Russians angered by Dutch probe
By Haris Hussain – New Straits Times – October 11, 2015
KUALA LUMPUR – JUST 48 hours before the release of the official report into the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, last year, it has emerged that the Russians are far from satisfied with the conduct of the investigations by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB).
In a scathing letter to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), Oleg Storchevoy, Russia’s deputy director of the Federal Air Transport Agency and accredited representative in the international investigation team into the MH17 tragedy, accused the DSB of ignoring “comprehensive information” relating to the investigation provided by the Russian side.
The letter, addressed to ICAO president Dr Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu, was received by the agency on Sept 16. One of Russia’s biggest concerns centred on the DSB’s approach to the probe, which Storchevoy claimed violated one of the basic principles of air accident investigations, known as the principle of sequence of conclusions.
In the letter, Storchevoy said that instead of studying the nature of the damage to the aircraft’s front fuselage and then arriving at a logical and final conclusion, the DSB sets, from the get go, to prove that the aircraft was destroyed by a BUK missile, launched from a location given right after the incident.
“This is before any research into the characteristics of the warhead which brought down the plane was done. Basic data and methods of identifying where the missile was fired from were also not explained by the DSB.”
The letter also stated that during two separate meetings with the DSB, detailed information on the 9M38 and 9M38M1 surface-to-air missile systems was provided to the probe team by the designer and manufacturer of the BUK SA-11, JSC Almaz-Antey Corporation.
These included technical specs, flight and ballistics characteristics, launch parameters, algorithms governing the detonator and characteristics of the warhead.
The DSB was also given the results of a warhead detonation test under controlled conditions to determine shrapnel dispersal patterns and what fragments of the missile could have impacted the fuselage.
“All these detailed calculations were ignored by the DSB. As a result, the DSB arrived at conclusions that contradict common sense and are not consistent with the design of this weapons system,” Storchevoy wrote, adding that there were additional discrepancies with regards to the metallurgical properties of the missile and size of the warhead. “According to the (DSB) calculations, the weight of the warhead was no more than 33kg, and the main warhead was equipped with between 3,000 and 4,000 ‘pre-formed fragments’ (flechettes) that weighed around 3g each. These do not correspond with the BUK at all.”
He added that Russia’s insistence that the flechettes and shrapnel allegedly found at the impact site — their weight, shape, sizes and material type — be identified, tagged and bagged, was ignored.
“They were submitted half a year later, after the investigation began. As a result, a year after the accident, there is no proof to connect the pre-formed fragments with missiles of any type. “Taking the abovementioned into consideration, there is no proof that this aircraft was destroyed by the BUK rocket.”
The Dutch-led investigation is operated in accordance with the standards and recommended practices under ICAO’s Annex 13. The state of occurrence (Ukraine) delegated the investigation to the DSB.
In July, Russia vetoed a United Nations resolution to create an international tribunal to prosecute those who shot down MH17. The lone “no” vote was cast by Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin. Russia is one of five permanent UN Security Council members with veto powers.
Following the vote, Churkin accused other countries of politicising the vote and said Ukraine was blocking Moscow from being involved in the investigation. Ukraine and many Western countries had accused pro-Russian rebels in east Ukraine of shooting down the Boeing 777 with 298 passengers on board with a Russian-made BUK SA-11 missile.
Moscow vehemently denies the charges.
The resolution was drafted by Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine. Malaysia had pushed for an international tribunal to try those responsible for the atrocity.
Eleven of the 15 members of the council voted in favour; China, Venezuela and Angola abstained.
Just an hour before the Malaysia-backed resolution was put to a vote, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he opposed the plan. Russia had said that setting up a tribunal before the investigations were complete would risk further politicising the incident.
Putin also regretted that Russia’s own draft resolution, which demanded justice for the victims but does not establish a tribunal, did not win the UN Security Council’s backing.
Britain’s Secret Widespread Use Of Torture
By Graham Vanbergen | TruePublica | October 6, 2015
The last British prisoner in Guantanamo Bay has claimed that Britain knew flawed evidence, used to justify the Iraq War, had been obtained under torture – and said his lengthy detention was a result of fears that he would go on the record if released.
Shaker Aamer, who is due to be freed from the US military prison after 13 years without charge, said he witnessed British agents at Bagram Air Base when a prisoner wrongly told interrogators that Iraqi forces had trained al-Qaeda in the use of weapons of mass destruction.
The evidence of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, which was later disproven, was used by George W Bush in 2002 during a hawkish speech calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein, in which he said: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.”
Mr Aamer said that despite guarantees he would be released within days, he feared he would still die in the prison, adding: “I know there are people who, even now, are working hard to keep me here.”
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “The UK does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment for any purpose.
Aamer gave statements to the Metropolitan police two years ago in which he detailed the alleged brutality he has faced, that included torture. He said he was interrogated by British agents at Bagram airbase, who knew he and others were being tortured there.
Britain has a long, dark history of torture and it has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide it. A normal functioning democracy would stand resolute that torture of any kind is not just illegal and immoral, it simply doesn’t work.
David Whyte’s recent book “How Corrupt is Britain” covers some pivotal moments in the UK’s history of torture.
In June 1975 an eminent Harley Street doctor flew to Dublin. The patient was suffering from severe angina, a condition which is ‘always associated with the risk of sudden death according to the doctor. The doctor was Dr Denis Leigh, a leading consultant psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal and the Maudsley Hospitals in London, and more importantly, medical consultant to the British Army.
The patient, Sean McKenna, was a former member of the IRA who had been subjected to so-called ‘in-depth interrogation’ following the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971, He was one of the 14 ‘hooded men’ whose infamous treatment forced the lrish state to launch a case alleging torture against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Leigh’s medical examination was being carried out on behalf of the Crown to bolster the UK defence that the men had not suffered long-term physical or psychiatric damage as a result of their interrogation.
The ‘in-depth interrogation’ that McKenna and the others were subjected to consisted of five techniques that had been widely used by the British army in counter-insurgency campaigns in Aden, Cyprus, Malaya, Palestine and elsewhere – hooding, white noise, wall standing in a stress position and of course regular beatings.
Dr Leigh found that McKenna’s condition was known to British army doctors before the interrogation went ahead, and ‘it would be hard to show that it was wise to proceed with the interrogation, and that the interrogation did not have the effect of worsening his angina’.
In fact McKenna’s psychiatric condition was such that he had been released from Long Kesh internment camp in May 1972 directly into the care of a psychiatric unit. His daughter described ‘a very broken man, sitting crying, very shaky’. Four days after the June 1975 medical examination Sean McKenna died. He had suffered a massive heart attack.
In 1976 the European Human Rights Commission (EHRC) upheld a complaint by Ireland that the treatment of the ‘hooded men’ constituted torture, and referred the case to the European Court of Human Rights for judgement. The Commission had condemned the five techniques as a ‘modern system of torture’.
Britain was one of the original signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, had been found to have sanctioned torture.
Successive UK governments, rather than comply with their legal obligation to ‘search and try’ allegations of torture, adopted a policy more akin to ‘hide and lie’. This was to have consequences many years later. The inquiry into the 2003 murder of an Iraqi civilian, Baha Mousa, by British soldiers was told that the five techniques had again been used in Iraq by every single battle group in the field.
ln ‘Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture,’ Guardian journalist Ian Cobain provides damning evidence that the UK government did in fact ‘do’ torture, and had been doing so for decades in counter-insurgency wars from Brunei to Aden, and from Ireland to lraq. In June 2013 UK foreign secretary William Hague apologised in Parliament for the torture of Mau Mau suspects in Kenya during the 1950s. Over £50 million was paid out in compensation to some 5,000 Kenyan victims. ln 1972 prime minister Edward Heath had promised Parliament that the ‘five techniques’ torture techniques would never be used again.
As declassified documents now show, prime ministers and cabinet colleagues over the decades actually went to great lengths to ensure that those responsible for torture would not face sanction or prosecution and actively covered up these crimes.
In another case in Afghanistan, among the Britons who were picked up was a man called Jamal al-Harith. Born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, Harith had converted to Islam in his 20s and travelled widely in the Muslim world before arriving in Afghanistan. After 9/11, he had been imprisoned by the Taliban, who suspected him of being a British spy. A British journalist found Harith languishing in the prison in January 2002 and alerted British diplomats in Kabul, believing they would arrange his repatriation. Instead, they arranged for him to be detained by US forces, who took him straight to an interrogation centre at Kandahar.
Harith then spent two years at Guantánamo, being kicked, punched, slapped, shackled in painful positions, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of sleep. He was refused adequate water supplies and fed on food with date markings 10 or 12 years old. On one occasion, he says, he was chained and severely beaten for refusing an injection. He estimates he was interrogated about 80 times, usually by Americans but sometimes by British intelligence officers.
In all, nine British nationals were sent to the maximum-security prison at Guantánamo, along with at least nine former British residents. All were incarcerated for years, and from the moment they arrived they suffered torture including regular beatings, threats and sleep deprivation. All were interrogated by MI5 officers and some also by MI6.
In December 2005, the full truth about British complicity in rendition and torture was still such a deeply buried official secret that Jack Straw felt able to reassure MPs on the Commons foreign affairs committee about the allegations starting to surface in the media. “Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories,” he said, “there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition or that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States”. Straw was lying.
Over the next few years, men were rendered not only from the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, but from Kenya, Pakistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania, Gambia, Zambia, Thailand and the US itself. The US was running a global kidnapping programme on the basis of agreements reached at a Nato meeting.
Quietly, Britain pledged logistics support for the rendition programme, which resulted in the CIA’s jets becoming frequent visitors to British airports en route to the agency’s secret prisons on at least 210 times.
It has since been discovered that throughout the postwar period, it seemed, there had been a network of secret British prisons, hidden from the Red Cross, where men thought to pose a threat to the state could be kept for years and systematically tormented, tortured and sometimes murdered.
It is now known that MI5 have a department called the “international terrorism-related agent running section”: the section routinely responsible for interviewing suspected terrorists. The MI5 officers who were interrogating al-Qaida suspects – men who were being tortured in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere around the world – were agent handlers. It appeared that MI5 was seeking to recruit torture victims as double agents.
Within two months of the May 2010 general election, under pressure from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, as well as some of his own backbenchers, the new prime minister, David Cameron, announced the establishment of a judge-led inquiry into the UK’s involvement in torture and rendition. The man appointed to head the inquiry was named as Sir Peter Gibson, a retired judge. It is possible that MI5 and MI6 had a hand in his selection; for the previous four years Gibson had served as the intelligence services commissioner. Rights groups suggested that Gibson should be appearing before the inquiry as a witness rather than presiding over it.
In July 2011, most major international and British human rights groups, including Amnesty International, said they would be boycotting the inquiry. The following month, lawyers representing victims of Britain’s torture operations announced that they, too, would have nothing to do with it. Six months later, the government announced that the Gibson inquiry was scrapped.
Cameron’s government then brought forward a green paper that suggested a need for greater courtroom secrecy. Britain’s complicity in torture was to continue to be a dirty dark state secret.
None of this squares with Britain’s reputation as a nation that prides itself on its love of fair play and respect for the rule of law. Successive British government’s continues to preach to other nations around the world of the importance of justice, transparency and democracy whilst disregarding essentials such as these back at home.
Deconstructing the NATO Narrative on Syria
By Eva Bartlett | Dissident Voice | October 10, 2015
Over the past five years, the increasingly ridiculous propaganda against President al-Assad and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has ranged from the scripted (OTPOR fomented -“revolution“) “peaceful protesters under fire” rhetoric, to other deceitful lexicon like “civil war,” and “moderate rebels.”
As the intervention campaigns continue with new terrorist and “humanitarian” actors (literally) constantly emerging in the NATO-alliance’s theatre of death squads, it is worth reviewing some of the important points regarding the war on Syria.
Million Person Marches
On March 29, 2011 (less than two weeks into the fantasy “revolution”) over 6 million people across Syria took to the streets in support of President al-Assad. In June, a reported hundreds of thousands marched in Damascus in support of the president, with a 2.3 km long Syrian flag. In November, 2011 (9 months into the chaos), masses again held demonstrations supporting President al-Assad, notably in Homs (the so-called “capital of the ‘revolution’”), Dara’a (the so-called “birthplace of the ‘revolution’”), Deir ez-Zour, Raqqa, Latakia, and Damascus.
Mass demonstrations like this have occurred repeatedly since, including in March 2012, in May 2014 in the lead-up to Presidential elections, and in June 2015, to note just some of the larger rallies.
In May 2013, it was reported that even NATO recognized the Syrian president’s increased popularity. “The data, relayed to NATO over the last month, asserted that 70 percent of Syrians support” the Assad government. At present, the number is now at least 80 percent.
The most telling barometer of Assad’s support base was the Presidential elections in June 2014, which saw 74 percent (11.6 million) of 15.8 million registered Syrian voters vote, with President al-Assad winning 88 percent of the votes. The lengths Syrians outside of Syria went to in order to vote included flooding the Syrian embassy in Beirut for two full days (and walking several kilometres to get there) and flying from countries with closed Syrian embassies to Damascus airport simply to cast their votes. Within Syria, Syrians braved terrorist mortars and rockets designed to keep them from voting; 151 shells were fired on Damascus alone, killing 5 and maiming 33 Syrians.
For a more detailed look at his broad base of popular support, see Professor Tim Anderson’s “Why Syrians Support Bashar al Assad.”
The Reforms
Prior to the events of March 2011 Syrians did have legitimate desires for specific reforms, many of which were implemented from the beginning of the unrest. In fact, President al-Assad made reforms prior to and following March 17, 2011.
Stephen Gowans noted some of those early reforms, including:
- Canceling the Emergency Law;
- Amending the the constitution and putting it to a referendum [8.4 million Syrians voted; 7.5 million voted in favour of the constitution];
- Scheduling, then holding, multi-party parliamentary and presidential elections
The constitution, according to Gowans, “mandated that the government maintain a role in guiding the economy on behalf of Syrian interests, and that the Syrian government would not make Syrians work for the interests of Western banks, oil companies, and other corporations.”
It also included:
- “security against sickness, disability and old age; access to health care; free education at all levels”
- a provision “requiring that at minimum half the members of the People’s Assembly are to be drawn from the ranks of peasants and workers.”
Political commentator Jay Tharappel further articulated:
The new constitution introduced a multi-party political system in the sense that the eligibility of political parties to participate isn’t based on the discretionary permission of the Baath party or on reservations, rather on a constitutional criteria… the new constitution forbids political parties that are based on religion, sect or ethnicity, or which are inherently discriminatory towards one’s gender or race. (2012: Art.8)
No surprise that NATO’s exile-Syrian pawns refused the reforms and a constitution which ensures a sovereign Syria secure from the claws of multi-national corporations and Western banks.
In his article, “Decriminalising Bashar – towards a more effective anti-war movement,” writer Carlos Martinez outlined Syria’s positives, including its anti-imperialist, socialist policies; its secularism and multiculturalism; and—poignantly—its continued support for Palestinians and anti-Zionist stance.
These are all points that contradict the lies spewed over the past nearly five years, and shatter the feeble justification for continuing to wage war on Syria.
Twisting the Numbers to Serve the War Agenda
The number and nature of Syrians killed varies depending on which list one consults. Many talking heads draw from one sole source, UK-based Syrian Rami Abdulrahman of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) (run out of his home and based on information provided largely by unnamed “activists”). Abdulrahman hasn’t been to Syria for 15 years, and, as Tony Cartalucci noted, is “a member of the so-called ‘Syrian opposition’ and seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.” Further, Cartalucci explained, “Abdul Rahman’s operation is indeed funded by the European Union and a “European country” he refuses to identify.” So not an impartial source.
In her February 2012 “Questioning the Syrian Casualty List,” political analyst Sharmine Narwani laid out the logistical difficulties of collating the number of deaths, including:
- Different casualty lists and difficulty confirming accuracy of any of them.
- Lack of information on: how deaths were verified and by whom and from what motivation.
- Lack of information on the dead: civilian, pro or anti government civilians; armed groups; Syrian security forces?”
She found that one early casualty list included 29 Palestinian refugees “killed by Israeli fire on the Golan Heights on 15 May 2011 and 5 June 2011 when protesters congregated on Syria’s armistice line with Israel.”
Jay Tharappel looked at two of the other prime groups cited regarding casualties in Syria: the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) and the Violations Documentation Center (VDC).
He noted that neither of the groups “are ‘independent’ in the sense that they function merely to provide facts, they’re all open about their agenda to overthrow the Syrian government…and for the imposition of a no-fly zone on behalf of the ‘moderate rebels’, whoever they are.”
Further, according to Tharappel, “the SNHR doesn’t provide any evidence to substantiate its assertions about the numbers killed by government forces. They claim to have ‘documented [victims] by full name, place, and date of death,’ however none of these can be found on their website.”
Regarding the VDC, he wrote, “there are good reasons to believe the VDC is listing dead insurgents as civilians, as well as mislabeling dead government soldiers as FSA fighters.”
One example he cited was the listing of a Jaysh al-Islam militant, ‘Hisham Al-Sheikh Bakri’, killed by the SAA in Douma (infested with Jaysh al-Islam terrorists), in February 2015, which al-Masdar News reported. The VDC also listed ‘Hisham Abd al-Aziz al-Shaikh Bakri’, “however this one is listed as an adult male civilian and not a Jaish Al-Islam fighter,” Tharappel wrote.
Even embedded war reporter Nir Rosen, Tharappel recalled, in 2012 wrote:
Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes.
It would be an understatement to say there are considerable, and intentional, inaccuracies in the lists of these groups. In fact, most of the aforementioned groups fail to note what commentators like Paul Larudee did:
The UN estimates 220,000 deaths thus far in the Syrian war. But almost half are Syrian army soldiers or allied local militia fighters, and two thirds are combatants if we count opposition fighters. Either way, the ratio of civilian to military casualties is roughly 1:2, given that the opposition is also inflicting civilian casualties. Compare that to the roughly 3:1 ratio in the US war in Iraq and 4:1 in the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-9. (The rate of Palestinian to Israeli casualties was an astronomical 100:1.)
“Leftists” Keeping the Myths Alive
Public figures like Owen Jones, and pro-Palestinian sites like the Middle East Eye and the Electronic Intifada, have a following for their more palatable (and safe) solidarity stance on Palestine, but routinely spew rhetoric against Syria, which is then echoed by their well-intentioned, if very misinformed, followers.
Much of grassroots “Leftists”’ anti-Syria propaganda is as poisonous as corporate media. Routinely, at ostensibly anti-war/anti-Imperialist gatherings, the anti-Syria narrative is predominant.
For example, at the March 2015 World Social Forum in Tunis, some Syria-specific panels spun the fairy tale of “revolutionaries” in Syria, one panel alleging: “The protests in Syria were peaceful for almost six or seven months; 6-7000 unarmed people were killed; only then did ‘rebels’ eventually take up arms.”
Yet, it is known that from the beginning, in Dara’a and throughout Syria, armed protesters were firing upon, and butchering, security forces and civilians. Tim Anderson’s “Syria: how the violence began, in Daraa” pointed out that police were killed by snipers in the March 17/18 protests; the Syrian army was only brought to Dara’a following the murder of the policemen. Additionally, a storage of protesters’ weapons was found in Dara’a’s al-Omari mosque.
Prem Shankar Jha’s, “Who Fired The First Shot?” described the slaughter of 20 Syrian soldiers outside Dara’a a month later, “by cutting their throats, and cutting off the head of one of the soldiers.” A very “moderate”-rebel practice.
In “Syria: The Hidden Massacre” Sharmine Narwani investigated the early massacres of Syrian soldiers, noting that many of the murders occurred even after the Syrian government had abolished the state security courts, lifted the state of emergency, granted general amnesties, and recognized the right to peaceful protest.
The April 10, 2011 murder of Banyas farmer Nidal Janoud was one of the first horrific murders of Syrian civilians by so-called “unarmed protesters.” Face gashed open, mutilated and bleeding, Janoud was paraded by an armed mob, who then hacked him to death.
Father Frans Van der Ludt—the Dutch priest living in Syria for nearly 5 decades prior to his April 7, 2014 assassination by militants occupying the old city of Homs—wrote (repeatedly) of the “armed demonstrators” he saw in early protests, “who began to shoot at the police first.”
May 2011 video footage of later-resigned Al Jazeera journalist Ali Hashem shows fighters entering Syria from Lebanon, carrying guns and RPGs (Hashem stated he’d likewise seen fighters entering in April). Al Jazeera refused to air the May footage, telling Hashem to ‘forget there are armed men.’ [See: Sharmine Narwani’s “Surprise Video Changes Syria “Timeline””] Unarmed protesters?
The Sectarian Card: Slogans and Massacres
What sectarianism we see in Syria today was delivered primarily by the Wahabi and Muslim Brotherhood (MB) regimes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and by Turkey, with NATO’s blessing and backing. The cross-sect make-up of both the Syrian State and the Syrian army alone speaks of Syria’s intentional secularism, as well as the prevalent refusal of average Syrians to self-identify along sectarian lines.
On the other hand, from the beginning, the West’s “nonviolent protesters” were chanting sectarian slogans, notably, “Christians to Beirut, Alawis to the grave.” Other popular chants included: calling for the extermination of all Alawis; pledging allegiance to Saudi-based extremist Syrian Sheikh Adnan Arour and to extremist MB supporting Egyptian Sheikh, Yusuf al-Qardawi.
Qatar-based Qaradawi advocates killing Syrian civilians: “It is OK to kill one third of the Syrian population if it leads to the toppling of the heretical regime.” The inflammatory Arour said about Syria’s Alawis: “By Allah we shall mince them in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs.”
The NATO alliance’s terrorists have committed numerous massacres of Syrian civilians and soldiers, many of which were intended to sow sectarianism, including:
- The June 2011 Jisr al Shugour, Idlib, massacre of up to 120 people (soldiers and civilians) by between 500-600 so-called FSA terrorists; blamed on the SAA as having killed “military deserters”. [see Prem Shankar Jha’s article “Syria – Who fired the first shot?”]
- The Houla massacre of over 100 civilians on May 25, 2012, which only 2 days later the UN claimed—without an investigation— had been committed by the Syrian Army. [See Tim Anderson’s detailed rebuttal, “The Houla Massacre Revisited: “Official Truth” in the Dirty War on Syria” In the same article, Anderson also looked at the August 2012 Daraya massacre of 245 people and the December 2012 Aqrab massacre of up to 150 villagers.
- The August 2013 massacre of at least 220 civilians (including a fetus, many children, women, elderly) and kidnapping of at least 100 (mostly women and children) in villages in the Latakia countryside.
- The December 2013 massacre of at least 80 residents (many “slaughtered like sheep”, decapitated, burned in bakery ovens) in Adra industrial village.
- The continued terrorist-mortaring of civilian areas and schools; the repeated terrorist-car-bombing of civilian areas and schools. [see: “The Terrorism We Support in Syria: A First-hand Account of the Use of Mortars against Civilians”]
Yet, in spite of outside forces attempts to sow sectarianism in Syria, the vast majority of Syrian people refuse it. Re-visiting Syria in July 2015, Professor Tim Anderson recounted that Latakia alone “has grown from 1.3 million to around 3 million people – they come from all parts, not just Aleppo, also Hama, Deir eZorr, and other areas.” He also visited Sweida, a mainly Druze region, which has accommodated “135,000 families, mainly from Daraa – others from other parts”. Mainly Sunni families.
The Syrian “Civil War”?!
Given that:
- At least 80,000 terrorists from over 80 countries are fighting as mercenaries in Syria;
- Israel has repeatedly bombed Syria [examples here, here and here];
- Israel is treating al-Qaeda terrorists in their hospitals and enabling their transit back and forth into Syria, as well as arming them—even Israeli media have reported that Israel is providing aid to al-Qaeda terrorists; even the UN has reported on Israeli soldiers interacting with Jebhat al-Nusra in the occupied Syrian Golan;
- Turkey is not only arming and funneling terrorists into Syria but also repeatedly co-attacks Syria;
- the whole crisis was manufactured in imperialist think tanks years before the 2011 events;
…“Civil war” is the absolute last term that could be used to describe the war on Syria.
In 2002, then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria (and Libya, Cuba) to the “rogue states” of George W Bush’s “Axis of Evil,”…meaning Syria was on the list of countries to “bring democracy to” (aka destroy) even back then.
Anthony Cartalucci’s “US Planned Syrian Civilian Catastrophe Since 2007” laid out a number of pivotal statements and events regarding not only the war on Syria but also the events which would be falsely-dubbed the “Arab Spring.” Points include:
- General Wesley Clark’s revelation of US plans to destroy the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
- Seymour Hersh’s 2007 “The Redirection” on NATO and allies’ arming and training of sectarian extremists to create sectarian divide in Lebanon, Syria and beyond.
The 2009 Brookings Institution report, “Which Path to Persia?”, on plans to weaken Syria and Lebanon, to later attack Iran.
Further, Stephen Gowans reported:
- U.S. funding to the Syrian opposition began flowing under the Bush administration in 2005.
- Since its founding in October 2011, the Syrian National Council has received $20.4 million from Libya, $15 million from Qatar, $5 million from the UAE.
Former French Minister for Foreign Affairs, Roland Dumas, in a June 2013 TV interview spoke of his meeting (two years prior) with British officials who confessed that:
Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned.
More recent evidence of the NATO-alliance plot against Syria includes a June 2012 NY Times article noting the CIA support for “rebels” in Syria, including providing and funneling “automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons” from Turkey to Syria. The article said:
A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.
In October 2014, Serena Shim, a US journalist working for Press TV, was killed in a highly suspicious car crash near Turkey’s border with Syria shortly after reporting she had been threatened by Turkish intelligence. Shim had previously reported she had photos of “militants going in through the Turkish border… I’ve got images of them in World Food Organization trucks.”
Similar statements have been made. For example, testimony of a Turkish driver explaining “how vehicles would be accompanied by MİT agents during the trip, which would start from the Atme camp in Syria and end at the border town of Akçakale in Şanlıurfa Province, where the militants and cargo would reenter Syria.”
In July, 2015, Press TV reported that terrorists caught in Aleppo confessed to receiving training by US and Gulf personnel in Turkey.
As I wrote, “in a November 2014 report, the Secretary-General mentioned the presence of al-Nusra and other terrorists in the ceasefire area ‘unloading weapons from a truck,’ as well as a ‘vehicle with a mounted anti-aircraft gun’ and Israeli ‘interactions’ with ‘armed gangs.’”
Given all of this, and America’s plan to train up to 15,000 more “rebels” over the next three years, it is beyond ridiculous that the inappropriate term “civil war” continues to be propagated.
DA’ESH and Other Moderates
In June, 2015, Anthony Cartalucci wrote about a recently-released 2012 Department of Defense document which admitted that the US foresaw ISIS’ establishing a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want….”
He outlined the flow of weapons and terrorists from Libya to Syria, via Turkey, “coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies in Benghazi – a terrorist hotbed for decades,” as well as weapons from Eastern Europe.
Earlier “moderates” include the Farouq Brigades‘ (of the so-called “FSA”) organ-eating terrorist “Abu Sakkar,” and those numerous “FSA” and al-Nusra militants who committed the massacres listed above, to name but a portion.
“Human Rights” Front Groups Promoting War Rhetoric
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Avaaz, Moveon, and lesser-known, newly-created groups like The Syria Campaign, The White Helmets, and Action Group for Palestinians in Syria, are complicit in war-propagandizing and even calling for a (Libya 2.0) no-fly-zone bombing campaign of Syria.
On HRW, geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser noted:
Human Rights Watch is undeniably an appendage of US foreign policy. It is in many ways part of the ‘soft power’ arm of US power projection, a means of delegitimizing, demonizing, and otherwise destabilizing countries that do not play ball with the US…
Vigilant Twitter users have called out HRW’s lying Ken Roth for tweeting a photo he claimed to be Aleppo’s destruction from “barrel bombs” but which was, in fact, Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) post-Da’esh attacks and US-coalition bombs. In another outrageous case, Roth tweeted a video of the flattened al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza, devastated by Israeli bombing in 2014, purporting it to be Aleppo.
Again, he was called out, forcing a weak retraction. Post-retraction, he tweeted yet another image of destruction, again claiming it to be from “Assad’s barrel bombs” but which was according to the photo byline Hamidiyeh, Aleppo, where “local popular committee fighters, who support the Syrian government forces, try to defend the traditionally Christian district” against ISIS.
On Amnesty International, Anthony Cartalucci wrote:
Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros (whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other “human rights” advocates). Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance, was drawn directly from the US State Department…
Highlighting just one instance of AI’s slick maneuvering, Rick Sterling, in his May 2015 “Eight Problems with Amnesty’s Report on Aleppo Syria” outed Amnesty for not only normalizing sending weapons to terrorists in Syria but suggesting how to do so in an underhand means. He emphasized:
This is an amazing statement, effectively sanctioning the supplying of arms to insurgents who agree to follow ‘humanitarian’ rules of war.
Sterling further noted that Amnesty:
- relied on groups “either based in, or receiving funds from, Turkey, USA or one of the other countries heavily involved in seeking overthrow of the Damascus government.
- did not seek testimonies from the “two-thirds of the displaced persons in Syria INSIDE Syria…people who fled Aleppo and are now living in Homs, Latakia, Damascus or in Aleppo under government control.”
In “Humanitarians for War on Syria” Sterling elaborated on the intervention campaign:
The goal is to prepare the public for a “No Fly Zone” enforced by US and other military powers. This is how the invasion of Iraq began. This is how the public was prepared for the US/NATO air attack on Libya.
The results of western ‘regime change’ in Iraq and Libya have been disastrous. … Avaaz is ramping up its campaign trying to reach 1 million people signing a petition for a “Safe Zone” in Syria.
Sterling wrote on the “White Helmets”, “created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor…” He noted the ties between WH and anti-Syria actors, including Jabat al-Nusra. One example of their propaganda: “Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda (sic).”
Vanessa Beeley’s “‘White Helmets’: New Breed of Mercenaries and Propagandists, Disguised as ‘Humanitarians’ in Syria” further flushed out the propaganda elements of the WH operation and their parroting of the MSM/HR industry anti-Syrian rhetoric.
The list of “humanitarian” actors is long, and the list of their war-propagating lies even longer. [see: “Human Rights” front groups (“Humanitarian Interventionalists”) warring on Syria]
The Yarmouk Card
A district of Damascus formerly housing over one million residents, of whom 160,000 were Palestinian refugees, according to the UN, the rest Syrians, the plight of Yarmouk neighbourhood has been used by “humanitarian” campaigners to pull at heartstrings and to further confuse supporters of Palestine on the subject of Syria and the State’s treatment of Palestinians. In fact, Syria has been one of Palestine’s greatest advocates and friends, providing Palestinian refugees in Syria with a quality of life equal to that of Syrians, including free education, health care and other social services. The same cannot even remotely be said of any of Palestine’s neighbouring countries, where Palestinian refugees languish in abysmal refugee camps and are denied the right to professional employment, and affordable and quality health care and education, much less dignity.
The United Nations, the HR industry, and the media obfuscate on Yarmouk, ignoring or whitewashing both the presence of various terrorist groups and the role of some Palestinian factions in enabling these groups entry, as well as fighting alongside them against the Syrian government. Talking heads also pointedly ignore the Syrian government-facilitated evacuations of Yarmouk residents to government, community, and UN provided shelters. They likewise ignore the documented repeated and continuous terrorists attacks on government and other aid distribution within the neighbourhood, as well as on anti-terrorist demonstrations held by Yarmouk residents.
One such demonstration occurred in May 2013, with UK-media Sky News’ Tim Marshall present as demonstrators came under so-called “rebel” fire. He reported:
… Some screamed at us: “Please tell the world the truth! We don’t want the fighters here, we want the army to kill them!”… About 1,000 people were in the demonstration. …The shooting began almost immediately. A man went down, followed by others. …As they passed us a man stopped and shouted that he was sure the fighters were not Syrians but men paid to come to Damascus and kill people…
In his April 2015 “Who Are the Starving and Besieged Residents of Yarmouk and Why Are They There?” Paul Larudee asked:
Who are the remaining civilians and why are they refusing to evacuate to outside shelter like so many others? Local humanitarian relief supervisors report (personal communication) that some of them are not from Yarmouk and some are not Palestinian. They include the families of Syrian and foreign fighters that are trying to overthrow the Syrian government by force of arms, and some of them came from districts adjacent to Yarmouk, such as the Daesh stronghold of Hajar al-Aswad.
Larudee’s article further addressed the issues of:
- the Syrian government allowing food aid into the district: “…it has allowed the stockpiling of supplies on the edge of the camp and it has permitted civilians from inside to collect and distribute the aid….”
- the Syrian military’s siege tactic (combined with evacuation of civilians): “The objective is to remove the civilians from the area as much as possible and then attack the enemy or provoke surrender…”
Analyst Sharmine Narwani observed:
The Syrian government has every right to blockade the border areas between Yarmouk and Damascus to prevent extremist gunmen from entering the capital. I have been in Yarmouk several times, including last year, and have talked to aid workers inside the camp, including UNRWA. The Syrian government, in their view, assists in getting aid and food to refugee populations inside the camp – contrary to western narratives and those activists like the EI activists… most of whom appear not to have set foot inside Yarmouk since the early days of the conflict.
Although the figure of 18,000 remaining Palestinians in Yarmouk may have been accurate in October 2013, today, after the evacuation of thousands, anti-Syria publications continue to cite 18,000. Journalist Lizzie Phelan, who visited Yarmouk in September 2015, says the number remaining is around 4,000.
Most media and HR groups are not reporting that there are Palestinian fighters fighting alongside the SAA, in Yarmouk and other parts of Syria, against the NATO-alliance’s fighters. Al Masdar News reported in June 2015:
…ISIS originally launched a successful offensive at the Yarmouk Camp District in the month of March; however, after a joint counter-assault by the PFLP-GC, Fatah Al-Intifada, the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), and members of Aknef Al-Maqdis; ISIS was forced to withdrawal to the southern sector of the district, leaving only the southern axis under their control.
Sharmine Narwani’s “Stealing Palestine: Who dragged Palestinians into Syria’s conflict?” is essential reading, to understand the current situation in Syria vis-a-vis its Palestinian refugees. As for Palestinians themselves, the Syria Solidarity Movement published a statement which emphasized that “more than 1101 Palestinian groups and individuals declare their solidarity with the Syrian people and the Syrian state.” Signatories include Jerusalem’s Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the Palestinian Popular Forum, Yarmouk, and other Palestinian Yarmouk residents.
Serial Chemical Offenders Remain at Large
Israel has on more than one occasion used prohibited chemical and other weapons on the locked-down nearly 2 million Palestinians of Gaza. During the 2008/2009 Israeli massacre of Gaza, the Israeli army rained white phosphorous on schools sheltering displaced Palestinian families, on homes, and on hospitals (of which I gathered video, photo and witness evidence at the time). Israel also used DIME on the Palestinians of Gaza. Yet, Israel remains unpunished, and receives ever increasing billions of dollars and new weaponry every year. Nor has the US ever been held accountable for its widespread criminal use of CW, such as on the people of Vietnam, of Iraq.
The US and HR actors have repeatedly—and without evidence—accused Syria of using Sarin gas, then Chlorine, accusations which have been amply refuted. Seymour Hersh’s probe on the sarin attacks was so damning US mainstream media wouldn’t print it.
In rebuttal to the May 2015 accusation of chlorine attacks — as always followed with human rights groups’ calls for a No-Fly Zone —Stephen Gowans wrote:
As a weapon, chlorine gas is exceedingly ineffective. It is lethal only in highly concentrated doses and where medical treatment is not immediately available. It is far less effective than conventional weapons. Why, then, would the Syrian army use a highly ineffective weapon, which is deplored by world public opinion, and whose use would provide the United States a pretext to directly intervene militarily in Syria, when it has far more effective conventional weapons, which are not deplored by world public opinion, and whose use does not deliver a pretext to Washington to intervene? (See also Gowans’ “New York Times Complicit in Spreading False Syria Allegations”)
Tim Anderson investigated the August 2013 Ghouta attacks, pointing out:
- UN investigator Carla del Ponte had testimony from victims that ‘rebels’ had used sarin gas in a prior attack
- Turkish security forces sarin in the homes of Jabhat al Nusra fighters.
- Evidence of video manipulation in the Ghouta attacks.
- “Parents identified children in photos as those kidnapped in Latakia, two weeks earlier.”
- “CW had been supplied by Saudis to ‘rebel’ groups, some locals had died due to mishandling.”
- “Three of five CW attacks were ‘against soldiers’ or ‘against soldiers and civilians’.”
The Interventionalists have tried repeatedly to accuse the Syrian government of CWs usage; yet the real criminals remain at large.
Against Incitement, For Peace
Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari, in May, 2015, said that spreading incitement and lies on Syria is a blatant violation of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution No. 1624 for 2005 and of journalism ethics if any, SANA reported.
Syrian media, which attempts to report the reality of Syria under attack, has been repeatedly targeted, something the MSM refuses to acknowledge (See: Media Black-Out on Arab Journalists and Civilians Beheaded in Syria by Western-Backed Mercenaries).
As the NATO-alliance pushes for a “safe zone”…meaning a “no-fly zone” for the purpose of bombing Syria, anti-war activists and journalists must denounce the lies of anti-Syria governments and “human rights” groups, and must share the truth of Syria’s war against terrorism.
Since drafting this lengthy Syria-101 overview, there have been major shifts in Syria’s war against foreign-backed terrorism, namely Russia’s recent airstrikes against Da’esh and co. This increase in Russian support for Syria—with Russian planes destroying more Da’esh and other western-backed terrorists and their training camps in just a few days than the US coalition has over the past year—is a turning point in the war on Syria. Predictably, corporate media are pulling all the stops to demonize Russia‘s involvement, although Russia was invited by the Syrian government to do precisely what it is doing.
Those following Syria closely have echoed what Syrian leadership has said for years and continues to say: the way to stop ISIS and all its brethren terrorist factions, and to bring security to the region, is to cease arming, financing, training and funneling terrorists and weapons into Syria, silence the sectarian indoctrination coming from Gulf extremist sheikhs, and support the Syrian army and allies in their fight for security and stability in Syria.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon. Visit Eva’s website.
Turkey imposes broadcast ban on Ankara bomb blast
MEMO | October 10, 2015
Turkey has imposed a temporary ban on showing images of Saturday’s bomb attack in Ankara for reasons of “public security”.
The ban also includes images of the aftermath of attack on a peace protest outside the city’s main train station.
The Supreme Board of Radio and Television said the prime minister’s office decided to impose the ban.
In a written statement, the board said the ban was imposed due to “security reasons” and “public security”. Such bans are usually put in place to prevent the spread of what the government refers to as terrorist propaganda.
Broadcasters can still cover statements about the twin blasts and air commentary.
Guardian accused of passing off terrorist “hell cannon” as “barrel bombs”
The caption of this image on the Guardian currently reads: “An unverified photo of an unexploded barrel bomb alleged to contain napalm gel.”
OffGuardian | October 10, 2015
Robert Stuart, the indefatigable challenger of the media narrative through his analysis of the BBC’s “Saving Syria’s Children” program, is now taking on the Guardian. Below we publish his recent letter to the Graun’s complaints department regarding its use of a photo it claimed was a Syrian “barrel bomb”, but which is apparently no such thing.
Please share this as widely as possible and feel free to write your own emails or letters to the Guardian if you feel it is appropriate.
From: Robert Stuart
Sent: 07 October 2015 16:07:44
To: guardian.readers@theguardian.com
Syrian civil defence group accuses Assad of napalm attack near Damascus – The Guardian, 12 August 2015
Dear Mr Elliott,
I wish to complain that the above print and web article breaches the Guardian News & Media’s Editorial Code, which states (p8):
The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
I. An image in the article is captioned “An unverified photo of an unexploded barrel bomb alleged to contain napalm gel.”
As several comments below the online version of the article note [1] the image in fact quite clearly shows an opposition “Hell Cannon” mortar device. Numerous images [2] and videos [3] of these munitions, which are fashioned from domestic cooking gas canisters, in the hands of opposition fighters in Syria can readily be found online.
II. A correction to the web article states:
This article was amended to [sic] 13 August 2015 to remove a description of the Syrian Civil Defence as “aligned to the opposition”. The SCD argue that they are a neutral organisation and not aligned to any political group.
Rick Sterling, co-founder of Syria Solidarity Movement, observes [4]:
White Helmets is the newly minted name for “Syrian Civil Defence”. Despite the name, Syria Civil Defence was not created by Syrians nor does it serve Syria. Rather it was created by the UK and USA in 2013. Civilians from rebel controlled territory were paid to go to Turkey to receive some training in rescue operations. The program was managed by James Le Mesurier, a former British soldier and private contractor whose company is based in Dubai.
Sterling adds:
The trainees are said to be ‘nonpartisan’ but only work in rebel-controlled areas of Idlib (now controlled by Nusra/Al Queda) and Aleppo.
The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Queda in Syria). Video of the recent alleged chlorine gas attacks starts with the White Helmet logo and continues with the logo of Nusra. In reality, White Helmets is a small rescue team for Nusra/Al Queda.
But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention.
Numerous images and videos posted online make shockingly and abundantly plain the partisan and non-peaceful character of the Syrian Civil Defence/White Helmets. [5]
I suggest therefore that the amendment of the original, accurate, description of the Syrian Civil Defence as “aligned to the opposition” also breaches the Guardian Editors’ Code in respect of accuracy.
Yours sincerely
Robert Stuart
NOTES
[1]
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/57434207
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/57435927
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/57440161
http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/57437178
[2]
[3]
https://thewallwillfall.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/syria-welcome-to-hell/
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ac6_1439473586
[4]
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/04/seven-steps-of-highly-effective-manipulators/
[5]
http://m.liveleak.com/view?i=fd8_1430900709 – “Syria – So-called “White Helmets” facilitate an al Nusra execution”
https://youtu.be/d-gfgqi45pI?t=15m54s – “White Helmets” carrying weapons (15:55 and 17:05, still images here http://on.fb.me/1hrYO59 and here http://on.fb.me/1X6gHrd)
https://youtu.be/DE6yIIzxaBE?t=10m22s – Haj Abu Ahmad of the Civil Defence Force is translated as follows:
(From 10:23) “Glad tidings have reached us in Jisr al-Shghor on the hands of our mujahedeen brothers, may Allah strengthen them and make them steadfast on the correct way, and soon Insha’Allah the strongholds of the Assad regime in Latakya and Damascus will be liberated”. (Still images here http://on.fb.me/1EtnlBF and here http://on.fb.me/1X6iQTL).
(From 11:11) “Now we secure the families and transfer them to a safe place, outside of Jisr al-Shughor and we also search for injured civilians, as for the dead bodies, we put them in bodybags after identifying them so we can send [news of them] to their families. Finally we collect the bodies of the Shabiha (Assad regime militia) and throw them in the trash.” (Still image here: http://on.fb.me/1FcDMNw).
https://youtu.be/cs75QuGSaGg?t=6m3s – “White Helmet” gives victory sign over corpses of presumed Syrian government forces members (6:07, still image here http://on.fb.me/1O3SRWI).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkGszvFrf-8 – “White Helmet” jubilantly waving black flag of Jabat al Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) (35 seconds, still image here http://bit.ly/1OY8BOE).
US can’t rescue CIA-trained terrorists in Syria: American officials
Press TV – October 10, 2015
Militants trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fight against the Syrian government are now under Russian missile strikes with little prospect of rescue by their American supporters, according to US officials.
Russia has directed parts of its military campaign against US-backed terrorists and other extremist groups in an effort to weaken them, The Associated Press reported on Saturday, citing unnamed US officials.
The Obama administration has few options to defend those it had secretly trained and armed, the officials say.
US Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas who serves on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press the Russians “know their targets, and they have a sophisticated capacity to understand the battlefield situation.”
The CIA began its covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train terrorists to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The covert CIA program has floundered for years, so much so that some lawmakers in Congress proposed cutting its budget.
Some CIA-trained terrorists have been captured; others have defected to other extremist groups, such al-Nusra Front.
“Probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.
Since 2013, the CIA has trained approximately 10,000 terrorists. The effort was separate from a failed US military program to train “moderate” militants to supposedly fight the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.
That $500 million Pentagon program is widely considered a failure, and on Friday, the US Defense Department announced it was abandoning those efforts and instead opting to arm existing groups to fight Daesh.
The US Defense Department had spent $42 million (out of $500 million set aside for the training program) to vet, arm and pay dozens of militants. The original goal of the program was to train 5,400 in the first year.
Vice News, Sputnik and the Cold Nature of Proper-ganda
By Katerina Azarova – Sputnik – October 7, 2015
“Sputnik’s coverage is often completely at odds with how the same story is reported in the West”, writes Vice News reporter Justin Ling. He was specifically addressing our coverage of the Canadian election, but the sentiment is spot on. Thanks for getting us, Justin. That’s precisely what we’re trying to do here.
Vice, which started out as a Canadian magazine and grew into an international media empire, is known for its in-depth, yet highly comprehensible coverage of international news. So it’s flattering, I guess, that they would pay attention to our articles, albeit a little confusing as to why.
After diligently mentioning all the right buzzwords — “Kremlin” and “propaganda” – in the very first paragraphs, Justin moves on to say that Sputnik is “directly run by the Russian government” – but claims that information is “scrubbed daily from the news outlet’s Wikipedia page”. And it is bizzare.
Now, I know, and you know, that journalists rely on Wikipedia for a quick fact check or background details to a story. But I would never expect a reporter of Ling’s stature to be using Wikipedia as a news source. (No offence, Wikipedia).
I’ll admit, curiosity got the better of me and I, too, checked out Sputnik’s Wiki page.
Now, either our daily page-scrubbing service has gone on strike, or Wikipedia in Canada looks dramatically different to what we’re seeing in Russia. And the US. And the UK. I know, because I asked our hubs to check. What can I tell you, I’m a curious gal. … Full article
Casualty Count: 794 Palestinians, 7 Israelis—NY Times Obsesses on Israeli Victims
By Barbara Erickson | TimesWarp | October 8, 2015
Isabel Kershner in The New York Times tells us that Palestinians are running amok, lashing out at Israelis not only in the West Bank but now in Israel as well. Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to quell this “wave of terrorism,” she reports, and Israelis are “unnerved” by the spread of incidents.
Kershner describes three alleged stabbing attempts, dwelling at length on one of them; recaps an earlier incident that left two Israelis dead; and in the final paragraphs of her story informs us that “at least two” Palestinians were killed, one of them a 13-year-old boy “described as a bystander.”
Nowhere do we learn that the major victims of violence in this turbulent conflict are Palestinians, not Israelis, as revealed in a recent United Nations report: In one week, ending Oct. 5, Israeli security forces injured 794 Palestinians, while Palestinians injured a total of seven Israelis. (As of Oct. 5, 30 Palestinians had been killed in 2015 compared with eight Israelis.)
This is an injury ratio of more than 100 to one, a shocking disparity, but the Times story shows concern only for Israeli injuries and fears. We find no accounts there of what the Palestinian victims experienced as they faced the aggression of heavily armed security forces.
Readers and viewers elsewhere, however, got a firsthand view of Israeli violence yesterday as videos emerged that revealed undercover agents inciting stone throwers in the West Bank. The agents, wearing keffiyehs and bearing a Hamas flag, urge bystanders to join them, then draw their weapons and assault Palestinian youths.
The videos, by several agencies, including Reuters and Agence France-Presse, went viral, appearing on French, British, Israeli and American media outlets. The Times, however, has so far failed to link to the videos, which show a soldier shooting a captive Palestinian in the leg at point blank range.
The newspaper also avoids any commentary that would shed a clear light on the nature of the conflict even as Israeli columnists have recently provided eloquent testimony of the despair behind Palestinian attacks.
Gideon Levy, writing in the Middle East Eye, notes that when Palestinians remain quiet, they reap nothing but “an intensification of the occupation.” He lists the constant attacks and humiliations they endure and asks, “Are Palestinians to assent to all this in silence?”
Levy notes that after a Palestinian family was burnt alive, Israeli officials admitted that they knew who was responsible but refused to make any arrests. “What people could maintain restraint in the face of such a sequence of events,” he writes, “with the entire might of the occupation in the background, without hope, without prospects, with no end in sight?”
Amira Hass writes in a similar vein, and the headlines on her Haaretz article express it well: “Palestinians Are Fighting for Their Lives; Israel Is Fighting for the Occupation—That we notice there’s a war on only when Jews are murdered does not cancel out the fact that Palestinians are being killed all the time.”
Both these Israelis speak with an honesty that rarely, if ever, appears in the Times. Readers of the newspaper of record instead face a determined effort to protect Israel’s reputation, to preserve the narrative of Israeli victimhood even in the face of the evidence.
As Palestinians fall to Israeli violence at the rate of 100 a day, the Times obsesses on Israeli Jewish victims. It ignores the numbers that reveal an enormous toll of Palestinian suffering and it excludes the news and the voices of conscience that could help readers gain a truer perspective in this conflict.
Cell Phone Video Clears Canadian Man of Assault Charges Despite Phone Going Missing in Police Custody
By Alexandra J. Gratereaux | PINAC | October 8, 2015
These days, a simple cell phone can make the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.
At least it did for Abdi Sheik-Qasim, who was cleared of assault charges thanks to a video he recorded of the interaction he had last year with two Toronto-based cops.
The best part?
Despite the phone going missing while in police custody, it instantly uploaded a duplicate copy of the 10-second video clip directly to Sheik-Qasim’s email, giving him the proof necessary to clear his name.
“It saved my life, or at least a lot of headaches,” Sheik-Qasim told The Toronto Star, who broke the news last week. “I would have probably been in jail right now.”
The incident took place on Jan. 4, 2014 with officers Piara Dhaliwal and Akin Gul.
Sheik-Qasim, 32, was staying over his uncle’s house in Ontario when law enforcement officials arrived after a noise complaint had been placed by neighbors. According to The Star, Sheik-Qasim quickly turned down the music’s volume without hesitation and gave the cops his identification.
But when the two police officers insisted on entering his home without a warrant, Sheik-Qasim whipped out his cellphone and began recording the incident, only to have the phone slapped from his hands.
He was then arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer as well as refusal to comply with a court order.
Both officers testified that Sheik-Qasim was the one who initiated the brawl, alleging he reached for Gul’s utility belt, leaving Dhaliwal no choice but to arrest him.
Nevertheless, Ontario Court Justice Edward Kelly disagreed.
But only after he viewed the video.
Kelly cleared Sheik-Qasim of the bogus charges after viewing the clip and stating he found it “extremely troubling” the cellphone went missing while in police custody.
“The absence of the phone is extremely troubling when considered in light of the testimony of the officers, which I regard to be deliberately misleading,” Kelly said, adding that it must have been nearly impossible for Sheik-Qasim to have reached the utility belt as fast and as aggressively as the cops claim.
Tehran Has No Info on Cruise Missiles Which Allegedly Landed in Iran
Sputnik – 08.10.2015
Iranian defense ministry believes reports on “fallen Russian cruise missiles” are part of the intensified western propaganda war, according to a source.
Tehran has denied US reports that four of Russia’s cruise missiles targeting ISIL actually fell to the ground in Iran, with the country’s defense ministry calling the accusations “psychological war.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry also refutes US media reports of an alleged incident involving cruise missiles which were fired at ISIL positions in Syria on October 7, stating that all missiles hit their designated targets.
“No matter how unpleasant and unexpected for our colleagues in the Pentagon and Langley was yesterday’s high-precision strike on Islamic State infrastructure in Syria, the fact remains that all missiles launched from our ships have found their targets,” ministry’s spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
On Thursday, CNN reported that four of the 26 missiles fired from Russian warships in the Caspian Sea went off target and crashed in Iran. That report was based on anonymous Pentagon sources, who despite claiming to have evidence of the targeting malfunction, could not identify where, precisely, the missiles landed.
“In contrast to CNN we do not talk with reference to anonymous sources,” Konashenkov said. “We show the launch of our rockets and the targets they struck.”
Indeed, the Russian Defense Ministry has posted a number of videos to prove the accuracy of its targeting systems.
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From the Archives
Israel: Strategic Ally or Liability?
By Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat | June 12, 2010
The claim that Israel serves as a valuable ally for the United States is made by both pro-Zionists and much of the anti-war and anti-Zionist Left that is influenced by Noam Chomsky. As a result of the Gaza flotilla massacre, which has caused a world-wide uproar against Israel, the value of Israel to the United States is being publicly questioned in more mainstream foreign policy forums. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
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