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June 11, 2012
Open Thread 2012-16
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I know our island isn’t front page news around the world, but here I go anyway…
The Blaze: The Puerto Rican economic story is a perfect counter-narrative to the Obama message. It is a real world object lesson in why we should be doing the opposite of the failed policies of the last three years. Fortuño came to power in 2008 facing massive structural budget deficits, a stagnant economy, and stubborn unemployment. Over the protests of unions and government workers, he took to the Island’s public system with garden shears. Fortuño cut the budget by 90%, froze salaries and fired 39,000 public employees. Today private investment is flooding in. According to Barclay’s, Puerto Rican bonds are outperforming every state in the country.
Really???
Puerto Rico Daily News: Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services downgraded its outlook on Puerto Rico’s general obligation and appropriation debt ratings from stable to negative, the ratings service announced Wednesday. (…) The ratings agency said it was taking the measure despite steps taken by the Fortuño government to stabilize the economy. “In our opinion, the current administration has taken decisive measures to restore fiscal balance,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Horacio Aldrete-Sanchez. “However, a steady economic recovery has failed to take hold, which we believe limits the government’s ability to implement additional expenditure cuts and revenue enhancement measures in the near term.”
Posted by: Maracatu | Jun 11 2012 17:35 utc | 1
Gene Sharp, the inspiration for the real Arab Spring, on Syria
Some defecting soldiers have turned their weapons against their former fellow soldiers, perhaps believing that is the most powerful action they can take against the oppressing regime. But, perhaps it is not.
When defectors choose to use their limited military capacity in that way, the oppressing regime will then not hesitate to order its remaining massive military force to be applied against those defectors. The targeted defectors will soon discover that their limited military capacity is no match for the far superior greater military capacity of the oppressing regime.
As happened in Libya, an appeal for foreign military assistance can then be expected.
The foreign military aid may or may not come. If it does, the control of the conflict has been placed in foreign hands. Foreign hands serve foreign interests.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 11 2012 17:37 utc | 2
Seems the Syrian government is now using drones. Paid informants too no doubt. It’s the way of the future.
Posted by: dh | Jun 11 2012 17:49 utc | 3
You have to go to the ultra right Daily Mail, for sense about Syria.
This is Peter Hitchens, via The Angry Arab”
“The truth seeps out of Syria
I have been contacted by a group of Western women who live in Syria and who believe that most of what the world is being told about that country is false.
As far as I can discover, they are not stooges of what they agree to be a rather nasty government in Damascus, but exactly what they say they are: normal human beings caught up in a political tornado. For obvious reasons, I have promised to protect their identities.
I urge you to read what follows, because it is important, because our emotional interventions in other countries never do any good, and because it is vital that people resist attempts to drag us into Syria, too, by feeding us one-sided atrocity propaganda.
This sort of propaganda has a price. I hope you have noticed the continuing tally of deaths of selfless British soldiers in Afghanistan, in a cause long ago abandoned.
And I hope you have also noticed that Libya, ‘rescued’ by us a few months ago, is now a failed state whose main international airport was recently taken over by gangsters, and where unjustly arrested prisoners are starved and tortured in secret dungeons.
One of my informants from Syria writes of the ‘activists’ we hear so much about: ‘These protesters are not peaceful, flower-carrying people wanting freedom. No, they are weapon-toting killers who snipe, who ambush, who fire upon the army with the sole purpose of inciting riot and mayhem.’
She blames Salafis, ultra-puritan Muslims influenced by Saudi teachings, who loathe and threaten Syria’s minorities of Alawites and Christians. She says many of the ‘activists’ are foreigners, a view shared by all my informants. Many of the ‘activists’ are armed.
Armed intervention is in fact well under way, uncondemned by the UN, which readily attacks the Syrian government for defending itself. Another writes: ‘I have seen reports of opposition rallies which showed pictures of pro-government rallies, and reports purporting to be from the north Syrian countryside, where it has been an incredibly wet year, which appear to have been taken in some desert. The news being accepted as truth by BBC World News is so biased these days that I no longer believe what they say about anything any more, after more than 60 years of crediting them with the truth.’
She says she has spoken to a man who took part in a march at Hama last summer. He ‘was worried for his safety, but was given a red rose to carry and assured the whole thing would be calm and orderly, and seeing many other men from the mosque joining in with their small sons, he agreed. They walked for a very few minutes, the unarmed police watching them from the wayside, then a man next to him pulled out a gun and shot the nearest policeman dead.’
A riot followed, reported by foreign TV stations as a police attack on peaceful marchers.
2. There is very interesting piece in Al Akhbar (English) about Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni clients: Saleh evidently received $11 million per month.
Posted by: bevin | Jun 11 2012 18:22 utc | 4
The Roman Catholic Church is influential in Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The Holy Father doesn’t hesitate to speak out on issues such as abortion and birth control, so you’d think that he would express an opinion on the morality of the austerity policy. (Perhaps it’s because it would be awkward to make clear that his allegiance is to the 1%.)
Posted by: Watson | Jun 11 2012 18:54 utc | 5
He is German and three or four years of stupid decisions have demonstrated that they don’t have any sense of how a real economy works or what happens when you beat your slaves to death.
Counting the weeks for the end of the Euro and post-WW2 Europe. The sacred suicide pact of austerity to make ‘profligate southern’ tax payers pay, with interests, for the bad investments of southern and northern banks has run it’s course and the results are here for all to see.
The collapse may be faster than most people believe with the compounded stupidity and greediness of politicians and bankers south and north.
Posted by: ThePaper | Jun 11 2012 19:30 utc | 6
On Syria.
According to the following news article in Arabic language the Syrian authorities within the past couple of days reached a decision that rebels in a various localities have crossed “red lines”, in violation of the security conditions envisaged in the Annan plan, and accordingly the army has been instructed to take an initiative to deter the rebels from crossing the “red lines”. The objective of the initiative of the army is to get the rebels to return to the more inactive, wait-and-wait mode that the rebels partook of when the Annan plan came into effect originally. http://breakingnews.sy/ar/article/1105.html
That news article in Arabic does not come with named credentialled sources for its report. However, the following other items, all dated today 11 Jun 2012, may be taken to indicate that it’s got a good likelihood of being right. I get all the following from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Syriaonline/112518362169492 most of which in turn is available at http://sana.sy/eng/337/2012/06/11/424630.htm :
SANA: Authorities stormed a hideout of an armed terrorist group in Douma area in Outer Damascus. An official source told SANA that authorities clashed with the terrorists and killed all of them, adding that one personnel was martyred in the process.
SANA: An armed terrorist group attacked law-enforcement personnel in al-Haffah area in Lattakia on Monday. An official source in the province said the authorities clashed with the terrorists, killing and wounding large numbers of them, adding that five personnel were martyred and another four were wounded.
SANA: Authorities Kill Dozens of Terrorists in Idleb Countryside. The authorities in Idleb countryside clashed with the armed terrorist groups which launched several attacks against citizens and law-enforcement forces in the villages of Jabal al-Zawiyeh area. An official source in the province told SANA reporter that the clashes resulted in the death of dozens of terrorists.
Reported by PressTV’s Hussein Mortada: The security forces in Latakia province managed to thwart an attempt delivery of supplies coming from Idlib province and the Turkish border to the gunmen who attacked the Laufia city. The security forces eliminated the entire convoy, which included gunmen, weapons and equipment.
Reported by Addounia TV correspondent and also by Ajel correspondent: Syrian competent authorities have cleared the Al-Khaldiya and Bab Sbaa neighborhoods of Homs city of armed rebels.
SANA: Authorities confronted terrorists who were opening fire on passersby and busses between the towns of al-Jamediye and Ma’aret al-Nu’man in Idlib province. The clash resulted in the killing and injuring of a number of terrorists.
الله و سوريا و بشار و جيشنا و بس
Meanwhile, a much bigger conflict rages on, just across the US border. So far, the US War on Drugs has claimed 50,000 lives. Yet the US media remains oblivious. The spin meisters have determined that Syria is much more important, because Syria is not a US vassal state.
Also, the US is apparently supplying both sides with weapons. (It makes the gun industry so happy! And the Senators and Congressmen they fund.)
Here’s a wonderful response from graduates of the 2012 School of Authentic Journalism, where journalists learned how to get the word out by making videos to go viral.
http://www.narconews.com/nntv/video.php?vid=52
Posted by: JohnH | Jun 11 2012 19:58 utc | 8
@ Watson
The Church has always been a part of the power structure in Europe. By its nature a counter-revolutionary force. Smartest thing the French Revolutionaries did was deport the clergy and seize the churches and make them state land.
– Adam Curtis on the fascinating secret history of Bahrain. In 1925 Bahrain was in the midst of protests by Shias and Sunnis alike, demanding democracy. The British Empire hired an advisor to go to Bahrain “to protect British interests”. The advisor “worked with the rulers of Bahrain to exercise a cynical divide and rule tactic – set Shia against Sunni and maintain the tribal order”.
It began in the summer of 1925 when a young administrative officer in the British Colonial Service called Charles Belgrave read an advertisement in the middle of the “Personal Column” in the Times. Belgrave answered the mysterious advertisement and was then summoned to an interview in a West End hotel. His interviewer turned out to be one of the heads of the India Office – the government department which ran that part of the British Empire.
What Belgrave was offered was the job of being the British “adviser” to the new ruler of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The precise nature of the job was a bit murky (a murkiness that was going to run through this whole story). On the surface Belgrave would be completely independent of the British government – but what was also clear was that he was being sent there to deal with growing demands for reform and modernization that might threaten Britain’s interests.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/05/if_you_take_my_advice_-_id_rep.html
Posted by: Colm O’ TRoole | Jun 11 2012 20:07 utc | 9
A world of hurt, ladies and gentlemen, if this is true: Virtual disinformation on a grand scale
I just heard on TV that the US are warning that the Syrian government are preparing a massacre in Al Hafa? So how would the US know in advance that the Syrians are about to kill something like probably 100 civilians (enough to make an outrage anyway) woman and children then? Because they are the ones doing it? Or are they blowing smoke up our ass?
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 11 2012 21:06 utc | 12
0y! I think the last two comments might have something with eachother to do.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 11 2012 21:08 utc | 13
Can history itself be manufactured in a TV studio now, with digital effects and scale models of buildings, and running scripts? Could PSYOPS get away with it?–making a whole nation believe its government is in the process of collapse?
@ Alexander #10: بس bas = “just” in the the sense of “only”, “simply”. In the sentence “please answer just yes or no”, the word “just” would be bas in Arabic.
و بس wa bas = “and just” = “and just that” = “and it’s as simple as that” = “and that’s all”. Wa bas is common at the tail of slogans in Arabic. Including the slogan “God, Syria, Bashar, Our Army, wa bas“.
its always worth keeping this in mind: all that we see happening in Syria is rooted a PR offensive:
‘A quote from President John F. Kennedy in 1962 opens the document. These few lines illustrate a core Washington belief that US forces have the right to destabilize, infiltrate, assassinate, subvert – all in service of questionable foreign policy objectives, with no evident consideration of a sovereign state’s preparedness or desire for change:
There is another type of warfare—new in its intensity, ancient in its origin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It preys on unrest.
……
The most nefarious aspect of UW – aside from the obvious violations of international law pertaining to sovereignty, territorial integrity and loss of human life/property, etc – is the proactive and aggressive effort to psychologically sway a population against its government. It is at this entry point where UW fails every American test of “values.”
etc
http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/going-rogue-americas-unconventional-warfare-mideast
so if you see any media, HR or other attacks on syrias govt….you can be sure the Unconventional Warfare (undeclared warfare) doctrine is in action
Posted by: brian | Jun 11 2012 21:41 utc | 16
@Copeland, #14:
See the excellent movie Capricorn One.
Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jun 11 2012 21:53 utc | 17
This excerpt from Thierry Meyssan’s article:( link at #11, above)
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.
A little further along in the article Meyssan writes
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
I have read nowhere else that Putin has made such a representation to use force in the event of NATO aggression against Syria; and frankly it would astonish me if he had in mind anything beyond a bluff. But I don’t know. I am taken aback by this claim; and I’m not sure if that point is believable.
‘Some defecting soldiers have turned their weapons against their former fellow soldiers, perhaps believing that is the most powerful action they can take against the oppressing regime. But, perhaps it is not’
this same meme was used in Libya:cast you mind back to this:
The description of the video reads – at the Youtube channel SurvivalWithBushcraf:
Soldiers tied up and executed by Gaddafi mercenaries for refusing to kill protesters! Reuploaded from … WARNING Extremely graphic video smuggled to an Al Jazeera reporter across the border in Libya. This is evidence of crimes against humanity which the world should know about especially the West. The information given is that these are soldiers who refused to kill their own people so they were tied up and executed.
http://nocheinparteibuch.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/hidden-behind-propaganda-a-giant-crime-against-libya-is-fact-part-i/
its part of the propaganda initiative..to make it seem syrias soldiers are rebelling against the govt…its smoke and mirrors …beware
Posted by: brian | Jun 11 2012 21:57 utc | 19
ALSO anyone remember ‘Katherine Marsh’?
She may be the origin of this story:
‘Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters
> Katherine Marsh in Damascus
>
>
> April 12, 2011
Katherine Marsh is a pseudonym for a journalist living in Damascus
> http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m76776&hd=&size=1&l=e
Les Politiques has this to say:
Katherine Marsh reporting from Damascus
The name is a pseudonym for a Guardian journalist reporting from Damascus. He or she was the one to report the fabricated story of the Syrian security shooting the 9 army personnel in Banias.
She raised my curiosity because her misrepresentation of the Syrian uprising, lack of analysis and depth (more american style journalism than European and British journalism) as well as her flagrant bias, were unusual to read in The Guardian, and were matched only by the bias and the spin of Al-Jazeera in their coverage of Syria.
Katherine Marsh might be the cause of the ‘arrest’ of Dorothy Parvaz, the Al-Jazeera reporter who disappeared after landing in Syria on April 29th or she might be Parvaz. Clearly the Syrian authorities must have been infuriated by Marsh’s reporting from Damascus. They must be desperately searching for Marsh’s real identity.
etc
http://lespolitiques.blogspot.com/2011/05/katherine-marsh-reporting-from-damascus.html
a commentator says:
Anonymous said…
Sarah Birke is Katherine Marsh and Nidda Hassan and Nour Ali and she is working in The Guardian. She used to sign articles in the magazine Syria Today. It is easy to prove this, my friends.
September 1, 2011 4:49:00 AM GMT+12:00
Anonymous said…
Sarah Birke is Katherine Marsh has Nidda Hassan and Nour Ali and she is working in The Guardian. She used to sign articles in the magazine Syria Today. It is easy to prove this.
============================
so this is all Unconventionl Warfare propganda:
http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/sandbox/going-rogue-americas-unconventional-warfare-mideast
and journalists wonder why they get killed?!
Posted by: brian | Jun 11 2012 22:01 utc | 20
Marsh was involved also with the Gay Girl from Damascus meme:
link
and from Counterpunch:
The Guardian’s pseudonymous reporter in Damascus reported the allegations, incorrect, at least in the matter of the injured soldier shown on Youtube, and used the allegation to paint a dire picture of a military and a regime facing disintegration:
Syrian soldiers shot for refusing to fire on protesters.
Katherine Marsh – a pseudonym – in Damascus
guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011
Witnesses claim soldiers who disobeyed
etchttp://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/15/syria-and-the-delusions-of-the-western-press/
Posted by: brian | Jun 11 2012 22:04 utc | 21
Syria, the resistance and Palestine
I found this quote on Amal Saad Ghorayeb’s blog.
“Why would I worry about how the fall of Asssad would lead to a strike on Iran, the severe weakening of Hizbullah, and the destruction of the remaining vestiges of armed resistance in Palestine, when your boycott campaign against Madonna‘s global tour is picking up steam?”
I think the quote summarises well the state of the resistance in Palestine. Isn’t strange that the resistance axis is currently defined without a strong Palestinian component? Isn’t strange that Palestinian movements, who were sheltered in Syria, are either sitting idle or, when moving, going in the direction of Gulf states?
All this despite the sad state of Palestinians’ rights and their quasi absence from the Arab and international agenda.
http://lespolitiques.blogspot.com/2012/06/syria-resistance-and-palestine.html
indeed
Posted by: brian | Jun 11 2012 22:05 utc | 22
Copeland #11, The article doesn’t make one reference. That always arouses my suspicions as to credibility.
Alexander #12, What’s your source?
I have no that doubt that US PSYOP and the CIA would resort to such dirty tricks, and they certainly have in the past,
but for someone to just make unsubstantiated claims sets off my bullshit meter to max. I have Syrian friends who
I would alert and probably even my US senators if there were more credible sources. It even sounds to me like
a set up for the gullible to discredit future info that might be legit.
More please.
Posted by: juannie | Jun 11 2012 23:43 utc | 23
Hey, who broke the right margin? That makes it hard to read people’s comments, as I have to slide the margin bar back and forth, for every line. Annoying.
Plus, I need somewhat larger print to accommodate my presbyopia. so I don’t have as much room to have the copy spread out….
B has the absolutely best, most clear directions for embedding long URL’s of any site I’ve seen- well, on the parts of the web I’ve seen. No excuses for not using the embedding — Puh-leeeeeze?
Most URL’s fit, but some do not. I would imagine PREVIEW can show the commenter when a URL is bustin’ through the margin. Right? So, please, get with the embedding, at least when necessary. T/U.
Posted by: jawbone | Jun 12 2012 0:00 utc | 24
@ Copeland #18,
I’d be surprised about Russia using force as well. At least in public they have said unambiguously and more than once that they will NOT use force under any circumstance, and I don’t blame them since they are not a match for NATO that far from their borders.
What they might do, if they haven’t already, is upgrade Syrian air defense to a very high level. This would not thwart an all out air attack, but NATO would hesitate if they thought they would loose a number of aircraft. That would be a huge blow to their prestige and would cause a rally around Syria effect in the Arab world.
The risk for Russia would be if their air defenses proved ineffective then it would be a loss of prestige for them.
The part about taking over broadcasting sounds interesting, but why haven’t they done it before? And why couldn’t Syria shut down its own radio/tv if that happened?
Posted by: Lysander | Jun 12 2012 0:08 utc | 25
Brian @ 20 — Dorothy Parvaz was released by Syrian authorities in mid-May, per Al Jazeera, and wrote about her tme in prison in an article at Al Jazeera on May 18th.
A scan of her luggage showed a sat phone equipment, plus she had an American passport, so, off to an unpleasant Syrian jail. Interesting read.
However, her hair is now cut short and if her hair is off her face she has pronounced widow’s peak. Also she’s somewhat older than the photos that came of of Sarah Birke (not the blond skier) and Katherine Marsh. Both came up on Google images under Sarah Birke.
Is there proof that Sarah Birke/Katherine Marsh also used the other two names listed?
Posted by: jawbone | Jun 12 2012 0:39 utc | 26
@ juannie #24
I think you are right, caution and a skeptical approach is best, until more is known about this. I’ve been thinking about what this would imply, as a kind of thought experiment; that is to say, what the overreaching nature of such a project would reveal about those who are so desperate, or psychopathic enough, to risk shooting craps on it. When the game is bound to be revealed, and the supreme crudeness and condescension of the conspiracy is, in due course, unmasked, the only imperative will have been to destroy the secular social order and eliminate Assad’s government, regardless of any, or all, repercussions to diplomacy or peace, that are bound to follow.
Those outside the Coalition of the Killing, the other sovereign states of the world (not in the NATO clique), would then wake up in a transformed and suddenly very hostile, diplomatic environment. Perhaps the PSYOPS warriors have convinced themselves of their own infallibility. Perhaps these psychos, whose bet is always against the peace of the world, have totted up all the known and unknown, and have decided that power trumps everything, and to hell with what the witnesses to the crime might have seen, or know, or believe.
A power, an Axis of Aggression like this–if it were to rear its head on the morning after deposing the Syrian government by brutal force and deception–would represent a clear and present danger to every sovereign state that’s still standing.
@#10 I dunno who else translated with google maybe Parviziyi was crackin a joke but according to google translate الله و سوريا و بشار و جيشنا و بس means “God, Syria, Bashar and our military and Avatar.
Can I make a plea that will almost certainly fall on deaf ears?
That is that this ‘open’ thread be used for issues which concern us all outside of Syria. One could easily imagine Syria was the only place in the world were humans are being slaughtered for the advancement of empire.
Sadly there are many other spots on our planet where all sorts of horrors are being perpetuated, yet despites the fact that 6 of the previous 8 ‘subject’ related threads are about Syria, the open threads are also swamped by mostly the same voices saying largely the same things about that country.
Just because western news media conglomerates do this for a plethora of reasons, I’m at a loss to comprehend why we do the same.
Rather than informing this practise does the opposite clouding issues by distorting reality, making it seem Syria is the only issue. Same for any hot button issue – with platforms for discussion elsewhere at MoA why do we write about them in the open thread?
Note I’m not suggesting anyone stop posting about syria, just that with so many Syrian threads, how about leaving the open thread for issues that would be off topic in other recent subject threads?
I came across a particularly awful circa 1970’s (in the sense that I imagined major corporations sub contracted out their dirty work) example of corporate capitalism in the 21st century.
A corporation called Glencore founded by willie clinton’s mate Marc Rich found itself in possession of a block of land in Colombia that the bulk of its coal mines major seam ran onto. This was weird cause the owners (10 families of impoverished Colombian locals) had refused to sell. That problem had been fixed when one of prez Uribe’s paramilitary death squads massacred all 10 families and installed 10 families all related to members of the paramilitaries, who then sold the land.
South African born israeli citizen Ivan Glasenberg who replaced Marc Rich as boss prior to Glencore’s listing on the london stock exchange denies any Glencore involvement in the massacre.
it is worth noting that
“a former official of Colombia’s Administrative Department of Security, or DAS, the functions of which are similar to the F.B.I., testified he saw the president of Drummond’s Colombia (a Glencore subsidiary.) coal operation pay money to a paramilitary leader to murder union members at Drummond’s coal mine in the Guajira Peninsula in northern Colombia. Two miners who were union leaders were thereafter murdered by paramilitary forces. Gary Drummond and other Drummond representatives have refused to negotiate with union leaders at the company’s mine, even though union membership is legal and the right to bargain long recognized in Colombian law.”
Yes that is old news. Glencore got what they wanted outta Colombia and have now moved on the Africa specifically the Congo (hence hiring the jaapie Glasenberg and listing in england).
So Glencore’s current slaughter of unwhite unbourgeois humans involves sending 10 year old children ‘down pit’ to recover copper ore.
See how ‘the west’ sentences unwhites to 50 years jail on circumstantial evidence for ‘war crimes’ yet ignores Rich and Glasenberg.
Glencore may be a big yawn for many but it is one of hundreds of similar disgusting examples of what ‘we’ get up to ‘out there’.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 12 2012 2:09 utc | 29
And Lysander, I think you are right that Russia won’t look to blunt force to win its diplomatic concessions. I remember now what b wrote a couple of days ago, about Russia having control over the Northern supply route to Afghanistan, that the US depends on. That is Russia’s major bargaining chip; and the threat of opposing violence is not necessary at all.
alexander @ 12…thatd be Copeland @13s claim of a media coup d’etat
Posted by: brian | Jun 12 2012 3:51 utc | 31
Thanks, as always, to Copeland, to Debs, Brian, and all those who have made this a very useful and stimulating thread. Meyssan is a “provocative” and contentious source: at least his assertion that the TV takeover may take place as early as June 15 is (partially) falsifiable as of that date. One wonders what, or better, who is producing the apparent “sense of urgency” for regime change in Syria, a country about which I know nothing by personal experience. Probably there is a malefic confluence of Wahabi fervor, Israeli realpolitik, Western economic(gas) interests, and Obama administration electoral calculations, all exploiting the kind of “perception management” supplied by the media division of the “secret team” (as suggested by the detailed information in this regard propounded by Meyssan). Verifying these assertions and filling in further details about real “command and control” of these operations is a difficult but important process. Thanks again for the contributions to that process made here.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 12 2012 6:09 utc | 32
Maybe the sense of urgency has also to do with upcoming elections in Syria or with a timetable to start an iranian “Mission” before autumn or winter? There’s probably a thousand other good reasons.
Posted by: peter radiator | Jun 12 2012 7:03 utc | 33
The risk for Russia would be if their air defenses proved ineffective then it would be a loss of prestige for them.
Posted by: Lysander | Jun 11, 2012 8:08:20 PM | 25
Russia’s air defenses were proven an utter failure during the attack on the alleged phony nuclear site in 2007, which was really what that attack was about. The Pantsyrs that had just been delivered embarrassed by Assad and Russia.
Posted by: JL | Jun 12 2012 7:24 utc | 35
I agree with Debs and denk. Could you, b, post a parallel ‘Syria happenings’ thread? I’m quite riveted (and frankly scared shitless!), so would like the Syria info to keep flowing, but there are lots of other things going on.
To whit… I am (somewhat ashamedly) a Formula 1 fan (bit of a techno-geek), so had to listen to the commentators playing the Minimization Game this past weekend, and attempting to downplay the recent student protests in Montreal. Though they were less concerned about the Quebecois than they were about the situation in Bahrain, it was clearly a disruption of the event in Canada. Their line, sadly transparent, was “Hey…this is racing! It has nothing to do with rising university tuition! The gall of those ornery kids!”
I know, not very earth-shattering, but it’s just another sign that The Revolution is spreading, and beginning to harsh the PTB’s buzz.
Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jun 12 2012 7:34 utc | 36
The urgency eminates from British Israelism. Without sarcasm, I say look to the Masonic calender for answers.
Posted by: JL | Jun 12 2012 7:54 utc | 37
Meyssan has good instincts much of the time but his imagination is sometimes too vivid, and while writing he gets carried away ..
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!”
This, afaik, happened. It is also a popular French meme as it was reported in at least two French graphic books (BD.) These kinds of things happen all the time, and it is not a good example of anything.
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.
Many comments could be made. It was not NATO that used the media. It was the USuk (+Isr.) MSM that was apprised and complicit, in some measure prepared, and/or jumped on the bandwagon immediately through direct contagion and control. The rest followed along until they ‘got the script’ and embroidered on it. This was very clear to me at the time, of course that is just my vision.
The 9/11 Commission Report (about Rhodes I cannot say) was a separate, different operation, and it was 100% the creation of the US Gvmt. and para-state entities, and other US actors. (Influenced by Isr. if one wants, I leave that aside.) It was so slow and late in coming for one reason only: officialdom had to normalize, smooth out, collate, spin and in parts suppress everything that the media (US but also world) had spun, invented, unearthed or revealed. In this way, false news and spin was retroactively legitimized, true facts were squeezed into some kind of believable but incorrect frame, and so on.
The 9/11 example in fact shows that the interplay between the media and a power nexus formed of State and other entities not directly in the media is very complex, that the media is really quite free, and that the main thrust comes from setting (imposing?) a general framework, scenario, plot, reading, etc. which is to be taken on board, mandatory. (For 9/11, that planes hit the towers and the perps were Muslim terrorists.)
In the case of Syria, one can see how parts of the W (not NATO) tried to impose a particular reading – democratic, peaceful dissidents who want fairness and regime change and yadda yadda facing vicious – I need not continue, has not worked, while the methods used were pretty much the same.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2012 8:04 utc | 38
From the slightly over-the-top Center For An Informed America, comes this gem buried a bit in an odd rant ranging from Jesus-as-controlled-asset to media whores:
So what we have here, in reality, is a bit of cleverly crafted theater. The formula seems to be to take an unusually large field of candidates, all of whom have more negatives than positives, put them through a gruelingly long primary process, complete with a seemingly endless series of debates designed to constantly reinforce those negatives, mix in a newly engineered playing field and a bottomless pit of corporate cash, and what you end up with is a voting public completely disgusted with all of the choices offered to them.
And that, it appears, is by design. The plan is not just to arrive at the convention with no presumptive nominee, but to arrive there with rank-and-file voters thoroughly underwhelmed by all the remaining candidates. Why? Because, as I already indicated, the GOP plans to go ‘old school’ – with a brokered convention. What will likely happen is that there will be a few votes taken, which will, as planned, fail in anointing a candidate. Then the big boys will retire to one of those ‘smoke-filled rooms’ from days of yore, where they will ‘decide’ to bypass all the remaining candidates and bring in fresh blood.
…
They will cheer despite the fact that the dumping of the entire field of candidates means that the entire primary campaign breathlessly covered by the media – the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, the unprecedented number of pointless debates, the endless barrage of campaign ads and robocalls, the ever-shifting field of candidates, the constant speculation over who the nominee would ultimately be – was all just smoke and mirrors. They will cheer despite the fact that it will represent yet another brazen attack on basic democratic rights.
I know this because I have run the brokered convention/throw-all-the-buns-out scenario past a few of my conservative friends and they have told me that nothing would make them happier. Their faces light up as if I had just told them that Santa had left a shiny new car for them in the driveway. And that is especially true when I tell them who I believe the nominee and his running-mate will be – Jeb Bush and Sarah Palin. That would be, I am told, a “dream ticket.”
This sounds soooo Karl “Petit Machiaveli” Rove.
Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jun 12 2012 8:16 utc | 39
juannie @ 23
An announecement from the US state department, were warning of a imminent massacre in the plans in Syria, yesterday. I saw it on TV, Al-Jazeera english and Norwegian NRK.
Parviziyi @ 15
Thanks, Google translator gave Avatar as a translation, but i suppose linguistically, the two words have the same origin.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 12 2012 10:15 utc | 40
>>> Meyssan has good instincts much of the time but his imagination is sometimes too vivid, and while writing he gets carried away ..>>>
Noirette, you’re not so bad yourself in the imagination and conspiracies department. BTW, Meyssan that is PNG in the USA and Votaire Org’s VP, Issa al-Ayyubi, that is Lebanese are both living in Beirut. That may explain where some of Voltairenet’s conspiracies are coming from; they say it’s in the air that’s breathed there.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 11:03 utc | 41
US Navy drone crashes in state of Maryland
Must be the Iranians, quick bomb them to the stone age!
Posted by: hans | Jun 12 2012 11:37 utc | 42
>>>Thanks, Google translator gave Avatar as a translation, but i suppose linguistically, the two words have the same origin.>>>
Alexander, google couldn’t help you because the word is colloquial Arabic and these aren’t in the dictionary. They say another meaning for “bas” is the interjection “but” like in “Sorry, bas…” which means “Sorry, but…”. In any event, the word “bas” as a colloquial is used for its dramatic rythmic adrenalin-pumping effect at the end of slogans such as the ones Parviziyi writes at the end of his posts. When the word is used by itself and you add a couple of exclamation marks after it (bas!!), it takes on the same sense as the “basta!!” that ruralito here uses when he comes out of his skin when annoyed, so both words (bas and basta)are probably with the same root, at least when used in annoying situations. The classical Arabic word for “only” in the absolute sense is “faqat”. Another is “l’a ghair” which is another absolute form of “no-other” so the right word depends on the sentence. The avatar you got was probably so you wouldn’t leave with your hands empty.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 12:24 utc | 43
>>> Must be the Iranians, quick bomb them to the stone age!>>>
Another conspiracy starting to take shape. It brings to mind the downing in 2000 of an Egypt Air Boeing 767 40 minutes after take-off from Kennedy with 34 Egyptian generals and other military aboard. La belle Noirette is going to like this one. All indications on this mysterious crash point to an Isreali hand in it; by al-Ahram via al-Balagh:
“16 Coincidences Worth Contemplating
Here is a “series” of events or “coincidences” as in the language of investigators:
1. There were 34 generals of different ranks from the Egyptian Armed Forces on board the plane. Among them was a general who has a Doctorate in atomic sciences, and more than 20 pilots who successfully completed training in operating Apache helicopters that were sold recently to Egypt. Also on board were other generals who successfully completed training in launching the famous American Patriot missiles. The training of all those generals lasted 3 years and has cost Egypt $3 billion, which Egypt paid in full.
2. Israel vehemently denounced the training program of those generals upon their arrival in the US 3 years ago, and Israel called the training program “a threat to Israel’s security”.
3. Cairo started a big campaign to rid the region of weapons of mass destruction. The campaign has targeted mainly Israel since it is the only country in the region that possesses such dangerous weapons.
4. Israel started a campaign accusing Egypt of seeking to modernize its armed forces, and of possessing missiles that threaten the security of Israel, especially so because the army generals who came to train in the US will be exposed to the secrets of the joint American-Israeli missiles and jet fighters technology.
5. Egyptian defense minister, Muhammd Hassan Tantawi, announced last October that war with Israel is not ruled out. He also announced that Egypt therefore is continuously building its armed forces to be in a state of readiness.
6. One day before the tragedy, the American authorities provided hotel accommodation in a 3-star hotel for the airplane crew, which constitutes a violation of the simplest norms of international aviation, where the crew is usually accommodated in the airport hotel or in a 5-star hotel.
7. On the same day, a crew of pilots and flight attendants of Israel’s airline (Al A’al) checked in the same hotel with a general form the Israeli Intelligence (Mossad) who was in charge of the crew’s luggage and personal belongings.
8. Just a few hours prior to the incident, one of the Egypt Air flight crew complained to the hotel security that someone has sneaked into his room, because he noticed signs of someone’s attempt to open his suitcase by breaking the locks. But the hotel security assured him of no foul play as long as nothing was missing.
9. The day of the incident, Edward Mcglauglen, an American Jew, who is a vice president of an American civil agency was one of the passengers of Egypt flight form Los Angeles to New York City in route to Cairo. But when the plane landed in New York City, Mcglauglen refused to continue his journey to his final destination (Cairo) for fear of possible “planting of a bomb” by “one of the passengers” at its first stop (New York City).
10. The same day of the incident, the American authorities opted to take the flight crew’s luggage from the hotel through the halls to the plane itself. Meanwhile the Mossad general opted to take the luggage of the crew of Al A’al flight to the Israeli plane himself. But the luggage of the crews of both Egypt Air and Al A’al ended up being taken from the hotel to the airport in the same car that took the Mossad general to the Israeli plane.
11. Prior to the Egypt Air flight departure, the American authorities have inspected the plane for 3 hours, which is a very unusually long time in aviation norms. Also it has been reported that airport security have not given similar attention to any other plane that day.
12. After 40 minutes of the flight’s departure, contact with the plane was lost over the Edward American naval base, which is known to have anti-aircraft missiles, some of which are ready to be launched automatically by the mere sensing of an object passing over at a certain elevation.
13. After the incident, 3 eye witnesses testified to the investigators that they saw the plane on fire as it was falling down. Fox News also has confirmed in its own investigation of the incident that the plane had exploded in mid air before its fall according to what was seen on the radar screens.
14. The American investigation team reported that the plane fell down from 33,000 feet to 19,000 feet in 40 seconds, “which, according to aviation experts, is a speed equal to a free fall due to earth gravity, which makes it evident that the plane has fallen down in pieces and not as one body. Because the body of the plane is designed in a way that makes it impossible for the body of the plane to descend at a speed in access of 7,000 feet per second”. Aviation experts also add that “even if the engines of the plane stopped working, it would still be possible to land the plane at the nearest airport.”
15. After 10 hours of the incident, a member of the American investigation team announced that they have found the “black box” that records the secrets of the events in the “last moments” just before the plane’s fall. However, the next day, the American official spokesman denied finding the “box” and said that the investigation team is still searching for it!
16. There were 34 generals from the Egyptian army on board “the plane”, which is a violation of Egyptian army rules that “prohibit” more than 3 generals to be on board the same flight, domestic or international, for security of the generals. This decision was reached in 1978 after “the downing” in the Western Sahara of the flight that had Ahmad Badawi on board (in which 12 generals have died). At that time the fingers pointed to “the Israeli enemy” and the American intelligence.
http://www.albalagh.net/current_affairs/egypt_crash.shtml
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 13:12 utc | 44
Looks like a new MSM trend with ‘massacre forecasts’ in Syria. Is this just cynical editorial spin? Or is it something more sinister, leaked reports pending NATO false-flag ops?
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 12 2012 13:14 utc | 45
Tnks www, that was helpful. I am learning Arabic, giving it a try anyway.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 12 2012 13:17 utc | 46
The destruction of Syria and Iraq was spelled out in February,1982 in an article by ODED YINON in the Journal of the Department of Information, World Zionist Organizaion
The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target…Iraq, rich in oil, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets.
(translated from the Hebrew by Dr. Israel Shahak)
The article goes on to project the “dissolution” of ALL the Middle Eastern countries in the same way-a process
ongoing now. Read the article if you can.
Posted by: hans | Jun 12 2012 13:22 utc | 47
>>> Copeland #11, The article doesn’t make one reference. That always arouses my suspicions as to credibility.>>>
juannie #23, the article is full of references, but you have to get off your chair and work a bit for them. Those that have been been watching Jazeera’s and Arabia’s coverage of Libya and Syria for a while know exactly what Meyssan is talking about and no sources or links are necessary. Google a few assertions from the article and you’d get many links to them, such as “Arab League asks NileSat and ArabSat to stop broadcasting Syrian stations” or “media disinformation campaign on Syria”, or “Christians to Beirut Alawites to the grave.”
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 14:05 utc | 48
They have been suspiciously quiet on the subject, that can only be due to things going their way, and that they in reality are very much on top of things – indicating they are steering in detail the whole deal, and they are content with the development. As opposed to the other extreme, that they are just watching from the sideline with no attempt to influence the situation, now I find that harder to believe.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 12 2012 14:06 utc | 49
>>> Tnks www, that was helpful. I am learning Arabic, giving it a try anyway.>>>
Alexander (Iskandar), you’re welcome, I’m learning too.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 14:09 utc | 50
www: Noirette, you’re not so bad yourself in the imagination and conspiracies department.
I consider that a compliment ha ha, though I am not really a fan of say Meyssan or Alex Jones, to mention two public, well known, and money-earning so-called conspiracists.
Yes I know about Meyssan connections, a bit.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2012 14:46 utc | 51
www: Noirette, you’re not so bad yourself in the imagination and conspiracies department.
I consider that a compliment ha ha, though I am not really a fan of say Meyssan or Alex Jones, to mention two public, well known, and money-earning so-called conspiracists.
Yes I know about Meyssan connections, a bit.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2012 14:46 utc | 52
To get away from Syria as someone has asked here, news about the little criminal country and a second German with a guilty conscience that’s bending backwards to please it:
Palestinians: Vatican set to indirectly recognize annexation of East Jerusalem
Negotiations between Israel and the Holy See on the fiscal status of Catholic institutions in Israel seems to make no distinction between the two sides of the Green Line.
ed note–as much as the church in the person of Benedict XVI think that by giving in to Israel’s demands of recognizing Jerusalem as part of Israel that organized Jewish interests will ease up in their reporting of priest sex-abuse cases, in truth all he is doing is setting himself up for an assassination later at the hands of ‘AY-RAB’ terrorists in order to bring about the ultimate ‘clash of civilizations’.
Haaretz
The draft of an economic agreement between Israel and the Vatican contains no distinction between sovereign Israel and the territories occupied in 1967. The lack of a preamble containing such a distinction is at the center of heightened tension between Palestinian Christian denominations and the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Vatican.
Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the agreement meant indirect recognition of Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and of the imposition of Israeli law in part of the West Bank.
France, which has special standing as custodian of holy Christian sites and Christian communities, is also said to be concerned at the apparent latent recognition of the annexation and the economic implications for the communities, and particularly its Christian institutions in the country and the people who are part of them.
From the Ugly Truth; it’s a Haaretz paying article:
http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/palestinians-vatican-set-to-indirectly-recognize-annexation-of-east-jerusalem/
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 14:55 utc | 53
>>> I consider that a compliment ha ha>>>
It was, Noirette.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 14:56 utc | 54
Greece.
Now for a hardcore example of true regime change!
Considerations about austerity and the Euro etc. swamp the media, making this tale about the currency union, EU integration, banks, debt and deficit spending, Greek productivity, tax collection, etc. which completely obfuscates the power struggle going on.
…Frames the story uniquely in terms of ‘misguided economic policies, austerity is no use’ from milquetoast Keynesians or pro-Statists, sometimes linked to a populist class-struggle meme, with the fat hogs registering their boats in Panama, their cars in Bulgaria, sending their savings to say Singapore, while widows scrabble in rubbish bins and go without health care. (None of this is false and that is why it flies so well.)
The Greek state, its Government apparatus, has been broken, it no longer functions, at all.
Reform measures were imposed, and *kilometers* of laws were voted in by Parliament, on:
– retirement (completely overhauled, old structure is dust, previous agreements shredded) and social + health protection, the last is now one mega State entity, in short all other private, local, corporate, arrangements are defunct.
– labor laws setting minimum wage, salary caps, indexation, etc. All ‘collective conventions’ (worker-employer agreements, etc.) were declared null and void. Ppl tend to think such applies only to ‘lazy Gvmt workers’ – not so. Today there is no possibility of negotiation, and (small) employers hands are tied as well.
– creation of businesses (used to be, you go to a bank and borrow and set up your cheese factory) are now handled by a *unique State run guichet.*
How does all this jibe with the ‘free market’ and ‘structural reforms that will empower creativity’ and ‘innovation’?
Some might call it…Stalinism!
Austerity is a misnomer, though the end *result* is overall impoverishment.
The measures aim to collapse the existing structure – how could officials, public servants, bureaucrats be on board, even with goodwill? Many block these reforms merely by being passive. or just puzzled. Every ministry is defending its territory! Many measures simply cannot be applied, for a variety of reasons. (Opposition is one, e.g. by taxi-drivers and students.)
I read in one news article: as tax collection is still problematic (e.g. property tax tagged onto the electricity bill!) the latest idea is to have them collected by…hold your tinny hats…The banks!
Who could have done that to Syria, or Lybia for that matter? Nobody, for now.
At present, Greece is still a democracy in the sense that voting can be organized, it still has pol parties, and the EU cannot, will not, prevent that process.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2012 14:56 utc | 55
Yes I know about Meyssan connections, a bit.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12, 2012 10:46:56 AM | 51
Please elaborate. Or provide a google hint.
Posted by: wasta | Jun 12 2012 15:35 utc | 56
Noirette, great summary on Greece but you left out the IMF and the WB vultures that have been waiting for this to happen.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 15:57 utc | 57
www – I left them – IMF, WB, Troika – out because I concentrated on what it takes, or how it can be accomplished, to destroy a state, without thugs and grenades, rebels, bombing, massacres, etc.
Just, slow death, chaos, poverty, hyper Gvmt. control, etc. Small biz dying, agriculture curtailed, health services gone. Energy unaffordable…
How all this came about, and who is ultimately responsible is very hard to discuss.
Certainly the WB and the IMF, perhaps more importantly the EU or Germany’s Merkel, as well as within Greece powerful families, the arms industry (world), banks (mainly EU, German and French) and some mention must go to e.g. the Greek shipping industry.
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 12 2012 16:42 utc | 58
are you saying Meyssan’s contacts are in WB and IMF? confusing.
Posted by: wasta | Jun 12 2012 19:51 utc | 59
Wasta #56, unless yours was a trick question and until Noirette does her own answering, in a nutshell, the Voltairenet main guys (Meyssan and al-Ayoubi) think America was behind 911 and Beslan. They are pro-Assad, anti-American imperialism and close to the Syrian Socialist National Party, a fringe pro-Baathist Lebanese political party that used to aspire for a Lebanon within a Greater Syria.
In your #59, Meyssan had nothing to do with the post on Greece.
Posted by: www | Jun 12 2012 20:06 utc | 60
not a trick, a sincere query as meyssan is unknown to me.
btw: that US -Mossad behind 911 is an opinion shared by many around the world, including top intelligence agency experts. us openly using qaeda in libya and syria, hillary clinton admitted, and tremendous documentation US created qaeda. those ties never stopped- qaeda is America’s merc of choice and still on tap
Posted by: wasta | Jun 12 2012 21:18 utc | 61
re www 43
Alexander, google couldn’t help you because the word is colloquial Arabic and these aren’t in the dictionary. They say another meaning for “bas” is the interjection “but” like in “Sorry, bas…” which means “Sorry, but…”. In any event, the word “bas” as a colloquial is used for its dramatic rythmic adrenalin-pumping effect at the end of slogans such as the ones Parviziyi writes at the end of his posts. When the word is used by itself and you add a couple of exclamation marks after it (bas!!), it takes on the same sense as the “basta!!”
In my experience of Levantine colloquial Arabic, the root meaning of ‘bas’ is ‘only’. That’s why Parviziyi uses it at the end, meaning something like “That’s all”, full stop.
I was taught in Arabic school that ‘bas’ means ‘but’, but in fact it is not a full equivalent of the English ‘but’. I find it works only in limited cases, when you could have substituted ‘only’ in an English version of your sentence. ‘Yes, but…’ that’s fine. Other times, no.
My dialect is Ammani Jordanian; it could be different in Damascus or Beirut.
Posted by: alexno | Jun 12 2012 21:23 utc | 62
re www 44
By the way I liked your Egyptian story.
It reminds me of the case in 1969, when the Israelis shot down a Libyan airliner which accidentally missed Cairo airport, and flew too far. They took out the entire personnel of the Libyan Antiquities Department. It took the Libyans years to replace them.
Nothing new under the sun…
Posted by: alexno | Jun 12 2012 21:35 utc | 63
‘There are a lot of soldiers of fortune among the bandits. They are Chechens, Romanians, French, Libyans, and Afghans. Moreover, there was a very funny accident with Afghan soldiers. A few Afghans were caught and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ They replied, ‘We were told that we came to Israel, and at night we are shooting at Israeli buses. We are fighting with the enemy to liberate Palestine.’ It might be funny, but it is true. The guys were really surprised, ‘Are we in Syria? We thought we were in Israel!’’
http://gbtimes.com/third-angle/syria/syria/eyewitness-account-media-lies-about-syria
so there are jihadis ready willing and able to go to israel…instead they find themselves in…syria! how did they end up there? who sent them there? a question that needs answering…who is sending the jihadis to syria?
Posted by: brian | Jun 12 2012 21:45 utc | 64
Today’s story in the BBC online blurb says there are UN reports of Syrian troops, regular soldiers, decorating their tanks with little hostages. These are fronted as reports from UN people, and balanced to a degree with reports that the rebels are also using apparently captured children, to help with chores near the front line. They are saying that children to an unprecedented degree are caught up in the war’s atrocious battles. Is this the full unleashed civil war descending into madness?–Or is this the kick-off of the manufactured news blitz that Meyssan was warning us about?
The UN is now declaring that there is civil war in Syria. This I read on RT. The RT report didn’t say so; but it would seem that this is the end of the Annan peace mission. The report did say that crowds were throwing rocks and metal objects at UN vehicles that were passing through. The UN people seem to be despised in some quarters at least. There is loose talk of unilateral action by the usual imperialist clowns. They will try to carve Syria up like a fat goose, if they can; and the pretext will be “to save the children” .
what civil war? how can foreign invading jihadis aided by western minders make up a ‘civil war’?
Posted by: brian | Jun 13 2012 3:11 utc | 67
The same way the Americans made a sectarian, civil war, in Iraq. Death squads, anonymous explosions, hideous torture, by ominous never ending threats and ubiquitous terror: that is how a society can be driven to civil war, by an imperial power that acts like a cyborg, one which has had its morality chip removed. And with a spool of disinformation a mile long. I’m surprised you ask, Brian. The people who do this have had a lot of experience over the years.
Nicaragua comes to mind.
US alarm over Russia’s supplying attack helicopters to Syria
Moscow’s arms shipments to Syria will aggravate the continuing bloodshed in the Arab country, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday. “We are concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically,” she said. Russia maintains that the arms supplies they are sending to the Syrian government are not meant to be used in the internal conflict – but Clinton says these assertions are “patently untrue.”
Killary Clinton likes to lie and lie …the US should stop sending its attack weapons to the terrorists as well as to brutal entities like israel
Posted by: brian | Jun 13 2012 5:08 utc | 70
>>>It reminds me of the case in 1969, when the Israelis shot down a Libyan airliner >>>
Alexno #63, I didn’t know about the Libyan Antiquities Department on the Libyan airliner. One downing that did not leave any questions was that of Iran Air’s Airbus Flight 655 with 290 people including 66 children on board. It was shot down on July 3, 1988 by a missile while in Iranian air space by a US navy ship in Iranian territorial waters. 8 years later, the US settled out of court by paying $131 million for the wrong it had done. The commander that had it shot down was later decorated. It was 6 months after the downing of the Iranian plane that the Pan Am jumbo was blown up over Lockerbie.
Posted by: www | Jun 13 2012 7:08 utc | 71
>>>Killary Clinton likes to lie and lie >>>
How do you know Syria is not receiving Rusian attack helicopters, Brian? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong if they did, since the West and the Gulf have admitted sending in hundreds of millions in arms to the rebels, but I’m curious how you could be so sure.
Posted by: www | Jun 13 2012 7:22 utc | 72
>>> Death squads, anonymous explosions, hideous torture, by ominous never ending threats and ubiquitous terror…>>>
Copeland #68, it describes what has been talked about for months that the CIA, Mossad and Blackwater have agents inside Syria. There has to be some fire underneath all that smoke; from Huffington Post last March:
“CIA, Mossad and Blackwater agents are involved in military violence in the Homs district, an Arab news agency exclusively reports.
According to Al-Manar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and political party, a coordination office with agents from the three branches of intelligence is in operation in nearby Qatar.
Salim Harba, a Syrian expert in strategic affairs, told Al-Manar the office was established: “Under American-Gulf sponsorship. The office includes American, French, and Gulf – specifically from Qatar and Saudi Arabia – intelligence agents, as well as CIA, Mossad, and Blackwater agents and members of the Syrian Transitional Council.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/07/syria-uprising-mossad-blackwater-and-cia-led-operations-in-homs_n_1326121.html
Posted by: www | Jun 13 2012 7:48 utc | 73
www, Heh I had forgotten that one. (post 44)
The plots, plans, to commit atrocities, such as massacres of villages and terrorist attacks, often leak beforehand. I reckon they leak more today, because of modern communications, growing individualism and lesser grip of authority, and perhaps the importance of the media and the ‘society of the spectacle’..
What is interesting to me is that one might assume that leaks would be more voluminous for false flag attacks (as opposed to say rebels killing off a village of hated ppl) because ‘being in the know’ is important to members of the in group, ppl connected to, closely or not, to those who are carrying out the attack.
Needless to say, I have not been able to shore up, illustrate, not to mention prove, this hypothesis. There were an untold number of ppl warned about 9/11, as well as leaks (school children in NJ as a picturesque ex.) and the London bombings looked like anybody important knew about them beforehand.
Wasta, I only meant that I was aware of what www posted – I have no further info, see www’s posts. Issa El Ayoubi is no. 2. at Voltaire net, afaik. Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire_Network
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 13 2012 14:17 utc | 74
www, Heh I had forgotten that one. (post 44)
The plots, plans, to commit atrocities, such as massacres of villages and terrorist attacks, often leak beforehand. I reckon they leak more today, because of modern communications, growing individualism and lesser grip of authority, and perhaps the importance of the media and the ‘society of the spectacle’..
What is interesting to me is that one might assume that leaks would be more voluminous for false flag attacks (as opposed to say rebels killing off a village of hated ppl) because ‘being in the know’ is important to members of the in group, ppl connected to, closely or not, to those who are carrying out the attack.
Needless to say, I have not been able to shore up, illustrate, not to mention prove, this hypothesis. There were an untold number of ppl warned about 9/11, as well as leaks (school children in NJ as a picturesque ex.) and the London bombings looked like anybody important knew about them beforehand.
Wasta, I only meant that I was aware of what www posted – I have no further info, see www’s posts. Issa El Ayoubi is no. 2. at Voltaire net, afaik. Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire_Network
Posted by: Noirette | Jun 13 2012 14:17 utc | 75
Former British PM John Major testifies that Rupert Murdoch demanded his government change its policy on Europe or his papers would oppose him at the 1997 general election.
Re: Can I make a plea that will almost certainly fall on deaf ears?
Debs, it’s called Propagenda, I learned that here…
Posted by: Captain Merica | Jun 13 2012 23:01 utc | 76
The Huffington Post is hardly my favorite “news” outlet, but they seem to be the heaviest weight distributor who is presently carrying this story: Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 14 2012 1:35 utc | 77
why is Murdoch after years of bad journalism and empire building suddenly under attack by the system? and why does nooone ask this simple question?
Posted by: brian | Jun 14 2012 2:20 utc | 78
RE:
Russia’s air defenses were proven an utter failure during the attack on the alleged phony nuclear site in 2007
is a red herring.
1. The Pantsyr’s had yet to be deployed.
2. The Isreali’s didn’t engage Syrian air defences at all – they simply went around them by using foreign airspace (Turkey if I remember rightly), obviously arranged by the US. It was an undefended facility in the middle of nowhere near the Turkish border.
The majority of Syrian air defences are concentrated over the major population centres in the south & near the Isreali & Lebanon borders.
They are overlapping, multiply-reduundant, & consist mostly of 70’s & early 80’s era equipment.
There also doesn’t seem to be any concensus among experts on how much of it has been upgraded & in what state of repair a lot of it is, but the basis is relatively solid.
For the best overview, recommend Sean O’connor’s IMINT & Analysis site.
Regarding the Pantsyr’s, they are an excellent SHORT RANGE mobile point defence system, & if they were actually stationed at the attacked facility, could of caused quite a bit of damage among the Isreali F-15’s, especially if they were linked up with a more powerful radar.
Posted by: KenM | Jun 14 2012 4:13 utc | 79
god damn it
fukus drones in philippines
http://tinyurl.com/86zrgjg
Posted by: denk | Jun 15 2012 6:45 utc | 80
Just a heads up. Can someone confirm or deny this.
US violates int’l laws; moves USS Enterprise into Pakistani water near Balochistan
Karachi: After failing to strike a deal on Nato supply with Pakistan, violating international laws the US has moved its USS Enterprise, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, into Pakistani territorial waters near Gawadar city of Balochistan province.
“After the deployment of the aircraft in Pakistani sea the country’s security agencies are now investing into the matter. The movement apparently shows the increasing interest of the US in Balochistan province of Pakistan,” sources said.
“The US has moved its biggest aircraft carrier 65 to 70 nautical miles away from Gawadar in the second week of June,” a well informed source told The News Tribe correspondent.
The USS Enterprise, which holds a crew of over 4,000, had taken part in several wars.
That’s straight hostility from the US, they are bulldozing on, and this is more or less an open threat. (of war)
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 15 2012 8:03 utc | 82
Remember, the US don’t need a reason to go to war, they just need an excuse.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 15 2012 8:15 utc | 83
@Monolycus77
There is a good segment on DemocracyNow! about this TPP trade pact. The whole thing seems to be treasonous. The transnational corporations are on their way to becoming a governing entity; and a parallel justice system that will supersede the nation state’s sovereignty. It’s all been accomplished in secrecy on a need-to-know basis, and it will be sprung like a trap, the way the PATRIOT ACT got passed. Locally controlled, sovereign authority to regulate corporate activity, seems to be on the verge of being abolished.
Link
fukus, Building a global guns-and-graves culture
http://tinyurl.com/7nd8vj9
Posted by: denk | Jun 15 2012 9:09 utc | 85
@Copeland #84
That was certainly my impression as well, and the lack of heavyweight coverage here grates me (nothing for or against DemocracyNow! but it is hardly what I would term a mainstream source.) This is not the first incidence of unitary executive over-reaching or backroom politicking, but you really have to dig anymore to even compile a credible list, much less try to compare notes with your neighbours in order to fully appreciate the implications.
One of the great strengths that Billmon had during the Bush administration was the ability to keep careful track of executive branch abuses and he had a very keen eye for analysing patterns of misconduct. Unfortunately, even if he hadn’t retired, his selective blind spot when it came to the Democrats would have rendered him fairly useless after 2008. Bernhard is brilliant, but he has an engineer’s eye for detail, so the result is that this blog becomes nearly single-topic for long stretches at a time. Every other place I know of to gather data has different, but similar, problems with integrating information into a larger picture.
If the more conspiracy-minded people hadn’t already drowned out the debate about the so-called Codex Alimentarius with bad information for example, we could see who was seriously discussing that measure and deduce who was in the pockets of the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries (or, in other words, who would be most likely to place corporate interests over civil liberties.) It is difficult now to dig through the noise-to-signal ratio to find out what actually was/is said/done and by whom, and it is as utterly impossible to publicly discuss the implications if you do find real data as it is to debate the potential health implications of flouridated municipal drinking water. Without a mainstream spotlight on the information, it is coopted by the hysterical and becomes useless to everybody.
Simply scanning the headlines or checking out the chatter on the blogs has served to keep me less informed than if I hadn’t read them at all.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 16 2012 3:05 utc | 86
I’m only just now catching up on the TPP leak and its insane implications, and it’s weirdly coincided with a post I wrote today at our local blog about Agenda 21
I know it’s a bit down the conspiracy rabbit hole, but any thoughts?
Posted by: lizard | Jun 17 2012 3:10 utc | 87
the tam *massacre*
courtesy bbc
+So whence the story of a Tiananmen Square massacre?
A lurid BBC report at the time was one important source. Other reporters may then have felt compelled to chime in even though none of them, including the BBC, had actually been in the square+
http://tinyurl.com/7w625rh
Posted by: denk | Jun 17 2012 5:43 utc | 88
In 2009, James Miles, who was the BBC correspondent in Beijing at the time, admitted that he had “conveyed the wrong impression” and that “there was no massacre on Tiananmen Square.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 17 2012 15:01 utc | 89
This Victor Bout related story (perhaps a trial balloon intended precisely for being “popped”) has not received intense coverage in Western media outlets. The same holds for this story about the other pawn involved in the alleged swap negotiations.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 18 2012 12:22 utc | 90
This regime/government hairsplitting has been mulling around for a while, and I think I have the technical defining terminology straight here:
The Obama administration
The Democrat regime
The US government
The Assad administration
The Baath regime
The Syrian government
Right? Sound reasonable?
In Practice though, regime is used about something one wants to characterize as negative and authoritarian/autocratic like dictatorship, and government is a clean-shaven western-style democracy.
Posted by: Alexander | Jun 18 2012 12:58 utc | 91
cia
*we play on the world’s media like a giant wurlitzer*
hello alexanda 89
planting disinfo in the msm is one of the oldest trick in fukus playbook
tam was the *template* for all *color revolutions*
*tam massacre* was the mother of all these *they shoot unarmed
protestors dont they* bs we see in kosovo, libya, syria n beyond.
fukus psyop that fabrcated the tam *massacre* myth
+Mathews traces much of the problem to a Hong Kong newspaper that
immediately, after the 1989 disturbance, ran a long story under the name
of an alleged student protester. He claimed he was at the square when
troops arrived with machine guns to mow down students in the hundreds.
Distributed around the globe, the article was seen as final proof that the
original BBC and other massacre reports were accurate. But the alleged
author of that report was never located, and for good reason: The article
was almost certainly planted — one of the many black information
operations organized by British intelligence over the years.+
http://tinyurl.com/7w625rh
fukus psyop that launched the 1965 genocide in indonesia
[a conservative estimation put the death toll at 3m, many were ethnic
chinese framed by fukus as china’s *5th columnists*]
+The army’s anxiety was increased by rumors, throughout 1965, that
mainland China was smuggling arms to the PKI for an imminent revolt.
Two weeks before Gestapu, a story to this effect also appeared in a
Malaysian newspaper, citing Bangkok sources which relied in turn on
Hong Kong sources.106 Such international untraceability is the stylistic
hallmark of stories emanating in this period from what CIA insiders
called their “mighty Wurlitzer,” the world-wide network of press “assets”
through which the CIA, or sister agencies such as Britain’s MI-6, could
plant unattributable disinformation+
http://tinyurl.com/nx9gdc
Posted by: denk | Jun 19 2012 4:15 utc | 92
so tier 2 = not doing enuff to police human trafficking
http://tinyurl.com/83qozql
well guess who’s running a god damned human trafficking racket
in nepal ………..amerikka n unchr !!!
*Officials assigned by the Dalai Lama stationed in Kathmandu are
trafficking the Tibetans to Nepal by promising them that they will send
them to the United States and European countries. They have also be
promised that they will earn huge amounts of money. Some western
countries [no prize guessing who ;-)] have supported this project [sic]
with the intention of defaming China on human rights violation.
The US senators had also held a meeting with Sittal Niwas officials and
put pressure on the Nepalese to provide travel documents to the
refugees and allow them to run the Dalai Lama’s office*
http://tinyurl.com/63vsko
+Department of Immigration (DoI) sent nine Tibetans to jail on April 30
after they refused to pay fines for illegally entering Nepal. The detention
evoked so much diplomatic pressure from Western countries, mainly the
US, that the Tibetans were released after five days in jail.
The pressure was so intense [sic] that officials at the Nepali embassy in
Washington DC had to call up the Immigration Office in Nepal, asking it
to release the arrested.
Officials in Nepal fear that there could be a well-coordinated organization
involved in bringing Tibetans illegally to Nepal and later sending them to
Dharamshala, India and to Western countries through the help of
UNHCR
The apprehension comes as arrested Tibetans said, during
interrogations, that brokers brought them to Nepal with promises to take
them to Western countries where they could lead comfortable lives.
Those arrested even disclosed that they each paid Chinese Yuan
15,000 to 17,000 to brokers+
hmmm
enticing poor peasants with promise of pots of gold at the other end of
the rainbow,
lure them into india, amerikka
to be used as propaganda tools, *see, so many tibetans running away
from *persecution in tibet* !!
to parade them out as angry young men at every opporunity, like those
who assaulted a wheelchair bound chinese athletic during the 2008
beijing olympics
i wouldnt be surprised if
many were sent to some secret camps to be trained in guerilla warfare
n then spirited back into china as sleepers , agent provocateurs.+
Posted by: denk | Jun 23 2012 3:46 utc | 93
Paraguay: President Lugo Ousted; UNASUR Won’t Recognize Successor; Peasants and Others Protest the Coup
by Yoshie Furuhashi
Ten months to go till the upcoming elections, the Senate of Paraguay dismissed the President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, by a vote of 39-4, for allegedly “poor performance in office,” in an express impeachment whose legitimacy has been questioned by not only the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) but also the Organization of American States (OAS). OAS Secretary General Miguel Insulza, minutes before the vote, warned negative consequences for the democratic life of the country.
Lugo — who will be succeeded by his Vice President Federico Franco — called his impeachment a “parliamentary coup in judicial dress.”
Who’s behind the coup? According to the noted Paraguayan human rights activist Martín Almada, it is big landowners who have been particularly keen on destabilizing the Lugo government: “This murder of campesinos [seized upon by the Colorado Party as a pretext for the impeachment] happened as a result of a process of police violence instigated by big landowners discontent with President Lugo.”
Chilean journalist Daniel Jadue sums it up thus: “The impeachment in Paraguay aims to scuttle debate on big plantations and other privileges of the same old powers that be.”
Right now, everywhere in the city of Asunción, people are standing up in support of the ousted president Fernando Lugo. The defenders of democracy in Paraguay, many of whom are activists of peasant and other social movement organizations, are being met with tear gas and water cannons in the streets.
The people of Paraguay are not alone. UNASUR will not recognize the now illegitimate government of Paraguay headed by Franco. Venezuela, on which Paraguay depends for 40% of its fuels, has threatened to cut off the fuel supply. Brazil, for its part, has proposed to expel Paraguay from MERCOSUR as well as UNASUR.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012/furuhashi220612.html
Posted by: brian | Jun 23 2012 7:30 utc | 94
is it just coincidence that ever since amerika announce its *return* to asia, there has never been a moment of peace in china’s *peripherals*
http://tinyurl.com/896w9bj
anyway
its pay up time for dear nobel peace lauriet aung san suu kyi
*Suu Kyi made her public remarks warning against investment with
Chinese firms while supporting dealing with Western oil companies such
as Chevron and Total. * 😉
http://tinyurl.com/7cyqb5x
Posted by: denk | Jun 24 2012 4:20 utc | 95
I haven’t bothered to write on the TPP in MoA because the readers here traditionally don’t give a toss about this sort of stuff when I do post it.
The Australians appear to be the only government resisting this egregious nullification of the sovereign rights of nations.
My feeling was that no one in amerika would care too much since the rules around corporations’ right to sue governments are very similar to the deal done in NAFTA. I find it outrageous and know that several Latin American nations have been sued by anglo-american tobacco and philip morris for restrictions central american governments have put on nicotine delivery mechanism advertising.
They are currently threatening to sue the NZ government for insisting that all cigarettes be packaged in plain brown cartons, the only colour being some truly repulsive hi-def photos of cancer tumours that were caused by smoking. They tried the same thing in Oz and the OZ courts told the amerikan tobacco corps to go suck a red one, so replacing the judicial process with a show tribunal of bought and paid for stooges is their next logical step.
We all need to be very very wary of these so called ‘independent’ tribunals. Anyone who follows Pam Martens articles in Counterpunch and elsewhere has probably read her descriptions of the truly unjust decisions that the allegedly independent employment tribunals that all wall st employees must agree to nominate as arbitrator before they can get a job on wall st, have handed down on issues ranging from unjust dismissal to sexual harassment to persecution of suspected whistle-blowers.
These tribunals are unabashed puppets for the man.
There is a woman by the name of Jane Kelsey who is a professor of international law at the Auckland University law school who has been making a point of developing contacts within the negotiations since they first began.
Anyone who wants to get across what is happening with TPP should check out her site.
The NZ media is just about 100% foreign owned now so it is hardly surprising that the largest daily churns out editorials such as “Fair basis of TPP removes cause of fear” which is a classic piece of media manipulation. It didn’t work as you can judge by the comments. The Herald moderates its comments heavily (except close to elections where it is concerned about running afoul of the electoral commission who would likely deem its efforts to be a donation to the conservative party and so cause the tory pricks they favour to get disqualified for breaching spending limits), which means apart from the coupla pro TPP sock puppets everyone else was opposed to the TPP. A lot of effort has been put into keeping the NZ economy in recession partially so that those with money can buy everything up for ten cents on the dollar and partly to gull kiwis into believing the attacks on their living conditions aren’t too bad ‘lookit Greece’ n all that, but also to make it easier to get this sort of destruction of democratic safeguards past the sheep.
People in all nine nations whose governments are planning this horror show need to get organised and soon. Everyone is waiting for someone else to get the ball rolling and that is exactly what the pricks want.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jun 24 2012 10:13 utc | 96
Debs…I care!
I knew what NAFTA would do, and would have resisted if I could. Now I’m forced to drive the roads with big trucks in dangerous states of disrepair and spewing horrid clouds of half-burnt diesel fuel. If my state or country tries to regulate that, it’s “infringing upon the ability of a company in another country to make a profit.” Fuck that!!! Ditto for timber companies. According to NAFTA, if Wayerhouser wants to keep clear-cutting the old growth forests in the PNW, all they would have to do is move headquarters (Caymans, perhaps?) and sue the state of Washington and the EPA for over-regulating the timber industry. Fuck that also!!!
Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Jun 25 2012 3:11 utc | 97
aussie to fukus
*fuck off *
here’s the catch
the aussie isnt john pilger 😉
http://tinyurl.com/7njh9c7
Posted by: denk | Jun 25 2012 3:14 utc | 98
Read Kelsey’s summary of TPP. The secrecy and the legsialtion through treaty reminds me a lot of ACTA, which fortunately (and after tons of work by activists across Europe) appears for Europe at least to soon be crushed in the European Parliament.
Posted by: a swedish kind of death | Jun 25 2012 8:05 utc | 99