Kurdish leader says Syria Kurds not after forming own government
Press TV – July 21, 2013
A senior Syrian Kurdish leader has rejected earlier reports that Kurds are planning to establish an independent Kurdish government in northern Syria.
China’s Xinhua news agency on Sunday quoted Salih Muslim, the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as saying, “There is no intention among the Kurds to form their own government, nor to secede from Syria.”
On Saturday, Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network quoted Muslim as saying that Syria’s Kurds were planning to create a “temporary autonomous government to administer their regions in the north.”
The Syrian government has granted the Kurds a certain level of autonomy since 2012 and they are now controlling security of the region.
In recent months, Kurdish fighters, who are opposed to foreign interference in Syria, have been battling foreign-backed militants in the north.
This comes as clashes continued between PYD-linked Kurdish militants and foreign-backed Takfiri militants around several villages in northeastern Syria near the border with Turkey on Saturday.
The Kurdish militants took control of a checkpoint and also seized light weapons, ammunition, a vehicle mounted with a heavy machinegun, and a mortar launcher.
On July 17, the Kurdish fighters took control of the town of Ras al-Ain in the border province of Hasakah, forcing out the al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Foreign-sponsored militancy has taken its toll on the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, since March 2011.
Western powers and their regional allies including the Israeli regime, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supporting anti-Syria militant groups, including al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.
The NYT Continues to Misinform on Chemical Weapons in Syria
By Michael McGehee · NYTX · July 11, 2013
Writing in his original preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell wrote about how “inconvenient facts [can be] kept dark, without the need for any official ban”:
Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact […] At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
One way in which readers, listeners, or viewers can gauge the validity of news stories is by how quickly they drop off the media’s radar. If a story is sensationalist hype it will likely disappear as fast as it appeared. Another way is if the story gets reported at all.
Earlier this year was the scare story of an impending North Korea attack on the United States. The mainstream media, especially in the U.S. and the West, went ballistic (pun intended) on supposed North Korean threats. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of articles claimed over and over that North Korea threatened to attack South Korea and the United States. That was the popular narrative repeated ad infinitum. But it’s not entirely true. What North Korea “threatened” was retaliation, not an attack. Kim Jong-Un said his country would respond to South Korean and American aggression.
But, let’s rewind to the New Year. According to the Washington Post: “In New Year’s speech, N. Korea’s Kim says he wants peace with South”:
SEOUL — In a domestically televised New Year’s Day speech, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Eun said he wants to “remove confrontation” on this divided peninsula and called on “anti-reunification forces” in South Korea to end their hostility toward the North.
The lengthy address, which laid out North Korea’s goals for the year, marked Kim’s first formal remarks since the election two weeks ago of Park Geun-hye as South Korea’s next president.
The North Korean leader asked for a detente — but with prerequisites that the conservative Park is likely to be reluctant to accept. Both sides, Kim said, must implement joint agreements signed years ago by the North and liberal, pro-engagement presidents in Seoul. Those agreements call for, among other things, economic cooperation, high-level government dialogue and the creation of a special “cooperation” zone in the Yellow Sea, where the North and South spar over a maritime border.
The peace overture was replied with the annual South-Korean-U.S. military exercise, but this time with an interesting twist: the exercise included a scenario of a pre-emptive attack on North Korea. Worse, the U.S. pulled out its B-52’s, that are capable of firing nuclear weapons, and flaunted them recklessly.
In chronological order: North Korea requests peace and steps to move in that direction, to which South Korea and the United States respond with a mock scenario of a pre-emptive strike, including the possible use of nuclear weapons, to which North Korea says it will retaliate against any such attack, and, finally, the American media largely ignores this context, that Kim was vowing retaliation, and whips up hysteria of North Korea coming out of the blue with threats of nuking America.
But then the story simply went away.
We have seen this also with the recent case of Syria and the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.
A month ago the White House came out with the claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”
And though FAIR’s Peter Hart quickly pointed out that skepticism was “warranted,” the mainstream media saturated news outlets with the story.
But, like the North Korean “threat,” the story simply went away.
Until yesterday.
The story is back on the radar as Russia provided the UN, and Western countries with their report on the Sarin attack in Aleppo, Syria. Unlike the US, the Russians have (and provided) evidence that it was the rebels who carried out the chemical attack.
According to Rick Gladstone of The New York Times, in his article “Russia Says Study Suggests Syria Rebels Used Sarin,” and which appears on page A7 of the July 10, 2013 edition, Moscow’s “scientific analysis of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria on March 19 showed it probably had been carried out by insurgents using Sarin nerve gas of ‘cottage industry’ quality delivered by a crudely made missile.” Gladstone then informs us that Russia’s findings “contradicted conclusions presented by Western nations, including the United States, that the Syrian government had been responsible.”
The most troubling aspect of Gladstone’s article was this passage: “The American conclusion was based in part on indirectly procured soil samples and interviews with survivors, as well as the Syrian insurgency’s lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack.”
The problem? Those last sixteen words—“the Syrian insurgency’s lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack”—are presented, not as a claim, but as a fact. As we at the NYTimes eXaminer pointed out last month, The New York Times has ignored two important news items that undermine this assertion: (1) the hacking of Britam, a British defense company, revealed a plan by Washington for the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and then blame it on the government; and (2) the arrest of Syrian rebels in Turkey, who happened to be in possession of Sarin nerve gas.
All of this occurred before the White House came out with their claim that the Syrian government was behind the Sarin attacks, and was readily available in the press, though not reported by The New York Times. To this day the “paper of record” has yet to mention either of these two incidences, even as they claim that the Syrian rebels have a “lack of technical ability and materials to carry out a chemical weapons attack.”
Readers should be concerned with why sensationalist stories of a threatening North Korea, and chemical weapon-using Syria, can appear long enough to outrage the public, but stories of false flags, and rebels getting caught with the very chemical weapons we claim they don’t have, go unreported.
Key Israel lobby senator calls for US military strikes on Syria
Press TV – July 11, 2013
A prominent U.S. senator has called on the administration of President Barack Obama to attack Syrian “airfields, airplanes and massed artillery.”
The influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin (D-Mich.) who has returned from a fact-finding trip to the Middle East, also expressed support for arming the militant groups fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
“Increased military pressure on Assad is the only way to achieve a negotiated settlement in Syria, which in turn is needed to restore stability to a region that certainly doesn’t need any more instability,” Levin said Wednesday during a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Levin conceded that the U.S. public opposes an increased involvement in the Syrian conflict and that there is “no consensus” on the issue on Capitol Hill.
Senator Levin and Senator Angus King (I-Maine) spent five days in Jordan and Turkey, talking to government officials as well as U.S. diplomatic and military personnel about the conflict in Syria.
The two senators also met with militant leaders including Salim Idriss, the leader of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA), and visited refugee camps along the Syrian border.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, Levin and King said the U.S. and its allies should arm and train the militants and consider “options for limited, targeted strikes at airplanes, helicopters, missiles, tanks and artillery.”
However they said they were not calling for American troops on the ground in Syria.
The senators noted that “doing nothing may be the worst option of all,” potentially destabilizing U.S. allies in the region, including Turkey and Jordan, and threatening Israeli interests.
In a letter last month, Sen. Levin, Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey called on President Obama to take “more decisive military actions” against Syria.
A recent opinion poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that the majority of Americans, 70 percent, are against U.S. involvement in Syria’s unrest.
Foreign-backed Syrian opposition-assigned ‘prime minister’ resigns
Press TV – July 9, 2013
A foreign-backed Syrian opposition figure, Ghassan Hitto, who had been proclaimed by the divided Syrian National Coalition (SNC) as “prime minister” and tasked to form an “interim government,” has resigned.
On Monday, Hitto announced his resignation in a statement only four months after his appointment, citing his inability to form the “interim government,” amid the escalating divisions and the infighting within the SNC.
The foreign-backed opposition formed the SNC back in November 2012 with Moaz al-Khatib as its head.
Khatib also announced his resignation a few months after his appointment.
George Sabra became acting president of the SNC in April 2013, shortly after Khatib had resigned.
On Saturday, the SNC elected a Saudi-linked member, Ahmad Assi Jarba, as its new president during its latest meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
Jarba received 55 votes, defeating Mustafa al-Sabbagh, Qatar’s point man in the opposition, in the second round of the election at the group’s meeting in Istanbul, where the foreign-backed Syrian opposition group is based.
Jarba is a tribal figure from the eastern Hasaka Province with connections to Saudi Arabia, which has been supporting the militants in Syria.
The divisions within the foreign-backed opposition comes as the Syrian army has been gaining further ground against the militants. Syrian forces drove out militants from Ghouta, Zamalka and Irbin neighborhoods, inflicting heavy losses on the armed groups.
On July 6, Syrian army restored security to the industrial area of al-Qaboun, east of the capital. The army also retook control of the northwestern part of the Sayyida Zeinab camp near Damascus.
The foreign-sponsored militancy in Syria has taken its toll on the lives of many people, including large numbers of Syrian soldiers and security personnel, since March 2011.
In an interview with Syrian daily Al-Thawra published on July 4, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the opposition and their foreign supporters have “exhausted all their tools” in a conspiracy against Syria.
Related article
- “Syrian Opposition Won’t Attend Geneva II unless It Becomes Militarily Strong” (alethonews.wordpress.com)
“Syrian Opposition Won’t Attend Geneva II unless It Becomes Militarily Strong”
Al-Manar | July 8, 2013
The new head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition said he expected advanced weapons supplied by Saudi Arabia to reach militant mercenaries soon, strengthening their currently weak military position.
Ahmad Jarba, who has close links to Saudi Arabia, told Reuters in his first interview since being elected president of the coalition on Saturday that the opposition would not go to a proposed peace conference in Geneva sponsored by the United States and Russia unless its military position improves.
“Geneva in these circumstances is not possible. If we are going to go to Geneva we have to be strong on the ground, unlike the situation now, which is weak,” Jarba said on Sunday after returning from the northern Syrian province of Idlib, where he met commanders of insurgents’ brigades.
Asked if shoulder-fired weapons that could blunt President Bashar al-Assad’s massive advantage in armor and air power would reach the militant groups after Saudi Arabia took a lead role in supporting the opposition in recent weeks, Jarba said: “We are pushing in this direction.”
“I think the situation is better than before. I think these weapons will arrive in Syria soon,” he stated.
“We are working on getting advanced and medium-range weapons to the Free Syrian army and the liberated areas,” he added referring to the regions occupied by the armed opposition groups of foreign mercenaries fighting the Syrian government and people.
Jarba offered Assad’s forces a truce for the duration of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on Tuesday, to stop fighting in the city of Homs, where armed gangs face a ferocious ground and air onslaught by the Syrian army. There has been no indication that the government is ready to accept such a truce, probable to fears of more military support the opposition might receive from foreign actors.
Homs, 140 km (90 miles) north of Damascus, is situated at a strategic crossing linking the capital with army bases in coastal. The city also links Damascus and the coast with neighboring Lebanon.
“We are staring at a real humanitarian disaster in Homs. Assad, whose military machine was on the verge of defeat, has been propped up by Iran and its Hezbollah proxy,” Jarba said, denying all the massacres committed by his militant groups against the people of Aleppo, Homs, Idlib, Hama, Latakia and Deir Ezzor.
“I will not rest until I procure the advanced weapons needed to hit back at Assad and his allies. … I give myself one month to achieve what I am intent on doing,” Jarba said in an implicit hint at his intend to arm the opposition groups during month of Ramadan and exploit any possible truce period.
Jarba was speaking in Istanbul after a meeting of the so-called Syrian National Coalition, which has little physical presence in Syria and little influence over al-Nusra Front militant brigades that play a major role in the fight against President Assad’s forces.
As Obama regurgitates Israel lobby script on Syria, America sliding toward another Iraq
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | July 5, 2013
At a Washington Institute policy forum luncheon debate on June 28 entitled “Arming the Rebels: Sliding Toward Iraq or Inching Toward Stability,” Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow in the institute’s program on Arab politics, hinted at the pro-Israel think tank’s influence over President Obama’s recent shift in Syria policy. Referring to his Foreign Affairs piece entitled “Syria’s Collapse: And How Washington Can Stop It,” Tabler said he would like to say that it “follows a lot” of President Obama’s responses in a major June 17 television interview. Whether out of modesty or a desire to downplay the Israel lobby’s role in deepening Washington’s involvement in the destabilization of Syria, a smiling Tabler added, “I’m sure that he didn’t read it and then just go and regurgitate it to Charlie Rose.”
WINEP’s executive director Robert Satloff was similarly coy in his introduction. Describing Tabler as a “very consulted” expert on Syria, Satloff said, “I won’t go into the details of the consultations” he has with senior government officials “but suffice to say that the arguments that we’ll be hearing today very much reflect the arguments that are on the table.”
Given the proven track record of such arguments made “in the national interest” by partisans of Israel, it would appear that its oblivious American proxy is rapidly sliding toward another Iraq.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @O_Cathail.
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- Ó Cathail: ‘Israel dominates US Syria policy’ (thepassionateattachment.com)
- Did an Israel lobby front group organize McCain’s trip to Syria? (thepassionateattachment.com)
The Evolving Story of the Death of Father Murad
By Richard Edmondson | War and Peace | July 3, 2013
Conflicting news reports have been coming out on the death of Father Francois Murad. Initially it was reported by a number of sources, including a press release from the Vatican, that the priest had been beheaded. Today, however, reports are saying that no, this was incorrect, that he was only shot dead, and that the video purporting to show his beheading was an old video. Here is how The Telegraph is reporting the matter:
The footage, said to show Father Francois Murad, 49, as the victim in a brutal summary execution by foreign jihadists is likely to be an older video that bares no relation to the death of the Catholic priest.
Father Murad “died when he was shot inside his church” in the northern Syrian Christian village of Ghassaniyeh on June 23, three separate local sources, who did not wish to be named, told the Telegraph.
Claims that Father Murad was one of two men to be decapitated by a foreign jihadist group went viral, with outrage expressed in blogs and articles worldwide.
The story goes on to describe the contents of the video, noting that it is “too grainy to be able to confirm the identity of either of the victims as Father Francois,” while offering quotes of clarification from Human Rights Watch as well as Holy Land Custos Pierbattista Pizzabala. The latter is quoted as saying, “Islamists attacked the monastery, ransacking it and destroying everything. When Father Francois tried to resist, defending the nuns, rebels shot him.”
According to the HRW spokesperson, the video “looks like it may have been filmed” several months ago, well before Murad’s death, and that the confusion may have arisen due to its appearance “around the same time that the news came out that Father Francois had been killed.”
All of this quite naturally raises some questions. Descriptions of the video, found at both LiveLeak and YouTube, specifically said the two men shown being beheaded were Christians and that Murad was one of them. Who made this video available to the public and what was their motive?
The conflict in Syria is becoming more and more like a house of mirrors—something noted in a report by journalist Patrick Cockburn published Sunday in The Independent and headlined, “Foreign Media Portrayals of the Conflict in Syria are Dangerously Inaccurate.” Cockburn writes:
Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can’t think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.
Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague, is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria, Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.
In the midst of all this confusion and pretense over humanitarian concerns comes a report from the Hudson Institute highlighting the horrendous toll the conflict has taken on Syria’s Christian population. The report documents, among other things, deaths of priests, though here again there is some suspicious timing. On June 25, two days after the murder of Father Murad, a pair of congressional subcommittees held a joint hearing on the issue of “Religious Minorities in Syria: Caught in the Middle.” This is the subject of the Hudson Institute’s report, or more specifically the report focuses on the testimony given at the hearing by one of the institute’s chief researchers on the plight of Syria’s Christians.
Such a report becomes all the more remarkable when you consider that the Hudson Institute basically could be thought of as a neocon think tank. Its senior vice president is Lewis “Scooter” Libby, while Douglas Feith is listed as a senior fellow. Is there not something strange about a report documenting rebel atrocities against Syrian Christians being released by such an organization? Doesn’t Israel want to see Assad overthrown, and haven’t the Zionist media been feeding us the spin of the rebels, as Cockburn puts it, wearing the “white hats”? What gives?
I’ll have more on this report in an upcoming post, hopefully in a day or two.
Related articles
- Catholic Online Muddles Story of Priest’s Beheading (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Vatican confirms horror beheading of Catholic priest by Syrian rebels (independent.ie)
Kerry: Geneva II peace conference on hold, “August is very difficult for Europeans”
Al-Manar | July 2, 2013
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that the United States and Russia were committed to holding Geneva peace conference on Syria but that it would likely take place after August.
Kerry, speaking after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the annual regional forum of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Brunei, said “we both agree that the conference should happen sooner rather than later” to find a peaceful solution to the Syrian war.
But he said that the conference, originally planned for June, could not happen this month due to US-Russian meetings and that “August is very difficult for Europeans and others,” a likely reference to summer vacations.
“It may be somewhere thereafter,” he said of the timing of the conference.
Kerry also said he did not have substantive discussions with Lavrov on US whistleblower Edward Snowden. The meeting between Kerry and Lavrov follows controversy surrounding Snowden, who leaked details of a US surveillance programme.
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From the Archives
MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) – Vaccine Risk Statement
MMR Vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) Is It Safer Than Measles, Mumps and Rubella?
Physicians for Informed Consent | December 2024
… It has not been proven that the MMR vaccine is safer than measles, mumps, and rubella. The vaccine package insert raises questions about safety testing for cancer, genetic mutations, and impaired fertility. Although VAERS tracks some adverse events, it is too inaccurate to measure against the risk of measles, mumps, and rubella. Clinical trials do not have the ability to detect less common adverse reactions, and epidemiological studies are limited by the effects of chance and possible confounders. Safety studies of the MMR vaccine are particularly lacking in statistical power. A review of more than 60 MMR vaccine studies conducted for the Cochrane Library states, “The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate.”19 Because permanent sequelae (aftereffects) from measles, mumps, and rubella are so rare (especially in children with normal levels of vitamin A and infected after birth),6,15-17 the level of accuracy of the research studies available is insufficient to rule out the possibility that the MMR vaccine causes greater death or permanent disability than measles, mumps, and rubella. – Read full article
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