The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[conniption]

https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2 ... ufficient/

^^^
reminds me of this:
Catapult The Propaganda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxnegxNEDAc

~~~

VoltaireNet

For London, propaganda is an art

by Thierry Meyssan

No normal human being can accept to see his children suffer – consequently, they make good subjects for war propaganda. Thierry Meyssan takes a look at the use of children by the International Coalition during the war against Syria.

Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 23 August 2016



Just as in all wars, the war against Syria has triggered an avalanche of propaganda. And the use of children is always a winning strategy.

So, at the beginning of the war, Qatar wanted to demonstrate that the Republic, far from serving the general interest, actually despised the People. The petro-dictatorship then broadcast, on its TV channel Al-Jazeera, the legend of the children of Deraa, supposedly tortured by the police. To illustrate the cruelty of its adversary, Qatar specified that their fingernails had been torn out. Of course, despite research, no journalist could find any trace of these children. The BBC broadcast an interview with two of them, but their nails were still intact.

Since the myth could not be proved, Qatar then launched a new story – that of a child, Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb (13 years old), who had allegedly been tortured and castrated by the «regime’s» police. This time, they provided a convincing image. Everyone could see that the body had no sex. However, the autopsy showed that the body had been poorly preserved, and that it had fermented and swollen. The stomach hid the child’s sex, which was still present.



In this magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle imagined the arrest of a German spy by Sherlock Holmes. The writer was working for the Office of War Propaganda.

At the end of 2013, the British took over the task of war propaganda. They had a long experience in that sector, and are considered to have invented modern propaganda during the first World War, with the Office of War Propaganda. One of the characteristics of their method is to rely on artists, because aesthetics tend to neutralise critical thinking. In 1914, they recruited the great authors of the time – like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling – to publish texts which attributed imaginary crimes to their German enemy. Then they recruited the heads of their major newspapers to publish the imaginary information invented by the authors.

When the United States adopted the British method, in 1917, with the Committee on Public Information, they made a more precise study of the mechanisms of persuasion, with the help of star journalist Walter Lippmann and the inventor of modern publicity, Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew). But, persuaded of the power of science, they forgot about aesthetics.

At the beginning of 2014, the British MI6 created the company Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat) to whom we owe, for example, the magnificent logos of the armed groups, from the most «moderate» to the most «extremist». This company, which has offices in Washington and Istanbul, organised the campaign to convince the Europeans to offer sanctuary to 1 million refugees. It was this company that photographed young Aylan Kurdi, drowned on a Turkish beach, and managed, in two days, to have it published on the front page of the main Atlantist newspapers in all NATO countries as well as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council.



Every year, before the war, a hundred people died from drowning on Turkish beaches, and no-one mentioned it. And above all, only the tabloids showed photographs of the corpses. But this photo was so well composed…

Since I noted that a body can not be washed up perpendicular to the waves, the photographer explained later that he had moved the corpse for the needs of the photo.

The photo of young Omran Daqneesh (5 years old), in an ambulance in West Aleppo, is thus accompanied by a video. The two supports enable the information to be exploited by both the written Press and the television. The scene is so dramatic that a news-reader from CNN could not stop herself from crying when she saw it. Of course, when we think about it, we notice that the child was not attended to by the medical personnel who gave him first aid, but by a group of extras, (the «White Helmets»), who placed him facing the cameras.

The British film directors care nothing about the child, whose only interest for them is as a feature in their images. According to Associated Press, the photograph was taken by Mahmoud Raslan, whom we can see in the video. According to his Facebook account, this man is a member of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki (supported by the CIA, who supplied the group with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles). Still according to his Facebook account, and as confirmed by another video, it was Raslan who, on the 19 July 2016, personally cut the throat of a young Palestinian child, Abdullah Tayseer Al Issa (12 years old).

European laws lay down strict guidelines for the use of children in publicity. Clearly, these laws do not apply to war propaganda.
_______
Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Pete Kimberley

~~~

MoA

August 18, 2016
The "Wounded Boy In Orange Seat" - Another Staged "White Helmets" Stunt

This pic is making the rounds in "western" media together with a tearful story from "activists" in a neighborhood in al-Qaeda occupied east-Aleppo.

continued... http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/08/th ... stunt.html

[Nordic]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/hillary-cl ... ct/5541918

Hillary Clinton’s Uncanny Fulfillment of Israel’s Yinon Plan for a Middle East Riven with Conflict

What the Media is Missing in the Bloody Boy from Aleppo Photo: Thank You, Hillary


Wikileaks has released what may be the most underreported story of the year in a year full of them, Hillary Clinton’s uncanny fulfillment of Oded Yinon‘s plan for the Middle East according to Israel 30 years ago. This was summed up in Yinon’s “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.” Yinon, an influential right-wing Israeli strategist, envisioned a Middle East riven with conflict between Arab tribes and religious denominations, unable to oppose Israeli ambitions for regional dominance. Yinon wrote:

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel…Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.

Syrian Boy

When former presidential candidate General Wes Clark shockingly proclaimed in 2011 that he had seen a memo emanating from the Bush defense department which revealed that the invasion of Iraq was only the beginning of a much more extensive program of “regime change” across the Middle East, one could not help but recall Yinon’s desire to provoke “inter-Arab confrontation.” Recalling a conversation with a Pentagon staffer before the invasion of Iraq, Clark told an audience:

I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

In a recently released email from the Clinton Archives, which run from June 30, 2010 to August 12, 2014 while she was Secretary of State, Clinton wrote from the standpoint of not US interests, but Israeli. She said:

Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted.

The unabashedly hawkish exchange, which seems to telegraph the intent to overcome obstacles to “common view” which would justify an attack on Iran, shows that Hillary is of a like mind with Yinon, who held that toppling stable Arab regimes and uncorking fratricidal civil wars, which may go on for decades, is in Israel’s interest.

General Wes Clark, “Seven Countries in Five Years”


With the world freshly shocked at an image seen in Syria and Libya every day, wounded children, it might help to remember the most exuberant advocate, as Secretary of State, for the military actions which unloosed the horrors seen today in these war zones. The photo of the boy is but one fairly tame example. The true carnage is unpublishable.

In a piece at Huffington Post, “Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath,”Harvard’s Professor Jeffrey Sachs writes:

Clinton has been much more than a bit player in the Syrian crisis. Her diplomat Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was killed as he was running a CIA operation to ship Libyan heavy weapons to Syria. Clinton herself took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” to back the CIA-led insurgency.

Sachs is outraged at Hillary’s portraying herself as a “negotiator” who helped conclude ceasefires, writing:

This is the kind of compulsive misrepresentation that makes Clinton unfit to be President. Clinton’s role in Syria has been to help instigate and prolong the Syrian bloodbath, not to bring it to a close.

As for Libya, not only was Hillary the Obama administration’s most ardent supporter of military action to overthrow Gaddafi. It now comes out that the entire pretense for NATO intervention – stopping a massacre of civilians by Gaddafi, was pure fiction. Human Rights Watch, as reported in the Boston Globe:

released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Charles Kubic at the National Interest writes in “Hillary’s Huge Libyan Disaster”:

Despite valid ceasefire opportunities to prevent “bloodshed in Benghazi” at the onset of hostilities, Secretary Clinton intervened and quickly pushed her foreign policy in support of a revolution led by the Muslim Brotherhood and known terrorists in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Ongoing casualties of the Libyan Civil War are now in the hundreds of thousands, with just the latest UN report documenting 49 this month of June.

These are the dogs of war unleashed, in no small part, by Hillary. A disturbing glimpse of the cavalier attitude held by Clinton toward the chaos fomented by her policies was given when, told the news of Gaddafi’s torture and death, quipped and laughed: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Clinton Upon Learning of Death of Gaddafi



Combined with her boosterism for the Iraq War while a US senator from New York, which included repeating now thoroughly debunked Bush lies about weapons of mass destruction, and with Hillary already talking of escalation of the US military role in Syria, it behooves those frightened by Donald Trump to say how any candidate could be any scarier, from a been-there-done-that perspective, than Hillary. She has in the past threatened to “obliterate” Iran with nuclear weapons, and once cackled maniacally with James Baker III at the thought of finally attacking Iran.

Summing it up best, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein once observed wryly:

Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and ignoring the climate. Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things,

Hillary Laughs With James Baker III About War With Iran



The original source of this article is Hub Pages
Copyright © Hub Pages, Hub Pages, 2016
Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page

Become a Member of Global Research

But it's ok because she's not that racist.

[American Dream]

Daraya

August 26, 2016 by Leila Al Shami



'Daraya: the spirit of the Syrian revolution, and the heartbeat of every rebel’

Four years following its liberation, the predominantly agricultural town of Daraya, strategically located near the capital, has fallen to the regime. A deal was reached to evacuate the 4,000-8,000 civilians remaining from a pre-uprising population of 300,000. The local fighters who defended their town so courageously will go to Idlib and join the resistance there.

Daraya’s residents know that they may never return to their homes. Photos circulated on social media showed residents gathered at the graves of loved ones to say goodbye. Fears abound of a plan to cleanse opposition strongholds permanently, and in previous evacuation deals, even those carried out under UN auspices, many were detained by the regime, never to be seen again.

But the residents are desperate. A few days ago a group of women from Daraya sent a letter to the world. They described horrific conditions. A regime-imposed siege, ongoing for 1,368 days, had blocked the entry of food and medical supplies. People were starving. They described the daily regime assault which has seen over 9,000 barrel bombs dropped on the town as well as internationally prohibited poisonous gas and napalm. The hospital had been targeted and was out of operation. Agricultural land, the sole source of food, had been deliberately burned and destroyed. The women called on the international community to take action to end the violence and lift the siege. This letter followed months of protests held by women and children with the same demands. The first, and only, aid convoy to reach the town entered in June 2016. It contained medicine, mosquito nets and baby formula, but no food. ‘We can’t take medicine on an empty stomach,’ read a banner at a protest soon after.

Those who leave Daraya, leave as heroes. Daraya is an iconic town for Syrian revolutionaries. It’s been a centre for the development of the thought and practice of non-violent resistance and has inspired civil disobedience across the country. And despite the horrific repression inflicted on the town, it’s had remarkable success in practicing local, autonomous self organization. Revolutionary activist Razan Zeitouneh, who herself was kidnapped in 2013, said “Daraya was a star before the revolution and a star during. What the young men and women of the city built took immense efforts and resulted in a small exemplary model for the future of Syria, the one we dream of. The activism in the city never ceased to amaze us for a minute… In Daraya, the signs calling for co-existence continued to be held high even when the entire country was falling into despair following every new massacre.”[1]

In 2011, when the uprising began, a local coordination committee quickly emerged to organize anti-regime protests. The committee emphasized the importance of non-violent struggle and handed out leaflets calling for a democratic Syria and for equality between all religious and ethnic groups. As church bells rang in solidarity, protesters marched holding flowers, and handed bottles of water to the security forces sent to shoot them. ‘The army and people are one,’ they chanted. One of those involved with the local coordination committee was a 26 year old tailor called Ghiyath Matar. He earned the nickname ‘Little Ghandi’ for his commitment to peaceful resistance. Ghiyath was arrested by security forces on 6 September 2011. A few days later his mutilated corpse was returned to his family and pregnant wife. In one of his last Facebook posts, Ghiyath said “We chose non-violence not from cowardice or weakness, but out of moral conviction; we don’t want to reach victory by having destroyed the country.”

Continues at: https://leilashami.wordpress.com/2016/0 ... /#more-534

[American Dream]

https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2 ... and-assad/

Thierry Meyssan and Syria: The Far-right and Assad.

On Voltaire Net we read, “Thierry Meyssan French intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.

He is not content with conspiracy theories about 9/11 in New York and the claim that the “Pentagon was the target of a guided missile, fired on as the result of a right-wing conspiracy within the United States.”

Currently Meyssan’s defence of the Syrian regime is being widely broadcast.

On Meyssan’s own site he has taken upon himself to defend the Syrian regime.

What has been happening in Syria for the past three years? According to NATO and GCC* media reports, the “regime” has shed blood to suppress a democratic revolution. However this version is contradicted by the current support for the government estimated at, according to sources, between 60 and 90 % of the population. The truth is quite different: NATO and the GCC have successively lost a war of succession and a fourth generation Nicaraguan-type war. It is they, and they alone, who organized and financed the death of 120,000 Syrians.

Meyssan is currently (according to the weekly Le Point) cited on Wikipedia) , “professeur de relations internationales au Centre d’études stratégiques de Damas », qu’il « signe des éditos dans al-Watan » et qu’il est « conseiller particulier de Bachar el-Assad »” – Professor of international relations at the Strategic Studies Centre of Damas, and a special adviser of Assad.

In October Le Monde Diplomatique published an article, Les embrouilles idéologiques de l’extrême droite, (the deliberate confusions of the far-right) largely about Alain Soral. (1)

It drew attention to the mixture of “anti-imperialism”, conspiracy theory, and (barely disguised) anti-Semitism peddled by a fringe of extreme-right ideologists.

They are designed to attract a ‘left’ audience, with anti-globalisation, anti-imperialist themes, and the ‘right’ with an appeal to (French) nationalism.

Meyssan participates the site Egalite et Réconciliation founded by Soral. (2)

It does just that.

It is devoted to promoting this ideology.

Equality and Reconciliation advocates the union of the “Labour left” (Marxist) and the “Moral Right” (Nationalism and Patriotism) in response to capitalist globalisation Many consider that it takes as its model the pre-great War Proudhon Circle, which brought together syndicalists (not, despite the legend, Georges Sorel himself) , and Maurrassians (followers of the Action Française, the French ‘Royalist’ party of the extreme right).

It would be a great mistake if the left, in its justified hatred of the jihadist killers in Syria, their international recruits and backers, working in Syria, forgets that Assad has attracted people of Meyssan’s stripe.

(* GCC: Cooperation Council of Arab States in the Gulf)
(1) Wikipedia.

Soral defined himself as a Marxist, and was a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90’s. He left the PCF because of his opposition to the party’s renunciation of revolutionary content[citation needed]. Soral supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election[citation needed].

In 2005, Soral turned to the far-right, joining the National Front‘s campaign committee; he was given responsibility for social issues and for the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. Soral’s personal journey has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain.[8] He supported the Bloc identitaire‘s distribution of food in January 2006.[8]

Since 18 November 2007, Soral has been a member of the central committee of the National Front which he left in early 2009 because of some ideas he was in conflict with (especially the menace of Islam which is not an actual threat for him).

In 2007, he founded the group “Egalité et Réconciliation”,[9] a think tank led by the ideas he developed in his books and his several interviews (an innovative mix between social and economic ideas from Left, and Values like Nation or morality from Right).

(2) Interestingly Meyssan is described as a “personal friend” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a recent post on this site, criticising Iran for giving way to the West over its nuclear programme.

[seemslikeadream]

“Pentagon was the target of a guided missile, fired on as the result of a right-wing conspiracy within the United States......yep

[American Dream]

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/le ... 1081590395

The left’s hollow anti-imperialism over Syria

Joey Ayoub


The inability of many leftists to see past outdated narratives on Syria has galvanised the rise of reactionary nativism in the West

Over the last week, some members of the Twitter bubble argued over the left’s response to the ongoing Syrian crisis. I took part in it, if only briefly and hesitantly, knowing in advance that it would most likely not bear any fruit. Here, I will try and explain why I think it’s important that such discussions continue.

The heated exchange was not between anti-imperialists and pro-imperialists but between those who can’t see past one form of imperialism and those who are struggling against all imperialisms (or strive to). Crucially for our purposes, the former typically underestimates, or willingly ignores, Russian and Iranian imperialism in Syria and it does the same with regards to the regime’s daily atrocities. The latter sees it as its mission to remind the former of what countless Syrians have been repeating for nearly four years now, namely that it is utterly meaningless to speak of struggling for equality and justice when a fascist, neoliberal and imperialist-friendly dictatorship is overpowering anyone who wishes to fight against it. As long as this balance of powers remains unchanged, the rest is wishful thinking, with very serious repercussions on the ground.

I call the former “essentialist anti-imperialists” and I’ve even attempted to provide some definition of what it means: “essentialist anti-imperialism is defined solely in relation to one’s own government rather than on the basis of a universal opposition to all forms of imperialism”. This anti-imperialism does not stop imperialism, quite the contrary: it pits imperialist powers against one another and sometimes even cheers on the one that just happens to not be its own. In other words, it prioritises identity politics and can only survive in a grotesquely Western-centric view of the world.

Essentialist anti-imperialism is defined solely in relation to one’s own government rather than on the basis of a universal opposition to all forms of imperialism

There is a significant portion of the Western Left today that has adopted a nativist framework which started to exclude the voices of Syrians as soon as their revolution became inconvenient. Without naming names, many of us can think of a number of commentators - including so-called “experts” whose credentials revolve around them being white males - who were initially supportive of the revolution but ended up disavowing it or even, in some cases, supporting the fascist and imperialist forces slaughtering their way to victory with the deafening silence of a spineless “international community”. This is made all the worse with the participation of notable figures and parties of the so-called Old Arab Left - that same “Left” which happily colludes with fascist parties under the guise of a tired “anti-imperialist” narrative.

The question at the bottom of this whole debacle is: what does “fighting imperialism” mean if “imperialism” is what might save your life and that of your loved ones? Is it actually fighting imperialism to effectively condemn the countless Syrians who have called for a no-fly zone since at least 2013 (and some as early as 2012)?

Where is the anti-imperialist fighting occuring and who is fighting whom? I’m reminded of Jesse Williams’s powerful recent BET Awards speech which, discussing the struggle of African Americans, can be said to have some universalist principles, namely that “the burden of the brutalised is not to comfort the bystander”. He then formulated a sentence that should be a basic principle whenever human suffering is concerned: “If you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression.”

I’m not arguing for or against a no-fly zone here. There are legitimate concerns to be had with the idea of a no-fly zone in Syria, concerns which I know for a fact have given Syrian comrades sleepless nights. It does, however, raise the question of who is opposing it, and why? The least that can be said of most of those who support the idea is that it is a reflection of popular - read: desperate - feelings on the ground and that it is proposed in the hope of preventing that which we know is behind most of Syrian suffering: the regime’s aerial bombardment of civilian areas, now worsened by the Russian government.

Beyond Syria, the inability of many to see past outdated narratives has galvanised the rise of right-wing reactionary nativism in the West. Discussions on Syria ignored Syrians for so long that it became easy to dehumanise and demonise them when large numbers reached Fortress Europe’s shores.

Discussions on Syria ignored Syrians for so long that it became easy to dehumanise and demonise them when large numbers reached Fortress Europe’s shores

With Syrians involved, we understand the context of the crisis. It is devastating but still palpable. It can be rationalised without robbing people already living in difficult conditions of their agency. To our eternal shame however, it wasn’t just the far right that smeared those that took up arms against Assad. In fact, as Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War co-author Robin Yassin-Kassab recently wrote, “it was the left which spread the idea that Syrian revolutionaries were ‘all al-Qaida’ before the right applied the slur to Syrian refugees.”

For this is what the death of internationalism looks like. “When progress is not universal, reactionarism progresses,” wrote the radical Syrian intellectual Yassin Al-Haj Saleh. Al-Haj Saleh’s recent article on the anniversary of the Ghouta chemical massacre is an indictment against that left, and an urgent call for thorough self-criticism.

Syrians will not forget how progressives have failed them. For just as progressives have failed Palestinians for much of Palestine’s post-1948 history and have only recently started accepting the radical notion that Palestinians are human beings struggling against settler-colonial savagery - so much so that we call them PEPs: Progressives Except for Palestine - they have repeated the same mistake with Syria.

We’re left to wonder when we’ll see the end of PES: Progressives Except for Syria.

[seemslikeadream]

The left’s hollow anti-imperialism over Syria.....does that mean they are pro immigrants?

September 5, 2016
EU president: Europe can't take more refugees
By Rick Moran
At a news conference held during the G-20 summit, European Council president Donald Tusk warned that the "practical capability" of Europe to accept more refugees is at its limit.
AFP:

Europe is "close to limits" on its ability to accept new waves of refugees, EU President Donald Tusk said Sunday, urging the broader international community to shoulder its share of the burden.

"The practical capability of Europe to host new waves of refugees, not to mention irregular economic migrants, is close to limits," he told a press conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

A steady stream of refugees has flowed into Europe over the last year, largely fleeing the civil war in Syria.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/201 ... ugees.html

Migrant Crisis: Germany Plans to Flood Greece With Unwanted Refugees

Germany’s Interior Minister argues that the country has done more than its fair share in attending to the migrant crisis caused by the gruesome conflict in Syria and that Greece should be forced to take on more refugees.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/news/20160904/10 ... reece.html

[American Dream]

[slimmouse]

In my own humble opinion, there is way too much focus on the effect without addressing the cause.

Like Hitler, we look at his very sick effect and not the cause.

The cause being the Psycopaths who currently run the show

Just like they have been doing for a long time now.

Apologies to anyone who doesnt understand this.

[DrEvil]

In my own humble opinion, there is way too much focus on the effect without addressing the cause.

Like Hitler, we look at his very sick effect and not the cause.

The cause being the Psycopaths who currently run the show

Just like they have been doing for a long time now.

Apologies to anyone who doesnt understand this.

I think we get it. It's not like every other post of yours is a repetition of the same thing or anything.

[slimmouse]

In my own humble opinion, there is way too much focus on the effect without addressing the cause.

Like Hitler, we look at his very sick effect and not the cause.

The cause being the Psycopaths who currently run the show

Just like they have been doing for a long time now.

Apologies to anyone who doesnt understand this.

I think we get it. It's not like every other post of yours is a repetition of the same thing or anything.

Ok doc, fair enuff, But i hope you understand that its important that we get some very important truth as we work our way through this physical realm

You see the assylum is clearly being run by lunatics, whether you like that or not.

[American Dream]

‘When They Took Me Inside’ Syria's Saydnaya Prison, ‘I Could Smell the Torture’


Screenshot from ‘Inside Saydnaya’, Amnesty International's video report of its findings. Source: YouTube Video.

When we first arrived, they put us all in the shower [area of the cell], on top of each other. We were naked of course. My penis was touching [a fellow detainee’s] back. I got cramp and had to move my leg, and my friend took the space that I made. Then I accidentally put my foot down on his penis. He screamed. For this, they were beating us with a steel bar on the front of the palms. I had had an operation on my hand earlier, and we told them [but] they just concentrated on that spot, and beat it harder. The surgery meant that I had 10 times the pain.

When they took me inside the prison, I could smell the torture. It’s a particular smell of humidity, blood and sweat; it’s the torture smell. They took me three floors underground. There were seven of us after the beatings. We were taken into our cell. It was about 2.5 meters by 3 meters. There was a big wall at the end of the room with a hole. There is no shower, just a toilet. It’s dirty and wet; water is leaking from the roof of the cell. It’s totally dark; there is no light; you can’t even see the other people in the same room with you.

They brought the food, but it was very little. They spent two hours beating us and saying ‘Bashar is your God’. They did the same for the detainees in the other solitary cells – we could hear them coming to us, cell by cell, and going down the row after us. Of course the other solitary [underground] cells were next to each other in a row, but the sound of beating was so loud that it could reach the sky.

Detainees held by the Government were beaten to death, or died as a result of injuries sustained due to torture. Others perished as a consequence of inhuman living conditions. The Government has committed the crimes against humanity of extermination, murder, rape or other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance and other inhuman acts. Based on the same conduct, war crimes have also been committed.

More at: https://globalvoices.org/2016/08/19/whe ... e-torture/

[American Dream]

Nearly 75,000 Syrians 'forcibly disappeared'

The Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented 74,607 cases of forced disappearance across Syria since the outbreak of the revolution in March, 2011. In a new report entitled “Prolonged Pain” the organization finds that "government forces" are responsible for at least 71,533 cases of forced disappearance. That figure includes 7,319 members of anti-government forces and 64,214 civilians, among whom were at least 4,109 children and 2,377 women. The remainder of the cases are attributed to ISIS and other militant groups. (MEM, Aug. 31)

[Grizzly]

Amnesty International has teamed up with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, to recreate the horrors of Saydnaya, a Syrian torture prison near Damascus, through an interactive 3D model.

This video demonstrates the model of the prison, and features interviews and testimonies from researchers at Forensic Architecture, from Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International, and with former prisoners at Saydnaya.

Uh huh.. who paid for this? I don't trust AI anymore than I trust the good ol' USA...

[American Dream]

Do you deny that torture, abduction, mass bombing and chemical warfare attacks have been and are systematically directed by the Assad regime indiscriminately and/or deliberately against civilians, practitioners of non-violent resistance, children, and other such human beings?