Nordic wrote:Lawrence Wilkerson interview.
Thanks for bringing that here, Nordic—excellent.
I've always liked Wilkerson, this is why.
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by Elvis » Sun Apr 09, 2017 5:08 am
Nordic wrote:Lawrence Wilkerson interview.
by Heaven Swan » Sun Apr 09, 2017 6:18 am
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 09, 2017 6:30 am
Heaven Swan » Sun Apr 09, 2017 5:18 am wrote:Donald Trump Is An International Law Breaker
By Colonel W. Patrick Lang
April 08, 2017
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46827.htm
Donald Trump's decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie. In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:
The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
Nordic » Sun Apr 09, 2017 12:45 am wrote:Lawrence Wilkerson interview.
A must-watch. Especially for the VERY LAST THING he says in the interview.
Wait for it. You'll see.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?opt ... ival=18841
seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:46 pm wrote:BY Removal THEY MEAN KIDNAPPING
Why did James Woolsey wait so long to tell anyone about this?Ex-CIA Director: Mike Flynn and Turkish Officials Discussed Removal of Erdogan Foe From U.S.
James Woolsey says he attended a September meeting where other participants, including then-Trump adviser Mike Flynn, talked of moving Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey without going through U.S. extradition process
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, center, consulted last September with Turkish government ministers about the case of a controversial Muslim cleric.
By JAMES V. GRIMALDI, DION NISSENBAUM and MARGARET COKER
Updated March 24, 2017 2:35 p.m. ET
83 COMMENTS
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign, met with top Turkish government ministers and discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended, and others who were briefed on the meeting.
The discussion late last summer involved ideas about how to get Fethullah Gulen, a cleric whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed military coup, to Turkey without going through the U.S. extradition legal process, according to Mr. Woolsey and those who were briefed.
Mr. Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal he arrived at the meeting in New York on Sept. 19 in the middle of the discussion and found the topic startling and the actions being discussed possibly illegal.
The Turkish ministers were interested in open-ended thinking on the subject, and the ideas were raised hypothetically, said the people who were briefed. The ministers in attendance included the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country’s foreign minister, foreign-lobbying disclosure documents show.
Mr. Woolsey said the idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” The discussion, he said, didn’t include actual tactics for removing Mr. Gulen from his U.S. home. If specific plans had been discussed, Mr. Woolsey said, he would have spoken up and questioned their legality.
It isn’t known who raised the idea or what Mr. Flynn concluded about it.
Price Floyd, a spokesman for Mr. Flynn, who was advising the Trump campaign on national security at the time of the meeting, disputed the account, saying “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”
Mr. Flynn served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days and resigned after he misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contact with a Russian diplomat. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether Trump campaign officials collaborated with the Russian government to influence the presidential election.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey. PHOTO: DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES
On March 2, weeks after Mr. Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration, the Flynn Intel Group, his consulting firm, filed with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Mr. Trump was unaware Mr. Flynn had been consulting on behalf of the Turkish government when he named him national security adviser, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said this month.
In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn't paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.
U.S.-Turkish relations deteriorated in the final year of the Obama administration over disagreements about extraditing Mr. Gulen and U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish forces battling Islamic State. The Turkish government has been demanding Mr. Gulen’s extradition to face charges that he was the architect of an unsuccessful military coup last summer to overthrow Mr. Erdogan.
Mr. Gulen, who since 1999 has lived in the Pocono Mountains north of Philadelphia and has a green card giving him permission to live in the U.S., denies involvement. Mr. Erdogan has been trying for years to undermine Mr. Gulen, a one-time ally whom Turkey has now branded as a terrorist leader.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday he had given the White House and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions new evidence linking Mr. Gulen to the coup.
Mr. Woolsey said he attended the Sept. 19 meeting at the urging of the Flynn Intel Group’s chairman and president, Bijan Kian. Mr. Woolsey said he had agreed to be on the group’s advisory board and was offered a consulting fee for his work, but turned it down because of what he heard at the meeting. He held no stake in the firm.
“It seemed to be naive,” Mr. Woolsey said about the discussion. “I didn’t put a lot of credibility in it. This is a country of legal process and a Constitution, and you don’t send out folks to haul somebody overseas.”
The meeting, held at the Essex House hotel in Manhattan, included Mr. Cavusoglu and Berat Albayrak, Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law and the country’s energy minister, according to the disclosure documents. Also present were Messrs. Alptekin and Mr. Kian.
Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year.
Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year. PHOTO: CHARLES MOSTOLLER/REUTERS
Mr. Woolsey said he didn’t say anything during the discussion, but later cautioned some attendees that trying to remove Mr. Gulen was a bad idea that might violate U.S. law. Mr. Woolsey said he also informed the U.S. government by notifying Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend.
The mutual friend confirmed to the Journal he told Mr. Biden about the meeting. Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, other than to say Mr. Biden felt the Gulen matter should be handled through the courts.
Mr. Flynn’s spokesman, Mr. Floyd, said that at the meeting “Gen. Flynn did discuss the Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo that included gathering information that could lead to a legal case against Mr. Gulen.”
Messrs. Kian and Alptekin didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment, nor did a spokesman for Mr. Albayrak. Mr. Cavusoglu’s spokesman referred the Journal to the Turkish Embassy in Washington.
In a written statement, the Turkish Embassy acknowledged that Turkish officials met with Mr. Flynn but declined to discuss the conversation. Referencing the Flynn Intel Group’s client, Inovo, the embassy said: “We are not in a position to comment on any engagement between a U.S. consultancy firm and a private company owned by a Turkish businessman.”
The disclosure Mr. Flynn’s firm filed with the U.S. government this month said the meeting was “for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time.”
Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.
Mr. Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, offered in September to advise the Trump campaign and opposed Hillary Clinton for president. He briefly served as a senior adviser to the transition team.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-cia-dir ... 1490380426
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 09, 2017 6:55 am
Donald J. TrumpVerified account
@realDonaldTrump
We should have gotten more of the oil in Syria, and we should have gotten more of the oil in Iraq. Dumb leaders.
Adam Khan @Khanoisseur Mar 15
3. Mattis, Kushner and family friend Netanyahu, raring to go to war with Iran, now potentially using US troops in Syria as bait to start one
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 09, 2017 7:11 am
Pro-Trump PAC Raising Money Off Syria Strikes
If you thought fundraising over a military strike was beyond the pale, you would be right. But that didn’t stop a pro-Trump PAC from doing just that on Friday.
Gideon Resnick
04.07.17 2:40 PM ET
President Trump ordered a military strike on Syria Thursday night in response to a recent chemical attack. By Friday afternoon, a supportive PAC was fundraising off of the strike.
“Last night, President Trump ordered military action against Syria in response to their chemical weapons attack,” an email from the Great America PAC, first flagged by Dave Levinthal at the Center for Public Integrity, read.
“59 United States tomahawk missiles destroyed the airfield used to store Syria’s toxic weapons and aircraft involved in the Sarin gas attack.
What are your thoughts?”
The message asks respondents to vote on whether they approve of the strike and subsequently includes a request for money. The email was signed by Ed Rollins, currently the national co-chair of the PAC who joined the group in May of 2016.
A representative for the PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
When the PAC was established in early 2016, it was among a horde of organizations that formed often making it difficult for donors to ascertain where they should contribute their money.
At the time of its inception, the PAC, led by Eric Beach, who worked for Rand Paul’s presidential campaign, was referred to by longtime Trump ally Roger Stone as a scam. He took particular issue with the presence of Jesse Benton on the staff, who was convicted last year, of falsifying campaign records in a 2012 attempt to buy an endorsement for Ron Paul.
According to OpenSecrets.org, Great America PAC raised over $28 million during the 2016 cycle and spent over $26 million.
Its biggest contributor was Bob Mcnair, the owner of the Houston Texans, who contributed $2,000,000 to the PAC according to OpenSecrets.org.
One of the PAC’s first ads used the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando to help bolster Trump’s bonafides as being tough on terror.
Trump’s campaign, at one stage, formally disavowed the PAC saying in a form to the Federal Election Commission: “This Committee is concerned about the likelihood of confusion among the public, which may be led to believe such activities are authorized by Mr. Trump or this Committee or that contributions to such unauthorized committees are being made to Mr. Trump’s campaign, when they are not.”
The group went on to accidentally expose private donor information of some 336 people, according to a review from the Center for Public Integrity.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... DAfternoon
by elfismiles » Sun Apr 09, 2017 10:46 am
elfismiles » 31 Mar 2017 16:58 wrote:...UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it
Originally published March 29, 2017 at 6:30 am Updated March 30, 2017 at 11:04 am
Kate Starbird, a University of Washington assistant professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering, with a domain network graph she developed looking at tweets relating to 2016 shootings. (Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times)
...
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new ... losing-it/
Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter
Kate Starbird, University of Washington, HCDE
http://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/A ... aReady.pdf
by SonicG » Sun Apr 09, 2017 1:37 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... sad-russia
Trump officials broadcast president's plan for Syria: wait for global response
In his first interview since replacing retired general Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser who resigned over misleading the White House about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, McMaster said the US was still willing to make a rapprochement with the Kremlin, as Trump has suggested for months.
“Russia could be part of the solution,” McMaster said. “Do they want it to be a relationship of competition and potential conflict? I don’t see how that’s in Russian interests. Or do they want it to be a relationship in which we can find areas of cooperation that are in mutual interests?”
The relationship, he said, could be “whatever the Russians wants it to be”.
McMaster also said, in a shift that aligned Trump with Barack Obama before him, the president believes a political solution in Syria is all but impossible if Assad remains in power.
“It’s very difficult to understand how a political solution results from a continuation of the Assad regime,” he said. “We’re not saying that we’re the ones to effect that change.”
The aim of the Tomahawk missile strike on a Syrian airbase on Thursday, McMaster said, was to deter another use of chemical weapons after Assad’s forces killed dozens of civilians, including children, with a sarin attack on Tuesday.
.....
In the first major diplomatic mission to Russia – and his first visit to the country as a public servant and not the head of oil giant ExxonMobil – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will travel to Moscow this week, to look for middle ground.
by Elvis » Sun Apr 09, 2017 2:38 pm
by MacCruiskeen » Sun Apr 09, 2017 4:43 pm
by Elvis » Sun Apr 09, 2017 8:38 pm
Atrocity propaganda
Atrocity propaganda is a term referring to the spreading of deliberate fabrications or exaggerations about the crimes committed by an enemy, constituting a form of psychological warfare.
The inherently violent nature of war means that exaggeration and invention of atrocities often becomes the main staple of propaganda. Patriotism is often not enough to make people hate, and propaganda is also necessary.[1] "So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations", wrote Harold Lasswell, "that every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about who the public is to hate."[2] Human testimony is deemed unreliable even in ordinary circumstances, but in wartime, it can be further muddled by bias, sentiment, and misguided patriotism, becoming of no value whatsoever in establishing the truth.[3]
According to Paul Linebarger, atrocity propaganda leads to real atrocities, as it incites the enemy into committing more atrocities, and, by heating up passions, it increases the chances of one's own side committing atrocities, in revenge for the ones reported in propaganda.[4] Atrocity propaganda might also lead the public to mistrust reports of actual atrocities. In January 1944, Arthur Koestler wrote of his frustration at trying to communicate what he had witnessed in Nazi-occupied Europe: the legacy of anti-German stories during World War I, many of which were debunked in the postwar years, meant that these reports were received with considerable amounts of skepticism.[5]
Like propaganda, atrocity rumors detailing exaggerated or invented crimes perpetrated by enemies are also circulated to vilify the opposing side.[6]
Techniques
By establishing a baseline lie and painting the enemy as a monster, atrocity propaganda serves as an intelligence function, since it wastes the time and resources of the enemy's counterintelligence services to defend itself. Atrocity propaganda can either be white, gray, or black. Atrocity propaganda is often white, as it makes no attempt to hide its source and is overt in nature. The propagandists' goal is to influence perceptions, attitudes, opinions, and policies; often targeting officials at all levels of government. Atrocity propaganda is violent, gloomy, and portrays doom to help rile up and get the public excited. It dehumanizes the enemy, making them easier to kill. Wars have become more serious, and less gentlemanly; the enemy must now be taken into account not merely as a man, but as a fanatic.[7] So, "falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country uses it quite deliberately to deceive its own people, attract neutrals, and to mislead the enemy."[8] Harold Lasswell saw it as a handy rule for arousing hate, and that "if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man."[2]
The extent and devastation of World War I required nations to keep morale high. Propaganda was used here to mobilize hatred against the enemy, convince the population of the justness of one's own cause, enlist the active support and cooperation of neutral countries, and strengthen the support of one's allies.[9] The goal was to make the enemy appear savage, barbaric, and inhumane.
Accounts of Irish atrocities during the Rebellion of 1641 are now dismissed as propaganda, but led to real massacres.[10]
Atrocity propaganda in history
Before the 20th century
In a sermon at Clermont during the Crusades, Urban II justified the war against Islam by claiming that the enemy "had ravaged the churches of God in the Eastern provinces, circumcised Christian men, violated women, and carried out the most unspeakable torture before killing them."[11] Urban II's sermon succeeded in mobilizing popular enthusiasm in support of the People's Crusade.
Lurid tales purporting to unveil Jewish atrocities against Christians were widespread in the Middle Ages.[12] The charge against Jews of kidnapping and murdering Christian children to drink their blood during passover became known as blood libel.[13]
In the 17th century, the English press fabricated graphic descriptions of atrocities allegedly committed by Irish Catholics against English Protestants, including the torture of civilians and the raping of women. The English public reacted to these stories with calls for stern reprisals.[14] During the Irish rebellion of 1641, lurid reports of atrocities, including of pregnant women who had been ripped open and had their babies pulled out, provided Oliver Cromwell with justification for his subsequent slaughter of defeated Irish rebels.[10]
In 1782, Benjamin Franklin wrote and published an article purporting to reveal a letter between a British agent and the governor of Canada, listing atrocities supposedly perpetrated by Native American allies of Britain against colonists, including detailed accounts of the scalping of women and children. The account was a fabrication, published in the expectation that it would be reprinted by British newspapers and therefore sway British public opinion in favor of peace with the United States.[15]
After the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, stories began to circulate in the British and colonial press of atrocities, especially rapes of European women, in places like Cawnpore; a subsequent official inquiry found no evidence for any of the claims.[16]
In the lead up to the Spanish–American War, Pulitzer and Hearst published stories of Spanish atrocities against Cubans. While occasionally true, the majority of these stories were fabrications meant to boost sales.[17]
20th century
World War I
See also: British propaganda during World War I and The Rape of Belgium
Atrocity propaganda was widespread during World War I, when it was used by all belligerents, playing a major role in creating the wave of patriotism that characterised the early stages of the war.[20] British propaganda is regarded as having made the most extensive use of fictitious atrocities to promote the war effort.[20]
One such story was that German soldiers were deliberately mutilating Belgian babies by cutting off their hands, in some versions even eating them. Eyewitness accounts told of having seen a similarly mutilated baby. As Arthur Ponsonby later pointed out, in reality a baby would be very unlikely to survive similar wounds without immediate medical attention.[21]
Another atrocity story involved a Canadian soldier, who had supposedly been crucified with bayonets by the Germans (see The Crucified Soldier). Many Canadians claimed to have witnessed the event, yet they all provided different version of how it had happened. The Canadian high command investigated the matter, concluding that it was untrue.[22]
Other reports circulated of Belgian women, often nuns, who had their breasts cut off by the Germans.[23] A story about German corpse factories, where bodies of German soldiers were supposedly turned into glycerine for weapons, or food for hogs and poultry, was published in a Times article on April 17, 1917.[24] In the postwar years, investigations in Britain and France revealed that these stories were false.[20]
In 1915, the British government asked Viscount Bryce, one of the best-known contemporary historians, to head the Committee on Alleged German Outrages which was to investigate the allegations of atrocities. The report purported to prove many of the claims, and was widely published in the United States, where it contributed to convince the American public to enter the war. Few at the time criticised the accuracy of the report. After the war, historians who sought to examine the documentation for the report were told that the files had mysteriously disappeared. Surviving correspondence between the members of the committee revealed they actually had severe doubts about the credibility of the tales they investigated.[25]
Stories of German soldiers impaling children on their bayonets were based on extremely flimsy evidence.
Message under the stamp
A notable example of an atrocity rumor concerns a family who receives a letter from their son, who is imprisoned a German POW camp; the letter says that he is being treated well and fed sufficiently, and that the stamp on the letter might be of interest to "Alfie", the youngest son. Because the family has no son by that name, they become suspicious, and underneath the stamp they find a message saying "they've torn out my tongue!"[6] Prisoners' letters, however, bore no stamps.[26]
World War II
During World War II, atrocity propaganda was not used on the same scale as in World War I, as by then it had long been discredited by its use during the previous conflict.[27] There were exceptions in some propaganda films, such as Hitler's Children, Women in Bondage, and Enemy of Women, which portrayed the Germans (as opposed to just Nazis) as enemies of civilization, abusing women and the innocent.[28] Hitler's Children is now spoken of as "lurid", while Women in Bondage is described as a low-budget exploitation film; the latter carries a disclaimer that "everything in the film is true", but facts are often distorted or sensationalized.[29]
Soviet-Afghan War
According to a 1985 UN report backed by Western countries, the KGB had deliberately designed mines to look like toys, and deployed them against Afghan children during the Soviet war in Afghanistan.[30]
Newspapers such as the New York Times ran stories denouncing the "ghastly, deliberate crippling of children" and noting that while the stories had been met with skepticism by the public, they had been proven by the "incontrovertible testimony" of a UN official testifying the existence of booby-trap toys in the shape of harmonicas, radios, or birds.[31]
The story likely originated from the PFM-1 mine, which was made from brightly colored plastic and had been directly copied from the American BLU-43 Dragontooth design. The Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan reported that the allegations "gained a life for obvious journalist reasons", but otherwise had no basis in reality.[30]
Yugoslav Wars
In November 1991, a Serbian photographer claimed to have seen the corpses of 41 children, which had allegedly been killed by Croatian soldiers. The story was published by media outlets worldwide, but the photographer later admitted to fabricating his account. The story of this atrocity was blamed for inciting a desire for vengeance in Serbian fighters, who summarily executed Croatian separatists who were captured near the alleged crime scene the day after the forged report was published.[32]
Gulf war
Main article: Nayirah (testimony)
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. On October 10, 1990, a young Kuwaiti girl known only as "Nayirah" appeared in front of a congressional committee and testified that she witnessed the mass murdering of infants, when Iraqi soldiers had snatched them out of hospital incubators and threw them on the floor to die. Her testimony became a lead item in newspapers, radio and TV all over the US. The story was eventually exposed as a fabrication in December 1992, in a CBC-TV program called To Sell a War. Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States, and actually hadn't seen the "atrocities" she described take place; the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which had been hired by the Kuwaiti government to encourage American intervention in the war, had heavily promoted her testimony.[33]
21st century
Iraq War
In the runup to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, press stories appeared in the United Kingdom and United States of a plastic shredder or wood chipper[34][35] into which Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action, in stories with titles such as "See men shredded, then say you don't back war".[36] A year later, it was determined there was no evidence to support the existence of such a machine.[37]
In 2004, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey claimed that he and other Marines intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians, including a 4-year-old girl. His allegations were published by news organizations worldwide, but none of the five journalists who covered his battalion said they saw reckless or indiscriminate shooting of civilians. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed his claim as "either demonstrably false or exaggerated".[38]
In July 2003 an Iraqi woman, Jumana Hanna, testified that she had been subjected to inhumane treatment by Baathist policemen during two years of imprisonment, including being subjected to electric shocks and raped repeatedly. The story appeared on the front page of The Washington Post, and was presented to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. In January 2005, articles in Esquire and The Washington Post concluded that none of her allegations could be verified, and that her accounts contained grave inconsistencies. Her husband, who she claimed had been executed in the same prison where she was tortured, was in fact still alive.[39]
Other cases
During the Battle of Jenin, Palestinian officials claimed there was a massacre of civilians in the refugee camp, which was proven false by subsequent international investigations.[40]
During the 2010 South Kyrgyzstan ethnic clashes, a rumor spread among ethnic Kyrgyz that Uzbek men had broken into a local women's dormitory and raped several Kyrgyz women. Local police never provided any confirmation that such an assault occurred.[41]
During the Arab Spring, Libyan media was reporting atrocities by Muammar Gaddafi loyalists, who were ordered to perform mass "Viagra-fueled rapes" (see 2011 Libyan rape allegations).[42] A later investigation by Amnesty International has failed to find evidence for these allegations, and in many cases has discredited them, as the rebels were found to have deliberately lied about the claims.[43]
In July 2014, the Russian public broadcaster Channel 1 aired a report claiming that Ukrainian soldiers in Sloviansk had crucified a three-year-old boy to a board, and later dragged his mother with a tank, causing her death.[44] The account of the only witness interviewed for the report was not corroborated by anyone else,[45] and other media have been unable to confirm the story,[46] despite claims in the testimony that many of the city's inhabitants had been forced to watch the killings.[45] A reporter for Novaya Gazeta similarly failed to find any other witnesses in the city.[47]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocity_propaganda
by seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 09, 2017 9:15 pm
DISINFORMATION ON SYRIA: COLLECTION OF WHOWHATWHY EXPOSÉS
Commander in Chief Donald Trump. Photo credit: The White House
Was Bashar al-Assad behind the recent poisonous gas attacks on his own people in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the rebel stronghold of Idlib province?
Assad claims that on April 4, the Syrian army bombed a rebel-controlled warehouse that contained chemical weapons. The rebels deny it. And the Syrian regime denies targeting the rebels — but makes a very unconvincing case.
The area was bombed again on April 8, but it is not yet clear where the planes involved in this strike came from. The runway at the Shayrat airbase hit by US missiles on April 7 was not destroyed, and Syrians have resumed using it — but they claim these planes targeted areas of Idlib occupied by ISIS.
If Assad is behind these attacks, what does he hope to accomplish? According to The New York Times, unnamed analysts say that “the Syrian government has adopted a policy of seeking total victory by making life as miserable as possible for anyone living in areas outside its control.”
This seems to make sense. Yet, in every war, on every side, there are insidious disInformation operations at work. WhoWhatWhy has been in the forefront of exposing these operations. Below are links to our stories (2012-2016) with summaries that will show you why public opinion is very much a product of expert manipulation.
***
Who Really Used Chemical Weapons in Syria?
Adapted from Reese Erlich’s new book, “Inside Syria: the Backstory of Their Civil War and What the World Can Expect”. The author examines the August 2013 sarin attack on Al Ghouta (Damascus suburb) from several points of view — the victims, the accused, a UN chemical-weapons team, missile experts, witnesses from Doctors Without Borders, US and British Intelligence, scientists with relevant expertise, etc. (Think of the movie “Rashomon.”) The author concludes: “Both sides quite possibly used Sarin. Both sides lied and manipulated evidence. At a minimum, the Obama administration exaggerated its case to justify a military attack on Syria. At worst, the White House fabricated intelligence. Bottom line: no one has yet presented convincing evidence of who perpetrated the horrific Al Ghouta attack.”
Doubts About Who Is Using Chemical Weapons in Syria
The Obama administration and allies claim, with near certainty, that Bashar al-Assad has used lethal gas on his population. But no credible evidence has emerged to confirm this. Conversely, as the West pushes for approval to bomb the Assad regime, some evidence suggests it may instead be the rebels who are using chemical weapons against other rebels — an extension of ongoing ethnic/religious battles being fought with what one UN inspector characterized as “almost medieval savagery.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photo credit: President of Russia (CC BY 4.0)
Syria: We Can Learn a Lot From the “Small Stuff”
Every now and then, Syria jumps into the headlines, and our consciousness. Even then, it’s easy to forget the big picture: that the United States government and its allies are waging, through surrogates, a war designed to overthrow an existing government… Our taxes and our government fuel the revolt in Syria…
Mind the Credibility Gap: Syria and the History of US War Disinformation
Americans — and others — are in heated discussion these days over whether an attack on Syria might be justified by alleged use of chemical weapons. But no such discussion is complete without consideration of a long history of disinformation disseminated in order to drum up support for overseas wars.
War Syrian Style? Has Assad Ordered Mass Rapes?
A growing refrain out of Syria is that widespread rape is taking place — and sanctioned by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. But when WhoWhatWhy examined the allegations, it found that well-intentioned women’s groups trying to document and prevent such abuses may be falling victim to a deliberate disinformation campaign intent on rallying public support for toppling Assad.
Peaceful Syrian Opposition Ignored by Peace Laureate Obama — An Exclusive WhoWhatWhy Interview
As Syrian expatriate Dr. Rim Turkmani was watching President Barack Obama give his brief nationally televised address to the American people and the people of the world last night, she says she had two contradictory feelings. “I felt good that it was not a war speech,” says this British-based member of the political office of an organization called The Syrian State Current, a movement that is seeking nonviolent democratic change in Syria. “But what upset me was his repeated referring to what is happening in Syria as a ‘civil war.’ There is an element of civil war in the violence in Syria, but more importantly it is a proxy war between the US and Russia, and it has to be acknowledged that the US and Russia are the key players.”
Turkey Syria Map
Photo credit: WhoWhatWhy
Photo credit: WhoWhatWhy
No Learning Curve: Syria Will Immediately Test Trump
President-elect Donald Trump’s widely reported “bromance” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the foreign-policy skills of his tentative, generals-rich cabinet, are set to be tested the moment the new administration assumes power.
US Demands Syria Destroy Chemical Weapons Lickety-Split, But Says it Needs Decades to Safely Eliminate its Own Chems
The US is demanding, in negotiations at the UN, that all Syrian chemical weapons, stocks and production facilities be eliminated by June 30 of next year. This has an element of hypocrisy, because the US itself has been incredibly slow about eliminating its own stocks of chemical weapons.
Meanwhile, Back in the Middle East
One thing you didn’t hear during the presidential debates [2012] was any questions about why the United States and its allies are involved in an undeclared war against the government of Syria. That’s right: not efforts to “end the violence there,” as the public is told, but rather stoking the violence, as a means of ejecting the long-running Assad regime. As we’ve noted here at WhoWhatWhy again and again, the effort to remove first Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and now Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as well as the urgency to isolate and pressure the Iranian regime, have little if anything to do with the publicly-stated reasons.
Book Excerpt From Charles Glass’s “Syria Burning”
News coming out of the Middle East is nearly always bad, so bad, it’s like a road accident. You just want to look away, and keep on going. There’s nothing you can do. How did it all come to this? Keep reading. Below is an excerpt from Syria Burning by Charles Glass, a book that is so beautifully written that reading it is more like seeing. And you will not want to look away.
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/04/09/disinf ... y-exposes/
BOOK EXCERPT: “SYRIA BURNING”
Above, some of the millions of people who have fled Syria. Photo credit: The UN Refugee Agency / G. Gubaeva
News coming out of the Middle East is nearly always bad, so bad, it’s like a road accident. You just want to look away, and keep on going. There’s nothing you can do.
How did it all come to this? Keep reading. Below is an excerpt from Syria Burning by Charles Glass, a book that is so beautifully written that reading it is more like seeing. And you will not want to look away.
You will see—better than what any photograph could show—little fragments of history explode before your eyes, as you fly through time and space, now and then swooping down for a close-up of some detail that brings the larger truth into focus.
This book is about much more than Syria or the Middle East. It may be what the poet William Blake meant when he wrote “To see a world in a grain of sand.”
Or a drop of oil.
***
WhatWhatWhy introduction by Milicent Cranor
The author in Talil, Iran, April 2003. Photo credit: Charles Glass
The author in Talil, Syria, April 2003. Photo courtesy of Charles Glass.
From the book’s “About the Author” section: Charles Glass is an author, journalist and broadcaster, who specializes in the Middle East. He made headlines when taken hostage for 62 days in Lebanon by Shi’a militants in 1987, while writing a book during his time as ABC’s News chief Middle East correspondent. He writes regularly for the New York Review of Books, Harper’s, the London Review of Books and The Spectator. He is the author of Tribes with Flags, Money for Old Rope, The Tribes Triumphant, The Northern Front, Americans in Paris, and Deserters: A Hidden History of World War II.
You can purchase the book here.
Chapter I, Arab Spring, Syrian Winter.
A dog in Lebanon, an old joke goes, was so hungry, mangy and tired of civil war that he escaped to Syria. To the surprise of the other dogs, he returned a few months later. Seeing him better groomed and fatter than before, they asked whether the Syrians had been good to him. “Very good.” “Did they feed and wash you?” “Yes.” “Then why did you come back?” “I want to bark.”
It is impossible not to sympathize with Syrians’ desire to be treated like adults. The Syrian regime is not alone, of course, among Middle East dictatorships in regarding its people as subjects rather than citizens. Under the portrait of the great dictator, petty tyrants grant some supplicants permits, demand bribes from others and abuse the rest. Syrians can identify with what Italians under Mussolini used to say: “The problem is not the big dictator. It is all the little dictators.”
Little dictators, though, thrive under the big dictator. But all dictators are at risk from changed international circumstances, a spark (like a self-immolation in Tunisia) or the sudden realization that the regime is vulnerable. People in Syria have reasons to demand change, as they have in the past. But history has not been kind to Syria’s desire for reform.
During the First World War, Arab nationalists in Damascus wanted to rid themselves of Ottoman rule. Ottoman officials could be corrupt and arbitrary, but they kept the peace, allowed the Syrians representation in the Istanbul parliament and put no restrictions on travel within the empire.
The nationalists collaborated with Britain and France. They ended up with British and French colonialism, contrived borders, the expulsion of three-quarters of Palestine’s population, insurrections and wars. At independence in 1946, Syria had a parliamentary system, even if landlords, urban merchants, beys and pashas dominated it. Into the mix came the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco), which had announced plans in 1945 to construct the Tapline oil conduit from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean. Three countries on the route—Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Lebanon—granted immediate permission.
Syria’s parliament, seeking better terms, delayed. The project stalled further when the Arab governments launched a war for which their colonially created armies (with the exception of Transjordan’s) were unprepared. When they lost, demonstrations condemned the corruption that had deprived soldiers of adequate resources. In Damascus, the protesters forced the government to resign. The United States embassy in Damascus seized the opportunity to win Syrian approval for Tapline.
The revolution in Syria raging since 2011 is not the country’s first major attempted coup. Photo credit: The Online Museum of Syrian History / Wikimedia
The revolution in Syria raging since 2011 is not the country’s first major attempted coup. Photo credit: The Online Museum of Syrian History / Wikimedia
The Central Intelligence Agency’s man, Stephen Meade, approached the army chief of staff, Colonel Husni Za’im, to arrange a coup. The Kurdish former Ottoman soldier took embassy money to foment an insurrection that justified his seizure of power in 1949. The embassy reported to Washington that “over 400 Commies [in] all parts of Syria have been arrested.” Syria signed an agreement with Aramco in May and an armistice with Israel in July.
Colonel Za’im antagonized sectors of society by raising taxes and attempting to give women the vote. Although he did not kill anyone, another colonel overthrew and executed him a month later. That colonel was himself eliminated by a third colonel. Thus began Syria’s instability, with military coups as regular as changes of season.
In the meantime, Colonel Za’im’s suppression of the Communist Party produced, in the last free vote held in Syria, the election of the Arab world’s first Communist member of parliament. The United States made two more major attempts in the 1950s to decide Syria’s future—with Operation Straggle and Operation Wappen. Both failed.
The era of chronic coups ended with the last one, Hafez al-Assad’s, in November 1970. Syria enjoyed continuity, if not freedom, until the latest uprising was launched in 2011. Revolutions elsewhere in the Middle East have also gone wrong, among them the Lebanese, Palestinian and Iranian.
In 1975 young Lebanese, every bit as idealistic as their Syrian counterparts in 2011, began a revolution against corruption and pseudo-democracy. It produced a 15-year war, foreign occupation and devastation. The Palestinian revolution sold out, making the lives of the people it claimed to represent more wretched in the Israeli-occupied territories and in exile (most obviously, in Lebanon and Kuwait).
The Iranian revolution, begun as a coalition of hope in 1978, led to a regime more brutal and corrupt than the one it replaced. Revolutions produce surprising outcomes, and those who start them must be prepared for the unintended consequences of success as much as for failure.
In 1987, I traveled by land through what geographers called Greater Syria to write a book. I began in Alexandretta, the seaside northern province that France ceded to Turkey in 1939, on my way south through modern Syria to Lebanon. From there, my intended route went through Israel and Jordan. My destination was Aqaba, the first Turkish citadel of Greater Syria to surrender to the Arab revolt and Lawrence of Arabia in 1917. For various reasons, my journey was curtailed in Beirut in June 1987. (I returned to complete the trip and a second book in 2002.)
The ramble on foot and by bus and taxi gave me time to savor Syria in a way I couldn’t as a journalist confronting daily deadlines. People loved to talk, linger over coffee and tea, play cards, and complain. One of the more interesting critics of President Hafez al-Assad’s then 17-year-old Baathist regime was Hafiz Jemalli. Dr. Jemalli, a distinguished statesman and diplomat then in his 80s, had been a founder of the Baath Party. By 1987, he belonged to Syria’s silent opposition. “Everyone is afraid,” he told me then. “I accepted to be a minister. Why? Because, if not, they put me in prison. Nobody has the courage to tell our president there is something wrong. Our president believes he is an inspired person, with some special relationship with God. If he is inspired, nothing is wrong. If there is some crisis, it is a plot, of Israel or America, but nothing to do with him, because he is inspired.”
Many of the civilian members of the Baath Party, whose founders claimed to believe in secularism and democracy, deserted its ranks when the party took power in 1963. They rejected the militarization of the party, which kept power not through elections but by force of the arms of its members within the army. Among them was the father of Roulla Rouqbi, whom I met in 2012 at the hotel she manages in Damascus. Faissal Rouqbi had died a month earlier, which explained why the attractive 54-year-old was dressed in black. A vigorous supporter of the revolution that began in Syria the previous year, she believed it represented the same struggle her father waged against one party military rule. “I was questioned twice by the security forces,” she told me in the hotel’s coffee shop, which looks onto a busy downtown street. “They did it just to show me they know what I am doing and that they are here.”
She said that, because young dissidents gathered in her coffee shop with their computers, the police cut the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection. Nonetheless, several young people were there discussing the rebellion, much as their forefathers did in the old cafés of the souqs that the French destroyed to put down their revolts, over strong Turkish coffee or, now, newly fashionable espresso.
Ms. Rouqbi detected a generational split in the conflict: “A lot of people here, nationalists of the old generation, are with the regime because they think it’s against imperialism and the Zionist project.” There was also an economic divide: “In Damascus, only the poor class is taking part. In Homs, all classes, all sects. It’s really a revolution.”
That was before the Arab Spring became the Syrian winter; before an uprising against dictatorship sparked by demonstrations against torture in the desert border town of Dera’a in 2011 degenerated into civil war. Syria had narrowly avoided civil conflict in 1982 and 1983.
President Bashar al-Assad followed in his father’s footsteps putting down rebel movements. Photo credit: Home of Chaos / Flickr
President Bashar al-Assad followed in his father’s footsteps putting down rebel movements. Photo credit: Home of Chaos / Flickr
In 1982, President Hafez al-Assad was caught unawares by a Sunni Muslim uprising in the north. His younger brother, Rifaat, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel movement’s last stronghold in Hama, his special forces sparing no lives. Faced with an uprising of democrats in 2011, joined later by Sunni fundamentalists, Hafez’s son and successor as president, Bashar, moved to crush unarmed demonstrators with the same ferocity.
The violent suppression of peaceful dissent led some opponents to take up arms in defense of the right to protest and demand change. The armed men were a minority among dissidents who recoiled from the despoliation of their country that would necessarily accompany a violent uprising, yet they gained the ascendancy by the force of their actions and the international support they gained for their choice of the rifle over the banner. As casualties mounted, advocates of a military solution dominated both the regime and the opposition camps. The center, inevitably, could not hold.
Battles that had been limited to border zones, where rebels were easily supplied from Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, spread to the rest of the country. Damascus and Aleppo, whose populations had for the most part either supported the regime or opposed it without resort to weapons, became theaters of bloody confrontation.
The rebels, advised by intelligence officers from western countries working in Turkey and Lebanon, took outlying neighborhoods of Damascus. The regime, inevitably, used all the means at its disposal to drive them out and retake those areas. The next target of the rebels’ strategy was Aleppo, where the pattern repeated itself: the rebels established themselves in the suburbs, residents fled and the regime returned with infantry, armor and airpower to “restore” order.
Many of the country’s approximately 22 million people had a vested interest in the continuation of the Assad regime, even as others demand change. On Assad’s side were the minorities who have done well under his and his father’s rule since 1970, his own Alawite community, other quasi-Shiite groups, most of the Christians and parts of the Sunni merchant class. Against them stood fundamentalists, Syrians from every community whose families had felt the rough heel of injustice, and the young who were sickened by ways of governing that did not permit peaceful power transfers. But after living through two and a half years of violent war, many of the young idealists I met in the café of Rulla Rouqbi’s hotel when I returned in September 2013 were exhausted and discouraged, and the café itself nearly empty.
Activists now say that the Syrian people are tired of war, even if the revolution ultimately failed. Photo credits: Free Syrian Activist, Zaidoun al-Zoabi / Facebook, Araw77 / Wikimedia
Activists now say that the Syrian people are tired of war, even if the revolution ultimately failed. Photo credits: Free Syrian Activist, Zaidoun al-Zoabi / Facebook, Araw77 / Wikimedia
“Stop the war. Stop the blood. The Syrian people are tired now,” said Khaled Khalifa, author of the acclaimed Syrian novel In Praise of Hatred. He was fed up with the revolution he once longed for. “You can play revolution for some time,” he said. “But not for a long time.”
Many of the activists have been arrested. They include Professor Zaidoun al-Zoabi of the Arab European
University and film festival director Orwa Nyarabia. Zoabi and Nyarabia were not tortured, although Zoabi says he heard the screams of torture victims in nearby cells. Interrogators may have spared them such abuse because they belonged to what Graham Greene in Our Man in Havana called the “non-torturable classes.” From prominent families, they were released and went into exile. Others were not so fortunate.
One former protester told me, “I spent three days in jail, three days of hell. I’ve gone back to my job and stay out of politics.” He fears the jihadists of the so-called Islamic State (IS) more than the security forces who arrested him, and he tries to avoid them both.
“The demonstrations are finished,” said a young woman whose activism has given way to resignation. “That was the good time.” The good time ended almost as soon as it began. If the revolutionaries are exhausted, so is the government; more tired still are the country’s civilians, who have borne the brunt of the suffering.
According to the UN nearly 200,000 people had been killed as of April 2014, probably an underestimate, while hundreds of thousands more have been injured and maimed. Atrocities by both sides have become routine. On August 4, 2013, ISIS and other Islamist militias launched an offensive against Alawite villages in the hills above Latakia. A Human Rights Watch report, You Can Still See Their Blood, estimated that the rebels kidnapped more than 200 Alawite women and children before they withdrew 12 days later.
Kenneth Roth, the head of Human Rights Watch, described how government forces indiscriminately attacked civilians with rockets, cluster bombs and other heavy weapons and used guns and knives to execute 248 civilians in a Sunni enclave that May. But he and his organization also condemned Islamists in the opposition for massacres and the ethnic cleansing of civilians “on a smaller scale”:
Human Rights Watch has collected the names of 190 civilians who were killed by opposition forces in their offensive on the villages, including 57 women and at least 18 children and 14 elderly men. . . . The evidence collected strongly suggests they were killed on the first day of the operation, August 4.
The Free Syrian Army, which distinguishes itself from the Islamists by claiming to represent Syrians of all
sects, disassociated itself from the killings. Nonetheless, it has continued to cooperate with extreme Islamist jihadists in other operations against the government.
Sectarian killings and hostage-taking— largely of Alawites and Christians—by the rebels terrify the minorities, but they do not threaten the regime. Instead, they force communities to turn to the regime for protection without bringing the war closer to a conclusion.
By the end of August 2014, the UN estimated that 6.5 million people in Syria had been displaced. Photo credit: Voice of America News / Wikimedia
By the end of August 2014, the UN estimated that 6.5 million people in Syria had been displaced. Photo credit: Voice of America News / Wikimedia
The UN’s Human Rights Council, while condemning all factions, including the government, for atrocities, concluded a report on Syria, “There is no military solution to this conflict.”
While armed struggle has indeed failed to end the war through outright victory, international diplomacy has done no better. The UN–Arab League initiative, led first by Kofi Annan, then by former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi and most recently by Staffan de Mistura, failed to break the impasse.
While diplomats pursued talks about talks, Syrians died in the tens of thousands. “Children are paying the heaviest price in this war,” reported United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Syrian Director Yusuf Abou Jelil in 2013. “Within Syria, four million children are directly affected. Two million are displaced in Syria. One million are on the front lines. One million are refugees.”
The escalation of suffering has reduced a country that fed itself before the war to living on international charity. Its medical and educational services, once among the best in the region, have been crippled. Children are suffering from malnutrition, and those in rebel areas have had difficulties receiving vaccines for polio, mumps, measles and rubella. At the end of October 2013, the World Health Organization confirmed an outbreak of polio among children in northeastern Syria. Dr. Annie Sparrow, a professor of public health at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, concluded from nearly 200 interviews with Syrian medical workers and civilians in the border regions of Lebanon and Turkey:
“Over the past two and a half years, doctors, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists who provide treatment to civilians in contested areas have been arrested and detained; paramedics have been tortured and used as human shields, ambulances have been targeted by snipers and missiles; medical facilities have been destroyed. . . . Five public hospitals have been taken over by the military, and there are no longer any left at all in the rebel-dominated cities of Idlib and Deir Ezzor. Fewer than forty ambulances in the country still function out of the original fleet of five hundred. . . . Now, more than 16,000 doctors have fled, and many of those left are in hiding. . . . At least thirty-six paramedics, in uniform on authorized missions, have been killed by Syrian military snipers or shot dead at checkpoints.”
Emergency medical squads have been routinely prevented from evacuating not only wounded rebel fighters but also injured children and other civilians from rebel-held territory. Far from limiting the effects of the conflict on civilians, President Assad’s counterinsurgency strategy has appeared to involve targeting the civilian population and medical facilities in rebel areas, in order to deprive the armed opposition of its support.
As of February 2014, more than 2.4 million Syrians were registered as refugees abroad, while Refugees International estimated that approximately 6.5 million have been internally displaced. Together, that’s more than 40% of Syria’s population.
For many refugees, the rallying cries of the regime and of the armed opposition ring equally hollow. Some have been sheltered in tented camps in Turkey and Jordan, while others have found lodging within Lebanon with friends or relations or in disused buildings. Syrians, who earned an average of $300 a month when they had jobs, are paying rents of $100 a month or more to sleep in Bekaa Valley car parks or $500 for space above a garage. Others sleep rough and beg for sustenance in the streets of Lebanese cities.
The exiled Syrians are learning what Palestinians have known since 1948: refugee existence is demeaning, cruel and crippling. Palestinian refugees themselves, 486,000 of whom are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in nine camps in Syria, are suffering more now than at any time in their 64 stateless years.
A Syrian friend of mine had a summer villa perched in a hillside village between Damascus and the Lebanese border. Armed militants broke in and fired, from the roof, at an army post. Soldiers responded with mortars and machine-gun fire. The rebels ran away. No one won, and the house was wrecked.
If a single image sums up the war in Syria, my friend’s house does the job. Neither the troops nor the insurgents gave a damn about him or his house, and it’s not clear how much either cares about the country.
Syria has marked the fourth anniversary of a war that began with peaceful demonstrations. In mid-March 2011, the people of Dera’a protested against the torture of children arrested for writing anti-government graffiti. Their demands were not revolutionary: dismissal of Dera’a’s governor and the trial of those responsible for torture. But for the people to demand, rather than beg, for anything from their government had violent consequences.
The children’s courage emboldened their elders to march through the streets of Damascus, Homs, Idlib and other cities to voice discontent, as they never had before. This was not a violent insurrection by religious obscurantists as in 1982, when the Muslim Brotherhood took up arms in Hama and Aleppo without consulting their inhabitants. Rather, this was a popular movement that was finding its way, learning from its mistakes and winning support.
As the protests spread, the regime responded, predictably, with gunfire, arrests and torture. But many of the demonstrators sought to continue peaceful opposition that would garner more and more public support, even at the risk of their lives.
Other oppositionists believed that only weapons would bring change; they found outsiders willing to subsidize their methods. Regimes that were anything but models of democracy, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar, poured in weapons and money. Turkey opened its border to arms, rebels and refugees. Clandestine training and logistical help came from the US, Britain and France. Protests turned to civil war.
As in post 2003 Iraq, whose monuments and museums were ravaged, Syria had historic souqs and castles burned. Alawites and Sunnis, whose villages had coexisted through ages, turned on one another with Balkan ferocity. Christians were caught in the middle. Those who could do so fled.
The mosaic of cultures that made for Syria’s richness is being lost. The rebels calculated that, as in Libya, NATO would ensure their swift victory. The US decided that the regime was so unpopular that the rebels would overthrow it without NATO help. Both were wrong.
Yet neither is taking the obvious alternative to the failed policy of violence: a negotiated settlement. Hillary Clinton, when she was US secretary of state, repeatedly said, as she did when Kofi Annan urged discussions between President Assad and his armed opponents, “Assad will still have to go.” Her successor, John Kerry, took a more nuanced stance but did nothing to bring it about, while Britain and France devoted their energies to promoting arms transfers to the rebels. Russia and Iran have contributed primarily by sending weapons to the regime, and at least a half-dozen countries are meddling on the other side.
Does anyone have the Syrians’ well-being in mind? Thomas Hardy, in his novel The Woodlanders, wrote of the knowledge required of anyone interfering with the lives of the people in his fictional Hintock:
“He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields which look so grey from his windows; recall whose creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that particular brake; what bygone domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge or disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansions, the street or on the green.”
Who in Washington, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh or Doha has that understanding of Syria? Who among the politicians or dictators of those countries foresees the consequences of their inflaming Syrian passions with more weapons and money?
Hardy had in mind an outsider with no knowledge of Hintock’s “bygone domestic dramas,” a doctor named Edred Fitzpiers. Fitzpiers was treating the aged John South for an unnamed malady that appeared to be related to his fear of a tree growing outside his window. The doctor ordered: “The tree must be cut down, or I won’t answer for his life.” South woke the next morning and, seeing the hated tree gone, died. Fitzpiers said only, “D–d if my remedy hasn’t killed him!”
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/07/01/book-e ... a-burning/
by Elvis » Sun Apr 09, 2017 10:38 pm
by American Dream » Sun Apr 09, 2017 11:21 pm
Why Being Against Assad Matters Too
Rally against US imperial intervention, but remember Assad’s crimes and be in solidarity with his victims.
by Bashir Abu-Manneh
A placard of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Alex Gourevitch’s brief piece on Syria concludes with the following statement:And in the end, this is a thin humanitarianism, since one never finds the humanitarian militarists arguing the true humanitarian case: not bombs but open borders. Let in anyone who wishes to escape.
Rather than bombing the Assad regime, Gourevitch says, let the Syrian refugees into the United States. What’s being advocated here is clear: no to empire, yes to refugees. Needless to say, I too subscribe to that notion and am against US imperial intervention.
But I fear that these two positions are just not enough. On their own, they constitute an impoverished politics.
In order to explain why, let’s briefly apply the same principles to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When Israel brutally kills Palestinians, as it regularly does, do progressives in America only say “let those Palestinian refugees who manage to escape come to the US”? Absolutely not. Because they know that this would just aid Israel’s colonial designs and invite Israel to continue behaving with impunity in the region.
Progressives stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, call for an end to Israel’s bombings, and demand that Israel be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. They also push their own imperial state to stop all military aid for Israel, stop feeding Israel’s colonial appetite, and stop shielding it from international justice.
Why is the Syrian case so different? The reality is that the Syrian catastrophe is even more acute. With half a million dead and millions displaced, the scale of the Syrian carnage is vast. Assad’s dictatorship would rather kill, besiege, and starve the population than allow them dignity and democracy. Either live in humiliation and servitude, leave, or die. No people should have to accept these miserable options.
Yet some American progressives haven’t afforded the Syrian people what they have so admirably afforded the Palestinians. Why is there no clear condemnation of Russian and Iranian intervention in Syria, without which the Assad government would have collapsed? Why was there no mention of the fact that Washington blocked Syrian opposition access to anti-aircraft weaponry, without which the regime was free to rain bombs on them?
US progressives cannot keep ignoring the fact that the Syrian people’s cause is just and that their right to freedom is as important as anyone else’s. We need to address the root cause of the refugee crisis and formulate a genuinely internationalist response to the Syrian catastrophe.
Being contra-empire and pro-refugee is not enough. It is simply unacceptable to stand by and see a brutal regime like Assad’s get away with emptying Syria of its own people. Syrians have a right both to live and to live freely in their homeland. No regime should be allowed to massacre its own people or force them into a life of permanent exile and displacement.
If the answer to Israel’s colonial persecution and dispossession of Palestinians is to help Palestinians stay in their homeland and fight for their rights, then the same solidarity principle should apply to Syrians.
Do open your borders to the wretched of the earth, but also stand in solidarity with the fight for their rights in their homeland.
by Elvis » Mon Apr 10, 2017 12:18 am
Bashir Abu-Manneh wrote:Assad’s dictatorship would rather kill, besiege, and starve the population than allow them dignity and democracy. Either live in humiliation and servitude, leave, or die. No people should have to accept these miserable options.
by MacCruiskeen » Mon Apr 10, 2017 6:25 am
MacCruiskeen » Sat Apr 08, 2017 12:36 pm wrote:
... American Dream ... always -- always-- de facto defending any US aggression
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