HIGHLY POTENT NEWS THAT MIGHT CHANGE YOUR VIEWS

war

‘Assad’s family attempts to escape Syria’

The Jerusalem Post
January 30, 2012

Sources tell Egyptian daily that Syrian security forces tried to help smuggle Syrian president’s family out of country.

Syrian security forces attempted to smuggle Syrian President Bashar Assad’s family out of the country, sources from the Syrian opposition told Al-Masry-Al-Youm Sunday evening, according to a report published by the Egyptian daily.

According to the report, security forces tried to aid the president’s wife Asma Assad, to escape via Damascus, along with his children, mother and cousin.

[CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE]

[hat tip: Drudge Report]

January 30, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

VIDEO — Apatzingan Michoacan. Tanques de guerra en San Jose.

YouTube – paulvanjaff
January 22, 2012

January 29, 2012 | Categories: news, tyranny, videos, war | Leave a comment

Iran: a quickly evolving geopolitical imbroglio – part VIII

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
January 26, 2012

It gives me no pleasure to report that the situation with Iran is only getting more heated and the push for war continues to get stronger.

An Israeli investigative journalist and highly connected analyst for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Ronen Bergman, recently wrote a piece for the New York Times magazine which states that indeed Israel will strike Iran in 2012.

Bergman bases his analysis and conclusions on meetings with “many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and intelligence.”

He says that the United States may choose to intervene, something which I think is quite likely, but he does say that “from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that.”

I am not quite sure why they would think that the United States would take a back seat in this conflict given the unmatched power the Israel lobby has in Washington coupled with the growing American presence in region of the Persian Gulf, which I have been detailing in this series.

However, the British Guardian rightly points out that Bergman’s words are more significant than those coming from most analysts and pundits given his close ties to political, military and intelligence figures in Israel.

The Guardian writes that since he spends “a significant amount of time with the politicians, spies and generals who are going to make the ultimate decision … his assessment carries more weigh[t] tha[n] your average Israel-Iran analyst.”

Note: I had to modify the above text (and other excerpts), as for some reason the Guardian’s article had an egregious amount of errors which one would think might be caught by the editor of a large news outlet but apparently not. It’s always humorous to me when a one-man-operation like End the Lie churns out higher quality content than a large-scale enterprise like Guardian.co.uk which recorded £1 million in profits in 2006 and is owned by the Scott Trust.

Bergman says that the Israelis are already preparing for the strike, something which I think is quite obvious and mirrored in the actions of the United States’ military as well.

Bergman writes, “The Israeli Air Force is where most of the preparations are taking place. It maintains planes with the long-range capacity required to deliver ordnance to targets in Iran, as well as unmanned aircraft capable of carrying bombs to those targets and remaining airborne for up to 48 hours. Israel believes that these platforms have the capacity to cause enough damage to set the Iranian nuclear project back by three to five years.”

Other estimates are much more conservative, but I honestly think that the Israeli estimate isn’t too wildly off the mark, although the author of the Guardian piece characterizes it as “very confident.”

This is mostly due to estimates from the likes of United States Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta who estimated one to two years in a best case scenario and Rafi Eitan, a Mossad veteran, who told Bergman it would set them back “not even three months.”

The two factors at play here are Iran’s physical capability to continue the nuclear program after taking a massive hit along with Iran’s drive to become self-sufficient and a scientific leader in the region.

It seems that Iran has been able to survive and continue their efforts in the face of tough sanctions, something which the country’s Supreme Leader Khamenei boasted about not too long ago.

There were also reports of roughly 1,300 students switching their major over to the field of nuclear sciences due to the most recent assassination and the many others that have occurred as of late.

It seems to me that the Western world’s hyperfocus on Iran has only served to embolden their efforts, as they feel they’re being unfairly targeted and thus should fight back by doing exactly what the West is trying to stop them from doing.

However, I must emphasize that this does not mean that I believe Iran will use a nuclear weapon against Israel or any other target, as I think it is quite clear that they are not, in fact, pursuing any nuclear weapons program at all.

Indeed Leon Panetta himself said as much on national television, yet the talking heads in the establishment media and the bought-and-paid-for politicians in Washington continue to spread disinformation about their nuclear ambitions.

I think that continued strikes and sanctions will in fact serve to embolden the Iranians and drive them to work even harder on their nuclear program.

A direct strike on their facilities would likely have a similar effect but the larger question is if they actually have the money and material capability to continue at this rate after an attack.

While they have indeed announced that they have created an underground enrichment facility which would be much harder to take out from the air, this is only one facility and I doubt that they have enough facilities which are sufficiently protected from air strikes to sustain their program after an Israeli assault.

If Israel managed to strike all above-ground facilities and take them out completely, perhaps even damaging their underground facilities with the use of so-called “bunker buster” bombs, I seriously doubt that they would be able to recover in the “not even three months” cited by Eitan.

Honestly, I think Eitan’s statement very likely represents the ever-present Israeli fearmongering about Iran which is intended to make us believe that Iran is some bloodthirsty nation itching to pull the trigger and nuke Israel and/or the West.

I think this assertion is laughable in its inaccuracy given that Iran is more peaceful than both Israel and the United States and they likely are well aware of the fact that any strike would be seen as justification for an attack on their nation.

I seriously doubt that the Iranian leadership is clueless enough to think that the West wouldn’t take any attack as an opportunity to utterly destroy Iran.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, spent a great deal of time with Bergman which allows us to get a peek into how the Israeli leadership views Iran.

“From our point of view,” Barak said, “a nuclear state offers an entirely different kind of protection to its proxies. Imagine if we enter another military confrontation with Hezbollah, which has over 50,000 rockets that threaten the whole area of Israel, including several thousand that can reach Tel Aviv. A nuclear Iran announces that an attack on Hezbollah is tantamount to an attack on Iran. We would not necessarily give up on it, but it would definitely restrict our range of operations.”

“And if a nuclear Iran covets and occupies some gulf state, who will liberate it?” Barak asked. “The bottom line is that we must deal with the problem now.”

This is a prime example of the Israeli approach: propagandize, instill fear, posit hypothetical situations with no basis in reality, then once you have your subject completely fearful and looking for a solution, you offer the solution which is inevitably a strike on Iran.

The problem here is that all of what Barak said is completely divorced from reality.

Since when was Iran threatening to occupy a gulf state? In reality, it is the United States and the West in general which poses a greater threat of occupying a gulf state.

Furthermore, if anyone is guilty of occupation, it is Israel, which has illegally occupied Palestinian land for decades and committed egregious war crimes in the process.

Has Iran done such a thing? Is Iran flouting international law on a daily basis by illegally occupying territory captured during a war?

However, not all individuals are easily duped by this type of psychological operation which is exemplified by Barak.

Take, for instance, Bruce Riedel, a former Middle East specialist for the CIA.

In a recent piece published in the Lebanese Daily Star, Riedel argued that even if Iran had a nuclear bomb (which it doesn’t) it would still not be an existential threat to Israel.

The Guardian thinks that Riedel’s view is representative of the majority opinion of the CIA and White House, even though there are no indications that this is the case.

Bergman goes on to examine this supposed divergence between the approaches of the United States and Israel (something which I think is wholly superficial) and wonders what notice, if any, Israel would give Washington of an attack on Iran.

Israel has previously said that they will not necessarily warn the United States of an upcoming attack on Iran, but I do not think that Israel would actually carry out a large-scale attack without telling the United States.

First of all, these two nations are the closest of allies, secondly the United States would likely be aware of an Israeli air campaign the second it began due to the presence of carrier strike groups in the region which have advanced radar capabilities.

However, a piece recently published in Mondoweiss claimed that Israel would give the United States 12 hours of warning before an attack on Iran because Netanyahu supposedly doesn’t trust Obama. This seems a bit off to me given that 12 hours is enough time to mobilize the troops in the region to some extent.

On the other hand, Matthew Kroenig, who was formerly an advisor at the Pentagon, now serving at the infamous Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), thinks that Israel’s warning will be “an hour or two [before the attack], just enough to maintain good relations between the countries but not quite enough to allow Washington to prevent the attack.”

This is borderline absurd to me, given that the United States has no ostensible interest in preventing an attack on Iran.

Figures in the United States’ military establishment have been pushing for an attack on Iran for years, leading many analysts to believe that an attack was imminent even though it never materialized.

What’s more, the increasing American military presence in the region surrounding Iran, which you can read about in painstaking detail in the previous installments of this series (a list of which can be found at the bottom of this article), indicates that the United States is indeed preparing for an assault on Iran.

In writing for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg rightly points out that the same individuals giving intelligence to Bergman had convinced Goldberg that an attack on Iran would come last summer.

Goldberg blames his miscalculation on the success of the Stuxnet attack, although honestly I think this is more of an attempt to keep whatever scrap of reputation he has left untarnished.

This makes me wonder, why would Israeli military and intelligence figures be trying to convince individuals in the media that a strike on Iran is imminent?

I believe that this very well might be in an attempt to pressure individuals in America to preemptively strike Iran or prepare for such a strike in order to make the Israeli job easier.

My impression is reflected in the Guardian piece in the passage which reads, “Clearly, [Israel] has a motive in conveying the impression that an attack might be imminent, to stir up urgency in the West to confront Iran.”

In my analysis of the events surrounding Iran, I have found that this is very likely the case and the constant “leaks” regarding plans to attack Iran are meant to push the United States into taking action first.

The military buildup in the region very well might be proof that this approach being taken by Israel is working.

There is also the issue of a third carrier strike group making its way into the Persian Gulf region, a group which would include the aging USS Enterprise.

In the previous installment of this series, I discussed the possibility that the “Big E” could be used as a target for a false flag attack which would give the West free license to assault Iran.

I find this to be likely because it would not only give the West the justification they so desperately have been seeking which has been proving difficult to achieve through pure propaganda, but it would also save the United States a great deal of money in decommissioning the vessel.

While I went over this in some detail before, I believe it is worth exploring more closely in an article devoted entirely to the subject, something which I plan to do in the near future.

If you have any information to share which could help me in this series or in my analysis of a possible false flag attack on the USS Enterprise, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at admin@EndtheLie.com with whatever you have to share.

Short URL: http://EndtheLie.com/?p=35681

January 27, 2012 | Categories: Iran, Israel, news, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

Report: Russia to deliver combat jets to Syria

Business daily Kommersant cites source close to Russia’s Rosoboronexport state arms trader, that $550-million deal envisages delivery of 36 Yak-130 aircraft.

Haaretz.com
January 23, 2012

Russia has signed a contract to sell combat jets to Syria in a show of support for President Bashar Assad’s regime, a newspaper reported Monday.

The business daily Kommersant said, citing a source close to Russia’s Rosoboronexport state arms trader, that the $550-million deal envisages the delivery of 36 Yak-130 aircraft. A spokesman for Rosoboronexport refused to comment on the report.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE…

[hat tip: Pakalert Press]

January 27, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, Russia, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

The Syria debacle – part II

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
January 20, 2012

This is part two in my new series following the complex developments in the Syrian uprising which I began just days ago. For previous coverage of this issue please scroll to the bottomof the article to find a reading list of previous material I have written.

Today the Washington Post reported that senior officials in the Obama administration have said that they are preparing to close the American embassy in Damascus and evacuate all personnel if President Bashar al-Assad cannot provide additional security.

If Assad cannot give additional security to the U.S. embassy, they reportedly plan to close the facility by the end of January.

Officials said that the United States is not alone in pulling their diplomatic missions out of Syria with other Western countries and Arab embassies making similar moves over the past week.

Currently they are still in talks with Assad’s government and have not reached a final decision.

Yet, they do say that there have been no visible results in terms of additional protection for the embassy.

This is hardly a surprise given that U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford previously met with leading figures in the opposition, a move which not only rightly enraged the Assad government but also the Syrian people who reacted in a violent manner.

“We have serious concerns about the deteriorating security situation in Damascus, including the recent spate of car bombs and about the safety and security of embassy personnel,” said a statement from the United States’ State Department.

“We have requested that the government of Syria take additional security measures to protect our embassy, and the Syrian government is considering that request. We have also advised the Syrian government that unless concrete steps are taken in the coming days we may have no choice but to close the mission,” the statement said.

The car bombs mentioned are part of no less than three unexplained car bomb attacks recently which killed up to 80 people in the Syrian capital of Damascus which was previously relatively peaceful.

Emphasizing that these car bombings are unexplained is quite important as there is a good chance those responsible very well might be the Western-backed opposition forces and their armed insurgent arm (arguably a terrorist organization) known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The FSA have bragged about attacking government targets in the past, so bombings in the capital very well might be an attempt to create chaos and further destabilize the Assad regime.

The process of removing personnel from the American embassy began last week, reportedly due to the bombings.

The Syrian government put the blame for the bombings on al Qaeda, while some activists predictably pointed the finger at the Syrian government itself, according to the Washington Post.

Of course, this would be completely illogical as car bombings in the nation’s capital only serve to further destabilize Assad’s power and erode his support.

A poll commissioned as part of the Doha Debates – thus sponsored by Qatar which has called for foreign military intervention in Syria – actually found that the majority of Syrians do not, in fact, want Assad to resign immediately.

The poll found that 81% of the Arabs questioned (over 1,000 which is far from a huge sample) wanted Assad to step down but since these individuals are not Syrians, their opinion is completely irrelevant.

Therefore, with 55% of the public supporting him, I can see absolutely no reason why he would seek to weaken such support by conducting bombings which make the Syrian people feel as though they are in danger under his rule.

The Obama administration has, unsurprisingly, not ruled out possible involvement in the attacks on the part of the Syrian government, but unnamed American officials stated that signs indicate Syrian and Iraqi militants linked to al Qaeda were involved.

“It smells like a terrorist attack and looks like a terrorist attack, but none of us knows for sure,” the anonymous official said, according to the Washington Post.

Logic alone would tell us that the most likely culprits would be militant opposition forces like the FSA who would benefit from such a terrorist operation.

By murdering innocent people in Damascus, they could say that Assad cannot even keep control over his own capital and keep his people safe, proving that he should step down from power immediately before more people die.

The specifics of the security measures being sought by the United States for the embassy have not been disclosed.

U.S. officials also refused to comment on if there had been specific threats to the embassy other than saying that the car bomb attacks “have brought the situation in Syria to another level.”

The Washington Post says that if Sunni extremists had come from Iraq to become involved in the Syrian uprising “it would add an alarming new dimension to what has been an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising that has been brutally attacked by the decades-old dictatorship.”

Of course, for those of us who have been paying attention, it is quite obvious that it has not been “an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising” but in fact both sides have engaged in violent acts since the beginning.

The Washington Post cites “Many Syrian opposition activists” (the typically ambiguous label leveraged by the Western media to control the narrative by giving a false sense of consensus) who “already are concerned about signs of a creeping Islamization of the revolt,” much like what is occurring in every other nation embroiled in the so-called Arab Spring revolts.

They claim nonsensically, “the failure of the West to intervene will open the door to Islamists, threatening the kind of destabilization that took hold in Iraq following the U.S. invasion there.”

Of course to most analysts like myself, this is nothing short of laughable.

Western intervention will not help stifle the Islamist element in the uprisings; in fact it will just serve to reinforce this anti-Western Islamist sentiment.

This is because many people will see the intervention has unwelcome meddling in their domestic affairs, which is exactly what it is.

Informed citizens would know immediately that the West will move in, destroy the infrastructure, and then loot the nation’s natural resources and wealth by getting all the contracts to rebuild the same infrastructure they destroyed.

We have seen this exact process in Libya and I do not see how any individual in the Arab world would think Western intervention is a good idea after seeing what happened there.

It appears that the car bomb attacks – if they are indeed carried out by the FSA – are achieving exactly what I believe they could be trying to do.

The anonymous senior official in the Obama administration cited by the Washington Post made this very clear in saying that the deteriorating security situation in Syria “demonstrates further that Assad is losing control of the country and reinforces our point that Assad has lost all legitimacy.”

Knowing that these bombings are in fact hurting the Assad regime, as I said, how could they still say that his government might be involved?

We can apply the classic qui bono logic here and in doing so realize that all roads lead to the armed insurgent groups like the FSA.

The Washington Post speculates that in explicitly warning that they might close the embassy, the Obama administration might be “signaling Assad that [the Obama administration’s] patience is running out.”

However, I would argue that they have been attempting to give that impression for months now and instead this move might be a warning that foreign military intervention is just over the horizon.

The Washington Post also mentions that Robert Ford returned to Syria last month after he was removed in October due to threats.

These threats were hardly surprising given that Ford not only vocally criticized the Assad government on the official embassy website (behavior hardly becoming of a diplomat) but even met with opposition leadership which clearly angered the many pro-Assad Syrians.

It seems the United States either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that Syrians do not take kindly to the United States openly getting involved in Syria’s domestic problems.

The Washington Post writes that, “Officials emphasized the importance of maintaining direct contact with opposition leaders and providing the opportunity of real-time reporting from Damascus.”

Do American officials really think that having a close relationship with opposition leaders will make them look impartial or evenhanded in their approach to Syria’s problems?

The Washington Post makes sure to highlight the Assad government’s security efforts, saying “Damascus felt as though it was under siege. Soldiers sealed off several major roads and checkpoints dotted the city. Outside one of the main offices of the security branches, there were sandbagged machine gun positions. Soldiers wearing flak jackets and machine guns kept guard.”

This is hardly a drastic measure given that the FSA has attacked government targets several times.

Furthermore, it is almost guaranteed that whatever police state measures they have in place pale in comparison to the security situation near American military facilities or in places like Washington.

Al Arabiya is also reporting today that “Pressure mounted on the Arab League Friday to seek U.N. intervention in the face of growing exasperation that the bloc’s hard-won observer mission in Syria has failed to staunch 10 months of killing as [the] death toll mounted across the country.”

However, U.N. intervention is very unlikely given Russia and China’s opposition to such an operation.

Many analysts, myself included, say it is much more likely for the West to create something like the “coalition of the willing” created to invade Iraq outside of the U.N.

General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi is preparing to report to foreign ministers of Arab League nations who will then decide if the Arab League’s observer mission will be extended for another month.

Meanwhile, Burhan Galiun, the head of the opposition’s Syrian National Council, traveled to Cairo in an attempt to get Arab ministers to refer the findings of the Arab League’s observer mission to the United Nations Security Council for what Al Arabiya called “tough action.”

Of course this is ignoring the veto power of Russia and China – both nations wholly opposed to another foreign intervention after the horrific Libyan intervention.

An official statement from the Syrian National Council (SNC) said that Ghaliun planned to “ask the head of the Arab League and Arab foreign ministers to transfer the file on Syria to the U.N. Security Council with a view to securing a decision to establish a buffer zone and a no-fly zone.”

It is hard to understand why anyone would call for a no-fly zone over Syria after seeing what NATO and the Arab League nations did in Libya, but then again given that many of the SNC’s members are not even inside Syria at the moment; it is somewhat understandable that they would be divorced from the situation on the ground.

“The SNC delegation will insist that the report contain a clear text concerning the ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ carried out by the [Syrian] regime against unarmed civilians,” the SNC’s statement said.

This makes it clear that they care not what the observers actually find, but instead care only that they come to the conclusions the SNC and the West want.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that the Arab League should urge the United Nations Security Council to impose more targeted sanctions which should include an arms embargo.

However, this is one again failing to recognize the strong opposition in the Security Council from Russia and China.

The Arab League’s panel on Syria is set to meet Saturday before the foreign ministers meet.

This panel is far from objective, with Qatar chairing the panel and calling for Arab troops to invade Syria, as I discussed in the previous part of this series.

However, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe claimed such an approach was not in the works in an interview published today in the French Ouest-France daily.

“In the present regional context we are not working towards such a scenario,” Juppe claimed.

On the other hand, French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave a much different impression of France’s position.

Sarkozy said that France would not silently stand by and watch the crackdown occur, hinting that indeed such an approach was being considered, if not planned as the Russians have been saying for a long time now.

“We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help extremists of all kinds,” Sarkozy said.

Sarkozy also seems to hold the delusional position that the United Nations Security Council must vote in condemnation of the crackdown and support the Arab League’s mission in Syria, despite the fact that Russia and China have made it clear no United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Syria will be passed.

Repeatedly saying that the Security Council should do something doesn’t change this fact, although far too many individuals seem to not realize this.

In an interview with BBC’s world service recently, I heard a representative of the SNC repeating these same statements while constantly contradicting herself when confronted with the facts.

In a span of about five minutes the representative said that they represent the people demonstrating on the streets then said that they do not represent anyone and thus are not legitimate in the traditional sense because no one voted for them.

It was an incredibly painful interview with the BBC presenter lobbing softballs in the SNC representative’s direction just to have the representative fall on her face trying to swing at it.

The BBC presenter’s most important point, one which was likely made unintentionally, was made when the presenter pointed out that most of the SNC not only doesn’t live in Syria currently but in fact many haven’t lived there for years.

The woman being interviewed had not even been in Syria since she was around 10-years-old, proving that she is no more connected to Syria’s domestic affairs and on-the-ground daily reality that most Westerners.

Sufian Allaw, Syria’s Oil Minister said yesterday that the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States were in fact having a drastic economic impact on Syria. “We have suffered important losses as a result of our inability to export crude oil and petroleum products,” Allaw said, citing over $2 billion in losses since September 1.

The sanctions have also hurt the Syrian currency, pushing it down to record lows which hurts the average Syrian civilian more than anyone else.

Adib Malayeh, the governor of Syria’s central bank said that they will be introducing a managed float of the currency this coming week, which is essentially devaluing the currency, according to the Financial Times.

MENA quoted Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning according to Al Arabiya, urging “Arab rulers to take the necessary measures to halt bloodshed in Syria,” quite clearly hinting at foreign intervention.

In addition to all of the unilateral sanctions currently being leveraged against Syria, the European Union is expected to expand the sanctions against Syria to include individuals, institutions and companies as well.

Before the oil sanctions were imposed back on September 2, the European Union purchased the majority of Syria’s estimated 130,000 barrels of oil exports every day.

As we saw with Iraq, the people who are ultimately hurt the most by the sanctions aren’t the governments and corporations they are supposed to target, but instead everyday people who have absolutely no ability to change their government’s policies.

This led to the deaths of countless Iraqis and likely will lead to the deaths of many Syrian civilians.

The unfortunate reality is that we will likely not see the impact these sanctions have until years after they have already impacted the lives of innocent people.

The push for foreign intervention is only increasing by the day and I sincerely hope that people around the world – but especially in the Western nations that are pushing so hard to oust Assad like the United States and the United Kingdom – start fighting back against the tide of disinformation in order to give a more accurate impression of what is really going on there.

We must also realize that the majority of Syrians do not want Assad to be removed from power right now, and if the West really values democracy as they so often claim to, then this will be respected.

Unfortunately, democracy only counts to them when they say it does and when the democracy aligns itself with Western interests.

However I do think that through raising awareness of the situation in Syria and what is really going on there, we can avoid an all-out conflict which would undoubtedly involve Russia and whatever foreign powers decided to take part in the intervention.

Please take a few moments and share this with your friends, family and contacts in order to help us get this information out there.

If I missed anything or you would like to contribute to our coverage, please do not hesitate to email me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your tips, comments, or insults.

Recommended related reading (in chronological order, oldest to latest):

Top Search Terms Used to Find This Page:

January 27, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

The Syria debacle – part I

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
January 18, 2012

I have been writing about Syria and the attempts at pushing a foreign intervention on the nation for months now (see the bottomof the article for a partial list of previous works on the subject).

I believe it has become such a multifaceted and important issue that I must devote a series to covering the developments as I have done with Iran and the global growth of the United States’ and NATO’s hegemony.

As the days go by the tensions between the West and Syria only get more pronounced, especially when it comes to the increasingly vocal opposition from Russia.

Russia’s opposition is far from something new. They were one of the first nations to come to Syria’s defense and protect – or at least attempt to protect them – from foreign meddling.

This has incarnated in many forms, some overt and military in nature – like the delivery of anti-aircraft missile systems and most recently a Russian naval group docking in the Syrian port of Tartus – others political, like the statements of the head of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev.

The political rhetoric has become increasingly heated and firm, and today’s news is no different.

The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reportedly had a phone conversation in which they “affirmed the need to defend the independence and [sovereignty] of Syria and Iran from the siege and interference in their internal affairs carried out by colonialist countries,” according to Syria’s SANA.

This is just another affirmation of Russia’s staunch opposition to any foreign intervention in Syria and Iran which is indeed a real threat, despite any assurances otherwise coming from the wholly untrustworthy Western establishment.

The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said that Chavez and Putin also discussed the strategic ties between the two nations in the fields of finance, the economy, commercial and industrial matters and military cooperation as well.

What remains to be seen is how Russia will actually step in on Syria’s behalf if the press to intervene in Syria continues.

Russia and China have both blocked increased sanctions when they were brought to the United Nations Security Council, but it is unclear exactly what they would do if the West ignores the writing on the wall and conducts another intervention like in Libya.

Russia has made their military presence in the region very well-known and their transfer of advanced military equipment underlines their position.

China, on the other hand, is a bit of a more unknown variable in this equation.

They have repeatedly voiced their distaste with the Western attempts at intervening in Syrian domestic affairs and blocked new sanctions, but it is unclear if China would take up arms in defense of Syria if it came down to such a situation.

If Russia were to take action and come under threat from the Arab League, NATO or the West as a whole, I think it is only logical to assume that China very well might come to Russia’s aid.

The Arab League has had a very interesting role in the Syrian conflict, given that most leaders of Arab League states are little more than Western puppets.

The League’s observer mission has been characterized as a failure in some quarters, and I found the entire situation quite ironic given the presence of a general accused of creating the brutal “janjaweed,” which was responsible for some of the worst atrocities during the Darfur genocide, in the Arab League’s observer force.

Yesterday China’s Xinhua reported that the Syrian Foreign Ministry has totally rejected Qatari Emir’s suggestion of dispatching Arab troops into Syria, supposedly to help curb the violence.

This is hardly a stupid move on Syria’s part, given that Qatar is now openly admitting that their forces were running most of the ground operations for the rebels in Libya.

Knowing this, it is only logical to think that the Qatari forces would not, in fact, act to help stop the violence but instead encourage it and run operations for the armed opposition in order to enact regime change.

Ultimately, the whole uprising is about regime change, as the opposition has made it clear time and time again that they will not consider negotiations with President Bashar al-Assad nor any option that does not involve Assad being removed from power completely.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry stated that they absolutely reject any calls like the ones coming from Qatar as it could not only make the situation worse but also set the precedent for a greater foreign intervention in Syria’s domestic affairs.

Of course, al Jazeera, the Qatari state-funded propaganda house which operates under the guise of anti-Western alternative news (laughable though the claim may be, many consider it indeed to be such an outlet) would utilize their position to push for a greater intervention just as they did in Libya.

Pointing to the failure of the Arab League’s observers to stop the violence in Syria, Qatar Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stated that he was in favor of deploying Arab troops into Syria.

Statements like this are regularly made, usually claiming that such a move would stop or at least decrease the violence.

Based on what we’ve seen in Libya, I think it is hardly an accurate assumption to make. Bringing in armed foreign troops to solve a domestic conflict is hardly conducive to peace.

In making the statement, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani made himself the first Arab leader to openly call for military intervention in Syria, saying, “For such a situation … some troops should go to stop the killing.”

Once again, this is operating on the nonsensical assumption that for some reason bringing armed troops into a conflict would not increase violence but in fact decrease it.

We saw how well that worked in Libya, not to mention Iraq, both of which are still rife with violence and civil strife.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry’s statement was quite strongly worded, saying that Syria “rejects all kinds of foreign intervention in its affairs, under any title, and would confront any attempt to infringe upon Syria’s sovereignty and integrity of its territories.”

What exactly they mean by “confront” isn’t quite clear but I believe it is safe to assume that they mean they would meet military intervention with military confrontation in hopes that Russia and perhaps China would come to their aid.

Syria also stated that while they are agreeing to stick to the Arab League’s plan, they ask for Arab nations and the Arab League as a whole to make an effort “to stop all instigating campaigns and media mobilization that aim to ramp up the situation in Syria.”

I believe this to be a not-so-subtle jab at Qatar which has used its propaganda arm to shape the narrative throughout the so-called Arab Spring since the beginning.

The statement also said that Arab states should assist Syria in blocking the movement of weapons into Syria in order to “reinforce stability and security that would pave the way for a constructive national dialogue that aims to find a political solution to the crisis in Syria.”

Unfortunately, it seems this hope is a bit misguided, as the Syrian opposition – especially the armed insurgent group the Free Syrian Army – have repeatedly stated that they have no interest in “a constructive national dialogue” nor a political solution unless it involves complete regime change.

The Arab League’s monitors began their mission in Syria on December 26, 2011 and they are due to issue an assessment on January 21.

Contrary to the Western narrative, the Syrian government states that the violence in Syria is being incited by terrorists and foreign-backed armed gangs, which is not entirely untrue as the establishment media makes out.

Indeed the United States has been busted funding anti-government propaganda stations which were beamed into Syria via satellite.

The United States’ ambassador to Syria has also openly met with opposition leadership, a move which elicited a violent reaction from the Syrian people.

According to Syrian government reports, over 2,000 army and security personnel have been killed during the uprising.

The Free Syrian Army, for one, has openly bragged about attacking government forces, even blowing up government transport vehicles.

The United Nations has estimated the death toll to be over 5,000 although their numbers are based largely – if not entirely – upon the unverified reports of so-called “activists” and “human rights groups” which have dubious intentions.

While NATO has repeatedly denied that they are working towards a no-fly zone over Syria along with so-called “humanitarian corridors” or “buffer zones” along the borders, Russia today dismissed these claims and insisted that they have information that such tactics are currently being discussed.

“Our partners int he West are in fact discussing a no-fly zone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow, according to Bloomberg.

“There are other ideas being realized, including humanitarian convoys, in the hope they could provoke a response from government forces, border guards,” Lavrov added.

Lavrov also said that Russia would continue to block any attempt at passing a resolution for military intervention in the United Nations Security Council.

He also dismissed the American condemnation of Russian arms shipments to Syria, saying that they were not violating international law by simply supplying Syria with weapons.

Indeed this is true and one must consider the almost laughable hypocrisy displayed by such statements coming from the United States when they are providing the weaponry to Bahrain used to crack down on their own domestic uprising.

Both the European Union and the United States have already put an arms embargo against Syria in place.

The United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, stated that the U.S. has “very grave concern[s]” about Russian arms being given to the Assad government.

One must wonder if this is because it would allow the government to put up a greater level of resistance to foreign intervention and Western-backed armed insurgent groups currently operating in Syria.

These statements echo ones I reported on previously made by Patrushev which at the time were by far the most heated we had seen.

Patrushev stated that Turkey may play a key role in such an operation and unsurprisingly the same day Turkey along with the United Kingdom and France all denied that such a move was a possibility.

However, the French denial makes very little sense when one remembers that in November Alain Juppe, the French Foreign Minister, suggested that military forces should establish humanitarian corridors to deliver aid in Syria.

Of course the aid would likely only be delivered to anti-Assad groups and insurgents, while pro-government demonstrators and citizens would probably end up getting shafted as they were in Libya.

There is very little we can do at this point to stop another bloody foreign intervention other than spreading the awareness of this campaign.

Please make an effort to share this article and other works by myself and the many others who have been bringing attention to this situation as much as humanly possible.

Only through a greater number of people becoming fully cognizant of the destabilization operation in Syria and other nations which don’t tow the Western line can we hope to stifle these deplorable efforts.

Please, take the less than 30 seconds to share this with your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, or whomever you can on whatever social network/medium you prefer.

Every single person who becomes aware of these issues is another person who can spread the truth and help push back against the wave of disinformation and warmongering.

Recommended related reading (in chronological order, oldest to latest):

Top Search Terms Used to Find This Page:

January 27, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

Foreign Syrian intervention and the Russian-Chinese opposition

Nikolai Patrushev (left) and Vladimir Putin (right) (Photo credit: http://www.kremlin.ru)

By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
January 13, 2012

The push for foreign intervention in Syria has been going on for quite a while now and never seems to relent in ferocity. I have been writing about this issue for months now, so if you would like to get a strong background on this topic I highly recommend you scroll down to the end of the article to find a list of related reading materials.

Despite the large conglomeration of Western nations and allied nations in the Arab League’s relentless full-court press, some countries continue to resist this effort.

The most glaring example is, of course, Russia.

Russia has not only been a vocal opponent of sanctions and resolutions in the United Nations Security Council, indeed they have actually backed up their rhetoric with muscle; something which China has yet to do.

I previously reported on Russia moving complete advanced anti-aircraft missile systems and all that is required to operate them into Syria, a move which was likely an attempt to dissuade the West and/or Arab League from moving to establish a no-fly zone over Syria.

Russian warships have also moved into Syrian waters previously, and most recently it was announced that a Russian naval group docked in the Syrian port city of Tartus.

All of these actions make some quite pronounced statements to the United States, NATO and Arab League members who are seeking to topple the Assad regime.

However, it just becomes more heated as the days go by and the statements coming out of Russia just get increasingly unequivocal.

Remarks made by Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev have been some of the strongest to date.

In an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant, Patrushev stated that NATO member states are planning “direct military intervention” in cooperation with the Arab League, according to RT.

Such an operation would likely be mostly in the blueprint of the foreign intervention in Libya which led to the brutal murder of Qaddafi, the desecration of his corpse, Western puppets being put in power, Western nations reaping the windfall profits of the contracts to rebuild Libya, and of course a massive civilian death toll.

This seems like hardly the course of events anyone would seek to repeat, yet this is exactly what they are apparently planning to do.

However, I must encourage the reader to keep in mind that this is not the first time such a report has been released, but in the previous case no such no-fly zone or so-called “buffer zone” ever emerged.

This operation would likely break from the mold of the Libyan operation in one important way: instead of the United States, France, Italy and the United Kingdom providing most of the firepower and personnel, it very well might be Turkey in this case.

Turkey might turn its back on a former ally due to the Turkish-Iranian rivalry.

Turkey reportedly has “huge ambitions” in the region and the major impediment to the realization of such ambitions is Iran, which continues to maintain close ties with Syria – something which obviously irks the West.

Patrushev has stated that the United States and Turkey are thought to be in the process of negotiating the establishment of a no-fly zone over Syria, which obviously would directly benefit the armed insurgent forces in the nation like the Free Syrian Army.

Recently a foreign journalist was killed in Syria, but not by government forces as many in the controlled establishment media immediately assumed.

This became quite obvious when it came out that the journalist was in fact at a pro-government rally, and a government under siege domestically shooting its own citizens who support them makes so little sense that it is surprising that anyone would say otherwise, even in the chronically nonsensical mainstream media.

Events like this have been occurring since day one, but the mentions of the armed opposition and their actions are usually either omitted, marginalized, or strategically buried in articles.

Obviously this is a concerted effort as the presence of opposition gunmen is hardly an insignificant detail and it thoroughly contradicts the mainstream media’s manufactured narrative.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has continued to point to a foreign conspiracy as the cause of the uprising, statements which are routinely derided by the Western media and governments.

Assad’s statements are usually either ignored or brushed off as the insane rantings of some paranoid lunatic, which is a classic diversionary tactic intended to keep people from actually looking into his claims.

When one does, it becomes quite clear that there is, in fact, a Western conspiracy against Syria, and it is hardly unclear when one takes the time to look past the myopic coverage of the establishment media.

Often a news outlet will actually report on the Western backing of opposition groups, funding of anti-government propaganda, etc. while somehow managing to forget to integrate this knowledge into their future coverage.

This is because it wouldn’t look very good for a news outlet to cover the statements of chronic deceiver Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then mention how there is evidence that clearly shows all of her statements to be bold faced lies.

The same State Department has been guilty of pumping anti-government propaganda into Syria via satellite while American ambassadors have met with prominent Syrian opposition figures and Syrian opposition non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have had high-level meetings with the British government as well.

Unsurprisingly, instead of even attempting to address the mounds of evidence that show covert foreign involvement in the Syrian uprising – and the greater “Arab Spring” uprisings in general – Clinton just derided the comments as a whole.

Clinton made her typically laughably baseless statements during a joint press-conference with the Prime Minister of Qatar, calling Assad’s speech “chillingly cynical” adding that America “cannot permit President Assad and his regime to have impunity.”

The presence of the Qatari PM is quite ironic given their heavy involvement in the Libyan intervention, including running all of the major ground operations for the NATO-backed rebel forces.

We must keep in mind that al Jazeera is a Qatari state-funded propaganda arm, thus the news they publish must be viewed with the necessary skepticism, like all media but especially the controlled establishment media.

It is also worth noting that the Clinton just stated that the Arab League’s monitoring mission should be brought to an end because they have so far totally failed to “deter the government’s 10-month campaign of violence against dissidents,” according to Bloomberg.

The timing of Clinton’s remarks is quite interesting as well, not only because she had just met with Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al Thani, but also because American President Barack Obama also recently met with the Saudi Foreign Minister, Saud al-Faisal at the White House.

Saudi Arabia has been a key partner in the Western growth in the region, especially in the effort to encircle and isolate Syria and Iran.

As I have previously covered, the United States is also arming these allied states in the Persian Gulf, in the case of Saudi Arabia it is with new and renovated fighter jets.

A Middle East analyst at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Irina Zvyagelskaya, said that Russia is concerned that if Assad’s government is toppled, Islamic radicals may come to power.

This is hardly a baseless claim given that we have seen the  heavy involvement of Islamic forces throughout the so-called Arab Spring uprisings, especially in Libya and Egypt.

Zvyagelskaya stated that while Russia would continue to block any attempt at approval of a no-fly zone in the United Nations Security Council, Western nations and their allies very well might take an approach similar to that in 2003 in the case of Iraq.

This would be an independent coalition, outside of the United Nations, which could then engage in anything and everything without concern over operating outside of a UN mandate or a UNSC resolution.

“Syria has not become an object of interest for a new coalition of the willing itself,” Patrushev said. “The plan is to punish Damascus not so much for repressing the opposition as for its unwillingness to sever friendly relations with Tehran.”

Then again, as we saw in Libya, the West and others have absolutely no problem with breaching a United States Security Council Resolution if they decide to do so.

“We have seen before what a no-fly zone means, it will be used to overthrow the regime,” Zvyagelskaya said.

This is quite right, as we have seen in Libya where the no-fly zone actually killed civilians instead of protecting them as it was intended to do.

Instead, it was used to advance the NATO-backed and Qatari-controlled rebel ground forces in their effort to kill Qaddafi and enact regime change.

As I have previously reported, the Free Syrian Army – comprised mostly of military defectors – has been pushing for a “buffer zone” (a less intimidating term for a no-fly zone) in the north on the Turkish-Syrian border and the South on the Syrian-Jordanian border.

The Jordanian aspect of this equation becomes more important when one considers the reports of American troop buildups on the Syrian-Jordanian border in the recent past.

There is the real possibility that this force (if it is actually still there, which is unconfirmed as far as I know) could be used to create or assist in the establishment of this so-called buffer zone.

Fyodor Lukyanov, an analyst at the Council on Foreign and Defense policy in Moscow, said that these statements from Russia are likely due to either intelligence regarding Western military plans in Syria or perhaps it may just be an effort to make it clear that they will actively oppose any efforts made by the West or its allies to intervene.

However, I would argue that this has been quite clear with the instances of Russian warship presence and the delivery of advanced missile systems that Russia has always intended to take an active role in opposing any foreign efforts.

“After the Libyan experience, Russia will do everything to stop this scenario from happening,” Lukyanov told Bloomberg, adding, “Syria is much more important than Libya from Russia’s point of view.”

I think that it is quite obvious at this point that Syria is more important to Russia given that Russia never docked naval vessels on the coast of Libya or delivered weapons systems.

All of these statements from the Russians only serve to make it even more obvious that they will not stand for yet another Western intervention under the guise of humanitarianism.

Wu Sike, China’s Special Envoy to the Middle East said that China rejected the internationalization of the Syrian crisis while showing their support for the Arab League’s efforts to resolve the situation, according to Syria’s SANA via Azerbaijani Trend News Agency.

Sike stated that the situation should be addressed within the Arab framework, clearly implying that the Western companies trying to meddle in Syria’s domestic affairs need to mind their own business.

Interestingly, Sike’s statements conflicted with those of Clinton most significantly in that the Chinese Envoy said that the Arab League’s monitors should be assisted by the Syrian government and the other sides involved in hopes that they will succeed.

On the other hand, Clinton seems to believe that it has been a total failure which should be chalked up as a loss, indicating that the next option they will be pursuing will likely involve some kind of military action.

Hopefully the significant opposition from Russia – backed up with the threat of military action – coupled with China’s more diplomatic approach will serve to dissuade the West and the regional allies from engaging in another imperialistic regime change.

Unfortunately the wild brazenness with which the West has been operating as of late does nothing to reassure me that this will not occur.

Recommended related reading (in chronological order, oldest to latest):

Top Search Terms Used to Find This Page:

January 27, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »