Category: Syria

  • Syria: CIA, M16, French, Mossad, Saudi Involvement Unreported In Imperialist Media

    Syria: CIA, M16, French, Mossad, Saudi Involvement Unreported In Imperialist Media

    DisinformationBy Jay Janson

    27 June, 2011
    Countercurrents.org

    What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, Turkey and Israel. Armed insurgents belonging to Islamist organizations have crossed the border from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The US State Department has confirmed that it is supporting the insurgency. A monolithic unified slant media cartel restricts reports to indiscriminate killing of civilian protesters by Syrian government

    Now that the West’s war on Gaddafi is going well, American news commentators can in rare moments proudly admit that the CIA is heavily involved. No so, when if comes to Syria. It’s too early. The public has not been yet been properly taught to hate Syria’s President Assad sufficiently.

    The imperialist media cartel that controls what news is selected and how and with what intention it shall be broadcasted has done its best to demonize Assad. How? Simple! They just keep repeating day in day out that Syrian government forces are shooting and massacring protesters, period. They don’t say anything else. That’s it. There is nothing else happening. When it is necessary to admit that police and soldiers are being ambushed and killed, a cover story comes with it, like, ‘it is suspected that they were killed by defecting police and military.’

    This amazing great cartel of Pentagon/CIA fed media conglomerates, which seems to have the great majority of the basically indifferent population of the West in tow, is effortlessly running its usual cascade of disinformation, half-truths and propaganda preparing justification for military intervention as previously in the cases of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran.

    However, “The plan to destabilize Syria is not working all that well. It succeeded in persuading public opinion that the country is in the grips of a brutal dictatorship, but it also welded the vast majority of the Syrian population firmly behind its government. Ultimately, the plan could backfire on those who masterminded it, notably Tel Aviv” surmises Thierry Meyssan in “The Plan to Destabilize Syria”, Voltaire Network, Lebanon, 6/13/11.

    A few scholarly sites on the Internet always manage to fill in what is intentionally blacked out in Pentagon counseled and fed commercial mass media of the Western pseudo-democracies. Here, Michael Chossudovsky, consultant with a half-dozen UN agencies and publisher of Global Research out of Canada tell us:

    “What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, Turkey and Israel. Armed insurgents belonging to Islamist organizations have crossed the border from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The US State Department has confirmed that it is supporting the insurgency.
    This was stated by U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland. “We started to expand contacts with the Syrians, those who are calling for change, both inside and outside the country,” she said.

    Action against Syria is part of a “military roadmap”, a sequencing of military operations. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark–the Pentagon had clearly identified Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon as target countries of a US-NATO intervention:
    ‘[The] Five-year campaign plan [included]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan’ (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark) In Winning Modern Wars (page 130) General Wesley Clark states the following:

    ‘The objective is to destabilize the Syrian State and implement “regime change” through the covert support of an armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist militia.
    The reports on civilian deaths are used to provide a pretext and a justification for humanitarian intervention under the principle “Responsibility to Protect”.’

    Media Disinformation

    What is mentioned profusely is that the armed forces and the police are involved in the indiscriminate killing of civilian protesters. Press reports confirm, however, from the outset of the protest movement an exchange of gunfire between armed insurgents and the police, with casualties reported on both sides.

    The insurrection started in mid March in the border city of Daraa, which is 10 km from the Jordanian border. The Daraa “protest movement” on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)
    Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.

    What has unfolded in Daraa in the weeks following the initial violent clashes on 17-18 March, is the confrontation between the police and the armed forces on the one hand and armed units of terrorists and snipers on the other which have infiltrated the protest movement” The Destabilization of Syria and the Broader Middle East War, By Michael Chossudovsky

    One would be naive to believe that the century of brutal occupation of the Arab lands of Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco by France and those of Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Somaliland, Aden, and Yemen by the British, with both occupying Libya after W.W.II, that British M16 and and the French Secret Service would not be indispensable for the johnny-come-lately America empire and its CIA. But one would have to be even more naive to believe the excellent secret service of Israel, Mossad, at war with the Arab world since 1948 was not playing a key role in Syria and Libya, two adamant adversaries of the State of Israel. Here below is some background.

    Experts Fear Israeli Design to Balkanize Arab States By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, 6/19/11
    https://www.voltairenet.org/The-plan-to-destabilize-Syria

    “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, in 1982, ” Written by Oded Yinon, then a senior advisor for Israel’s foreign ministry, the essay explicitly calls for breaking up the Arab states of the region along ethnic and sectarian lines. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas… is Israel’s primary target on the eastern front in the long run.”

    “In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines… is possible,” he writes. “So, three states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shiite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.”

    As for Egypt, Yinon calls for breaking the country up into “distinct geographical regions.” The establishment of an independent Coptic-Christian state in Upper Egypt, he writes, “alongside a number of weak states with very localized power and without a centralized government…seems inevitable in the long run.”

    Yinon goes on to mention Sudan in similar terms, describing it as “the most torn-apart state in the Arab-Muslim world today…built upon four groups hostile to each other: an Arab-Muslim Sunni minority which rules over a majority of non-Arab Africans, pagans and Christians.”

    According to Mazloum, political maneuvering in recent years by Israel and the western powers – both overt and covert – appears to conform to this strategy of balkanization.

    “Israel and the U.S. have both helped break up Iraq by encouraging the emergence of an independent Kurdish state and fostering Sunni-Shiite division,” he said. “And in Sudan, Earlier this month, Mohamed Abbas, a leading member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Coalition Council (RCC), likewise warned of an ongoing “conspiracy” aimed at breaking Egypt into three petty states.

    “The Zionist plan to politically fragment the Arab Middle East so as to keep Arab states in a perpetual state of instability and weakness has been well known for the last three decades,” Gamal Mazloum, retired Egyptian major-general and expert on defense issues, told IPS.

    “The western campaign against Libya … was launched with the aim of breaking Libya; Libya could be split in two, with Gaddafi staying on in the west of the country and a revolutionary government loyal to the western powers in control of the east, Mohamed al-Sakhawi, leading member of Egypt’s as-yet-unlicensed Arabic Unity Party, told IPS.”

    The satellite generated media conglomerate cartel’s unified single angle presentation of world events is really difficult for progressive alternate media to dare challenge as slanted. Its deceptions become truths to everyone except the skeptical. Most progressive magazines and Internet sites and newsletters depend on keeping their less politically educated liberal readership.

    What this writer suggests is that progressives at least identify Network news and conglomerate owned print media in some manner as to warn their liberal readership to be wary of giant major media’s ownership and agenda. Warn that what is being projected in between commercials is the very same agenda of our now well understood, Military Industrial Financial Complex and the three branches of government it firmly controls.

    Notice how the general term media appears, even in the scholarly investigative journalism quoted in this article. Would it not carry more awareness to the reader if it was more carefully defined as ‘imperialist media.’ For what is referred to by peoples historian journalists in fighting deception and war mongering is not media per se, which must include all media, including more inclusive foreign media and U.S. alternate media containing investigative reporting in historical context without a war justifying agenda.

    Someone surely can come up with something besides ‘imperialist media’ to describe the monolithic output of all the media conglomerates of an increasingly moronic U.S. media cartel with overseas linkage.

    Are we never to hear of the mass homicidal crimes of the CIA until files are forced open by law decades too late? Progressives have to move on this, or lose credibility among Socialists and anti-capitalists.

    Jay Janson, 80, is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England, India and the US, and now resides in New York City. Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his. GlobalReserch, InformationClearingHouse, CounterCurrents, DissidentVoice, HistoryNewsNetwork, are among those who have republished his articles.

    www.countercurrents.org, 27 June 2011

  • Turkey soccer team sends sports equipment to Syrian children

    Turkey soccer team sends sports equipment to Syrian children

    The statement also said that 139 of the Syrians returned to their countries on Tuesday and Wednesday, while 46 more Syrians arrived in Turkey to take shelter.

    hatayy

    Number of Syrian people who fled the violence in their country and took shelter in Turkey was 10,659 as of Wednesday.

    A statement from the Turkish Prime Ministry Disaster & Emergency Management Directorate (AFAD) said that the Syrians were staying in five temporary tent-sites set up by Turkish Red Crescent in Altinozu and Yayladagi towns of Turkey’s southern province of Hatay.

    The statement also said that 139 of the Syrians returned to their countries on Tuesday and Wednesday, while 46 more Syrians arrived in Turkey to take shelter.

    AFAD stated that the food assistance, which was started to be extended on June 17 in the region, was still continuing, adding that also 3.7 million Turkish lira (TL) was given to the region so far. (one USD equals 1.641 TL)

    Hundreds of people have been killed during pro-democracy protests in Syria since January 2011.

    Meanwhile, 101 press members ?60 of them from foreign countries- are covering the developments in the town. There are press members from Britain, the U.S., Canada, Germany, China, France, Japan, Spain and India in the region.

    Ankaragucu soccer team of Turkey sent sports equipment to children living in tent-sites in Yayladagi town of Hatay.

    AA

  • Turkey Is Not Invading Syria

    Turkey Is Not Invading Syria

    Today’s Zaman, a large and respected English-language daily newspaper based in Turkey, made a big splash today with a story suggesting that that Turkish government had informed Western diplomats it was considering invading Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad. “Report: Turkey tells West it might launch offensive against Syria,” reads the headline. The article cites a Kuwaiti newspaper, As-Seyassah, which in turn cites an anonymous British diplomat.

    It’s the kind of story that’s outrageous enough to attract suspicion, but still gets passed around both because it has aspects of plausibility and because it tells people something they want to hear.

    Syria’s awful violence against its citizens has no obvious Western solutions. Assad’s regime is already heavily sanctioned, and Western governments have few diplomatic levers to influence his behavior. Regardless of whether a Libya-style intervention would be a good idea, the North African conflict has become so protracted and expensive that NATO is extremely unlikely to want to repeat in Syria. The idea that Turkey might simply take care of the Syria problem itself, however unlikely and however unwise, could tempt Western readers, even normally skeptical analysts and journalists, into letting themselves believe it.

    The fighting in Syria has indeed spread into nearby Turkey, where thousands of refugees have fled, creating an expensive and complicated humanitarian and diplomatic problem for a country that already has plenty of diplomatic problems. Though the countries are allies, their relationship was very tense not so long ago, and Assad’s isolationism, aggressive foreign policy, and brutal domestic leadership have made it difficult for Turkey to remain close at a time when it is also trying to join the European Union. So while the prospect of Turkey invading Syria is extremely unlikely, if you wanted to believe it, you could find justification.

    Alas, the story appears to be false. When I expressed incredulity at the likelihood of Turkey invading its neighbor, Today’s Zaman news editor Mahir Zeynalov responded, “I think the Kuwaiti daily misquoted the diplomat.” As for the prospect of Turkey launching an entire war with so little warning, Zeynalov pointed out that the country has not even suggested as much to Syria, which it surely would if invasion were a real possibility. “No need to exaggerate, Turkey did not even warn Syria of deploying troops.” He added of the newspaper’s own sourcing for the story that no government source “was used while writing this report.”

    via Turkey Is Not Invading Syria – Max Fisher – International – The Atlantic.

  • Iran: Turkey Must Not Pressure Syria

    Iran: Turkey Must Not Pressure Syria

    Iran: Turkey Must Not Pressure Syria

    The Iranian daily Kayhan, which is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned Turkey that if it continues to pressure the Syrian regime and to call on Hamas to recognize Israel, then Iran, Syria, and Iraq would limit their cooperation with it.

    An article in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps weekly Sobh-e Sadeq said that Ankara had encouraged Syrian citizens to flee to its territory in order to increase the number of refugees there – thus justifying foreign intervention in Syria.

    The article further said that Ankara’s actions against Syria on behalf of the U.S. and Israel, would lead to an uprising by the Syrian Turks and by millions of Alawis living in its territory.

    Source: Kayhan, Sobh-e Sadeq (Iran), June 27, 2011.

    via Iran: Turkey Must Not Pressure Syria.

  • Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead

    Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead

    ANTAKYA, Turkey — Syrian security forces arrested scores of people across the country on Saturday as mourners took part in the funerals of six protesters killed Friday outside of Damascus, continuing a grim pattern of protest, death, mourning and repression that has been repeated week after week as the uprising in Syria enters its fourth month.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed in the security sweep on Saturday, according to Reuters, and two protesters were killed during the funerals.

    Syria has been gripped since mid-March by an unprecedented popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled with an iron fist for over four decades. The government has cracked down hard on the protests, killing more than 1,400 people and detaining more than 10,000, according to activists, who estimate that 20 were killed on Friday, 5 of them children.

    Violence in the rural northwest has driven more than 11,000 refugees into neighboring Turkey, where the Red Crescent, a local version of the Red Cross, said this week that 17,000 more were waiting to cross the rugged border. Hundreds have also crossed into Lebanon, The Associated Press reported Saturday, citing a Lebanese security official.

    Pallbearers carried the coffins of the dead through the streets of the Damascus suburb of Kisweh on Saturday as a column of mourners marched behind them, clapping their hands and loudly chanting “God is great,” according to a video posted online by activists.

    “We wanted a very big funeral to honor the dead and we planned to show the regime our answer to their killing,” said Ibrahim, 30, a farmer in Kisweh. “We are so angry and we will not forget our martyrs. The security men killed Hassan Shabib, who was 13 years old.”

    Activists estimated the number of mourners in Kisweh at 30,000, although the video posted online appears to show far fewer. Syria bars most foreign journalists from entering the country so it is difficult to verify the accounts of either the government or its opponents.

    As mourners in Kisweh buried their dead, security forces continued a wave of mass arrests in towns and villages across the country that activists and residents said began after midnight Friday.

    In Kisweh, dozens of people were arrested on Saturday and one was killed, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, a grass-roots group.

    Many residents were nervous, hiding in their homes and unwilling to talk to a visiting reporter out of fear of possible government retribution.

    Activists from the Coordinating Committees said there were also dozens of arrests in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh, where three people were wounded and one person, Riad al-Shayb, 18, was killed.

    A human rights activist in Damascus, who declined to be identified for fear of government retribution, called the situation in Kisweh and Barzeh “tense,” and said he expected the government to come down hard there in a bid to crush protests in the capital that activists said have drawn ever larger crowds.

    The Coordinating Committees said there were also mass arrests Saturday in Homs, Syria’s third largest city; Mare’a, a suburb of Aleppo; and the villages of Khan Sheikhoun and Jebel Zawiyah in the restive northern province of Idlib, where security forces have reportedly used scorched-earth tactics in recent weeks as part of a drive to retake a string of towns that appeared to have fallen beyond their control.

    The Committees had no estimate of the number of people detained. A spokesman for the group, Hozan Ibrahim, said they were primarily young people, a trend that he said reflected fear on the part of the authorities.

    “They are scared,” he said. “Young people are the ones organizing the demonstrations and this is the last thing they want to happen.”

    In Kisweh, hundreds of soldiers prowled the streets on Saturday in what local residents described as a manhunt for young people believe to have taken part in antigovernment protests. Backed by at least 15 tanks, uniformed soldiers from Syria’s conscript army went from house to house bearing a list of the names of wanted men.

    “They have lists with the names of pro-democracy activists who are behind the demonstrations,” said a resident who identified himself as Abu Muhammad, 45, a public employee. “The regime intends to punish us.”

    He said checkpoints barred anyone from entering the town, squeezed between the capital and the Danoun Palestinian refugee camp 12 miles south of Damascus.

    “I wanted to go to work this morning but I saw a large number of soldiers with uniforms standing near two tanks and they told me you cannot leave Kisweh today, go back home, no work today,” said Abu Muhammad. “The soldiers blocked all of the entrances to Kisweh and won’t allow anyone to leave it.”

    An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.

    via Forces Make Arrests Across Syria – 5 Dead – NYTimes.com.

  • Syria reinforces northern border as Turkey loses patience with Assad

    Syria reinforces northern border as Turkey loses patience with Assad

    Syria reinforces northern border as Turkey loses patience with Assad

    Advance on Khirbet al-Jouz seen as a warning after Ankara seeks reforms and end to crackdown on Syrian protesters

    * Martin Chulov, Istanbul

    * guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 June 2011 18.38 BST

    A Syrian on a pro-Assad protest in Beirut. Lebanon is now considered increasingly dangerous for dissidents. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
    A Syrian on a pro-Assad protest in Beirut. Lebanon is now considered increasingly dangerous for dissidents. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

    Syrian officials have ordered military units to step up patrolling near the Turkish border in a warning to its increasingly irate northern neighbour not to establish a buffer zone inside Syria.

    Diplomats in Ankara and Beirut believe the Syrian advance on the border village of Khirbet al-Jouz, initially portrayed as a sweep against dissidents, was a veiled threat to Turkey, which is steadily turning on President Bashar al-Assad as his regime’s crackdown on dissent continues.

    In the wake of Assad’s speech last week, Turkish officials gave him one week to start reforms and stop the violent suppression of protests, which is estimated to have killed more than 1,400 people in less than four months. At least 18 were killed and dozens more wounded during nationwide protests on Friday – a relatively low toll compared with the past few Fridays. But the pattern of activists being attacked by the security forces remains the same.

    British government officials travelled during the week to the south of Turkey to interview Syrian refugees. A Foreign Office official told the Observer that diplomats are compiling accounts of what happened in Jisr al-Shughour and the villages around it during the first two weeks of this month, when the Syrian army mounted a series of raids, followed by an assault that led almost every resident of the 41,000-strong town to flee, first for the nearby hills, then to Turkey.

    Among the allegations being investigated are claims that Iranian soldiers operated alongside Syrian units – especially the Fourth Division of the army, which is led by Assad’s brother Maher and has a reputation for ruthlessness.

    The European Union last week adopted sanctions against three leading officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, among them Qassem Suleimani, commander of the elite Al-Quds force, who is widely regarded as the leader of all the Iranian military’s clandestine missions abroad.

    A senior diplomat in Beirut said on Friday that intelligence agencies had evidence that Iran sent weapons to Syria, but had not yet determined whether there had been an actual Iranian presence at demonstrations.

    In a further sign of Turkish unease with Damascus, officials from the country’s Red Crescent who run the five refugee camps along the border no longer seem to be banned from talking to reporters. Embarrassment to Syria has clearly become less of a concern.

    Refugee accounts are being used to compile a referral to the international criminal court, which will be asked to prosecute Assad and key regime officials for crimes against humanity. The referral is being prepared by several rights groups, including Insan, which is also compiling testimonies from defecting Syrian soldiers.

    Turkey’s growing diplomatic anger at Syria has made Istanbul an attractive hub for the Syrian opposition movement, which has received scores of defectors in recent weeks. Beirut, which is less than three hours’ drive from Damascus and offers easy access to Syrian citizens, is now considered too dangerous for anti-regime dissidents. “It is a clearing house only,” said one Syrian activist who directs a network of dissidents across the border. “There are many ways that the regime can get to people here – they don’t even have to be here themselves. They just use their proxies.”

    One Syrian journalist who fled to Beirut has told the rights group Avaaz of his capture by Lebanese military intelligence officers. The journalist says he was seized from a coffee shop in Jounieh, 25km north of Beirut. He said he was first asked by a stranger to step outside for a conversation, then seized and taken to a fetid barracks where he was interrogated for several days.

    “During the days I spent in Beirut, some other Syrian activists were kidnapped and extradited to the Syrian security police,” he said. “The Lebanese authorities have also captured the few fugitive Syrian soldiers who had fled Syria through the borders, and then turned them in to Syria, claiming that it had to because of the security agreement signed between the two countries.”

    At least 1,000 refugees crossed into Lebanon at the Wadi Khalled border point on Friday, including five men with gunshot wounds, after an assault on the Syrian city of Homs, according to Lebanese officials. A resident of the border village told the Observer that Syrian army units had opened fire towards the wounded as they attempted to enter Lebanon.

    via Syria reinforces northern border as Turkey loses patience with Assad | World news | The Observer.