That sarin gas has been used in Syria is becoming increasingly clear. The Assad regime, however, has flatly denied using the gas, despite the assertions of many western nations and rebel groups. In May of 2013, Carla del Ponte, a member of the United Nation’s Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, suggested that rebel groups may have used sarin as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2GPTqxf8rE

Though President Obama called the use of chemical weapons the “red line” which, if crossed, would warrant US intervention in Syria, the administration has failed to move beyond rhetoric, even as allegations of chemical warfare have mounted.

President Obama’s reticence may be due to the unpopularity of intervention in yet another Middle Eastern country; a recent poll by Reuters suggests that nearly 60% of Americans oppose intervention in Syria.

While it is true that the Geneva Conventions, signed after WWI, prohibit the use of chemical weapons in warfare, newly declassified CIA documents indicate that the United States supported the uncivilized use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in the 1980’s, at the height of the conflict between Iran and Iraq.

At the time this memo was written, thanks to the Glass-Steagall Act, commercial banks were limited in the interactions and connections they could have with securities firms to prevent securities firms from gambling with the money deposited in commercial banks. Glass-Steagall was enacted in 1933, after affiliations between banks and securities firms, which encouraged easy money and rising debt, contributed the financial collapse of the Great Depression.

Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Billy Act. It is now widely believed that the removal of Glass-Steagall’s restrictions contributed to the credit bubble of the 2000’s that precipitated the economic crash in 2008.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an organization that deals with trade regulation between its 159 member states. The WTO supervises international trade between nations with the aim of liberalizing trade, by lowering trade barriers and enforcing compliance with WTO agreements.

Under the terms of the agreement, members of the WTO accord each other Most Favored Nation (MFN) status.

The World Trade Organization was born on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement signed in Morocco in April of 1994. Though it’s unclear what objections the firms mentioned above had to the stipulations set out in the Marrakech Agreement, much of the Agreement was predicated upon and an expansion of the Uruguay Round.