Hands off Syria! Frankfurt protests against military intervention [video, photos]
End the Lie – Independent News
September 2, 2012
The UN Security Council’s push for a human corridor in Syria, which critics say could bring military intervention, has sparked protests in Germany. About 1,000 people gathered in Frankfurt demanding an end to foreign meddling in the Syrian conflict.
A crowd of around 1,000 people have gathered in front of the Opera House in Frankfurt to demonstrate against foreign military intervention in Syria. They waved the flags of the Syrian government and signs with photos of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
They shouted slogans in favor of the president and his Baath Party.
A small group of anti-Assad protesters also appeared at the scene, prompting police to move in and separate the groups.
But the majority of the people came to the square to voice their support to the government and speak against military intervention, RT’s Peter Oliver reported from the scene.
“We are here to expose the lies about Syria that are being shown to the rest of the world,” one of the protesters told RT. “The dead that are being shown were killed by terrorists and blamed on Assad. They are sponsored by NATO, the US, Turkey and Qatar.”
Image from Twitter / @PeterGOliver_RT 
Protesters waving flag of Hezbollah say they do not want international intervention in Syria (Image from Twitter / @PeterGOliver_RT) 
A small group of anti-Assad protesters isolated by police (Image from Twitter / @PeterGOliver_RT)
Source [and video]: http://rt.com/news/frankfurt-protest-syria-military-intervention-159/
Syrian terrorist reveals torture and murder of kidnapped women
Voltaire Network
August 22, 2012
A Syrian 22 years confessed on national television to working with armed terrorist groups in Douma, a town in the province of Damascus, and being an accomplice to the abduction, torture during interrogation and murder of women.
In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV, 22 year-old Sabah Othman said that she is originally from Douma and that she was married at the age of 14 and abandoned by her husband three years later.
She met a man named Ala’a Mahfoud from Harasta on the pretext that he wanted to marry her, and he introduced her to two militants from a group referring to itself as Loua’a al-Islam, linked with the Free “Syrian” Army (FSA).
The group’s leader Zahran Alloush employed the young Sabah Othman as an interrogator of the women they abducted. She explained to the cameras that her role was to beat the prisoners who refused to answer during interrogation and that she was assisted by another woman.
She also revealed that after the interrogation, members of the FSA would “slit the throats of the abducted women and dump their lifeless bodies near a slaughterhouse.”
The young Sabah Othman remembered the women she interrogated perfectly well. The first was Samira Assaf, a mother of four. Like other victims, Samira Assaf had her throat slit and was cast near a slaughterhouse where her body was eaten by stray dogs.
Othman noted that the terrorists had recorded it all on video. Dunya Omar, the second woman she interrogated, was shot in the head and her body was abandoned near a sewer. Another woman, Fadya Daher, was raped and tortured for days by the group’s leader before being murdered.
The young accomplice said that members of Loua’a al-Islam would pretend to be religious in front of people while in fact they used drugs and abducted women without showing any sign of remorse.
Sabah Othman concluded by warning other women associated with the terrorists of the danger to which they are exposed. She felt that, in addition to the cases she mentioned, many other women have been murdered to prevent them from revealing the crimes of the FSA.
Source: RT in Spanish, 21 August 2012.
NATO Terrorists to Target Syria’s Civilian Airports
Land Destroyer
September 1, 2012
In violation of international law, NATO-backed terrorists plan civilian airport raids.
by Tony Cartalucci
September 1, 2012 – Syria has over 15 military airbases, including dedicated airbases located near Aleppo and Damascus. These airbases are generally surrounded by networks of military infrastructure including storage depots, barracks, motor pools, and defensive positions. So much as even denting these facilities would require a standing enemy army, airpower, and armor – something the terrorists operating in Syria with NATO backing currently lack. Even a successful, concentrated attack on a single airbase would make little difference tilting the balance of power in favor of NATO-backed foreign terrorists operating under the banner of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA).
Image: (via GlobalSecurity.org) Syria has over 15 dedicated military airbases located across the country, including bases within effective range of Damascus and Aleppo. Many more airbases either are, or can easily be converted into dual military/civilian use. Additionally, helicopter airfields can be set up ad-hoc nearly anywhere. The latest threat then, by terrorists operating in Syria against the nation’s two main international airports is a craven act of terrorism seeking psychological, not military, and certainly not defensive objectives. The West’s continued support of the so-called FSA, and the UN’s continued silence has entirely eviscerated both their collective legitimacy and the primacy of “international law.”
Puzzling then was an announcement made by NATO terrorists, warning that in 72 hours, starting September 1, 2012, they would begin operations to target Syria’s two international airports, Damascus International, and Aleppo International. The Telegraph would report that NATO’s terrorist front, “warned it would target civilian planes using the airports in Damascus and Aleppo from tomorrow.” The Telegraph would also claim, “it [the FSA] suspected government was using the flights to bring in weapons.” Like all of NATO terrorist claims, no evidence has been provided by either the militants, or the Western press.
The Telegraph has just reported that terrorists are planning to shoot at civilian planes and paralyze civilian flights across the country – a terrorist act by any definition or law.
Declaration of Terrorist Intend in Absolute Violation of International Law.
RT has also reported in their article, “Syrian rebels give airlines ’72-hour warning’ before they plan to seize civilian airports,” that terrorists, “gave a 72-hour advance warning to airlines to suspend flights to Syria before the rebels try to seize civilian airports in Damascus and Aleppo. They claim the Syrian Air Force is using them ‘illegally.'” RT also noted that, “international law prohibits attacks on civilian airports, whether during internal conflicts or wars between states.”
Indeed, even corporate-financier funded faux-NGOs like Human Rights Watch (HRW) note that attacking civilian infrastructure, such as an airport can only be done if achieving a military objective outweighs the impact on civilians. HRW says specifically:
Civil airports, roads and bridges are civilian objects that become military objectives subject to attack if they are actually used for military purposes or military objectives are located on or within them. Even then, the rule of proportionality applies, requiring the parties to the conflict to weigh the short- and long-term harm on civilians against the military advantage served; they must consider all ways of minimizing the impact on civilians; and they should not undertake attacks if the expected civilian harm outweighs the definite military advantage.
Clearly, if the Syrian Air Force has 15 bases in addition to whatever they may or may not be using its two international airports for, terrorist attacks on its two main civilian airports in no way achieve military objectives proportional to the adverse impact such attacks will have on Syria’s civilian population.
A Blatant Terroristic Threat.
Instead, the two airports have been picked to maximize terror against both the Syrian people and government forces, as well as undermine Syria politically on the international stage. In other words, they are craven acts of terrorism designed to achieve a political, not military objective – to attack, not defend Syria’s civilian population. And it will be craven terrorist attacks carried out with funding, arms, and logistical support provided by the US, UK, Israel, NATO-member Turkey, and the Gulf State despots of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The attacks will have absolutely no impact on Syrian security operations, and will instead simply paralyze civilian infrastructure and inevitably cost civilian lives. It will serve to panic the Syrian people, thus creating yet more refugees with which NATO will then claim demands foreign military intervention in the form of long sought-after “safe havens.” Essentially, NATO is purposefully encouraging an atmosphere of terror and panic, then using the resulting refugees and humanitarian crisis as political bargaining chips.
The silence of the UN in the face of this bold declaration of terroristic intent, as well as its utter indifference toward US, NATO, GCC, and Israeli sponsorship of terrorism and purposeful creation of humanitarian catastrophe, further undermines both the organization itself and the primacy of “international law” it is charged with maintaining.
Now more than ever, nations as well as individuals must begin both boycotting these failing institutions while replacing them with viable alternatives.
NATO Secretly Authorizes Syrian Attack
Stop NATO
August 30, 2012
Press TV
August 29, 2012
NATO secretly authorizes Syrian attack
By Gordon Duff
No announcement was made, no plans or timetable published, simply a vote on authorization of force which passed unanimously by member and included non-member states unanimously.”
Yesterday afternoon, Monday, August 28, 2012, in a meeting in Brussels, NATO military leaders in consultation with “telephonic liaison” with officers of military forces in several former Soviet Republics, major African states, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states came to a combined decision to act against Syria.
Two issues were on the agenda:
1. How climate change in Greenland will effect geopolitics, immigration and military affairs for the EU
2. Syria and the potential for Russian and Chinese intervention.
3. Iran was not an official agenda item but it is an unspoken conclusion that, if China and/or Russia stand aside for interference by NATO in Syria’s internal affairs, this will be seen as an authorization for incursions into Iran, a systematic “Balkanization” based on a prescribed formula of “manufactured and simulated internal political and social strife.”
No announcement was made, no plans or timetable published, simply a vote on authorization of force which passed unanimously by member and included non-member states unanimously.
News stories throughout North America and Europe earlier in the day were filled with reports of mass killings by the Syrian Army and the presence of Iranian troops in Syria. True or not, these stories represent a pre-staging for the NATO conference.
The critical reporting issue involves rhetoric. We moved, yesterday, from discussions of “fighting” to “systematic execution of hundreds of civilians.”
No video nor photos were included to verify neither claims nor sources given other than reports from “rebel forces.”
Recent consultation with friends in the Pentagon as to Syria’s air defense system indicated that the US has, in place, a play to destroy the command and control capability of Syria’s system.
The problems are twofold:
1. Russian technicians man the Syrian system
2. The S300P2 system Syria uses is extremely “robust”
An additional political consideration is a simple one, there is no UN authorization. Both Russia and China have vetoed even sanctions against Syria much less authorized an attack.
Thus, there is no existing authority capable of justifying an attack.
In an interview this week at the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) conference in Tehran, attended by 120 member states, a huge defeat for NATO interests in the area, this interview yielded some substantive and surprising facts.
Press TV: Certain powers have been trying to isolate Iran, actually, by not holding such a conference at such a high ranking level. As you said, this all has failed.
Now tell us about all the sanctions against Iran which have propagated against Iran, that Iran should be isolated, but as you said it’s all been failed. What is really important is that the agenda of the 688-point draft document which talked about, as you call and urge all countries to make the world free from any nuclear weapons.
You were a senior expert in the IAEA as an inspector. Tell us about that and also with the particular focus on Israel which has not yet signed up to the NPT.
Abu Shadi: I oppose strongly any kind of accusation on any state based on intelligence information. All the accusations given to the nuclear program in Iran is based only on intelligence information. There is no single proof that Iran is deviating from its commitment from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
I am very surprised that the Security Council took four decisions, sanctions against Iran just because of rumors that the intelligence source may think there is something.
I think this policy should be changed. The Security Council and its way of veto, and its limited number only to the big powers should be changed. I think that will also be one of the points to be addressed in this conference. I believe strongly that that situation, which is actually politically influenced by the West, should be changed.
With respect to your second part about the NPT, in fact, almost all the states in the world respects the Non-Proliferation [Treaty] except the five weaponized states, which they should reduce their weapons which didn’t happen up until today, and the three or four states which did not sign the NPT including Israel. Israel is the only state in the Middle East who did not sign the NPT.
None of the Western countries who are accusing not only Iran but before also Iraq, Libya, Syria and even Egypt, considered any accusation to what the Israelis are doing. I believe this bias in the international organization should be stopped.
Shadi makes some particularly interesting points and raises some concerns few had noticed. His most damning statement, of course, is that the Security Council, a carryover from a war 70 years ago, certainly a demonstration of oligarchic rule at the United Nations, has been directed at Iran.
In particular, he notes that the council’s unilateral and undemocratic decisions, followed by nations, China and Russia, who defended Syria, were aimed at Iran but backed by no presentation of facts or even qualified intelligence assessments. In fact, since Colin Powell’s humiliating WMD presentation before the UN, no “American fact” has been taken seriously nor is likely to.
CNN quotes a top Powell aid:
A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “the lowest point” in his life.
“I wish I had not been involved in it,” says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. “I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”
Actual risks and ramifications
Top intelligence analysts in private consultation fear a larger Middle East war. “Russia and China won’t stand back, not with the US planning a unilateral moves on Africa and its resources. It’s like 1947 again with Truman and the Marshall plan, encirclement, but a war over, not just resources, but a world war against what has now seen as the real threat, what Americans call the “middle class.”
Thus, taking Syria without taking Iran is “not in the cards.” Here I return to the words of H. G. Wells, in his War of the Worlds. His grasp in this fiction well over a century old reflects on our times in a curious and wonderfully literate manner:
“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
“The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of…
“And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety–their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours–and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity.”
Martians, this is how NATO and Israel look on the world, as expressed through the prose of Wells. Their gaze “cool and unsympathetic,” as drone warfare and their plans, calculated acts of false flag terror, kidnappings, assassinations, the abomination of mythical news reporting.
The end of the road, this path of “hubris” could well be world war, least of all fuel price increases that collapse the currencies and economies.
Talking of death is nothing as we are now pre-staged to look on life as nothing, all victims are “militants” if you want them dead or “collateral damage” when you err.
Iran’s position chairing NAM makes them a harder target. The general criticism by many NAM members, the dictatorial rule of the United Nations by the Security Council, has not prevented the Syrian conflict from becoming a threat to world peace.
For Iran, their choice seems, on the surface, to be in aiding Syria, negotiations, using oil leverage with India, China and others and predicting how the west is plotting.
If Iran falls, it will be only another domino.
Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, a combat infantryman, and Senior Editor at Veterans Today. His career has included extensive experience in international banking along with such diverse areas as consulting on counter insurgency, defense technologies or acting as diplomatic representative for UN humanitarian and economic development efforts. Gordon Duff has traveled to over 80 nations. His articles are published around the world and translated into a number of languages. He is regularly on TV and radio, a popular and sometimes controversial guest.
HANDS OFF SYRIA! HANDS OFF IRAN! — Weekly Pickets in Halifax, Canada
[Potent News editor’s update – 19/08/2013: Sadly, I am no longer advertising this event because the organizers cannot assure me that a “demilitarize.ca” sign will not be present at the picket. This is not a minor issue. When I lived in Halifax and participated in these pickets this didn’t happen. Demilitarize.ca is pushing Agenda 21 – enough said. I’m sick of participating in protests which hack at the branches and don’t ever get to the root core of the problem. My family’s suffering in Syria will not be aided by a watered down and diluted solution that ignores that the same people perpetrating this unrest in Syria are ultimately aligned with the same people pushing Agenda 21. If the organizer(s) change their minds and are able to simply focus on Syria/Iran and not dilute their message by advertising Agenda 21 (something that is fundamentally diametrically opposed to freedom everywhere) then maybe I will advertise this again. It’s not like I was able to have a “PotentNews.com” sign at the picket when I was present. I would have loved to teach people about chemtrails too during the pickets, but I didn’t do that except for individually among people I met who seemed receptive because I felt that stopping war was something everyone could rally behind. I had already consciously overlooked the fact they they were communists, because I felt that the communist message has been around long enough and people would have fully fallen for it by now if it was that much of a threat. I, however, view the green agenda to be a more significant threat so I will not advertise this toxic information/protest anymore. That said, I can’t say I’m surprised by these events and with each passing day I start to see that the relationship had to be torn down in this way so that it could be perhaps one day rebuild it on a more solid foundation. As I said, we’re currently hacking at the branches if we ignore the Agenda 21 infection of this movement. Chemtrails are a form of warfare against us. Even though my family in Syria has had their lives turned upside down, chemtrails are a slow kill weapon here in Canada. It is biological warfare. And I don’t see the purpose in looking at one “war” and pretending we’re not ALREADY being attacked right now as we speak. This is global depopulation. I voiced these concerns to the Halifax picket organizer initially a year ago but sadly he was not enthusiastic to do any digging into the geoengineering issue. I put up with that because I was depressed about war on Syria and the picket was (most of the time) consisting of only ME and the organizer, Allan – only 2 people in the whole city. I felt obligated to work with him because I didn’t see anyone else in all of Halifax who was awake about the Syria issue. Allan, if there was a miscommunication between us and I’m missing something, please email me.]
Potent News
August 31, 2012
[Potent News Editor’s note: The weekly pickets have been organized partly by communists and while I do not condone communism at all, I do have relatives in Syria and I do not want NATO to drop bombs on them. I urge anyone in Halifax who opposes war to join us every Friday at the address noted below (if the weather permits) so that we can raise awareness about the world war that is quickly unfolding. There are many reasons why Canada should not be involved and many reason why Canada should exit NATO.]
HANDS OFF SYRIA! HANDS OFF IRAN!
Weekly Picket:
Oppose imperialist intervention in Syria and Iran!
4 – 5pm, every Friday (weather permitting)
Corner of Spring Garden Road & Barrington Street
Western Commando’s Tasked to Disable Syria’s Anti Aircraft Missiles – Ziad Fadel [video]
108morris108
August 29, 2012
Ziad Fadel, a Lawyer and Political Commentator suggests it is time to ask for Russian Troops as a counter measure to NATO’s forces.
NATO Terrorists Target Syria & Algeria
NATO’s Pan-Arab Terrorist Blitzkrieg.
by Tony Cartalucci
August 29, 2012 – Western policy makers admit that NATO’s operations in Libya have played the primary role in emboldening Al Qaeda’s AQIM faction (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel in his article, “The New Al Qaeda Menace,” admits that AQIM is now heavily armed thanks to NATO’s intervention in Libya, and that AQIM’s base in Mali, North Africa, serves as a staging ground for terrorist activities across the region.
Image: NATO’s intervention in Libya has resurrected listed-terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate, LIFG. It had previously fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has fighters, cash and weapons, all courtesy of NATO, spreading as far west as Mali, and as far east as Syria. The feared “global Caliphate” Neo-Cons have been scaring Western children with for a decade is now taking shape via US-Saudi, Israeli, and Qatari machinations, not “Islam.” In fact, real Muslims have paid the highest price in fighting this real “war against Western-funded terrorism.”
AQIM, like their Libyan counterparts, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) are both listed by the US State Department as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” Likewise, both the UK Home Office (.pdf, listed as GSPC) and the UN recognize both organizations as terrorists.
Despite this, military intervention in Libya was pursued by the West and condoned by the UN with full knowledge that the militants leading so-called “pro-democracy uprisings” were in fact merely the continuation of decades of violent terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates. The West had full knowledge of this, primarily because it was Western intelligence agencies arming and supporting these militants for the last 30 years, in Libya’s case, while coddling their leaders in Washington and London.
Additionally, the US Army itself meticulously documented foreign terrorists fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the highest percentage per capita emanated from Libya’s cities of Benghazi and Darnah, the so-called “cradle” of 2011’s “pro-democracy uprisings” in Libya.
What unfolded was a premeditated lie – where placard waving “activists” overnight turned into battle-hardened heavily armed, tank driving, jet flying militants waging a nationwide battle against Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi. In reality, it was the fruition of 30 years of covert support the West has poured into militant groups across the region – support that would not end with the fall of Qaddafi.
LIFG terrorists promptly turned both east to Syria and west to Mali beyond their borders – a logistical matter they had perfected during their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, as early as November 2011, arrived on the Turkish-Syrian border to provide cash, weapons, and LIFG terrorist fighters, overseen by Western intelligence along with US funding and arms laundered through Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) members such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since then Libyan militants have been confirmed to be leading entire brigades of foreign fighters inside Syria.
And as Bruce Riedel of Brookings concedes, these weapons went west to Mali as well. Algeria had feared just such a scenario unfolding with NATO’s intervention in Libya – a fear now fully realized. Ironically, Riedel, in August 2011, had tried to make a case for Algeria being “next to fall” in an article titled literally, “Algeria Will Be Next to Fall.”
A year ago, Riedel attempted to argue that it would be the so-called “Arab Spring” that would spread into Algeria after having taken root in neighboring Libya. He had eluded to, and it has now become abundantly clear, that by “Arab Spring,” Riedel meant, US-backed subversion, and more specifically NATO-armed Al Qaeda-brand militancy and terrorism.
With the US now openly arming, supporting, and literally “cheering” Al Qaeda in Syria, it is clear that the “War on Terror” is an unprecedented geopolitical fraud perpetuated at the cost of millions of lives destroyed and an incalculable social and economic toll. NATO, with full knowledge of the consequences is literally carving out of North Africa and the Middle East, the so-called “Caliphate” Western leaders had held over their impressionable people’s heads as the impetus to perpetually wage global war. Torn from the pages of Orwell’s 1984, an artificial war has been created to carry forward corporate-financier machinations both abroad and domestically. The so-called threat to Western civilization is in fact a foreign legion of Western corporate-financier interests, executing Wall Street and London’s foreign policy on a global scale where and in a manner traditional Western forces cannot.
NATO’s terrorist blitzkrieg across the Arab World will not end in Syria. It will continue, if allowed, into Iran, through the Caucasus Mountains and into Russia, across China’s western borders, and even across Southeast Asia. The price for ignorance, apathy, and complicity in supporting the West’s so-called “War on Terror” will ironically reap all the horrors and then some in reality, that were promised to us if we didn’t fight this “Long War.”
Our support of both the political gambits of our politicians, as well as our daily patronage of the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda have already reaped an unprecedented and still growing regional safe haven for terrorists – and as moderate secular governments continue to be undermined and toppled, we can only imagine the blowback, retaliation, and other consequences as this destructive foreign policy unfolds. To imagine that such meddling will not end up being visited back upon us, even if in the form of a false flag attack dwarfing 9/11, would be folly.
Already, we are suffering economic devastation and an increasingly stifling security apparatus at home, and as long as we capitulate to this current agenda instead of asserting a more rational one of our own, it will only get worse.
PN 