Mr Aleppo Syria Update 27 April One bombing 9 Killed [video]
108morris108
April 27, 2012
A News Report, some analysis and a Personal viewpoint.
Syria, Waco, Occupy, and Los Angeles [video included]
Correlations They Hope You Never Make.
by Tony Cartalucci
Image: While the UN demands that Syria not only allow admittedly armed terrorists to roam freely through its cities, but that they also capitulate to their demands, the West has driven peaceful “Occupy” protesters from the streets of their cities by force. One wonders what events would have followed if protesters being sprayed and beaten in the streets pulled out assault rifles and fired on police. Would Washington withdraw security forces and entertain their demands?
April 27, 2012 – While the West demands Syria pull its security forces from cities where roving bands of terrorists are on record committing widespread atrocities including the kidnapping, torture, and murder of civilians, as documented by the West’s own Human Rights Watch report, “Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses,” it has denied its own citizens the right to even peacefully assemble at “Occupy” protests to address their grievances back home. Syria’s government has been threatened continuously by the West to begin a process of political “transition,” or more accurately, to submit to Western-backed regime change, in the face of armed militants, while the West itself maintains a strict policy of non-negotiation with terrorist demands.
Image: Homs, Syria? No, this is Waco, Texas after a combination of military and federal security forces raided, burned down, and killed nearly every man, woman, and child in this sprawling complex located on private property. The US will kill its own citizens with weapons of war just for breaking their laws, mentioning nothing of what they would do should Americans take to the streets and carry out a campaign of terror while demanding the government step down.
As the West conjures up a myriad of excuses to sweep prolonged “Occupy” protests off the streets of their biggest cities, they insist that the Syrians not only tolerate an armed “occupation,” but capitulate immediately to their demands. But one must wonder just what any given Western nation would do if protesters demanded the nation’s leadership to stand down, and did so through armed violence.
Video: Hardly unarmed civilians, meet Syria’s tank-driving, rocket-firing, Kalashnikov-waving rebels. Had rioters in Los Angeles raided government armories and patrols, capturing armored vehicles and rocket launchers, or had violence escalated to the point where such weapons were crossing in from Mexico, surely Washington would have mobilized armored divisions, gunships, and aircraft to crush them and would be considered negligent if they failed to do so.
In Europe there are the Basque separatists of Spain – considered terrorists across the European Union, England, and the United States. The Irish Republican Army likewise was considered a vicious terrorist organization the United Kingdom sought to crush with a brutal military campaign of their own, turning entire cities into Syrian-esque war zones.
In the United States, there have been no real organized armed uprisings, yet the government has still mobilized its military to slaughter its own citizens as seen during the siege in Waco Texas in 1993. Scenes of tanks and helicopters against the backdrop of a Texan landscape and the subsequent destruction of the Branch Davidian compound are on par with anything allegedly unfolding in Syria, including the murder of women and children.
However, unlike in Syria, where terrorists are actively carrying out widespread violence, including bombing campaigns, targeted assassinations, and kidnappings, the people of Waco, Texas were on their own property attempting to mind their own business.
When armed groups do take to the streets, such as during the 1992 LA Riots, the government was far from “withdrawing” security forces from the city and accepting demands. In addition to the police who were gunning down both armed threats as well as looters, thousands of National Guardsmen and Marines were also mobilized to restore order. Unlike in Syria, where rebels are armed with rocket propelled grenades, tanks, French-made missiles, assault-rifles, machines guns, and mortars, the rioters in LA were armed with pistols, rifles, shotguns, or simply their own cars – yet still the military was mobilized, and indeed killed Americans in their own streets.
It is sensible for a government to restore order in their own country, preserving the life and liberty of the vast majority of citizens not taking to the streets to carry out theft, violence, and mayhem. The people of Los Angeles, had the government not acted and had the violence continued to spiral out of control, would have begged for security forces to restore order and viewed the government as negligent in their duties should they have failed to do so. They also most likely would have taken the law into their own hands, just like thousands of Syrians are doing now against NATO-backed death squads.
So why is the West holding Syria to standards they themselves have demonstratively rejected? It goes beyond hypocrisy – it is a declaration to the world that the “international rule of law” exists solely as a means to justify the expansion of the West’s global hegemony. It is naked military conquest hiding behind the fig leaf of “humanitarian concerns.” Syria, as does any sovereign nation or individual on Earth, has the right to defend itself and restore order within its realm.
The United States, England, and France would never withdraw security forces from their own cities where militants were armed with rockets, tanks, and machine guns while killing security forces and civilians alike and they certainly would not step down from power in the face of such armed threats. In fact, after invading foreign nations on patently false pretenses and stirring up warranted armed resistance, they then use such violence to justify perpetual occupation. They promptly label these people “terrorists” and then execute a bloody campaign to eliminate them.
The depths of depravity, the hypocrisy, the illegitimacy flaunted by the United Nations and the Western interests pulling its string, demanding Syrian troops to withdraw from cities plagued by terrorists, but making no mention of the terrorists themselves or their own serial violations of the “peace plan,” even as they drive tanks around on camera in front of the world, forever renders moot this latest attempt to assert the “primacy of international law” over that of the nation-state.
What Wall Street and London do through their “international institutions” from this point forward, is done as poorly disguised imperialism with their “humanitarian concerns” nothing more than the weakest sort of rhetoric in the long history of weak rhetoric used to propel the interests of empire.
War Under Table: Ex-Blackwater mercs in Syria ‘backed by US’ [video]
Russia Today
April 26, 2012
The opposition fighters in Syria might be getting help from a different source – in the form of training from the US private security firm, formerly known as the notorious Blackwater group. Security circles reportedly confirmed the information which was released earlier by Wikileaks – that the company is sending mercenaries from Iraq into Syria. RT discusses this with Christoph R. Horstel – who’s a government and business consultant. He joins RT from Germany.
RT on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_com
RT on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
[hat tip: Friends Of Syria]
Will NATO Try a Wag-the-Dog Provocation Against Syria to Keep Sarkozy in Power After May 6? [video]
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV / Tarpley.net
April 24, 2012
[hat tip: Land Destroyer]
NATO and XE try for Another Oppressive DeMockracy – Syria Christoph R. Hörstel [video]
108morris108
April 26, 2012
Christoph R. Hörstel is a regular contributor to Russia Today, it was an honour to have him appear and inform. The mercenaries funded by the west are going into Syria across most of its borders ….
Neo-Imperialists Grind Away at Syrian Sovereignty
Recolonization of Syria 20 years in the making.
editorial by Tony Cartalucci
April 24, 2012 – Western corporate-financiers have plotted since at least 1991 to overturn not only Syria’s government, but to topple and co-opt the governments of every nation previously in the Soviet sphere of influence. US Army General Wesley Clark made it known during a 2007 speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California, that in 1991, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz said the US had 5-10 years to clean up the old Soviet “client regimes” before the next super power rose up and challenged western hegemony.
Clark would go on to say that shortly after September 11, 2001, while at the Pentagon, a document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense indicated plans to attack and destroy the governments of 7 countries; Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon and Libya.
More recently, US State Department is on record stating that millions of dollars have been spent recruiting, training, networking, and equipping armies of “activists” from these targeted nations since at least 2008 to return home and sow the very unrest seen at the beginning of the “Arab Spring” – unrest that has served as the very foundation for the violence now plaguing Syria.
And even as the UN’s Kofi Annan disingenuously peddles his 6-point “peace plan,” the US, European Union, and their Arab League junior partners, are funding and arming the rebels to continue the fight even while attempting to hold the Syrian government accountable to the peace deal they themselves brazenly flaunt.
Never has it been so obvious that “international law” and “humanitarian concerns” are merely the latest contrived rhetorical devices, institutionalized as “the responsibility to protect,” to expand the financial, political, and tactical hegemony of today’s imperialists across the globe.
Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.
Yet despite brazen admissions by US policy think-tanks like the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution, that the latest peace deal in Syria is nothing more than a ploy to buy time to continue eroding the Syrian government in pursuit of Western orchestrated regime change, and political “commentators” drawn from Fortune 500 funded institutions like the Henry Jackson Society admitting that “diplomatic options” are merely the West paying lip service ahead of unilateral military intervention, there are still throngs of brain-addled pundits parroting the latest US State Department talking-points regarding a brutal regime mass murdering its own people and how it is the moral imperative of the West to intervene.
The latest, and perhaps most depraved grandstanding yet, comes to us from United States President Obama, who stood in front of the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum correlating Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to restore order to his nation to Adolf Hitler’s US and British eugenics-inspired, Bush-bankrolled, IBM facilitated racial superiority death cult. Worse than even the real history behind World War II, is the fact that since then, the United States has conducted a global campaign of systematic atrocities killing easily as many Vietnamese and Iraqis as Hitler did Jews. To this day, the United States maintains an unparalleled global network of torture chambers and hit teams as it combs the planet extra-judicially executing and imprisoning people with absolute impunity.
Image: A particularly relevant exhibit at the Washington D.C. Holocaust Museum. President Obama, using the museum as a backdrop, set the stage for the continuation of Wall Street and London’s own crimes against humanity. Students of history however, will understand that Hitler’s Nazis weren’t pioneers of genocide and global domination, but merely clumsy imitators inspired by what the Anglo-Americans were already in the process of perfecting.
In fact, the very personalities behind the sort of atrocities carried out by the United States over the last 20 years are still dictating US foreign policy today. Despite the charade carried on by Obama and his alleged “liberal” presidency, he has merely fronted for the continuation of a singular agenda meted out by Wall Street and London’s think-tanks with but the flimsiest veneer of “progressive liberalism” laid over it.
For those that take a few minutes to look into the details of what is presented to them by a serially compromised corporate-media, they will see yet another “Iraq-style” pack of lies being paraded before them to justify continued meddling in Syria. Just like in Libya before it, Syria will not face salvation by means of a NATO intervention, it will face total destruction. Sanctions of “luxury goods” announced just this week by the White House are aimed at peeling away the Syrian government’s supporters, hoping that, through basic game theory, the ruling elite across Syria will take the bait to “save themselves.” In reality, the collapse of the Syrian government will lead to the same perpetual instability, lawlessness, division, and murderous mayhem Libya has been plunged into- to the benefit of no one but the multinationals.
Imperialism throughout the ages has always been sold with rhetoric peddling a “higher cause.” Whether it was taming the barbarians outside the gates of Rome, spreading “superior” Anglo civilization to the four corners of the globe, the big-oil and banker expansionism during America’s manifest destiny, or today’s “humanitarian wars,” the underlying truth is one of megalomania, exploitation, and human depravity on an ever increasing scale. It is peddled with simplistic rhetoric aimed at the most impressionable, weakest of minds. The support these gullible minds lend the powered elite results in catastrophic consequences not only for the victims of imperialism, but for the empires themselves – inevitably wrecked by insatiable, unchecked greed.
Syria is just one prize of many sought after by a long line of empires attempting to feed the world, its people, and resources into its ever-hungry maw. And Syria itself has been the subject of imperial ambitions many times in the past, including those of the Romans, Ottomans, the French, and now the Anglo-Americans. Unlike in the past, where information was difficult to come by for the average person, there is no excuse for ignorance, nor for believing the same tired lies told by the global elite in their quest to mobilize entire populations to sustain their own self-serving agenda. While the allure to “fit in” with what we think the rest of the world is thinking is persuasive, it is illogical, and in reality an illusion. What the TV tells us on a daily basis is not what the rest of the world thinks – it is what the rest of the world is told to think by an extremely small minority.
Image: Confessed liar Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi is proud that his politically motivated fabrications regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were eagerly used by the West as a convenient casus belli for their predetermined invasion and the subsequent death, maiming, and displacement of millions. There are “al-Janabis” in every nation waiting for the right climate in which to flourish – and an eager cadre of neo-imperialists seeking them out as they expand their corporate-financier empires across the planet. Libya’s Sliman Bouchuiguir was one of them. Syria’s human rights “Observatory” is another.
Syria’s government could not stand for as long as it has with only a military backing it. It has support across both the upper echelons of Syrian society, as well as across the myriad of minorities who all stand to lose should NATO’s terrorist proxies, drunk on extremist doctrine and promises of dominion over their fellow Syrians, come to power. This is precisely why NATO has adopted a two-prong strategy – terrorize Syria’s minorities into submission and penalize Syria’s elite until they defect.
More importantly, Syria has stood against insidious foreign meddling for over a year because the people see themselves, their nation, and their sovereignty, both personal and national, at risk. Whatever transgressions they face under the Syrian government, it is ultimately still a Syrian government. Whatever comes into being by NATO’s blood-soaked hands will be entirely divorced from anything “Syrian.” In Libya, it took the form of Abdurrahim el-Keib – a long time US resident, chairman of the BP, Shell, Total-funded Petroleum Institute who has swiftly moved to sell the nation out from under the Libyan people. Worst of all, he has done so as a first priority, even at the expense of Libya’s security and territorial integrity.
Image: The “fruits” of NATO’s regime change in Libya – a client state run by US resident, BP, Total, and Shell-funded Petroleum Institute chairman, Abdurrahim el-Keib whose policy is dictated by Wall Street and London, not the aspirations of the Libyan people. Neo-imperialists seek to turn Syria into a similar footstool of Western power.
The oligarchs of Wall Street and London will continue directing their vast propaganda networks to portray the violence they themselves are fueling as a one-sided atrocity carried out solely by the long-targeted Syrian government. They will continue to use the UN as a willing tool to develop their casus belli for military intervention on behalf of known terrorists. We will also see the West attempt various ploys to prod members of the Syrian government and military into defecting as Syria is slowly destroyed just as in Libya.
It is not enough for the world to simply ward off a military intervention by the Wall Street and London oligarchs. Regardless, Syria will still be picked apart. It must be made clear that as US President Obama stands before a memorial for victims of Nazi war crimes, he and the corporate-financiers he speaks on behalf of, are in the middle of carrying out their own vast crimes against humanity – on a scale far exceeding anything the Nazis could have hoped to accomplish – and they do so with UN and NATO complicity.
No matter how much power these self-proclaimed leaders garner, no matter how many people they succeed in turning to their cause, rationally, logically, historically, and morally, they are wrong. No amount of contrived institutional approval or signed resolutions makes what is being done in Syria, or what was done to Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan right. This is modern day empire being propagated not by nation-states, but by corporate-financiers, fueled by our daily patronage of their goods and services, who see themselves as transcending the nation-state. And because even imperialism in its purest form is beyond the understanding of many people, it becomes doubly so in its new, stateless form.
[hat tip: Activist Post]
Security Council Authorizes 300 Syrian Monitors
by Stephen Lendman, Contributor
Activist Post
April 22, 2012
On April 21, the Security Council unanimously adopted a Russian/EU resolution. It calls for deploying up to 300 unarmed military Syrian observers for three months.
Russia pushed hard for compromise language. An initial US-urged EU draft was one-sided. A provision Moscow rejected involved invoking Article 41 of the UN Charter.&
It states:
The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures.
These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, severance of diplomatic relations.
It’s a short leap to Article 42, stating:
Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.
Explicit language is excluded, but implies war. Washington’s itching for another one.
Resolution 2043 isn’t perfect. It falls short of full even-handedness.
Provision 2 “(c)alls upon the Syrian government to implement visibly its commitments in their entirety, as it agreed to do in the Preliminary Understanding and as stipulated in resolution 2042 (2012), to (a) cease troop movements towards population centres, (b) cease all use of heavy weapons in such centres, (c) complete pullback of military concentrations in and around population centres, as well as to withdraw its troops and heavy weapons from population centres to their barracks or temporary deployment places to facilitate a sustained cessation of violence.”
Omitted is Assad’s obligation to protect civilians. No responsible leader would leave them defenseless. Insurgent violence continues. He justifiably vows to respond.
Provision 3 “(c)alls upon all parties in Syria, including the opposition, immediately to cease all armed violence in all its forms.”
Note the difference between provision 2 and 3 language. The former is hardline and detailed. The latter seems almost an afterthought.
It excludes Turkey providing border area safe havens. Free Syrian Army insurgents use them to stage cross-border attacks. They return to launch new ones. Daily, the process repeats.
Provision 8 burdens Assad with full implementation responsibility.
It calls on him “to ensure the effective operation of UNSMIS by: facilitating the expeditious and unhindered deployment of its personnel and capabilities as required to fulfil its mandate; ensuring its full, unimpeded, and immediate freedom of movement and access as necessary to fulfil its mandate, underlining in this regard the need for the Syrian government and the United Nations to agree rapidly on appropriate air transportation assets for UNSMIS; allowing its unobstructed communications; and allowing it to freely and privately communicate with individuals throughout Syria without retaliation against any person as a result of interaction with UNSMIS.”
Provision 9 merely calls on “the parties to guarantee the safety of UNSMIS personnel without prejudice to its freedom,” but places “the primary responsibility” on Assad.
He’s committed to comply with all provisions, but can’t control insurgent behavior. Only Washington, key NATO partners, and regional allies can do it. They could end violence today and provide no need for monitors. They refuse because regime change plans depend on it. With or without monitors, expect it to continue.
It makes Provision 14 more worrisome. Like SC Resolution 2042 authorizing deployment of an advance military observer team, it mandates consideration of unspecified “further steps as appropriate.” Doing so could provide wiggle room for war.
Therein lies the problem. On April 19, the Christian Science Monitor headlined, “Leon Panetta: US military planning for greater role in Syria conflict,” saying:
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, he said Pentagon officials are “reviewing and planning for a range of additional measures that may be necessary to protect the Syrian people.”
Libya’s model is considered a potential intervention template. He suggested employing similar steps in Syria. More must be done, he stressed. “Make no mistake,” he added. (O)ne way or another, this regime ultimately will meet its end.”
Syrian National Council (SNC) and Free Syrian Army members openly urge Western intervention. On April 21, an SNC statement said:
“We call anew on the U.N. Security Council to act with all urgency to intervene militarily to bring an end to the crimes committed by the bloody regime against the unarmed Syrian people.”
On April 19, Free Syrian Army leaders urged military intervention with or without UN authorization.
On April 20, Today’s Zaman headlined, “Clinton urges tougher UN pressure on Syria,” saying:
Among other steps, she called for implementing UN Charter’s Chapter 7: “Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.”
Specifically, she wants tougher sanctions, an arms embargo, and other unspecified measures on Assad. She stopped short of endorsing military intervention, but suggested it, saying:
We have to keep Assad off balance by leaving (all) options on the table.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon implied support, saying:
Despite the government’s agreement to cease all violence, we still see deeply troubling evidence that it continues. The past few days, in particular, have brought reports of renewed and escalating violence, including the shelling of civilian areas, grave abuses by government forces and attacks by armed groups.
Assad gets blamed for insurgency violence. It continues daily. Monitors won’t change things. Of concern is who’ll choose them? Will they be independent or mostly pro-Western? Will their reports be even-handed, or what Washington wants to hear?
Moroccan Colonel Ahmed Himmische heads them. Morocco’s part of the Arab League anti-Assad coalition. Its monarchy replicates Bahrain’s. King Mohammed VI likely endorsed Himmische’s appointment. How much say he has over other monitors remains to be seen, but his voice will be loudest.
Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi headed the December/February observer team until Arab League officials suspended operations. Al-Dabi’s candor caused the pullout. He contested a Western-generated insurgency. His assessments weren’t what Washington wanted to hear.
Himmische likely assures no repeat. Monitors may be compromised before arriving. One-sided reports may follow.
Pressure will increase for tougher measures. Expect Western intervention to follow with or without UN authorization. Pretexts are easy to arrange. Any number of scenarios are possible. Invoking NATO Charter Articles 4 or 5 are possible.
Article 4 calls for members to “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any” is threatened.
Article 5 considers an armed attack (real or otherwise) against one or more members, an attack against all, and calls for collective self-defense. Turkey threatened to invoke it. Hillary Clinton suggested Article 4.
War draws closer. Monitors may be an intermediary step. Washington and key ally plans may be in place.
Whether Russia and/or China contest remains unknown. They have vital reasons for doing so. The worst ahead is possible. As developments unfold, future articles will assess them.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/
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