Syria plans for 'strong possibility' of NATO action

The U.S. held conversations with Turkey about the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone on Syria in September or October, according to a senior Syrian official speaking to WND.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself acknowledged in a briefing this past weekend that a no-fly zone was among the options under consideration however she stopped short of any pledge on the subject.

The senior Syrian official said that information passed on from Russia indicates that Clinton told Turkey that a NATO-imposed no-fly zone is a "strong possibility," leading to immediate contingency planning by both Russia and Syria for such an eventuality.

The official further said that the working assumption by Russia and Syria is that Israel could be drawn into any conflict resulting from the imposition of an international force in Syria. The official did not further elaborate.

Many analysts believe Syria's air force is not capable of responding effectively to a NATO-imposed no-fly zone. There is some fear Syria could reply by attempting to widen the conflict by attacking Israel, including firing missiles into the Jewish state. Syria is known to have a large arsenal of missiles that can reach all of Israel.

The Syrian official, meanwhile, said that any NATO deployment would come under the banner of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

Samantha Power

Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by President 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 Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, founded by Samantha Power, had a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that original founded Responsibility to Protect. Power is Obama's national security adviser who now leads the White House Atrocities Prevention Board, which is tasked with formulating a response to war crimes, crimes against humanity and mass atrocities. Power's husband is Cass Sunstein, Obama's former "regulatory" czar.

The 2001 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.

Power 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.

Soros funded, terror-tied

The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world's leading champion of the military doctrine.

George Soros' Open Society Institute 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.

The committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who was Yasser Arafat's deputy and is a notorious denier of the Holocaust.

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."

Thakur and Evans sit on multiple boards with Soros.

The 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' borders'

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-chairs, 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.

The group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, a process apparently underway with a visit last month by Brotherhood officials to the White House.

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.

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'

Doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a “New World Order."

In a piece in March 2011 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 behavior 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."