An analyst says the United States seeks to establish a Libya-style “pure puppet government” in Syria to deprive Hezbollah and Iran of a necessary ally and fulfill the geopolitical agenda of imperial powers in the region.
The comment comes as nearly 40 people have been killed and over 80 others injured in bomb attacks carried out in a district near the Syrian capital city of Damascus. The bombings rocked the Jaramana district, about 10 kilometers (six miles) southeast of Damascus, on Wednesday.
Press TV has conducted an interview with New York-based Eric Draitser, founder of Stopimperialism.com to shed more light on the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: As someone mentioned in that report is this essentially a result of what happened in Doha as far as the forming of the coalition goes and secondly if that is true then how can the Syrian people have any confidence in this coalition which is meant to represent them?
Draitser: Well, to answer the second part of your question first, certainly they should not have any confidence in the so called Syrian coalition. The reality is that this is a coalition that was created at the behest of Hillary Clinton and the United States and more generally the Western imperial powers and the purpose of it was to rebrand the opposition and to make it more palatable both to world opinion and to those in Syria and in fact what we see is that the new head of this coalition Mouaz al-Khatib is in fact merely a puppet of the Western powers.
More to the point he has made references to Syria becoming a purely Islamic state and so the events that we’ve seen in Jaramana in the past two days seem to indicate this same point that they are attacking not just any suburb of Damascus but a suburb that is home to much of the Christian and Druze population in the area and so this is clearly an attack that is motivated by a desire for sectarian conflict to sow the seeds of chaos between Christians, Druze, Alawites, Shia Muslims and all of the other groups for the interests of the United States.
Press TV: So then in a sense Mr. Draitser is the United States creating a future headache for itself? Once again is in a sense history repeating itself?
Draitser: Well, certainly history is repeating itself but I think it’s a mistake to think that the United States wants something other than chaos. Certainly they would like a pure puppet government the way that they have in Libya but the side effect of that is a chaotic situation that cannot be controlled by a government authority.
The United States is perfectly happy with this because what it does is it deprives Hezbollah of a necessary ally; it deprives the Iranians of a necessary ally and it furthers the geopolitical agenda of the United States, Israel and the Western imperial powers.
Internet connections & telecom reportedly failing across Syria, right as NATO has finished preparing their proxy “SNC” and readies for final push.
November 29, 2012 (LD) – In early summer, NATO had attempted to overwhelm Damascus and Aleppo with a torrent of psychological operations, communication disruptions, foreign terrorists crossing Syria’s borders, and a devastating assassination of top Syrian officials in the heart of Damascus. The idea was to cause panic, division, mass defections and fold the Syrian state when in reality, it was more than able to fight on. Syria called the bluff and here it still stands.
With the Israel-Gaza charade concluded, it was reported that NATO would pivot back toward Syria – and it has. It has handpicked a new proxy-regime to act as the face of the terrorists battling Syrian civilians and soldiers alike within the country, while it has been conducting a concerted and refocused propaganda campaign to paint the Syrian government as once again, “imminently about to fall.”
Reports are now trickling in that communications are failing across the country and another attempt at a Libyan-style “Mermaid Dawn” is being made by NATO and its terrorist proxies inside Syria. The hope is, that after several months more of terrorism, threats, sanctions, and pressure put on the border by both Israel on the Golan Heights, and Turkey along Syria’s north, that this time the trick might work.
If operations are not already in progress, they will be soon, and one must recall historical instances when this tactic has been used before so as to recognize it when it is tried again.
Reposted below, is Thierry Meyssan’s June 2012 warning regarding NATO psychological operations – and the information is as relevant now as ever. Inside Syria, unity and resilience is more important now than ever.
In a few days, perhaps as early as Friday, June 15, at noon, the Syrians wanting to watch their national TV stations will see them replaced on their screens by TV programs created by the CIA. Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian Government, people demonstrating, ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President Al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.
This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat. NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization.
The Arab League has officially asked the satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting Syrian media, either public or private (Syria TV, Al-Ekbariya, Ad-Dounia, Cham TV, etc.) A precedent already exists because the Arab League had managed to censure Libyan TV in order to keep the leaders of the Jamahiriya from communicating with their people. There is no Hertz network in Syria, where TV works exclusively with satellites. The cut, however, will not leave the screens black.
Actually, this public decision is only the tip of the iceberg. According to our information several international meetings were organized during the past week to coordinate the disinformation campaign. The first two were technical meetings, held in Doha (Qatar); the third was a political meeting and took place in Riyad (Saudi Arabia).
The first meeting assembled PSYOP officers, embedded in the satellite TV channels of Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Fox, France 24, Future TV and MTV. It is known that since 1998, the officers of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit (PSYOP) have been incorporated in CNN. Since then this practice has been extended by NATO to other strategic media as well.
They fabricated false information in advance, on the basis of a “story-telling” script devised by Ben Rhodes’s team at the White House. A procedure of reciprocal validation was installed, with each media quoting the lies of the other media to render them plausible for TV spectators. The participants also decided not only to requisition the TV channels of the CIA for Syria and Lebanon (Barada, Future TV, MTV, Orient News, Syria Chaab, Syria Alghad) but also about 40 religious Wahhabi TV channels to call for confessional massacres to the cry of “Christians to Beyrouth, Alawites into the grave!.”
The second meeting was held for engineers and technicians to fabricate fictitious images, mixing one part in an outdoor studio, the other part with computer generated images. During the past weeks, studios in Saudi Arabia have been set up to build replicas of the two presidential palaces in Syria and the main squares of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Studios of this type already exist in Doha (Qatar), but they are not sufficient.
The third meeting was held by General James B. Smith, the US ambassador, a representative of the UK, prince Bandar Bin Sultan (whom former U.S. president George Bush named his adopted son so that the U.S. press called him “Bandar Bush”). In this meeting the media actions were coordinated with those of the Free “Syrian” Army, in which prince Bandar’s mercenaries play a decisive role.
The operation had been in the making for several months, but the U.S. National Security Council decided to accelerate the action after the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, notified the White House that he would oppose by all means, even by force, any illegal NATO military intervention in Syria.
The operation has a double intent: the first is to spread false information, the second aims at censuring all possible responses.
The hampering of TV satellites for military purposes is not new. Under pressure from Israel, the USA and the EU blocked Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian TV channels, one after the other. However, no satellite channels from other parts of the world were censured.
The broadcast of false news is also not new, but four significant steps have been taken in the art of propaganda during the last decade.
• In 1994, a pop music station named “Free Radio of the Thousand Hills” (RTML) gave the signal for genocide in Rwanda with the cry, “Kill the cockroaches!”
• In 2001, NATO used the media to impose an interpretation of the 9/11 attacks and to justify its own aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. At that time already, it was Ben Rhodes who had been commissioned by the Bush administration to concoct the Kean/Hamilton Commission report on the attacks.
• In 2002, the CIA used five TV channels (Televen, Globovision, ValeTV and CMT) to make the public in Venezuela believe that phantom demonstrators had captured the elected president, Hugo Chávez, forcing him to resign. In reality he was the victim of a military coup d’etat.
• In 2011, France 24 served as information ministry for the Libyan CNT, according to a signed contract. During the battle of Tripoli, NATO produced fake studio films, then transmitted them via Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, showing phantom images of Libyan rebels on the central square of the capital city, while in reality they were still far away. As a consequence, the inhabitants of Tripoli were persuaded that the war was lost and gave up all resistance.
Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.
This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid “to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas” (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and “all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression”. By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.
As in Libya, Syrian “opposition” is led by long-time servants of Western corporate-financiers.
November 26, 2012 (LD) – A year ago, it was reported that Libya’s new NATO-installed prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, was in fact a long-time US resident, having taught at the University of Alabama and was formally employed by the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. El-Keib is listed as a “Professor and Chairman” in his Petroleum Institute profile which also describes extensive research conducted by him sponsored by various US government agencies and departments over the years.
His long history of serving and working in coordination with Western governments and corporations made him and his collaborators the ideal candidates to prepare Libya for its place within the Wall Street-London international order.
Now it is revealed that the US-handpicked opposition, announced in Doha, Qatar earlier this month, is led by a similarly compromised figure, Moaz al-Khatib. The corporate-financier-funded Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reported of al-Khatib that:
Moaz al-Khatib, an oil sector engineer and former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, has garnered substantial praise since his designation, while Riad Seif and Suhair al-Atassi bring their own credibility to the coalition. They have now set up shop in Cairo and have received the full endorsement of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council as the “sole representative” of the Syrian opposition. The European Union and the United States have endorsed the group in a more general fashion.
Even more importantly, from Syrian citizens of various affiliations with whom I have met recently, it is clear that al-Khatib and his associates seem to draw praise for their opposition to the regime—as an imam, al-Khatib refused to follow the speeches imposed by the regime and was imprisoned—their resistance, and their tolerance. These endorsements are a first achievement, but a number of steps are necessary before Moaz al-Khatib becomes the real head of the Syrian opposition and enters into a substantive relationship with EU leaders.
However, this resounding praise should be kept in the context that among the Carnegie Endowment’s sponsors are in fact many “oil sector” giants including British Petroleum (BP), Chevron, Exxon, and Shell.
Completely unknown to the international public only a week ago, Sheikh Moaz al-Khatib has been catapulted to the presidency of the Syrian National Coalition, which represents pro-Western opposition in the Damascus government. Portrayed by an intense public relations campaign as a highly moral personality with no partisan or economic attachments, he is in truth a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and an executive of the Shell oil company.
Indeed, al-Khatib had worked at the al-Furat Petroleum Company for six years, according to the BBC, which is partnered with Shell Oil. Al-Khatib is also said to have lobbied for Shell in Syria between 2003-2004, and has likewise taught classes in both Europe and the United States, this according to his biography featured on his own website.
Video: The smirking crypto-sectarian extremist, and new Western proxy of the recently re-contrived “Syrian National Council,” Moaz al-Khatib admits that he’s been promised legitimacy and weapons despite openly declaring his intention of overthrowing the secular nation-state of Syria, and installing an “Islamic state.” Qatari state propaganda walks al-Khatib through the all-too-familiar talking points repeated by the US, UK, EU, Turkey and their Persian Gulf collaborators. Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs sells the “legal” argument for circumventing the United Nations Security Council.
….
While the global public is repeatedly told that the violence in Syria is the result of “pro-democratic” forces fighting against the “brutal regime” of President Bashar al-Assad, it is Moaz al-Khatib himself who inexplicably states that two certified autocracies, those of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are propping him up and that it is an “Islamic state” he hopes to create upon the rubble of a destroyed Syria.
Qatari state media front, Al Jazeera, credits the Qatari minister of state for foreign affairs for the very creation of al-Khatib’s new “opposition coalition. Al-Khatib, in an Al Jazeera interview, counts the two absolute monarchies of Qatar and Saudi Arabia as his “friends,” and admits – that while he cannot say who – “friends” have promised him weapons as he embarks on the creation of this “Islamic state.” Despite his assurances that his planned “Islamic state” will exhibit tolerance, festering extremist regimes such as Libya and Egypt, created with the same Western-backed formula now at work in Syria, have already proven such assurances are merely rhetoric aimed at placating public opinion long enough for Syria’s secular institutions to be irrevocably disfigured.
Already in Syria, al-Khatib’s “freedom fighters” are exposed as both foreign extremists – affiliates of Al Qaeda, as well as sectarian-driven Muslim Brotherhood militants that have plagued Syria’s sociopolitical landscape for decades. Clearly, al-Khatib has played a role in perpetuating this plague, clearly he plans to continue well into the foreseeable future – this time with Western, Turkish, Qatari and Saudi support.
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The anti-Syria imperialists would not be happy to see a ceasefire which would allow for dialogue to resolve the turmoil in the country, says an activist.
The Arab League has welcomed the formation of a new anti-Syria opposition bloc, recognizing the so-called Syrian National Coalition for Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNCROF) as the representative of the Syrian people.
Hundreds of Syrian and Arab students studying at the University of Damascus on Saturday staged a sit-in in front of the United Nations building in Damascus to express condemnation of the unjust Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Waving the Syrian and Palestinian flags, the participants stressed solidarity with the people in Gaza and denunciation of the flagrant official Arab and international silence towards the Israeli criminality against the Palestinians in the Strip.
The students chanted slogans which affirm the unity of the Syrian and Palestinian people and condemn the conspiring stances of some Arab and foreign countries towards Syria and their silence regarding what is happening in Gaza.
“The Arab League has become a tool in the hands of the US,” the students said, noting that their sit-in is aimed at stressing the Syrian youth’s standing by the steadfast people of Gaza and their right to liberate every inch of their land.
They called on the international community to compel the Zionist entity to halt its crimes and aggression against the Palestinian people.
“The Syrian people will never forget that the Palestinian cause is their number one cause and will continue commitment to resistance as an only solution and option to regain the usurped rights of people,” said Zeina, one of the participants in the sit-in.
For her part, Iman, expressed wonder at the stances of some Arab countries which have not cut their ties with Israel that has been committing crimes and massacres against the Arabs.
Chairperson of the National Union of the Lebanese Students, Mais Sweidan, said the participation of Lebanese students in the sit-in is an expression of their solidarity with the people of Gaza and standing by Syria in the face of the conspiracy hatched against it.
In turn, Secretary of the Arab Student Organizations at Damascus University, Mutaz al-Qarashi, said the aim of the event is to protest the savagery of the Zionist aggression in Gaza and draw the Security Council’s attention to the real crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.
Mustafa Dakwan, Head of Africa Students Union in Damascus, considered that the Arab and African nations are brought together by one fate and one goal against the international conspiring, stressing that the students’ participation in the sit-in is an expression of their solidarity with the Syrian and Palestinian people.
At the end of the sit-in, the participant students, represented by the National Union of Syrian Students, handed to the UN Advisor in Damascus, Khalid al-Masri, a statement condemning the barbaric aggression of the terrorist Zionist entity against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the international and Arab official silence towards it.
Hundreds of Students in Tartous Voice Solidarity with Gaza People
In the same framework, hundreds of students in Tartous province staged a sit-in in al-Mohafaza Square in solidarity with the people of Gaza against the Israeli aggression, condemning the international silence on the massacres committed by the Zionist occupation forces against children and women in the besieged strip.
The students denounced the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and all practices by the Israeli occupation which has been besieging the strip for many years.
The participants roundly denounced the silence of the Arab League on the Zionist crime against the people of Gaza, describing the stance of some Arab regimes on the Zionist occupation as shameful.
They pledged not to forget or forgive the crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, as they also will not forget the conspirators against Syria. http://sana.sy/eng/21/2012/11/17/452903.htm
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