated Nusra as a terrorist organization in 2013.  But the US has carried out very few airstrikes against it since then, in contrast to the other offspring of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or ISIS (Daesh), which has been the subject of intense air attacks from the US and its European allies.  The US has remained silent about Nusra Front’s leading role in the military effort against Assad, concealing the fact that Nusra’s success in northwest Syria has been a key element in Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic strategy for Syria.
When Russian intervention in support of the Syrian government began last September, targeting not only ISIS but also the Nusra Front and US-supported groups allied with them against the Assad regime, the Obama administration immediately argued that Russian airstrikes were targeting “moderate” groups rather than ISIS, and insisted that those strikes had to stop.

New Arab: Coming Together to Fight Assad in Aleppo
New Arab (5/8/15). Note that the Syrians “coming together to fight Assad” are doing so under the leadership of an Al Qaeda affiliate.

The willingness of the news media to go beyond the official line and report the truth on the ground in Syria was thus put to the test.  It had been well-documented that those “moderate” groups had been thoroughly integrated into the military campaigns directed by Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham in the main battlefront of the war in northwestern Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces. For example, a dispatch from Aleppo last May in Al Araby Al-Jadeed (The New Arab), a daily newspaper financed by the Qatari royal family, revealed that every one of at least ten “moderate” factions in the province supported by the CIA had joined the Nusra-run province command Fateh Halab (Conquest of Aleppo).  Formally the command was run by Ahrar al Sham, and Nusra Front was excluded from it.
But as Al Araby’s reporter explained, that exclusion “means that the operation has a better chance of receiving regional and international support.” That was an indirect way of saying that Nusra’s supposed exclusion was a device aimed at facilitating the Obama administration’s approval of sending more TOW missiles to the “moderates” in the province, because the White House could not support groups working directly with a terrorist organization. A further implication was that Nusra Front was allowing “moderate” groups to obtain those weapons from the United States and its  Saudi and Turkish allies, because those groups were viewed as too weak to operate independently of the Salafist-jihadist forcesand because some of those arms would be shared with Nusra Front and Ahrar.
After Nusra Front was formally identified as a terrorist organization for the purposes of a Syrian ceasefire and negotiations, it virtually went underground in areas close to the Turkish border.  A journalist who lives in northern Aleppo province told Al Monitor that Nusra Front had stopped flying its own flag and was concealing its troops under those of Ahrar al Sham, which had been accepted by the United States as a participant in the talks.  That maneuver was aimed at supporting the argument that “moderate” groups and not Al Qaeda were being targeted by Russian airstrikes.
But a review of the coverage of the targeting of Russian airstrikes and the role of U.S.-supported armed groups in the war during the first few weeks in the three most influential US newspapers with the most resources for reporting accurately on the issue—the New York TimesWashington Post and Wall Street Journal–reveals a pattern of stories that tilted strongly in the direction desired by the Obama administration, either ignoring the subordination of the “moderate” groups to Nusra Front entirely or giving it only the slightest mention.

WaPo: Russia Defends Syria Airstrikes
Washington Post (10/1/15)

In an October 1 articleWashington Post Beirut correspondent Liz Sly wrote that the Russian airstrikes were being “conducted against one of the few areas in the country where moderate rebels still have a foothold and from which the Islamic State was ejected more than a year and a half ago.” To her credit, Sly did report, “Some of the towns struck are strongholds of recently formed coalition Jaish al Fateh,” which she said included Nusra Front and “an assortment of Islamist and moderate factions.” What was missing, however, was the fact that Jaish al Fateh was not merely a “coalition” but a military command structure, meaning that a much tighter relationship existed between the US-supported “moderates” and the Al Qaeda franchise.
Sly referred specifically to one strike that hit a training camp in the outskirts of a town in Idlib province belonging to Suquor al-Jabal, which had been armed by the CIA. But readers could not evaluate that statement without the crucial fact,reported in the regional press, that Suquor al-Jabal was one of the many CIA-supported organizations that had joined the Fateh Halab (“Conquest of Aleppo”), the military command center in Aleppo ostensibly run by Ahrar al Sham, Nusra Front’s closest ally, but in fact under firm Nusra control. The report thus conveyed the false impression that the CIA-supported rebel group was still independent of Nusra Front.

NYT: US Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia
New York Times (10/13/15)

An article by New York Times Beirut correspondent Anne Barnard (co-authored by the Times stringer in Syria Karam Shoumali—10/13/15) appeared to veer off in the direction of treating the US-supported opposition groups as part of a new US/Russian proxy war, thus drawing attention away from the issue of whether the Obama administration support for “moderate” groups was actually contributing to the political-military power of Al Qaeda in Syria. Under the headline “US Weaponry Is Turning Syria Into Proxy War With Russia,” it reported that armed opposition groups had just received large shipments of TOW anti-tank missiles that had to be approved by the United States. Quoting the confident statements of rebel commanders about the effectiveness of the missiles and the high morale of rebel troops, the story suggested that arming the “moderates” was a way for the United States to make them the primary force on one side of a war pitting the United States against Russia in Syria.
Near the end of the story, however, Barnard effectively undermined that “proxy war” theme by citing the admission by commanders of US-supported brigades of their “uncomfortable marriage of necessity” with the Al Qaeda franchise, “because they cannot operate without the consent of the larger and stronger Nusra Front.” Referring to the capture of Idlib the previous spring by the opposition coalition, Barnard recalled that the TOW missiles had “played a major role in the insurgent advances that eventually endangered Mr. Assad’s rule.” But, she added:
While that would seem like a welcome development for United States policy makers, in practice it presented another quandary, given that the Nusra Front was among the groups benefiting from the enhanced firepower.
Unfortunately, Barnard’s point that US-supported groups were deeply embedded in an Al Qaeda-controlled military structure was buried at the end of a long piece, and thus easily missed. The headline and lead ensured that, for the vast majority of readers, that point would be lost in the larger thrust of the article.

WSJ: US Sees Russian Drive Against US-Backed Rebels in Syria
Wall Street Journal (10/5/15)

The Wall Street Journal’s Adam Entous approached the problem from a different angle but with the same result. He wrote a story on October 5 reflecting what he said was anger on the part of US officials that the Russians were deliberately targeting opposition groups that the CIA had supported. Entous reported that US officials believed the Syrian government wanted those groups targeted because of their possession of TOW missiles, which had been the key factor in the opposition’s capture of Idlib earlier in the year. But nowhere in the article was the role of CIA-supported groups within military command structures dominated by Nusra Front even acknowledged.
Still another angle on the problem was adopted in an October 12 article by Journal Beirut correspondent Raja Abdulrahim, who described the Russian air offensive as having spurred US-backed rebels and the Nusra Front to form a “more united front against the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian allies.” Adbulrahim thus acknowledged the close military collaboration with Nusra Front, but blamed it all on the Russian offensive. And the story ignored the fact that those same opposition groups had already joined military command arrangements in Idlib and Aleppo earlier in 2015, in anticipation of victories across northeast Syria.
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The image in the media of the US-supported armed opposition as operating independently from Nusra Front, and as victims of Russian attacks, persisted into early 2016. But in February, the first cracks in that image appeared in the Washington Post and New York Times.
Reporting on the negotiations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on a partial ceasefire that began on February 12, Washington Post associate editor and senior national security correspondent Karen DeYoung wrote on February 19 that an unresolved problem was how to decide which organizations were to be considered “terrorist groups” in the ceasefire agreement. In that context, DeYoung wrote, “Jabhat al-Nusra, whose forces are intermingled with moderate rebel groups in the northwest near the Turkish border, is particularly problematic.”
It was the first time any major news outlet had reported that US-supported armed opposition and Nusra Front front troops were “intermingled” on the ground. And in the very next sentence DeYoung dropped what should have been a political bombshell: She reported that Kerry had proposed in the Munich negotiations to “leave Jabhat al Nusra off limits to bombing, as part of a ceasefire, at least temporarily, until the groups can be sorted out.” At the same time, Kerry was publicly demanding in a speech at the Munich conference that Russia halt its attacks on “legitimate opposition groups” as a condition for a ceasefire.  Kerry’s negotiating position reflected the fact that CIA groups were certain to be hit in strikes on areas controlled by Nusra Front, as well as the reality that Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham were central to the success of the US-backed military effort against Assad.
New York Times: Nusra Front presence
New York Times (2/22/16). In an accompanying story, the Timesdescribed Nusra as “an insurgent group linked to Al Qaeda.”

In the end, however, Lavrov rejected the proposal to protect Nusra Front targets from Russian airstrikes, and Kerry dropped that demand, allowing the joint US/Russian announcement of the partial ceasefire on February 22. Up to that point, maps of the Syrian war in the Post and Times had identified zones of control only for “rebels” without showing where Nusra Front forces were in control. But on the same day as the announcement, the New York Times published an “updated” map, accompanied by text stating that Nusra Front “is embedded in the area of Aleppo and northwest toward the Turkish border.”
At the State Department briefing the next day, reporters grilled spokesman Mark Toner on whether US-supported rebel forces were “commingled” with Nusra Front forces in Aleppo and northward. After a very long exchange on the subject, Toner said, “Yes, I believe there is some commingling of these groups.” And he went on to say, speaking on behalf of the International Syria Support Group, which comprises all the countries involved in the Syrian peace negotiations, including the US and Russia:
We, the ISSG, have been very clear in saying that Al Nusra and Daesh [ISIS] are not part of any kind of cease-fire or any kind of negotiated cessation of hostilities. So if you hang out with the wrong folks, then you make that decision…. You choose who hang out with, and that sends a signal.
Although I pointed out  the significance of the statement (Truthout2/24/16), no major news outlet saw fit to report that remarkable acknowledgement by the State Department spokesperson. Nevertheless, the State Department had clearly alerted the Washington Post and the New York Times to the fact that the relationships between the CIA-supported groups and Nusra Front were much closer than it had ever admitted in the past.
Kerry evidently calculated that the pretense that the “moderate” armed groups were independent of Al Nusra front would open him to a political attack from Republicans and the media if they were hit by Russian airstrikes.  So it was no longer useful politically to try to obscure that reality from the media.  In fact, the State Department now seemed interested in inducing as many of those armed groups as possible to separate themselves more clearly from the Nusra Front.
The twists and turns in the three major newspapers’ coverage of the issue of relations between US-supported opposition groups and Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria thus show how major news sources slighted or steered clear of the fact that US client armed groups were closely intertwined with a branch of Al Qaeda—until they were prompted by signals from US officials to revise their line and provide a more honest portrayal of Syria’s armed opposition.

Gareth Porter, an independent investigative journalist and historian on US national security policy, is the winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.  His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, published in 2014.




Nee Tegen Associatieverdrag Oekraïne


Door het Associatie verdrag met Israel steunt de EU de zionistisch terreur tegen de Palestijnse burgerbevolking. Hetzelfde gaat door het associatieverdrag met Oekraïne gebeuren.



Paul Craig Roberts 172

Does The United States Still Exist? — Paul Craig Roberts

Does The United States Still Exist?

An address delivered to the Libertarian Party of Florida on March 23, 2016 in Destin, Florida
Paul Craig Roberts
To answer the question that is the title, we have to know of what the US consists. Is it an ethnic group, a collection of buildings and resources, a land mass with boundaries, or is it the Constitution. Clearly what differentiates the US from other countries is the US Constitution. The Constitution defines us as a people. Without the Constitution we would be a different country. Therefore, to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.
Does the Constitution still exist? Let us examine the document and come to a conclusion.
The Constitution consists of a description of a republic with three independent branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with its own powers, and the Bill of Rights incorporated as constitutional amendments. The Bill of Rights describes the civil liberties of citizens that cannot be violated by the government.
Article I of the Constitution describes legislative powers. Article II describes executive powers, and Article III describes the power of the judiciary. For example, Article I, Section 1 gives all legislative powers to Congress. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to declare war.
The Bill of Rights protects citizens from the government by making law a shield of the people rather than a weapon in the hands of the government. 
The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, the press, and assembly or public protest. 
The Second Amendment gives the people the right “to keep and bear arms.”
The Third Amendment has to do with quartering of soldiers on civilians, a large complaint against King George III, but not a practice of present-day armies.

The Fourth Amendment grants “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and prevents the issue of warrants except “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment prevents police and prosecutors from going on “fishing expeditions” in an effort to find some offense with which to charge a targeted individual. 
The Fifth Amendment prohibits double jeopardy, self-incrimination, the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process and the prohibition of seizing property without just compensation.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees speedy and public trial, requires that a defendent be informed of the charge against him and to be confronted with the witnesses, to present witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of an attorney.
The Seventh Amendment gives the right of trial by jury to civil suits.
The Eighth Amendment prevents excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments.
The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not deny or disparage others retained by the people. In other words, people have rights in addition to the those listed in the proscriptions against the government’s use of abusive power.
The Tenth Amendment reserves the rights not delegated to the federal government to the states.
The Tenth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The Third Amendment protects against an abandoned abusive practice of government. The Seventh Amendment is still relevant as it allows damages in civil suits to be determined by a jury, once a protection against unfairness and today not always the case.
The other seven amendments comprise the major protections of civil liberty. I will examine them in turn, but first let’s look at Section 1 and Section 8 of Article I. These two articles describe the major powers of Congress, and both articles have been breached. The Constitution’s grant of “all legislative powers” to Congress has been overturned by executive orders and signing statements. The president can use executive orders to legislate, and he can use signing statements to render sections of laws passed by Congress and signed by the president into non-enforced status. Legislative authority has also been lost by delegating to executive branch officials the power to write the regulations that implement the laws that are passed. The right that Section 8 gives to Congress to declare war has been usurped by the executive branch. Thus, major powers given to Congress have been lost to the executive branch.
The First Amendment has been compromised by executive branch claims of “national security” and by extensive classification. Whistleblowers are relentlessly prosecuted despite federal laws protecting them. The right of assembly and public protest are overturned by arrests, tear gas, clubs, rubber bullets, water canons, and jail terms. Free speech is also limited by political correctness and taboo topics. Dissent shows signs of gradually becoming criminalized.
The Fourth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. In its place we have warrantless searches, SWAT team home invasions, strip and cavity searches, warrantless seizures of computers and cell phones, and the loss of all privacy to warrantless universal spying.
The Fifth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The criminal justice system relies on self-incrimination as plea bargains are self-incrimination produced by psychological torture, and plea bargains are the basis of conviction in 97% of all felony cases. Moreover, physical torture is a feature of the “war on terror” despite its illegality under both US statute and international law and is also experienced by inmates in the US prison system.
The Fifth Amendment’s protection against deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process of law has been lost to indefinite detention, executive assassination, and property takings without compensation. The Racketer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) passed in 1970. The act permits asset freezes, which are takings. The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act passed in 1984 and permits police to confiscate property on “probable cause,” which often means merely the presence of cash.
The Sixth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. Prosecutors routinely withhold exculpatory evidence, and judges at prosecutors’ requests have limited attorneys’ ability to defend clients.The “war on terror” has introduced secret evidence and secret witnesses, making it impossible for a defendant and his attorney to defend against the evidence.
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive bail and torture are routinely violated. It is another dead letter amendment.
It is paradoxical that every civil liberty in the Bill of Rights has been lost to a police state except for the Second Amendment, the gun rights of citizens. An armed citizenry is inconsistent with a police state, which the US now is. 
Other aspects of our legal protections have been overturned, such as the long standing rule that crime requires intent. William Blackstone wrote: “An unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all.” But today we have crimes without intent. You can commit a crime and not even know it. See for example, Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.
Attorney-client privilege has been lost. The indictment, prosecution, and imprisonment of defense attorney Lynne Stewart is a good example. The DOJ prevailed on her to defend a blind Muslim regarded by the DOJ as a “terrorist.” She was informed that “special administrative measures” had been applied to her client. She received a letter from the federal prosecutor informing her that she and her client would not be permitted attorney-client privilege, and that she was required to permit the government to listen to her conversations with her client. She was told that she could not carry any communications from her client to the outside world. She regarded all this as illegal nonsense and proceeded to defend her client in accordance with attorney-client privilege. Lynne Stewart was convicted of violating a letter written by a prosecutor as if the prosecutor’s letter were a law passed by Congress and present in the US code. Based on a prosecutor’s letter, Lynne Stewart was sentenced to prison. No law exists that upholds her imprisonment.
Our civil liberties are often said to be “natural rights” to which we are entitled. However, in historical fact civil liberty is a human achievement that required centuries of struggle. The long struggle for accountable law that culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England in the late 17th century can be traced back to Alfred the Great’s codification of English common law in the 9th century and to the Magna Carter in the early 13th century. Instead of issuing kingly edicts, Alfred based law on the traditional customs and behavior of the people. The Glorious Revolution established the supremacy of the people over the law and held the king and government accountable to law. The United States and other former British colonies inherited this accomplishment, an accomplishment that makes law a shield of the people and not a weapon in the hands of the state.
Today law as a shield of the people has been lost. The loss was gradual over time and culminated in the George W. Bush and Obama regime assaults on habeas corpus and due process. Lawrence Stratton and I explain how the law was lost in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Beginning with Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, liberals saw the protective shield of law as a constraint on the government’s ability to do good. Bentham redefined liberty as the freedom of government from restraint, not the freedom of people from government. Bentham’s influence grew over time until in our own day, to use the worlds of Sir Thomas More in A man for All Seasons, the law was cut down so as to better chase after devils.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after the Mafia.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after drug users.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after child abusers.
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after “terrorists.”
We cut down the law so that we could better chase after whistleblowers.
We cut down the law so that we could better cover up the government’s crimes.
Today the law is cut down. Any one of us can be arrested on bogus charges and be helpless to do anything about it.
There is very little concern in legal circles about this. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) does attempt to defend civil liberty. However, just as often the ACLU is not defending the civil liberties in the Bill of Rights that protect us from the abuse of government power, but newly invented “civil rights” that are not in the Constitution, such as “abortion rights,” the right to homosexual marriage, and rights to preferential treatment for preferred minorities. 
An attack on abortion rights, for example, produces a far greater outcry and resistance than the successful attack on habeas corpus and due process. President Obama was able to declare his power to execute citizens by executive branch decision alone without due process and conviction in court, and it produced barely audible protest.
Historically, a government that can, without due process, throw a citizen into a dungeon or summarily execute him is considered to be a tyranny, not a democracy. By any historical definition, the United States today is a tyranny.



Hillary Clinton

Russia Has Now Done for Syria What It Could Not for Serbia in 1999

Hillary was sure Russia would not dare interfere in Syria as it had not in Kosovo. She was wrong on both counts
23 hours ago | 4,272 54
Belgrade under bombs, 1999
When pushing for a US intervention in Syria in 2012 then State Department chief Hillary Clinton explicitly argued that Russia would not react, particularly because it had done "little more" but "complain" during United States' war on Yugoslavia in 1999. The Clinton email release has revealed she argued:
The second step is to develop international support for a coalition air operation.
Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council.
Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise.
In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don't exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain.
Russian officials have already acknowledged they won't stand in the way if intervention comes. 
Hillary almost got it right. For over four years of Syria's civil war Russia did indeed stay on the sidelines even as US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey did not. Moreover its foray into Syria was something Moscow itself only begun to consider in 2015.
Nonetheless, Hillary should have really been more careful in her analysis. Firstly, she should have appreciated the difference between Russia under Yeltsin and Russia under Putin. 
Secondly, she should have remembered that actually even Yeltsin's Russia took the world by surprise in coming to the aid of Yugoslavia in 1999 but was then forced to back down.
On June 11, 1999  that is after Yugoslavia and NATO had reached an armistice agreement at Kumanovo, but before the retreat of the Yugoslav military allowed NATO to enter and occupy Kosovo – 250 Russian troops which had been part of a Western-led peacekeeping force in neighboring Bosnia crossed over into Serbia and dashed southward occupying the Priština airport in Kosovo before the arrival of NATO troops.
It seemed as if the Russians would now airlift in more troops from Russia itself and present NATO with a fait accompli of a separate Russian occupation zone in northern Kosovo. However, after a few tense hours Moscow backed down and agreed there would only be an American, Italian, German, French and British occupation zones, but not a Russian one. The Russian contingent would instead be dispersed and serve under other commands.
Four years later Putin ended Russia's presence in Kosovo realizing that its troops under NATO command served no useful purpose, except perhaps to help legitimize NATO's presence there.
Russian paratroopers racing to Slatina airbase, 1999
Russian paratroopers racing to Slatina airbase, 1999

In retrospect it is easy to see that Russia's 1999 Priština airfield gambit was doomed from the start.
Russia at the time was a weak power with a leadership which looked to west for loans and support against domestic rivals. Moreover, its strategic position in the Balkans was non-existent.
Hillary in 2012 remembers "genuine political ties" between 1990s Russia and Yugoslavia, but these simply did not exist. 
For most of the 1990s Russia fell in line with Washington's Balkan policies which singled out Slobodan Milošević as a uniquely rogue leader and source of all the regions' problems. In went along with UN sanctions against Yugoslavia in 1992 and again in 1998, as well as a string of other US-proposed UN Resolutions on the Yugoslav wars.
As a result when Moscow in 1999 finally came out from Washington's spell it had no relationship with Belgrade to speak of.
As it was the Russian Priština airfield gambit fell through when Romania and Bulgaria refused to allow Russians to fly military transports through their airspace.
However, we can note that Bulgarian and Turkish airspace was not needed for Russian soldiers to land in Syria. They arrived by sea. 
Russians could have just as easily used the maritime route in 1999 to disembark in Yugoslavia's Adriatic ports. But this would have required someone in Moscow to have entertained the thought of doing Yugoslavia a solid before June 11, 1999.
It would have taken troop transports that were already parked off the Adriatic coast and a measure of trust and coordination between Moscow and Belgrade - which empathically did not exist.
What really prevented Russia from successfully throwing a wrench in NATO's plans in 1999 was not the non-cooperation of Bulgaria and Romania, but the fact Moscow had only just broken free from its servility to Washington two minutes earlier.
By comparison, albeit Russia only begun to consider intervening in Syria in 2015, it always maintained a direct line to Damascus and throughout never abandoned it to US appetites completely.
The 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was important in waking up a pliant, pro-American Russia to Washington's triumphalism and militarism. Russia's Syria intervention sixteen years later is one of the consequences.