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Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood: Syria, Egypt, and Beyond


Steven Gaal

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And where did they say he was a fraud?

+++++++++++++++++++

THE IMPLICATION OF A LITTLE POPULATED POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IS DECREASED LEGITIMACY.

WHEN TAKEN IN THE CONTEXT OF AN NGO WITH ADDITIONAL COVERT AGENDAS THE IMPLICATION REACHES A OVERT CONFIRMATION OF NONLEGITIMACY =FRAUD.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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NGO/CIA/STATE DEPT = ARAB SPRING = COLONIALISM = WHAT GAAL'S TALKING ABOUT

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Editor’s Note: The EU must be moving towards the establishment of The
. A plan put forward by Nicolas Sarkozy to economically control all of North Africa and other Arab states. It will be more interdependence and a loss of sovereignty for those nations. In this light, the Arab spring benefits Europe greatly.

Morocco could be the first victim among the emerging democracies of Southern Mediterranean, a European strategy for economic independence and political sovereignty.

April 14, 2013

STRATRISKS

DCFTA : A European colonialism in Morocco?

The World Social Forum held recently in Tunis, associative altermondialists Maghreb, South European and Scandinavian, had preached an alarming discourse:

It would be according to what was discussed by them, a wide ranging a war that is about to pit the EU-27 countries against the democratic spring countries in the southern Mediterranean.

Thus, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan, whether it decides its orientation towards democracy or not, will be kept on a leash by Europeans through Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs)

This is because the thorough and complete free trade agreement including Morocco, among the four target countries, is the first to have indeed begun negotiations with the EU.

The government of Abdelilah Benkirane, which has not informed the Moroccans , in its government program, seems bound hand and foot, thus throwing away a number of founding principles of the sovereignty and independence of the country, especially in the economic and legislative levels.

Thus, under this agreement, when adopted by the kingdom and the powerful giant bloc of the northern neighbour, it will be a question of discussing the integration of the Moroccan economy into the European market.

While this title may sound appealing to some, a danger needs watching.

A wide range of new areas will be included in , such as liberalisation in agriculture, goods, services, intellectual property issues, investment protection and liberalisation of public procurement.

In sum, the principle of national preference, the government of Abdelilah Benkirane, has championed since its election, will simply go up in smoke and with it, the small farmer and Moroccan SMEs / SMIs, industrial and service sectors .

The DCFTA plans to ensure foreign investors the same rights as domestic investors, which will force national companies with their limited means, to face competition from major European groups, resulting in a deficit of activity exacerbating unemployment.

The little foreign currency that Morocco gains through its small tourist activities or through transfers of MRE funds, is not sufficient to pay the fat bills of European companies, which will always have the advantage of technical capital, their objective being the quick repatriation benefits and the investment itself.

WHEN THE MOROCCAN PARLIAMENT WILL HAVE NO RIGHT TO LEGISLATE

5412004-8073747.jpg?v=1365791420

A European colonialism in Morocco?

Worse, European activists warn that DCFTA will dispossess Morocco of its most basic right as a sovereign State, to legislate.

And European firms can drag Morocco before international arbitration courts, when the House of Representatives which is the legal representative of the Moroccan people have initiated changes in legislation or taxation, which would be against the interest of foreign investors, on behalf of a broader concept of expropriation.

At WSF Tunis,the voracious neoliberalism of Europe was criticised for facing newly emerging democracies in the southern Mediterranean, in which the EU had laid the groundwork for its designs of absolute control by the first generation of FTAs, which reducedthe financial resources of these countries because of missing receipts from customs duties,

Budget gaps caused were then filled by debt, accompanied by heavy conditionalities, thereby heaping others on the necks of those countries, still in their democratic apprenticeship .

Related Articles: (NGO = COLONIALISM <Gaal)

c5066d4259f3afd7189bbc5a7b193831_thumb_european-fund-for-democracy-funding-uprisings.jpgEurope's Fund For 'Democracy' Puts Its Money Openly Behind Regime Change

Editor’s Note: Who benefits from this arrangement. Will the money for sparking and sustaining the uprising be politically focused for the betterment of the EU? Will they hand pick countries like Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia? Europe had their fingerprints all over Libya and that was a real shining example of establishing a democracy. They cannot and will not be able to understand the impacts of their actions until it is too late. When it happens will they fund the new ‘democracy’ to oust the old ‘democracy’? The idea of a democracy is built upon the people and not some technocrats with cash and bullet points on a map. This reeks of hubris and stupidity.

(GAAL,CANT AGREE MORE)

Edited by Steven Gaal
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And where did they say he was a fraud?

+++++++++++++++++++

THE IMPLICATION OF A LITTLE POPULATED POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IS DECREASED LEGITIMACY.

WHEN TAKEN IN THE CONTEXT OF AN NGO WITH ADDITIONAL COVERT AGENDAS THE IMPLICATION REACHES A OVERT CONFIRMATION OF NONLEGITIMACY =FRAUD.

From the NYT article:

He does not work alone. Four men inside Syria help to report and collate information from more than 230 activists on the ground, a network rooted in Mr. Abdul Rahman’s youth, when he organized clandestine political protests. But he signs off on every important update. A fifth man translates the Arabic updates into English for the organization’s Facebook page.

[...]

Mr. Abdul Rahman’s toll for the Syrian conflict just passed 62,550, somewhat below the United Nations’ figure of more than 70,000. March was the deadliest month yet, with 6,005 deaths, he said, more than the combined total of the uprising’s first nine months.

[...]

Mr. Abdul Rahman has been faulted for not opening his list up for public access online, but the world of nongovernmental organizations gives him mostly high marks. “Generally, the information on the killings of civilians is very good, definitely one of the best, including the details on the conditions in which people were supposedly killed,” said Neil Sammonds, a Mideast researcher for Amnesty International.

Nothing about him being a fraud, that was your source's spin. His casulty estimates are below those of the UN and a researcher for AI vouches for him; i.e. he's more credible than the sources you cite.

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NGO/CIA/STATE DEPT = ARAB SPRING = COLONIALISM = WHAT GAAL'S TALKING ABOUT

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Editor’s Note: The EU must be moving towards the establishment of The
. A plan put forward by Nicolas Sarkozy to economically control all of North Africa and other Arab states. It will be more interdependence and a loss of sovereignty for those nations. In this light, the Arab spring benefits Europe greatly.

Morocco could be the first victim among the emerging democracies of Southern Mediterranean, a European strategy for economic independence and political sovereignty.

April 14, 2013

STRATRISKS

DCFTA : A European colonialism in Morocco?

The World Social Forum held recently in Tunis, associative altermondialists Maghreb, South European and Scandinavian, had preached an alarming discourse:

It would be according to what was discussed by them, a wide ranging a war that is about to pit the EU-27 countries against the democratic spring countries in the southern Mediterranean.

Thus, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and to a lesser extent Jordan, whether it decides its orientation towards democracy or not, will be kept on a leash by Europeans through Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs)

This is because the thorough and complete free trade agreement including Morocco, among the four target countries, is the first to have indeed begun negotiations with the EU.

The government of Abdelilah Benkirane, which has not informed the Moroccans , in its government program, seems bound hand and foot, thus throwing away a number of founding principles of the sovereignty and independence of the country, especially in the economic and legislative levels.

Thus, under this agreement, when adopted by the kingdom and the powerful giant bloc of the northern neighbour, it will be a question of discussing the integration of the Moroccan economy into the European market.

While this title may sound appealing to some, a danger needs watching.

A wide range of new areas will be included in , such as liberalisation in agriculture, goods, services, intellectual property issues, investment protection and liberalisation of public procurement.

In sum, the principle of national preference, the government of Abdelilah Benkirane, has championed since its election, will simply go up in smoke and with it, the small farmer and Moroccan SMEs / SMIs, industrial and service sectors .

The DCFTA plans to ensure foreign investors the same rights as domestic investors, which will force national companies with their limited means, to face competition from major European groups, resulting in a deficit of activity exacerbating unemployment.

The little foreign currency that Morocco gains through its small tourist activities or through transfers of MRE funds, is not sufficient to pay the fat bills of European companies, which will always have the advantage of technical capital, their objective being the quick repatriation benefits and the investment itself.

WHEN THE MOROCCAN PARLIAMENT WILL HAVE NO RIGHT TO LEGISLATE

5412004-8073747.jpg?v=1365791420

A European colonialism in Morocco?

Worse, European activists warn that DCFTA will dispossess Morocco of its most basic right as a sovereign State, to legislate.

And European firms can drag Morocco before international arbitration courts, when the House of Representatives which is the legal representative of the Moroccan people have initiated changes in legislation or taxation, which would be against the interest of foreign investors, on behalf of a broader concept of expropriation.

At WSF Tunis,the voracious neoliberalism of Europe was criticised for facing newly emerging democracies in the southern Mediterranean, in which the EU had laid the groundwork for its designs of absolute control by the first generation of FTAs, which reducedthe financial resources of these countries because of missing receipts from customs duties,

Budget gaps caused were then filled by debt, accompanied by heavy conditionalities, thereby heaping others on the necks of those countries, still in their democratic apprenticeship .

Related Articles: (NGO = COLONIALISM <Gaal)

c5066d4259f3afd7189bbc5a7b193831_thumb_european-fund-for-democracy-funding-uprisings.jpgEurope's Fund For 'Democracy' Puts Its Money Openly Behind Regime Change

Editor’s Note: Who benefits from this arrangement. Will the money for sparking and sustaining the uprising be politically focused for the betterment of the EU? Will they hand pick countries like Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia? Europe had their fingerprints all over Libya and that was a real shining example of establishing a democracy. They cannot and will not be able to understand the impacts of their actions until it is too late. When it happens will they fund the new ‘democracy’ to oust the old ‘democracy’? The idea of a democracy is built upon the people and not some technocrats with cash and bullet points on a map. This reeks of hubris and stupidity.

(GAAL,CANT AGREE MORE)

I didn't notice any evidence, all I saw was speculation.

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France’s Media Admits that the Syrian “Opposition” is Al Qaida. Then Justifies French Government Support to the Terrorists

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Global Research, April 14, 2013

=============================================

In a report published on the 11th of April French daily Le Monde admits that rebels fighting the government of the Syrian Arab Republic are dominated by Japhat Al Nosra, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaida. The admission comes after two years of non-stop disinformation trumpeted from all French mainstream media outlets from the official right to the official left, disinformation that has attempted to convince the French public that democratic revolutionaries are fighting a war for human rights and freedom against a brutal, tyrannical dictator, who is ‘’ killing his own people’’.

This puerile and deeply dishonest narrative has now been utterly discredited, as the facts about the terrorist nature of the Syrian rebels have become too obvious to ignore. In an article entitled ‘The New Visage of French Jihadism’ it is reported that French jihadists are leaving France in their hundreds to join the ‘holy war’ against the Syrian Arab Republic, with many more joining jihadist groups in Mali.

On the same page in an article entitled ‘Al Qaida extends its territory and unites its forces in Iraq and Syria’, Le Monde’s Christophe Ayad reports:

‘The head of Iraq’s Islamic state, the Iraqi branch of Al Qaida, announced in a recorded message on April 9
th
, that his group would be fused with the Japhat AL Nosra( Support Front), the principal armed jihadist organization in Syria. The new group will be called Al-Qaida in Iraq and the Levant. This announcement comes two days after the call of Ayman Al-Zawarhiri, the successor of Osama Bin Laden in the leadership of Al-Qaida ‘headquarters,’ for the establishment of an Islamic state after the fall of the regime of Bachar-Al-Assad, afflicted since two years by an insurrection by the Sunni majority.’[1]

al-qaeda.jpgSo, here we now have the French establishment press, who has been working overtime since two years to convince us that those fighting Assad are democrats, admitting that they are in fact Al Qaida. According to an October 2010Fox News report, the above-mentioned Al Qaida leader Al-Zawarhiri dined at the Pentagon just months after 911. Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge claimed she had documents to prove this. Of course, Fox News being a corporate propaganda agency did not pursue this story any further, nor did any other international mainstream media outlets. In the war on terror ignorance is strength and questioning is stupid.[2] The Fox News reporter earns 900,000 dollars per annum.[3]

In order to soften the blow and reassure French readers that the Quai d’Orsay’s support for the ‘rebels’ does not contradict France’s commitment to ‘human rights’, Le Monde’s Christophe Ayad tells us that:

‘Contrary to the Islamic State in Iraq the Al Nosra Front have made an effort not to systematically target civilians. It has not insisted, for the moment, on imposing an Islamic order that is too strict in the zones under its control, and has even concluded honorable agreements with the Kurdish rebellion, as in at Ras Al-Ain and more recently at Aleppo’[4]

Jabhat-Al-Nusra.jpgThese rebels Le Monde attempts to whitewash have been systematically targeting civilians from the start of this conflict. They have put bombs in cars in busy market squares, they have bombed universities murdering and maiming hundreds of innocent civilians. They have been torturing and beheading civilians and soldiers alike [5], even forcing children to participate in the decapitation some of their victims. Children have also been used as soldiers.[6 ]

They have forced women to wear the chador in the ‘liberated’ parts of once beautiful Aleppo.[7] They have desecrated and ruined the country’s religious and cultural heritage. They have blown up pipelines and wrecked infrastructure. They have destroyed thousands of schools, libraries and public service buildings. They have used chemical weapons. They have slit the throats of little children in order to blame the Syrian government. They terrorists are now even taking photos of themselves with the decapitated heads of their victims.[8] None of this is a secret. They have continously posted videos boasting about their crimes.

Yet Le Monde wants us to believe that Japhat Al Nosra [image above] is a good, more civilized version of Al Qaida, one perhaps worthy of Western military support! Of course, Le Monde will reply that they do not support Japhat Al Nosra, that they support the secular rebels. But where are the secular rebels?Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states very clearly that ‘any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law’. [9 ] The attempt by Western journalists to portray terrorist groups as freedom fighters and the use of information sources emanating exclusively from these groups to justify foreign aggression against a sovereign state recognized by the United Nations constitutes a war crime.

The French ‘special envoy’ seems to lament the fact that the announcement of this new fusion of terrorist groups will discredit the French government’s attempts to convince its European Union partners to officially arm the ‘rebellion’. While the French press admits that the Syrian armed opposition is predominantly Al-Qaida, it continues to insinuate and suggest that the bulk of the armed opposition is in fact secular and liberal. However, no evidence to support such insinuations has ever been forthcoming, while evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and impossible to dismiss.

In another article published on March 5th entitled ‘The Syrian Rebels take control of the Village of Raqqa in the North of the Country’, reporter Khalid Sid Mohand tells us just who these ‘rebels’ are. They are, he admits a few lines into his report:

‘A coalition of armed groups, some of whom are affiliated to the jihadists of Japhat-al-Nosra, who are behind the fall of Rakka.’[10]

How lovely! Al Qaida have captured a Syrian town and the French liberal media seems to be very excited about the prospect of armed barbarians taking over the Levantine state. From the title of the article, one is led to believe that the Syrian rebels have taken the town, the Syrian rebels being the French media’s designated ‘Arab Spring’ good guys. So, even though the news is bad, the headline suggests that it is good. Reality is turned upside down.

This technique of editorializing terrorists as rebels, while at the same time admitting that they are terrorists has the effect of confusing the public and preventing the uncritical reader from understanding the real forces at play in the Syrian conflict. The technique was repeatedly used during the Russian-Chechnian war when Islamist terrorists were repeatedly described as ‘rebels’. The double-standard, double-speak and double-think are techniques which are now part and parcel of ‘professional journalism’.

While such villainous and schizophrenic behavior may appear to some as a diabolical conspiracy, the reality is far more complex. This schizoid way of thinking and speaking is simply the psychological reflection of a global economic system that is collapsing upon its own internal contradictions. The extraction of surplus value from labour and the globalization of this capitalist mode of production have made a tiny section of the global population extremely rich and powerful.

The rich and powerful not only own the means of production, they also own the means of communication and as rule by a financial oligarchy is objectively contrary to democratic principles, a double-language and double-think is necessary in order to make people believe that 2 plus 2 equals 5. As a result, armed groups that serve the interests of the financial oligarchy will be mediatized as ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘human rights’ activists. However, as reporters cannot always control or ignore the complex realities they report on, the truth also emerges between the lines, in the margins and interstices of their own discourse. However, the job of rational analysis and interpretation of information is only being carried nowadays out by alternative media outlets whose goal is to serve the public good and tell the truth.

Thus, articles reporting the ‘good news’ that the Syrian rebels have taking another town will also have to admit that these same rebels are actually Al Qaida. But because double-think is so deeply embedded in Western culture, the contradictions of these reports are rarely noticed or analyzed The task of molding the public mind to support the ‘cruel but necessary’ geopolitical strategies of the global financial elite falls to the mass media , who orient and distort information to suit imperial designs and the corporate interests of the media’s owners.

In a Guardian article of 2002, the Western establishment’s policy of total hypocrisy was eloquently expressed by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief strategist Robert Cooper who wrote:

‘The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle’[11]

Since unknown snipers opened fire on protestors and police in the town of Daraa on March 15th2011, the Syrian nation has been assaulted by death squads armed and trained by the Gulf emirates and Nato intelligence. The result has been the death of thousands and the destruction of a nation. This is a repeat of the Arc of Crisis created in Afghanistan in 1979 when US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Bzrezinski organized the arming and training of Mujahedeen terrorists in order to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The result was the creation of Al Qaida, a data-base of military-intelligence assets, who have since the very beginning, always served Nato geopolitical interests. The same technique is now being used against Syria.

It is quite possible the French government’s admission that Al Qaida have taken over large parts of Syria could serve as an excuse in the weeks, months or years ahead for direct military intervention to ‘free’ Syria from Al-Qaida, just as French intelligence’s fomentation of jihadism in Libya and their transfer to Mali served the cause of military intervention there. Meanwhile,the media demonization of Bachar-Al Assad will continue. However, the existence of Al Qaida in Syria could eventually become the final justification for intervention if the terrorists succeed in sufficiently weakening the Syrian state and Russia can be persuaded to acquiesce in the loss of its Eastern Mediterranean client state.

The dupes of Nato’s media empire can continue to comfort themselves that their governments are fighting terrorists in some countries, while helping ‘democratic rebels’ to fight ‘brutal regimes’ in others, but as savage austerity cuts and the militarization of urban space afflicts European cities, the reality that it is the degenerate Euro-Atlantic elites who are fomenting jihadist terrorism, the nightmarish reality that this is in fact both the ‘brutal regime’, and the opaque, loose ‘terrorist network’ which wants to take away our freedoms and destroy civilization, this reality will become impossible to ignore. For in truth the war on terrorism is ultimately a war on humanity.

Notes

[1] http://www.lemonde.f...57029_3210.html

[2] http://www.foxnews.c...entagon-months/

[3] http://www.mediabist...ssed-out_b48807

[4] http://www.lemonde.f...57029_3210.html

‘Contrairement à l’Etat islamique en Irak, Le Front Al-Nosra prend garde à ne pascibler systématiquement les civils. Il a évité, pour l’instant, d’imposer un ordre islamique trop strict dans les zones passées sous son contrôle et conclut même des accords ponctuels avec la rébellion kurde, comme à Ras Al-Aïn, et plus récemment à Alep.’

[5] https://www.youtube....?v=4QhicJPzG9[4

[6]

[7]http://www.globalres...-aleppo/5328510

[8]http://allainjules.c...mes-decapitees/

[9] http://www.ohchr.org...Pages/CCPR.aspx

[10] http://www.lemonde.f...42837_3218.html

[11] http://www.guardian....d/2002/apr/07/1

Edited by Steven Gaal
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France’s Media Admits that the Syrian “Opposition” is Al Qaida. Then Justifies French Government Support to the Terrorists

By Gearóid Ó Colmáin

Global Research, April 14, 2013

=============================================

In a report published on the 11th of April French daily Le Monde admits that rebels fighting the government of the Syrian Arab Republic are dominated by Japhat Al Nosra, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaida.

OK so one report from one MSM outlet reports something that contradicts almost every other source (not tied the Syrian gov't and its allies) and this chooses to focus on that one to the exclusion of the others. This is known as 'cherry picking'.

So, here we now have the French establishment press, who has been working overtime since two years to convince us that those fighting Assad are democrats, admitting that they are in fact Al Qaida. According to an October 2010Fox News report, the above-mentioned Al Qaida leader Al-Zawarhiri dined at the Pentagon just months after 911. Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge claimed she had documents to prove this. Of course, Fox News being a corporate propaganda agency did not pursue this story any further, nor did any other international mainstream media outlets. In the war on terror ignorance is strength and questioning is stupid.[2]

ROTFLMAO This guy is a complete idiot according to his source it was American Anwar Al-Awlaki not Egytian Ayman Al-Zawarhiri, and the the former claimed to have been anti terror/AQ at the time.

The Fox News reporter earns 900,000 dollars per annum.[3]

Once again this guy is a shmuck, she was fired and seems to have made half that or less.

Much of the rest is based on inconclusive YT videos

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In a report published on the 11th of April French daily Le Monde admits that rebels fighting the government of the Syrian Arab Republic are dominated by Japhat Al Nosra, a terrorist group linked to Al Qaida.

OK so one report from one MSM outlet reports something that contradicts almost every other source (not tied the Syrian gov't and its allies) and this chooses to focus on that one to the exclusion of the others. This is known as 'cherry picking'.// END COLBY

++++++++++++++++++++

LOL !!!

US Sponsored Syria “Opposition” declares Allegiance to Al Qaeda

By Niall Green

Global Research, April 16, 2013

World Socialist Web Site

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Last week the Al Nusra Front, the military backbone of the US-sponsored Syrian opposition, openly swore its loyalty to Al Qaeda.

Al Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born cleric who served for many years as Osama bin Laden’s second-in-command.

“The sons of Al Nusra Front pledge allegiance to Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri,” al-Golani said in a recorded message released last week. The statement also indicated that the Syrian terrorist group would merge with Al Qaeda in Iraq, from which Al Nusra has received personnel and training.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State in Iraq, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in that country, said last week that his group would join with Al Nusra under the shared banner of “The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.”

The Al Nusra Front (or Jabhat al-Nusra) became the most effective armed group in the US-backed Syrian opposition last year. Its cadres, Islamist militants recruited internationally with combat experience from other wars, have inflicted several defeats on Syrian government forces, while carrying out sectarian atrocities against minority groups and alleged regime sympathizers.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the loose coalition of militias sponsored by Washington and its allies in their proxy war against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, issued a statement disavowing any formal ties with Al Nusra.

“We don’t support the ideology of Al Nusra,” an FSA spokesman said. “There has never been and there will never be a decision at the command level to coordinate with Al Nusra.”

This denial appears meaningless, however, as the FSA then admitted that it planned to continue co-operating with Al Nusra fighterson “certain operations.”

Without Al Nusra, the FSA would have very limited fighting capabilities. In July 2012, the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported from within Syria that the FSA frequently relied on al-Nusra when fighting the Syrian army. In the piece, titled “Al-Qaeda turns tide for rebels in battle for eastern Syria,” FSA personnel said that they had called upon Al Nusra to carry out truck and car bombings, plant roadside bombs, and to supply fighters, small arms and ordnance.

The FSA lacks a popular base of support, and appears to have little operational authority, within Syria. Rather, it is various sectarian and ethnic-based militias that carry out strikes against the Syrian regime, each for their own ends. Among these groups, it is Al Nusra that has proved to be the most deadly. Its militants, drawn to the Syrian war under the banner of Islamist jihad, are recruited from the ranks of Sunni extremist veterans of the wars in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Its shadowy leader, al-Golani (his nom de guerre ), is believed to have been a fighter in the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency in Iraq during the US occupation and subsequent ethno-sectarian civil war in that country.

Al Nusra has claimed responsibility for the overwhelming majority of suicide bombings inside Syria, including the December 2011 twin-suicide attack in Damascus that killed 49 people and injured over 160 others, the May 2012 bombing in the capital in which 55 people died and some 400 were wounded, and a triple suicide attack in Aleppo in October, which killed 48. In all these atrocities, and hundreds of other attacks carried out by the group over the past fifteen months, the majority of casualties have been civilians.

Al Nusra’s formal declaration of solidarity with Al Qaeda thus comes more as an inconvenience than a surprise to the Obama administration and its allies.

Islamist militias, including those associated with Al Qaeda, have received hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and materiel from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other US-backed forces—all under the watchful eye of the CIA, whose agents oversee the flow of supplies to the Syrian opposition across the borders of Turkey and Jordan.

On Thursday, the Assad government called on the UN to designate Al Nusra as a terrorist organization, like Al Qaeda. In a letter to the UN Security Council, the Syrian foreign ministry claimed that the announced merger confirmed previous assertions by Damascus that Al Nusra is engaged in terrorist crimes against the Syrian people.

The letter to the Security Council criticized the efforts within the “international community” to prevent Al Nusra from being branded as a terrorist organization, with the Assad regime attempting to put diplomatic pressure on US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have sponsored the Islamist fighters.

Washington was compelled to officially blacklist Al Nusra as a terrorist group in December. The designation came in the context of the establishment in November 2012 of a new US-sponsored anti-Assad umbrella group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Al Nusra was hostile to this group, which includes moderate Sunnis as well as secular and Kurdish personnel.

The terrorist label applied to Al Nusra by the Obama administration was mainly symbolic, however. In the months since the designation, al-Golani’s fighters have proven themselves even more capable of striking at Syrian regime targets and carrying out terrorist attacks.

On December 23, al-Nusra declared a “no-fly zone” over the city of Aleppo, the main commercial center of Syria prior to the civil war. According to Al Jazeera, the group was able to deploy 23mm and 57mm anti-aircraft guns against Syrian armed forces aircraft, as well as civilian planes that were suspected of carrying government personnel or supplies.

Al-Nusra has emerged as the principal opposition group in the battle for control of Aleppo, which lies close to the Turkish border and the large US Air Force base at Incirlik. It regularly fights off Syrian government assaults on rebel-held areas.

Given the extensive presence of the US military and the CIA in and around Syria, and Washington’s influence within the despotic Persian Gulf sheikhdoms that bankroll the opposition, it is inconceivable that Al Nusra or similar outfits could function without tacit support from US imperialism.

Secretary of State John Kerry effectively acknowledged that the US would turn a blind eye to the arming of al-Nusra during a press conference last month with Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, a Qatari royal. Kerry insisted that Washington was doing everything to ensure that support went to the “right people” in the Syrian opposition. He added, however, that there could be “no one hundred percent guarantee” that the flood of arms and money coming into Syria from the US and its allies would not end up in the hands of the local branch of al-Qaeda.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Well if an obscure Buffalo based Bolshevik blogger says the same thing as the LeMonde reporter the latter must be correct, there is no more room for doubt.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yes no room for doubt. Mr. Colby is very selective in his news readings . NO DOUBT. Exampled was his lack of knowledge of the overhyping of vaccine need in the European Flu Epidemic two years back by the (corrupt) WHO. IT WAS A BIG STORY, AND NOW MAN WHO

BLOVIATES ehh... PONTIFICATES ehh..ehh ........ SHARES HIS EXPERT OPINIONS WITH US ON THE MIDDLE EAST DOESNT NOW ABOUT THIS ISSUE/EVENT. CAN WE TRUST HIM ON OTHER ANALYSIS ????

***************************************************************

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US-Backed FSA Rebels Decapitate & Grill Victim

April 16th, 2013

Another example of Obama supporting bloodthirsty terrorists in Syria

(PaulWatson) – A gruesome new photograph has emerged of US-backed FSA rebels grilling a decapitated head of one of their victims, another chilling example of how the Obama administration is supporting bloodthirsty terrorists in Syria.

The photo is too graphic to show uncensored in this article, but a non-blurred version can be seen here.

According to SyriaNews.cc, “On Thursday, 11 April 2013, a Syrian Army helicopter transporting food supplies to villages and Army units besieged around Maarat Noman city in Idleb province when it was attacked by NATO’s best assets Al-Qaeda FSA terrorists not with chants of course calling for a better election law, but with latest weapons provided covertly and openly by their sponsors, and the plane was downed. On board 8 officers and soldiers, the terrorists rushed to the site of the downed helicopter, decapitated the pilots then GRILLED them.”

The story is not hard to believe given that it fits with the pattern of atrocities committed by US-backed rebels throughout the conflict. Although the Obama administration has tried to portray the extremist elements in Syria as a minority, the opposite is in fact true.

Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant organization which killed US troops in Iraq, was declared a terrorist organization by the United States back in December and yet almost immediately the rest of the so-called “moderate” FSA groups pledged their allegiance to the Al-Qaeda group.

According to numerous reports, far from playing a bit part in the conflict, Jabhat al-Nusra is “essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad,” and the group conducts “the heaviest frontline fighting” in Syria.

Innumerable videos and photos depicting FSA rebels committing atrocities, including beheadings, forcing prisoners to become suicide bombers, and ransacking Christian churches, have all emerged with virtually zero coverage from the mainstream media, which instead has focused entirely on the narrative that the Assad regime is indiscriminately killing innocent civilians.

The Obama administration has remained steadfast in its support for the rebels, sending over half a billion dollars to extremists who have been caught on tape burning US flags,

and singing the praises of Osama Bin Laden while glorifying the 9/11 attacks.

Not only have Syrian civilians and members of the Syrian Army fell victim to the FSA’s war crimes, but now women and teenage girls are being trafficked to the country to service the sexual needs of FSA fighters. As we reported last week, Islamic clerics are issuing fatwas permitting Syrian rebels to rape women and girls as young as 14 years old as part of a “sexual jihad”.

The video below shows the aftermath of the helicopter crash on April 11, including the dead pilot before he was decapitated.

The most recent example of FSA rebels beheading a victim can be seen in the video below, but should not be watched by those of a nervous disposition.

Related posts:

  1. US-Backed Rebels Beat, Humiliate Old Man; YouTube Censors Video
  2. Nearly 1 in 10 Syrian Rebels Are Now Terrorists In The Eyes Of The US
  3. Video: Syrian Rebels Try to Shoot Down Commercial Airliner
  4. Your Tax Dollars Fueling ‘Al Qaeda’ Syrian Rebels Praise OBL
  5. Video: Syrian Rebels Make Child Behead Prisoner
  6. US-Backed Syrian Opposition Demands Support for Al Qaeda
  7. Syrian Rebels Caught on Tape Discussing Chemical Weapons Attack
  8. Lebanon’s Western-Backed “Future Movement” Caught Smuggling Weapons & Terrorists into Syria

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IF YOU ARE CURIOUS PUT IN GOOGLE

FSA child decapitates

Teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry.

Teach a child to decapitate and you will have a assassin for life. (thank you CIA)

Edited by Steven Gaal
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NGO/CIA/STATE DEPT = ARAB SPRING = COLONIALISM = WHAT GAAL'S TALKING ABOUT

The Syrian National Council

The most quoted of the opposition spokespeople are the official representatives of the Syrian National Council. The SNC is not the only Syrian opposition group – but it is generally recognised as “the main opposition coalition” (BBC). The Washington Times describes it as “an umbrella group of rival factions based outside Syria”. Certainly the SNC is the opposition group that’s had the closest dealings with western powers – and has called for foreign intervention from the early stages of the uprising. In February of this year, at the opening of the Friends of Syria summit in Tunisia, William Hague declared: “I will meet leaders of the Syrian National Council in a few minutes’ time … We, in common with other nations, will now treat them and recognise them as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”

The most senior of the SNC’s official spokespeople is the Paris-based Syrian academic Bassma Kodmani.

Bassma Kodmani

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Bassma Kodmani of the Syrian National Council. Photograph: Carter Osmar

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Here is Bassma Kodmani, seen leaving this year’s Bilderberg conferencein Chantilly, Virginia.

Kodmani is a member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs, Syrian National Council. Kodmani is close to the centre of the SNC power structure, and one of the council’s most vocal spokespeople. “No dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system,” she declared this week. And here she is, quoted by the newswire AFP: “The next step needs to be a resolution under Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means, embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply.”

This statement translates into the headline “Syrians call for armed peacekeepers” (Australia’s Herald Sun). When large-scale international military action is being called for, it seems only reasonable to ask: who exactly is calling for it? We can say, simply, “an official SNC spokesperson,” or we can look a little closer.

This year was Kodmani’s second Bilderberg. At the 2008 conference, Kodmani was listed as French; by 2012, her Frenchness had fallen away and she was listed simply as “international” – her homeland had become the world of international relations.

Back a few years, in 2005, Kodmani was working for the Ford Foundationin Cairo, where she was director of their governance and international co-operation programme. The Ford Foundation is a vast organisation, headquartered in New York, and Kodmani was already fairly senior. But she was about to jump up a league.

Around this time, in February 2005, US-Syrian relations collapsed, and President Bush recalled his ambassador from Damascus. A lot of opposition projects date from this period. “The US money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005,” says the Washington Post.

In September 2005, Kodmani was made the executive director of theArab Reform Initiative (ARI) – a research programme initiated by the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The CFR is an elite US foreign policy thinktank, and the Arab Reform Initiative is described on its website as a “CFR Project” . More specifically, the ARI was initiated by a group within the CFR called the “US/Middle East Project” – a body of senior diplomats, intelligence officers and financiers, the stated aim of which is to undertake regional “policy analysis” in order “to prevent conflict and promote stability”. The US/Middle East Project pursues these goals under the guidance of an international board chaired by General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroft.

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Peter Sutherland pictured at the Bilderberg conference. Photograph: Hannah Borno

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Brent Scowcroft (chairman emeritus) is a former national security adviser to the US president – he took over the role from Henry Kissinger. Sitting alongside Scowcroft of the international board is his fellow geo-strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who succeeded him as the national security adviser, and Peter Sutherland, the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. So, as early as 2005, we’ve got a senior wing of the western intelligence/banking establishment selecting Kodmani to run a Middle East research project. In September of that year, Kodmani was made full-time director of the programme. Earlier in 2005, the CFR assigned“financial oversight” of the project to the Centre for European Reform (CER). In come the British.

The CER is overseen by Lord Kerr, the deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. Kerr is a former head of the diplomatic service and is a senior adviser at Chatham House (a thinktank showcasing the best brains of the British diplomatic establishment).

In charge of the CER on a day-to-day basis is Charles Grant, former defence editor of the Economist, and these days a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a “pan-European thinktank” packed with diplomats, industrialists, professors and prime ministers. On its list of members you’ll find the name: “Bassma Kodmani (France/Syria) – Executive Director, Arab Reform Initiative”.

Another name on the list: George Soros – the financier whose non-profit “Open Society Foundations” is a primary funding source of the ECFR. At this level, the worlds of banking, diplomacy, industry, intelligence and the various policy institutes and foundations all mesh together, and there, in the middle of it all, is Kodmani.

The point is, Kodmani is not some random “pro-democracy activist” who happens to have found herself in front of a microphone. She has impeccable international diplomacy credentials: she holds the position ofresearch director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale – “an independent and neutral institution dedicated to promoting modern diplomacy”. The Académie is headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE – the French foreign intelligence service.

A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American democracy-promotion industry. Her “province of origin” (according to the SNC website) is Damascus, but she has close and long-standing professional relationships with precisely those powers she’s calling upon to intervene in Syria.

And many of her spokesmen colleagues are equally well-connected.

Radwan Ziadeh

Another often quoted SNC representative is Radwan Ziadeh – director of foreign relations at the Syrian National Council. Ziadeh has an impressive CV: he’s a senior fellow at the federally funded Washington thinktank, the US Institute of Peace (the USIP Board of Directors is packed with alumni of the defence department and the national security council; its president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC).

In February this year, Ziadeh joined an elite bunch of Washington hawks to sign a letter calling upon Obama to intervene in Syria: his fellow signatories include James Woolsey (former CIA chief), Karl Rove (Bush Jr’s handler), Clifford May (Committee on the Present Danger) and Elizabeth Cheney, former head of the Pentagon’s Iran-Syria Operations Group.

Ziadeh is a relentless organiser, a blue-chip Washington insider with links to some of the most powerful establishment thinktanks. Ziadeh’s connections extend all the way to London. In 2009 he became a visiting fellow at Chatham House, and in June of last year he featured on the panel at one of their events – “Envisioning Syria’s Political Future”– sharing a platform with fellow SNC spokesman Ausama Monajed (more on Monajed below) and SNC member Najib Ghadbian.

Ghadbian was identified by the Wall Street Journal as an early intermediary between the US government and the Syrian opposition in exile: “An initial contact between the White House and NSF [National Salvation Front] was forged by Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist.” This was back in 2005. The watershed year.

These days, Ghadbian is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC, and is on the advisory board of a Washington-based policy body called the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS) – an organisation co-founded by Ziadeh.

Ziadeh has been making connections like this for years. Back in 2008, Ziadeh took part in a meeting of opposition figures in a Washington government building: a mini-conference called “Syria In-Transition”. The meeting was co-sponsored by a US-based body called the Democracy Council and a UK-based organisation called the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD). It was a big day for the MJD – their chairman, Anas Al-Abdah, had travelled to Washington from Britain for the event, along with their director of public relations. Here, from the MJD’s website, is a description of the day: “The conference saw an exceptional turn out as the allocated hall was packed with guests from the House of Representatives and the Senate, representatives of studies centres, journalists and Syrian expatriats [sic] in the USA.”

The day opened with a keynote speech by James Prince, head of the Democracy Council. Ziadeh was on a panel chaired by Joshua Muravchik (the ultra-interventionist author of the 2006 op-ed “Bomb Iran”). The topic of the discussion was “The Emergence of Organized Opposition”. Sitting beside Ziadeh on the panel was the public relations director of the MJD – a man who would later become his fellow SNC spokesperson – Ausama Monajed.

Ausama Monajed

Along with Kodmani and Ziadeh, Ausama (or sometimes Osama) Monajed is one of the most important SNC spokespeople. There are others, of course – the SNC is a big beast and includes the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition to Assad is wide-ranging, but these are some of the key voices. There are other official spokespeople with long political careers, like George Sabra of the Syrian Democratic People’s party – Sabra has suffered arrest and lengthy imprisonment in his fight against the “repressive and totalitarian regime in Syria”. And there are other opposition voices outside the SNC, such as the writer Michel Kilo, who speaks eloquently of the violence tearing apart his country: “Syria is being destroyed – street after street, city after city, village after village. What kind of solution is that? In order for a small group of people to remain in power, the whole country is being destroyed.”

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Ausuma Monajed. Photograph: BBC

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But there’s no doubt that the primary opposition body is the SNC, and Kodmani, Ziadeh and Monajed are often to be found representing it. Monajed frequently crops up as a commentator on TV news channels.

, speaking from their Washington bureau. Monajed doesn’t sugar-coat his message: “We are watching civilians being slaughtered and kids being slaughtered and killed and women being raped on the TV screens every day.”

Meanwhile, over on Al Jazeera, Monajed talks about “what’s really happening, in reality, on the ground” – about “the militiamen of Assad” who “come and rape their women, slaughter their children, and kill their elderly”.

Monajed turned up, just a few days ago, as a blogger on Huffington Post UK, where he explained, at length: “Why the World Must Intervene in Syria” – calling for “direct military assistance” and “foreign military aid”. So, again, a fair question might be: who is this spokesman calling for military intervention?

Monajed is a member of the SNC, adviser to its president, and according to his SNC biography, “the Founder and Director of Barada Television”, a pro-opposition satellite channel based in Vauxhall, south London. In 2008, a few months after attending Syria In-Transition conference, Monajed was back in Washington, invited to lunch with George W Bush, along with a handful of other favoured dissidents (you can see Monajed in the souvenir photo, third from the right, in the red tie, near Condoleezza Rice – up the other end from Garry Kasparov).

At this time, in 2008, the US state department knew Monajed as ”director of public relations for the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD), which leads the struggle for peaceful and democratic change in Syria”.

Let’s look closer at the MJD. Last year, the Washington Post picked up a story from WikiLeaks, which had published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables. These cables appear to show a remarkable flow of money from the US state department to the British-based Movement for Justice and Development. According to the Washington Post’s report: “Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified US diplomatic cables show that the state department has funnelled as much as $6m to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria.”

A state department spokesman responded to this story by saying: “Trying to promote a transformation to a more democratic process in this society is not undermining necessarily the existing government.” And they’re right, it’s not “necessarily” that.

When asked about the state department money, Monajed himself said that he “could not confirm” US state department funding for Barada TV, but said: “I didn’t receive a penny myself.” Malik al -Abdeh, until very recently Barada TV’s editor-in-chief insisted: “we have had no direct dealings with the US state department”. The meaning of the sentence turns on that word “direct”. It is worth noting that Malik al Abdeh also happens to be one of the founders of the Movement for Justice and Development (the recipient of the state department $6m, according to the leaked cable). And he’s the brother of the chairman, Anas Al-Abdah. He’s also the co-holder of the MJD trademark: What Malik al Abdeh does admit is that Barada TV gets a large chunk of its funding from an American non-profit organisation: the Democracy Council. One of the co-sponsors (with the MJD) of Syria In-Transition mini-conference. So what we see, in 2008, at the same meeting, are the leaders of precisely those organisations identified in the Wiki:eaks cables as the conduit (the Democracy Council) and recipient (the MJD) of large amounts of state department money.

The Democracy Council (a US-based grant distributor) lists the state department as one of its sources of funding. How it works is this: the Democracy Council serves as a grant-administering intermediary between the state department’s “Middle East Partnership Initiative” and “local partners” (such as Barada TV). As the Washington Post reports:

“Several US diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funnelled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit.”

The same report highlights a 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Syria that says that the Democracy Council received $6.3m from the state department to run a Syria-related programme, the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative”. The cable describes this as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” aimed at producing, amongst other things, “various broadcast concepts.” According to the Washington Post: “Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV.”

Until a few months ago, the state department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative was overseen by Tamara Cofman Wittes (she’s now at theBrookings Institution – an influential Washington thinktank). Of MEPI, she said that it “created a positive ‘brand’ for US democracy promotion efforts”. While working there she declared: “There are a lot of organizations in Syria and other countries that are seeking changes from their government … That’s an agenda that we believe in and we’re going to support.” And by support, she means bankroll.

The money

This is nothing new. Go back a while to early 2006, and you have the state department announcing a new “funding opportunity” called the “Syria Democracy Program“. On offer, grants worth “$5m in Federal Fiscal Year 2006″. The aim of the grants? “To accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.”

These days, the cash is flowing in faster than ever. At the beginning of June 2012, the Syrian Business Forum was launched in Doha by opposition leaders including Wael Merza (SNC secretary general). “This fund has been established to support all components of the revolution in Syria,” said Merza. The size of the fund? Some $300m. It’s by no means clear where the money has come from, although Merza “hinted at strong financial support from Gulf Arab states for the new fund” (Al Jazeera). At the launch, Merza said that about $150m had already been spent, in part on the Free Syrian Army.

Merza’s group of Syrian businessmen made an appearance at a World Economic Forum conference titled the “Platform for International Co-operation” held in Istanbul in November 2011. All part of the process whereby the SNC has grown in reputation, to become, in the words of William Hague, “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” – and able, openly, to handle this much funding.

Building legitimacy – of opposition, of representation, of intervention – is the essential propaganda battle.

In a USA Today op-ed written in February this year, Ambassador Dennis Ross declared: “It is time to raise the status of the Syrian National Council”. What he wanted, urgently, is “to create an aura of inevitability about the SNC as the alternative to Assad.” The aura of inevitability. Winning the battle in advance.

A key combatant in this battle for hearts and minds is the American journalist and Daily Telegraph blogger, Michael Weiss.

Michael Weiss

One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria – and an enthusiast for western intervention – Michael Weiss echoes Ambassador Ross when he says: “Military intervention in Syria isn’t so much a matter of preference as an inevitability.”

Some of Weiss’s interventionist writings can be found on a Beirut-based, Washington-friendly website called “NOW Lebanon” – whose “NOW Syria” section is an important source of Syrian updates. NOW Lebanon was set up in 2007 by Saatchi & Saatchi executive Eli Khoury. Khoury has been described by the advertising industry as a “strategic communications specialist, specialising in corporate and government image and brand development”.

Weiss told NOW Lebanon, back in May, that thanks to the influx of weapons to Syrian rebels “we’ve already begun to see some results.” He showed a similar approval of military developments a few months earlier, in a piece for the New Republic: “In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian Army and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides” – whereupon, as any blogger might, he laid out his “Blueprint for a Military Intervention in Syria”.

But Weiss is not only a blogger. He’s also the director of communications and public relations at the Henry Jackson Society, an ultra-ultra-hawkish foreign policy thinktank.

The Henry Jackson Society’s international patrons include: James “ex-CIA boss” Woolsey, Michael “homeland security” Chertoff, William “PNAC” Kristol, Robert “PNAC” Kagan’, Joshua “Bomb Iran” Muravchick, and Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle. The Society is run by Alan Mendoza, chief adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on transatlantic and international security.

The Henry Jackson Society is uncompromising in its “forward strategy” towards democracy. And Weiss is in charge of the message. The Henry Jackson Society is proud of its PR chief’s far-reaching influence: “He is the author of the influential report “Intervention in Syria? An Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards”, which was repurposed and endorsed by the Syrian National Council.”

Weiss’s original report was re-named “Safe Area for Syria” – and ended up on the official syriancouncil.org website, as part of their military bureau’s strategic literature. The repurposing of the HJS report was undertaken by the founder and executive director of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC) – one Ausama Monajed.

So, the founder of Barada TV, Ausama Monajed, edited Weiss’s report, published it through his own organisation (the SRCC) and passed it on to the Syrian National Council, with the support of the Henry Jackson Society.

The relationship couldn’t be closer. Monajed even ends up handling inquiries for “press interviews with Michael Weiss“. Weiss is not the only strategist to have sketched out the roadmap to this war (many thinktanks have thought it out, many hawks have talked it up), but some of the sharpest detailing is his.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

The justification for the “inevitable” military intervention is the savagery of President Assad’s regime: the atrocities, the shelling, the human rights abuses. Information is crucial here, and one source above all has been providing us with data about Syria. It is quoted at every turn: “The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA [Voice of America]that fighting and shelling killed at least 12 people in Homs province.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is commonly used as a standalone source for news and statistics. Just this week, news agency AFP carried this story: “Syrian forces pounded Aleppo and Deir Ezzor provinces as at least 35 people were killed on Sunday across the country, among them 17 civilians, a watchdog reported.” Various atrocities and casualty numbers are listed, all from a single source: “Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone.”

Statistic after horrific statistic pours from “the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (AP). It’s hard to find a news report about Syria that doesn’t cite them. But who are they? “They” are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman), who lives in Coventry.

According to a Reuters report in December of last year: “When he isn’t fielding calls from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife.”

When the Guardian’s Middle East live blog cited “Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” it also linked to a sceptical article in the Modern Tokyo Times – an article which suggested news outlets could be a bit “more objective about their sources” when quoting “this so-called entity”, the SOHR.

That name, the “Syrian Observatory of Human Rights”, sound so grand, so unimpeachable, so objective. And yet when Abdulrahman and his “Britain-based NGO” (AFP/NOW Lebanon) are the sole source for so many news stories about such an important subject, it would seem reasonable to submit this body to a little more scrutiny than it’s had to date.

The Observatory is by no means the only Syrian news source to be quoted freely with little or no scrutiny …

Hamza Fakher

The relationship between Ausama Monajed, the SNC, the Henry Jackson hawks and an unquestioning media can be seen in the case of Hamza Fakher. On 1 January, Nick Cohen wrote in the Observer: “To grasp the scale of the barbarism, listen to Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, who is one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime’s news blackout hides.”

He goes on to recount Fakher’s horrific tales of torture and mass murder. Fakher tells Cohen of a new hot-plate torture technique that he’s heard about: “imagine all the melting flesh reaching the bone before the detainee falls on the plate”. The following day, Shamik Das, writing on “evidence-based” progressive blog Left Foot Forward, quotes the same source: “Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, describes the sickening reality …” – and the account of atrocities given to Cohen is repeated.

So, who exactly is this “pro-democracy activist”, Hamza Fakher?

Fakher, it turns out, is the co-author of Revolution in Danger , a “Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing”, published in February of this year. He co-wrote this briefing paper with the Henry Jackson Society’s communications director, Michael Weiss. And when he’s not co-writing Henry Jackson Society strategic briefings, Fakher is the communication manager of the London-based Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC). According to their website, “He joined the centre in 2011 and has been in charge of the centre’s communication strategy and products.”

As you may recall, the SRCC is run by one Ausama Monajed: “Mr Monajed founded the centre in 2010. He is widely quoted and interviewed in international press and media outlets. He previously worked as communication consultant in Europe and the US and formerly served as the director of Barada Television …”.

Monajed is Fakher’s boss.

If this wasn’t enough, for a final Washington twist, on the board of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre sits Murhaf Jouejati, a professor at the National Defence University in DC – “the premier center for Joint Professional Military Education (JPME)” which is “under the direction of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

If you happen to be planning a trip to Monajed’s “Strategic Research and Communication Centre”, you’ll find it here: Strategic Research & Communication Centre, Office 36, 88-90 Hatton Garden, Holborn, London EC1N 8PN.

Office 36 at 88-90 Hatton Garden is also where you’ll find the London headquarters of The Fake Tan Company, Supercar 4 U Limited, Moola loans (a “trusted loans company”), Ultimate Screeding (for all your screeding needs), and The London School of Attraction – “a London-based training company which helps men develop the skills and confidence to meet and attract women.” And about a hundred other businesses besides. It’s a virtual office. There’s something oddly appropriate about this. A “communication centre” that doesn’t even have a centre – a grand name but no physical substance.

That’s the reality of Hamza Fakher. On 27 May, Shamik Das of Left Foot Forward quotes again from Fakher’s account of atrocities, which he now describes as an “eyewitness account” (which Cohen never said it was) and which by now has hardened into “the record of the Assad regime”.

So, a report of atrocities given by a Henry Jackson Society strategist, who is the communications manager of Mosafed’s PR department, has acquired the gravitas of a historical “record”.

This is not to suggest that the account of atrocities must be untrue, but how many of those who give it currency are scrutinising its origins?

And let’s not forget, whatever destabilisation has been done in the realm of news and public opinion is being carried out twofold on the ground. We already know that (at the very least) “the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department … are helping the opposition Free Syrian Army develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training.”

The bombs doors are open. The plans have been drawn up.

This has been brewing for a time. The sheer energy and meticulous planning that’s gone into this change of regime – it’s breathtaking. The soft power and political reach of the big foundations and policy bodies is vast, but scrutiny is no respecter of fancy titles and fellowships and “strategy briefings”. Executive director of what, it asks. Having “democracy” or “human rights” in your job title doesn’t give you a free pass.

And if you’re a “communications director” it means your words should be weighed extra carefully. Weiss and Fakher, both communications directors – PR professionals. At the Chatham House event in June 2011, Monajed is listed as: “Ausama Monajed, director of communications, National Initiative for Change” and he was head of PR for the MJD. The creator of the news website NOW Lebanon, Eli Khoury, is a Saatchi advertising executive. These communications directors are working hard to create what Tamara Wittes called a “positive brand”.

They’re selling the idea of military intervention and regime change, and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign.

But it’s never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise sources. Asking questions doesn’t make you a cheerleader for Assad – that’s a false argument. It just makes you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there’s a sceptic born every minute.

ARTICLE BY CHARLIE SKELTON @ THE GUARDIAN

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Gee YT videos and Syrian gov't sources how compelling!

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I DIDNT DO GOOGLE SEARCH I'LL OPEN TAB AND SEE IF DECAPITATION GETS A HIT AT BIGGER NEWS SOURCE

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Syrian rebels 'beheaded Christian and fed him to dogs'

http://www.theaustra...6-1226545322022

As previously noted xit happens during civil wars but the only source for this story is " Sister Agnes-Mariam de la Croix" a known Assad regime appologist.

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