Syria Update June 16 – Thermobaric Advanced weapons being used – Mr Aleppo [video]
108morris108
June 16, 2012
Syrian conflict is escalating – NATO’s gunmen are using more advanced weaponry (Thermobaric) – The Syrian government seems to have launched an offensive and seized many weapons – but by the Turkish border particularly there is a lot of infiltration – Telephone interview
CIA, MI6 agents direct massacres in Syria: American analyst [video included]
PressTV
June 10, 2012
An American author says agents of the CIA and MI6 are directing armed groups to carry out massacres inside Syria, Press TV reports.
Stephen Lendman, writer and radio host from Chicago, said the CIA and MI6 “special forces” are in Syria now, directing massacres.
“They go after pro-Assad loyalists,” Lendman stated in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.
“There is no question this is a Washington-orchestrated war.”
“It is a low-level war to the extent that NATO has not gotten directly involved. But it is exactly what happened in Libya last year. An insurgency began. Washington orchestrated it. Insurgents were recruited. They were funded. They were armed.”
The American author stated that Syria has been “targeted for regime change for years, at least a decade.”
Lendman also referred to the six-point peace plan presented by the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, in March.
“His so-called peace plan puts the onus on a side. He barely mentions these insurgents, these death squads, these killers.”
“I have written about Kofi Annan. I have written several times about him. During his tenure as UN secretary general, a decade, a solid decade, he never did a thing to stop imperial wars,” Lendman added.
He made the comments on the same day when the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) elected 56-year-old Abdulbaset Saida, a Kurdish activist, as its new leader during a meeting in Istanbul.
Saida replaced former SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun, who resigned in May.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister said in a press conference in Moscow on June 9 that Russia “will not sanction the use of force (against Syria) at the United Nations Security Council.”
Lavrov added that the Annan plan had begun to “seriously falter,” but that there was “no alternative” to it.
HSN/PKH/MA
[hat tip: Friends Of Syria]
Syria, Yemen, and America’s Quest for Imperial Dominance
Neo-Imperialism by Faux-Democracy, Terrorism, and Propaganda.
guest post by Eric Draitser of StopImperialism.com,
May 25, 2012 – At the G8 summit last week, President Obama and other officials in his administration, began utilizing the talking point of Yemen being a model to be emulated in Syria. Ostensibly, they were referring to the “peaceful” transition of power in Yemen as an example of what they would like to see in Syria. However, the comparison goes much deeper than simply this superficial connection. The truth is that Yemen represents, in more ways than one, the blueprint that the US imperialist ruling class would like to see applied to the escalating conflict in Syria.
Puppet Regimes and Faux Democracy
The “transition” of power in Yemen, from Saleh to Hadi, is a prime example of the hypocrisy of US policy, touting it as a victory for democracy while concealing the obvious fact that it was the creation of a puppet regime. Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has been presented as the legitimate leader of Yemen, despite the fact that he was the U.S. choice to govern that country. His legitimacy depended on the myth of a democratically elected regime; the US propagates this myth wantonly, pretending that people won’t remember that Hadi ran unopposed in February.
If the purpose of democracy is to create forms of governance accountable to the citizenry and to establish a government that is truly representative of the people’s desires, then it would be an outright lie to call the Hadi administration anything close to a democracy. In fact, as recent developments in Yemen have shown, his regime is nothing more than a puppet government, put in power by the United States in order to allow the CIA and other shadowy entities free reign to use drones, Special Forces, and other covert operations in what is supposedly a sovereign nation.
Not only is Hadi, the former vice President under Saleh, not democratically elected, he is the antithesis of progress in a country that was on the front lines of the Arab Spring. The people who marched through the streets of Sanaa and other cities across Yemen did so with the intention of effecting change in a country which, in the eyes of many, was seen as a backwards dictatorship. However, despite all the rhetoric about hope, change, and progress from the US State Department and the White House, President Obama and his minions, including John Brennan (counter-terrorism advisor and frequent representative of Obama in Yemen), immediately lent their support to Hadi. The betrayal came as no surprise to any informed observer as the United States was only interested in its own strategic interests in the region.
US Tactics and the Geopolitical Imperative in Yemen
US interest in Yemen is certainly not rooted in altruism or a desire to promote democratic ideals. On the contrary, it is the application of a long-standing geopolitical strategy to control international trade through the Mandab Strait and Suez Canal, access to African raw materials, and most specifically, block the expansion of Chinese economic influence in both the Middle East and Africa. For these reasons, the United States has a keen interest in both Yemen and Somalia, desperate to maintain chaos in those countries so as to prevent stable, nationalist leaders from emerging. In so doing, Washington once again shows itself to be an imperialist aggressor, interested only in maintaining and expanding the empire.
The tactics of this strategy are myriad. First and foremost, the US, in accordance with long-standing policy dating back to the Carter administration, uses the red herring of “Islamic extremism” and terrorism, to justify any actions it deems necessary for the advancement of its own agenda. In places like Afghanistan and Yemen, the enemy is Al-Qaeda which must be fought with US military might, while in Libya and Syria, Al-Qaeda is an ally fighting against the oppressive regimes of Gaddafi and Assad. This duplicity should come as no surprise since Washington’s foreign policy is based on expanding US hegemony rather than promoting any ideals.
The second aspect of America’s imperialist strategy is the fomenting of ethnic, tribal, and other sectarian conflicts. In doing so, Washington is able to prevent the emergence of any form of nationalism that, by definition, would stand in opposition to US imperialism. One must simply look across the Mandab Strait for an example of this strategy: Somalia. A nation of strategic and geographical importance, Somalia has been effectively destroyed by US policy over the last twenty years, having been transformed from a proud nation to a loose collection of tribal groups dominated by repugnant warlords with no regard for national identity.
In Yemen, we’ve seen this strategy employed vis-à-vis the Huthi rebellion, the propagandistic use of tribal groups as proxies of Saudi Arabia, Iran, or whomever the US wants to demonize, and countless other examples of these sorts of divisive tactics. In this way, the imperialists are able to keep Yemen fragmented, using it as a pawn on the geopolitical chessboard.
A Connection Between Yemen and Syria?
With all this talk about Yemen, the question might be, “So, what’s this got to do with Syria?” The answer to this question can be found in an analysis of the social movements of the two countries. In Syria, just as in Yemen, there is a real, pro-democracy opposition that took to the streets in hopes of forcing reforms. Both movements began with high-minded ideals and sought to end what they perceived to be the outdated rule of dictatorial leaders. However, unlike Yemen, Syria has been under assault by West-sponsored, foreign mercenary terrorists who have usurped the title of “opposition”, thereby making the real opposition into a mere irrelevancy on the international stage. The United States and its proxies in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, and elsewhere are responsible for this reprehensible turn of events.
And so, when the Obama administration claims that the Yemeni model is the best course of action in Syria, what they mean is that their tactics of subversion through terrorism are simply a means to an end. Just as in Yemen, the United States seeks to topple Assad and install a puppet government, one that would be comfortable under the thumb of the imperialist ruling class. The US has no interest in protecting the rights of the ethnic and religious minorities or the real opposition (namely the National Coordinating Committee and the Popular front) in Syria, just as they had little interest in furthering the democratic aspirations of the people of Yemen. Rather, Obama and those who control him, seek regime change in Syria in order to use that nation as a geopolitical chess piece against Iran, Russia and any other nation unfortunate enough to be deemed an “enemy” of the United States.
We Told You So
by Ghassan Kadi
Friends of Syria
May 21, 2012
So… the Syrian events are spilling into Lebanon. I hate to say the I/we who know about the region, have told you that it would. I hate to also say that when we said it would, we were not talking about a so-called Arab-Spring spilling into Lebanon, the like of which we saw in Egypt, and which called for reform and freedom. Our fear was purely about a bloody sectarian conflict. Yes, we told you so.
In Syria now, the calls for freedom and democracy have all but gone silence. We also told you so. And they have been replaced by Allah Akbar and pure sectarian calls to turn Syria into a Sunni fundamentalist state. We also told you so.
A Sunni Sheikh, Ahmed Abdel Wahed gets killed in Lebanon, and Lebanon is on the brink of yet another sectarian war.
No rational person condones killing in any given situation, but a rational analysis of the killing of the Sheikh can perhaps give a possible explanation of how and why it happened.
To begin with, Abdel Wahed was an outspoken supporter of Hariri, the core of Sunni fundamentalism in Lebanon. The Hariri camp refers to Abdel Wahed as a martyr and a man of God. His opponents describe him as a sectarian rascal spreading sectarian anti-Alawite hatred in the hearts and minds of young Sunni Lebanese youth as well as a militarised arms trader. No one seems to be able to pin point what he really was with clear evidence.
But why would a Lebanese army checkpoint shoot to kill?
If there was truly a Lebanese Army conspiracy to kill Abdel Wahed as his mourners claim, the Army intelligence would have found a way to do so in a manner that does not overtly implicate it. Would it not?
Even during the ugly Lebanese Civil War when all sorts of militia groups were in control of the streets and check points, the “rule” for passing traffic was to stop at checkpoints and accept being searched. Shots were fired only and only when the travelling car did not stop. And when they did not stop, they did so for good reasons because they had something or someone to hide.
So if the rogue combatant militia run and led by thugs stuck to this rule, it is only rational to think that the regular Lebanese army would also stick to this rue. There is no reason as to why it would not.
The most likely scenario is that the Sheikh and his companion driver had some “thing” to hide, not some “one” to hide. Most likely, they were hiding weapons that they were couriering from some point A to another point B.
In any which way one looks at the situation, outsiders are not in a position to understand the complexity of the situation in the Middle East.
The uprising in Syria is not about reform. It is not about democracy. It is about sectarianism, sponsored by the Sunni Arab funds (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) under the blessing of the USA with a political objective to maintain Israel’s military superiority in the region and a financial objective to keep in control of the oil.
Targeting Syria is for “good” reasons, because it is the only Arab state left that opposes Israel, and the only one in which Moslems and Christians live under a law that gives equal rights to all.
This tragedy can spill into Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia…. and sees Sunnis and Shiites engaging into a blood bath the likes of which has not been seen for centuries anywhere in the world. Nothing can serve Israel better.
I just hope that I won’t have to find myself in a situation in the future to say to the pundits and cynics, those who support the Syrian uprising; I told you so.
Explosion in Syria wounds six soldiers
Press TV
May 9, 2012
An explosion has wounded at least six Syrian soldiers escorting the United Nations monitors in the town of Daraa.
The incident occurred on Wednesday after a roadside bomb hit a Syrian military truck just seconds after a convoy carrying the head of the UN observer mission passed by.
The blast injured a 1st lieutenant and five troops.
The head of the UN observer mission, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, was heading into the southern Syrian city with a team of observers and a convoy of journalists. The explosion was more than 100 meters (330 feet) behind the convoy.
The bomb attack took place a day after UN-Arab League envoy; Kofi Annan briefed the UN Security Council (UNSC) by videoconference from Geneva on his efforts to end the year-plus-long unrest in Syria.
After Annan’s briefing, Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari accused foreign countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, of plotting to sabotage Annan’s plan by fueling the violence.
“We need to see everybody on board. We need to see these Qataris, the Saudis, the Turkish government, as well as some other nations, stopping their incitement to violence, stopping their sponsorship of…the armed rebellion in Syria, stopping their financial contribution to cover up the needs of these armed groups and the needs of the terrorist groups, which are attacking…civilians as well as military targets in Syria,” said Jaafari.
The Syrian official also stated that his country was committed to the plan.
Preparations For A War – Voice Over
108morris108
April 19, 2012
A Subscriber sent in some military observations – from the Gulf to Europe – the menace of military build-up is everywhere.
…
PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR
The US, Israel and Greece launched an air naval exercise in the Mediterranean Thursday, March 29. Codenamed “Noble Dina,” within Crete and including the waters off of Turkey, Cyprus, and Israeli Navy bases in Haifa and Ashdod. American, Israeli and Greek fleets are being supported by the British Royal Navy flotilla cruising around the Straits of Gibraltar. Rumours have it that the exercise is led by the US Sixth Fleet . As soon as it is over, possibly at the end of April, this aircraft carrier and strike group will head through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, raising the number of US aircraft carriers facing Iran to three. Israel contributed missile ships, submarines, fighter jets and assault helicopters to the drill.
As this drill is launched Russia has started to surround Syria with it’s warships to prevent any attack on Syria . Also in the recent US-backed “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul Saudi Arabia and Qatar confirmed they will financially assist the rebels. Russia has viewed it as a further step towards Arab meddling in the region.
Meanwhile 200 American and Arab Gulf fighter-bombers thundered overhead Sunday, April 8 at the outset of the biggest air force exercise ever conducted in the Gulf region. An operation for reopening the strategic Straits of Hormuz if it is closed by Iran which is busy building a naval base there. 100 of the warplanes took off from the USS Enterprise and USS Abraham Lincoln, training was also with Saudi, UAE, Kuwaiti and Bahraini air forces. The drill was conducted mainly around the US Fifth Fleet High Command base in Bahrain and around the Gulf.
Russia is building a radar station in the Armenian mountains to counter the US radar set up at the Turkish Kurecik air base. This system sends a warning to the US not to strike Iran. The Turkish station will trade data on incoming Iranian missiles with the US station in the Israeli Negev, the Russian station in Armenia will share input with Tehran. The Russian army has deployed S-400 surface-to-air missiles into Kaliningrad, the Baltic enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania as a response to US plans for an anti-Iran missile shield system in Europe and the Middle East. Looks like the future is going to be not peaceful and will get worse.
PN 