MoA - Syria: U.S. Resumes Arms Delivery To Al-Qaeda, Furthers Destruction

January 28, 2014

Syria: U.S. Resumes Arms Delivery To Al-Qaeda, Furthers Destruction

The past U.S. policy of providing arms to the Syrian insurgency failed to achieve any of its purported objectives. Neither did it result in a success of the insurgency in its attempt to overthrow the Syrian government, nor did help to keep the various Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria at bay. Instead the weapons provide to the "moderate" insurgents fell into the hands of the Al-Qaeda affiliates while the "moderate" insurgency fell apart. In effect the U.S. provided the logistics to those it claimed to have fought over the last twelve years.

As usual the U.S. response to a failed policy is to do more of the same.

The U.S. congress has voted to further arm "moderate" insurgents in Syria:

Light arms supplied by the United States are flowing to "moderate" Syrian rebel factions in the south of the country and U.S. funding for months of further deliveries has been approved by Congress, according U.S. and European security officials.
The weapons, most of which are moving to non-Islamist Syrian rebels via Jordan, include a variety of small arms, as well as some more powerful weapons, such as anti-tank rockets.

Earlier U.S. weapon deliveries have fallen into the hand of Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra:

Senior Free Syrian Army and Jordanian sources, along with video evidence, have confirmed that European-made anti-tank missiles were obtained, and in some cases sold, to the hard-line Nusra Front after being supplied to vetted Free Syrian Army battalions across the Jordanian border.

The vetted FSA in the south is little more than a public relations front for al-Nusra:

"They offer their services and cooperate with us, they are better armed than we are, they have suicide bombers and know how to make car bombs," an FSA fighter explained.
...
"The FSA and Al Nusra join together for operations but they have an agreement to let the FSA lead for public reasons, because they don't want to frighten Jordan or the West," said an activist who works with opposition groups in Deraa.
"Operations that were really carried out by Al Nusra are publicly presented by the FSA as their own," he said.

A leading FSA commander involved in operations in Deraa said Al Nusra had strengthened FSA units and played a decisive role in key rebel victories in the south.

"The face of Al Nusra cannot be to the front. It must be behind the FSA, for the sake of Jordan and the international community," he said.

The U.S. as also resumed "non-lethal" aid to insurgents in the north:

The United States has restarted deliveries of nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition, officials said Monday, more than a month after Al-Qaeda-linked militants seized warehouses and prompted a sudden cutoff of Western supplies to the rebels.
The communications equipment and other items are being funneled for now only to non-armed opposition groups, said the U.S. officials.
...
The U.S. officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity, said the aid was being sent through Turkey into Syria, with the coordination of the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, ...

When the jihadists raided those warehouses with "non-lethal" aid provided by the United States they looted this stuff:

[A senior FSA Supreme Military Council official] said that the Islamic Front raided a total of ten warehouses belonging to the Western-backed umbrella group and seized a significant arsenal of weaponry, including 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 1,000 assorted arms—including M79 Osa rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, and 14.5mm heavy machine guns—in addition to more than 200 tons of ammunition. At least 100 FSA military vehicles were also taken in the attack.

The resumption of arms supplies to the Syrian insurgency will not lead to any different outcome than earlier deliveries of such supplies. This then again proves that the real purpose of the U.S. instigated war on Syria and of the efforts to extend it is still this:

Destruction of the infrastructure, economy and social fabric of Syria is their and their supporters aim.

Posted by b on January 28, 2014 at 11:32 UTC | Permalink

Comments

'As a new work week begins here is Damascus many citizens across a fairly broad spectrum appear to be backing, and even exhibiting a kind of pride for their diplomatic team at the Geneva II conference. It might appear flippant for this observer to suggest that returning to Damascus after recent events in his neighborhood of Haret Hriek in Dahiyeh, South Beirut sort of feels like one has arrived in a peaceful holiday local rather stress free, but others have told me the same thing once they crossover from Lebanon. Damascus is currently the most quiet and ‘normal’ appearing that I have found this historic city for more than two years.

Damascenes to a person it appears, despite differing political views, are hoping for breakthroughs that just might bring an end to the carnage that has left virtually no one unaffected and has driven 9.5 million people from their homes, killed close to 140,000 and with more than 18,000 missing. These and many more tragedies creating a major humanitarian crisis both within Syria and among this birth place of civilization’s neighbors.

At the Set al Cham (Grandmother of Damascus) a home style cooking small restaurant around the corner from the Dama Rose hotel, close to where a rocket hit 30 yards outside the front entrance of the five star hotel last week and ignited half a dozen cars and shattered windows in this ‘security zone’, there are currently animated conversations about the Geneva II conference. They focus on the prospects for a ceasefire which all here apparently agree is the first essential step to ending the carnage ravaging this country for the past three years. The apparent imminent release of women and children from the more than 500 families who have for many months been trapped in the old city of Homs, Syria’s third largest city, has created some inchoate hope. According to UN Mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi , men also will be allowed to leave once their names are vetted to screen ‘terrorists’ from slipping out, a common security measure around this region during siege lifts and mass evacuations. The population allowed to exit Homs will be received immediately by volunteers from the courageous and deeply humanitarian Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARCS) and other humanitarian organizations that have stockpiled a range of urgently required necessities close by. As in the case with Yarmouk Palestinian camp in south Damascus, itself still under tight siege this evening with snipers on rooftops scanning the streets and alleys below through their gun sites seeking targets, baby formula is one of the foodstuff items most in demand and urgently needed in order save infant lives since their starving mothers generally are no longer able to produce milk.'
etc

http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/01/syrian-team-geneva/

Posted by: brian | Jan 28 2014 12:48 utc | 1

"Destruction of the infrastructure, economy and social fabric of Syria is their and their supporters aim."

No doubt, b. Seems to be a never ending scenario, not only in Syria, but, other locals around the globe.

Kinda begs the question, what if other nations pursued the same strategy towards the US? Oh, that's right, they'd be terrorists.

Posted by: ben | Jan 28 2014 14:46 utc | 2

what if other nations pursued the same strategy towards the US?

That's an interesting question. What keeps other countries from using this strategy in the us? Why can't Syria supply arms and money to mexican and canadian gangs and have them demolish US-infrastructure? ;-)

Posted by: peter radiator | Jan 28 2014 14:52 utc | 3

Well, well, well, why the US Congress (read:AIPAC, read: the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel) has decided to continue to supply arms to the jihadist mercenaries and further the "Destruction of the infrastructure, economy and social fabric of Syria is their and their supporters aim."

Why, that would mean that John "Zionist Whore" Kerry's "peace" efforts in BOTH Israel and Syria are nothing more than charades meant to buy time for the continued decimation of the indigenous populations of beleaguered Palestine and Syria to the direct benefit of genocidal and apartheid Israel. Who could have thought?!!! What an effing surprise!!!!

But let's all - read: the masses - keep dancing around the blatant, in-your-face, enactment of the Israelis' Yinon Plan over the last decade - helped out by the uber-Zionist American neocons and accelerated as of late - and just keep wondering who really benefits from such seemingly needless destruction of yet another sovereign state, a sovereign state that - once again - just happens to be large and near enough to pose an "existential" threat to the paranoid, genocidal and apartheid state of Israel.

Yeah, the "real" reasons for all of this murder/rape/destruction are probably really complicated involving oil, egos and sundry other vectors and I'm sure the Zionists at the NYT and other outlets will help us to focus on them so that we can consider ourselves "informed" AND non-anti-semitic. How cute. Why, I can't wait to see what they'll tell us are the REAL reasons behind the "peaceful protests/civil war" in Iran that should be happening in about five years or so. I'm sure the situation will be complex and multi-faceted and facts on the ground will look NOTHING like the culmination of the Yinon Plan. Nope.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 28 2014 15:31 utc | 4

It's for the moderate "terrorist" dammit!!!

You know, like how they sent moderate weapons to them moderate Mujaheddin who later became moderate Al-CIADA to kill moderately..The madness won't stop!!!

What we're witnessing is the bankruptcy of a fading "super-power" hell-bent on achieving "success" at any cost..The Syrian train left long time ago. Any new weapons to whatever moderate forces left won't make any difference...

Posted by: Zico | Jan 28 2014 15:46 utc | 5

Yeah, the "real" reasons for all of this murder/rape/destruction are probably really complicated involving oil, egos and sundry other vectors

Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 28, 2014 10:31:02 AM | 4

and of course the "incompetence" of our overlords.

We're constantly being told about that old "ruling class incompetence".

Luckiest incompetents in the whole wide world, then

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 28 2014 15:48 utc | 6

Is bankruptcy of a fading "super-power" the new "incompetence"?

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 28 2014 15:50 utc | 7

@2 - good question.. destruction of others habitat seems to be a specialty of the usa's so long it is not in the usa.. a country can't continue to support the death and destruction of other people's communities and not expect it to come back at them at some point. maybe congress members are so busy supporting an agenda that serves their own interests, they're incapable of seeing the death and destruction they are ultimately responsible for.

Posted by: james | Jan 28 2014 16:32 utc | 8

The opposition is consistent in its forceful habit of making U-turns when under West pressure.

In November Jarba Explains Refusal to Participate in Geneva II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZjAnY6rnu8

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 28 2014 16:34 utc | 9

Simple. Kerry realizes that the opposition has no leverage whatsoever in bargaining in Geneva because it is recognized by a minimal numbers of Syrians, it has no military control of any territories in Syria and Jarba turned out to be a disaster as a representant of 'all Syrians'. That's why he was kicked out from the negotiations.

The only way the USA has found to 'frighten' the Syrian government is to announce lethal weapons for the 'good' rebels.
I guess the ISIL, Al Nusra and the IF are rejoicing as they will get another load of fresh US made weapons.
This will convince even more Syrians who were hesitant that the opposition is just a lapdog and obeys blindly to the USA.

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 28 2014 16:45 utc | 10

Excellent post, b. And good point James @ 8 about the blindness of Congress in funding these arm flows to the jihadis. If there were a principled bloc of representatives anywhere in D.C. an excellent case could be made using b's post alone that the Obama administration is in direct violation of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.

Rep. Alan Grayson, someone who has raised the issue in the past, is likely too preoccupied with winning reelection in a campaign year. (He seems to be focusing on the admirable goal of beating back the surveillance state.) But what about that reputed fearless foe of tyranny, Sen. Rand Paul? Sadly, he seems to be busy dredging up the ghost of Monica Lewinsky.

Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jan 28 2014 16:55 utc | 11

Of course the "incompetence" meme always surfaces but as I stated last week it doesn't - even though the elite's "incompetence" always seems to break their way - necessarily mean that it's not a useful model by which to observe the actions of our elite.

The elite can be viewed as both incompetents and masterminds depending on the parameters one chooses - e.g. time frames especially - and they can even be both imbeciles and evil geniuses at one in the same time. For example, let's say the plan of the Western elite really is to subjugate the entire planet. Now I would say that is an imbecilic plan, one only undertaken by effing morons but that doesn't mean that even if they - the elite - really subscribe to this line of thinking that they will not employ devious clever and masterful stratagems along the way - spanning decades, mind you - to try and fulfill said idiotic mission. Thus, they are both imbeciles AND evil masterminds.

Similarly, bevin I think yesterday described the American Empire as flailing about, rudderless as it oafishly moves from one arena of destruction to another on its way to inevitable dissolution or something like that (I'm paraphrasing hopefully accurately). That would on the surface seemingly contradict my assertion that the US is adhering to the Yinon Plan as a game plan. But why can't BOTH models be correct? Yes, America appears on some levels to be flailing about needlessly causing wanton death and destruction yet the Yinon Plan is indeed coming to fruition before our eyes. Questions arise: Is an adherence to Yinon Plan causing this rudderless activity? Or was the (caused?) rudderlessness an opportune time for Zionist traitors within the US to grab the reins of power and steer them towards their own ends? The US as hegemon may be entering a period of rapid decline with more and more flailing but that doesn't mean there aren't other models which fit our observations. Further, the Yinon Plan could potentially be fully accomplished - let's imagine - in another decade or two while the American Empire could take another half-century or more to completely dissolve etc. That is, both realities are happening at the same time but they are indeed distinct as shown by the varying endpoints.

Personally, given the extremely blatant and seemingly unceasingly slavish subordinate position American leaders still to this day take to the apartheid, genocidal state of Israel, I prefer to view my country's actions through the lens of the Yinon Plan model as the sooner more people grow wise to how well the data points of the model fit our recent murderous and criminal actions over the last decade+ the sooner - hopefully - we can drop our support for this pariah "state" and begin to think about our multitudes of domestic woes.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 28 2014 17:51 utc | 12

Reuters have also picked up on the story. Congres secretly approves US weapons flow to "moderate" Syria rebels. Notice a few things:

1) Congress is really bad at keeping things secret. This was passed in a classified section of the Defense Appropriations legislation. Now its all over Yahoo News, Reuters and the alternative media. Looks like the NSA aren't the only ones suffering leaks.

2) Notice even the Reuters headline has the word "moderate" in quotation marks. Biggest joke there is. This coming barely 1 month after ISIS robbed an entire FSA warehouse at the Bab Al Hawa checkpoint.

3) You would wonder how far these weapons will get. The article mentions the weapons will be shipped over the Jordan border to Daraa province in the South, but getting them to Damascus will be a pain. They will have to travel through SAA held territory for it to even reach Damascus. Once there most rebel held territory is surrounded in a siege.

Its one thing to send in weapons but with the supply lines cut probably won't make much difference.

Posted by: Colm O' Toole | Jan 28 2014 18:57 utc | 13

Hey Brian @ 1 - thanks for the report from my birth city! Be safe.

This "secret" authorization is really a benign deal to silence the hawks - it is somewhere between we do nothing and we do very little.

Most likely any weapons will eventually end up either in the hands of the Real Syrian Army or Al Qaeda terrorists.

But the Administration is lurking in the background of this "secret" authorization. Congress can authorize and fund all it wants. It is the Administration that distributes these funds as it sees appropriate. The landscape is full of "funded" projects that are yet to be appropriated.

This is just for PR purposes.

Posted by: MikeA | Jan 28 2014 20:44 utc | 14

Face the Assad phenomena, people, and deal with failures:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/26/face-the-assad-reality-in-syria.html

Posted by: MikeA | Jan 28 2014 21:15 utc | 15

London Islamists Demonstrate in Support of Al-Qaeda in Syria, against FSA

http://youtu.be/pjP3jafW5Bg

righteousness is a dangerous trait to develop: ersp when harnessed to blind faith. Sometimes even MEMRI can be useful! here we see a spokesman dfor some muslism group in Londond outraged at the evil asaad killing 150000 muslims in syria....well thats what he believes and his firey rant or righteousness is bound to inspire more muslimst to go on jihad and do what he says trhe saudi army should do...
This guy, basing himeslf on his religious beliefs, that islam trumps secular nationalism derclares war on democacy and secularism....while living comfortably in a secular democracy! Hypocrisy? Moral insanity? the media thru their lies have managed to shit stir this fellow and others like him to create a jihad army.

Posted by: brian | Jan 28 2014 21:21 utc | 16

Lavrov: Geneva II key task is to stop violence in Syria, not to have Assad step down
[ 29 January 2014 00:50 ]

Baku-APA. The key goal of the Geneva II peace conference on Syria is to stop violence but not to have President Bashar Assad step down, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists on Tuesday after the Russia-European Union summit, APA reports quoting Itar-Tass.

“Russia is backing no particular figures in Syria,” he said. “We are not friends with Assad or his family. But we are deeply worried over the fact that this country, the cradle of Christianity in the Middle East, is besieged by terrorists and extremists who profess no religion, who plunder and burn monasteries and mosques, who kill the elder, women and children and who are not bound by any norms of humanity.”

“We are confident that it is inadmissible to focus on simplified, primitive demands,” he went on to say. “It is the easiest thing to say that Assad must step down and everything would be all right. But we remember Yugoslavia, where everybody demanded that Milosevic should step down. We watched the development in Iraq, where the same demands were laid to Saddam Hussein. There was Libya and Gaddafi. We see what it all resulted in. Today, we are witnessing an obsession with an idea of changing the regime in Syria, because someone feels personal hatred to Assad. But it is not a behavior of mature people.”

“The key tasks on the Geneva peace conference on Syria is to stop violence, to solve humanitarian problems, to reach a consensus between the government and the opposition on the how they want to rule a tolerant, democratic, free and secure Syria, free from terrorism and extremism,” Lavrov stressed. “They must agree on basic principles of how they want to reform the state.

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 28 2014 21:40 utc | 17

Keep in mind: Turkey was ORDERED by the US, to get involved in Syria.

Source: Sibel Edmonds

Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 28 2014 22:55 utc | 18

And the suffering of the syrian people continues .........

Posted by: Willy2 | Jan 28 2014 23:00 utc | 19

I for one am somewhat ambiguous about “Resumes Arms Delivery To Al-Qaeda”.

Just as the late Harold Pinter noted 2005 in its speech:

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

While this is not revolutionary new for those who are willing to investigate societal mechanics behind the conflicts, a memory hole with new stupefied graduates and journalist neglect the facts.
Astonishingly this video and the speaker, Dr Max G. Manwaring ex-CIA, is saying exact the same thing as Pinter. While the whole speech is excellent and mixture of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, if you do not have patience jump to 4:36 mark.

http://youtu.be/yHV8Fu6gdqU

What kind of the lunatics rule in US politics saying this text.

“Arizona GOP censures McCain for ‘liberal’ record”

The Arizona Republican Party formally censured Sen. John McCain on Saturday, citing a voting record they say is insufficiently conservative.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arizona-gop-censures-mccain-for-liberal-record/2014/01/25/939f1bcc-862e-11e3-aff8-191f8d178325_story.html

Posted by: neretva'43 | Jan 28 2014 23:55 utc | 20

"Why can't Syria supply arms and money to mexican and canadian gangs and have them demolish US-infrastructure?"

Because the Mexican narco gangs seem to be, in large part, creations of the US security services.

The latest news about DEA involvement with the Sinaloa Cartel shouldn't be surprising after all the revelations of Iran-Contra, the Kerry Committee, Gary Webb, and Mena, Arkansas. And the Zetas, founded and sustained by US trained soldiers from Mexico and Guatemala, were clearly very close to elements of the CIA and US military. And yet we are forced to watch the ultimate farce: of the "Mexican Government" (neoliberal gangsters) showy crackdown on are the Community Self-Defense forces of Michoacan while those the citizens were attempting to protect themselves against - the Christian Evangelical (recall the Guatemalan butcher Rios-Montt) Knights Templar gang goes marauding through the countryside.

But the fact that we see, once again, different sectors of the security state supporting different sides which are obviously engaged in all-out war is surely enough to shock even the most cynical. Perhaps 200,000 Mexican lives and 75 years from now, we'll find out the shocking truth: that two arms of the US security state were literally at war with each other in Mexico.

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 29 2014 1:15 utc | 21

google autocomplete: a misguide to nations:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/google-autocomplete-wants-to-know-why-post-communist-europe-is-so-poor/283393/

Times are tough! Money hard to come by even in rich USA(ask people in Detroit). Measnwhile the Atlantic has found a simpler way to do journalism and guage the character of nation states: google autocomplete: just type in: Why is Hungary so....and let the machine do your research for you and spit out the answers! Sometimse it can be amusing....but the Atlantic has decided to use a Q on poor post communist states in EU to use it to go on a rant on Venezuela (note: NOT in europe!)

mweanwhile,
type Why is america so....and you get : in debt.....so violent.....in afghanistan...in shutdown

Posted by: brian | Jan 29 2014 1:17 utc | 22

"different sectors of the security state supporting different sides which are obviously engaged in all-out war is surely enough to shock even the most cynical"

Ah, what am I saying. This is par for the course.

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 29 2014 1:26 utc | 23

What do you even say about something so fucking ridiculous:

ADL chief: Pollard case ‘on the verge of anti-Semitism'

He called Pollard’s continued imprisonment “an effort to intimidate American Jews. And, it is an intimidation that can only be based on an anti-Semitic stereotype about the Jewish community, one that we have seen confirmed in our public opinion polls over the years, the belief that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to their own country, the United States."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/adl-chief-pollard-case-on-the-verge-of-anti-semitism/

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 29 2014 4:39 utc | 24

guest77: your outrage is touching

Posted by: LouAlcindor | Jan 29 2014 6:50 utc | 25

And slighty retarded tbh

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 29 2014 9:37 utc | 26

OT, but Karzai is beginning to sound like Rowan and JS.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/relationship-hamid-karzai-us-afghanistan
The latest is a report that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, believes many insurgent-style attacks are masterminded by the US. The Washington Post quoted senior officials inside the presidential palace saying Karzai has kept a list of complex bombings across the country that he suspects were planned by Americans, although the officials also admit they have no firm evidence of a US role.

Topping his list of possible American plots is a recent suicide assault on a high-end restaurant in the Afghan capital, where three American citizens were among the 21 dead.

The idea that Washington is trying to violently undermine a government it has spent billions propping up, while carelessly taking the lives of its own citizens, provoked even the normally temperate US envoy to Kabul into a strong response.

"It's a deeply conspiratorial view that's divorced from reality," ambassador James Cunningham told the paper, adding that though he was aware of such allegations he had never heard them directly from the president.

Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 29 2014 10:44 utc | 27

what do US war machine, Amnesty, Pussy Riot and islamic terrorists from Dagestan have in common? all want President Putin gone:

.now why would muslim terrorists want President Putin gone? a question, as usual, noone is asking...after, all any russian leader would be unacceptable to the jihadis right?! #strange

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/29-01-2014/126705-terrorists_russia_putin-0/

Posted by: brian | Jan 29 2014 12:27 utc | 28

Aw, a new troll. How cute.

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 29 2014 12:57 utc | 29

Its hard to know what you're talking about sheesh, sort of like trying to decipher the thoughts of a mouse by examining the turds they left behind.

Was that a little defense of Pollard and Foxman, or are you just trying to tell us you're applying to be the new (assuming you aren't the old) lingering fart in our crowded little elevator here?

Posted by: guest77 | Jan 29 2014 13:15 utc | 30

Was that a little defense of Pollard and Foxman,

see? That's what I meant bout u being a little bit retarded.

CommuNazis like yourself behave exactly the same as Foxman - just a week or two ago you yourself were screaming "Jew-hater!" at Rowan.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 29 2014 13:35 utc | 31

@ Sheesh

What the fuck is "CommuNazis"? Is it like a radical leftwinger that supports the far right? Generally the political opinions of someone who doesn't know the ABC's of politics is worth less than nothing.

Posted by: Colm O' Toole | Jan 29 2014 14:55 utc | 32

Alert readers will have noted hmmm, stfu, foff etc's latest reincarnation. Carry on regardless.

Posted by: dh | Jan 29 2014 15:04 utc | 33

@27

The idea that Washington is trying to violently undermine a government it has spent billions propping up, while carelessly taking the lives of its own citizens, provoked even the normally temperate US envoy to Kabul into a strong response.
"It's a deeply conspiratorial view that's divorced from reality," ambassador James Cunningham told the paper, adding that though he was aware of such allegations he had never heard them directly from the president.

And all that really needs be asked of this murderous war criminal - b/c let's not forget that even though they may be called ambassador/general/President/Senator etc that's what they are: murderous war criminals - is for him to regale us with everyone's favorite fairy tale "The Magical 19 Bombers and Their Mystical Building-Destroying Better-Than-Fighter-Jet-Piloted-Airplanes" and tell us how WE'RE the ones who have some 'splainin' to do concerning reality, conspiracies and such.

Yeah, the US government having a hand in blowing shit up that it nominally supports. Why, how could anyone entertain such notions? Is there a universal hand gesture for GMAFB that people can flash when crap like this starts pouring out of officials' traps? The US could have used one last night for the SOTU address.

Rewrite:

"The idea that Washington would try to violently undermine its own government/country it has spent billions propping up, while carelessly taking the lives of its own citizens, provoked even the normally temperate [insert US official/gatekeeper here] into a strong response."

Posted by: JSorrentine | Jan 29 2014 15:28 utc | 34

Guest this isn't a new troll: it's the old one with a name change.

JS @12: I agree.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 29 2014 15:32 utc | 35

Is there a universal hand gesture for GMAFB that people can flash when crap like this starts pouring out of officials' traps?

Does French Jewry’s leader think fighting the quenelle is futile?

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 29 2014 16:26 utc | 36

The US resumes arms deliveries to Islamist militants.

Israel bombs the Syrian army's own weapon stockpiles.

Apparently, even the possession of accurate missiles is a red line for the Zionists. Oh, and advanced air defence systems. Thus preventing the Syrian state from defending itself, whilst hindering its attempts to surgically strike militant hideouts.

This is why we see the use of barrel bombs.

"Destruction of the infrastructure, economy and social fabric of Syria is their and their supporters aim."

Posted by: Pat Bateman | Jan 29 2014 16:30 utc | 37

Read the front page story today in the NYT, "Rebels in Syria Claim Control of Resources" and you get two canards for the price of one: 1) ISIS and Nusra are actually self-funding and not dependent on the Gulf Sheikhdoms because they control oil and gas fields in Syria, and 2) the Syrian government actively collaborates (some caveats here) with ISIS.

This is part of an effort to 1) put a fictive firewall between the West and its Sheikhs on one side and Al Qaeda on the other, and 2) create phony, confusing distinctions between the jihadis such as the favorite one that has recently started showing up in the mainstream press -- that ISIS is a creation of Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate.

Posted by: Mike Maloney | Jan 29 2014 16:43 utc | 38

There's an excellent article by Daniel Kovalic at Counterpunch today.
Here is a sample of it:

“...[i]t is not seriously in question, as John Coatsworth writes in the recently published Cambridge University History of the Cold War, that from 1960 to ‘the Soviet collapse in 1990, the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.’ Among the executed were many religious martyrs, and there were mass slaughters as well, consistently supported or initiated by Washington.”

Thus, there is a seamlessness to the decades-long policy of the U.S. in siding with right-wing death squads which inflict terror against the Colombian population – terror which includes the mass displacement of millions of peasants, with Colombia now having the largest internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million; forced disappearances, with Colombia now far exceeding the former Latin American leader, Argentina under the military junta, with over 50,000 disappeared persons; and the “false positive” scandal in which over 3,000 innocent young men were lured to their deaths by the Colombian military which killed them and then falsely passed them off as guerillas in order to justify continued backing by the United States.

"Similarly, the U.S. is not against drug trafficking per se, but rather, is only concerned with making sure that its friends – both military and corporate — benefit from the trade. First of all, as noted above, it is well-established that the U.S.-backed Colombian military and its paramilitary allies are some of the chief drug traffickers in Colombia. And again, the U.S. has left their trafficking alone because it is content for these forces to profit from the trade.

"As The Guardian recently explained, the entire Western banking system is propped up by billions of dollars of Colombian drug monies. [1] Therefore, it is not in the U.S. interests to too effectively combat drugs. And, sure enough, it has utterly failed to do so despite the over $9 billion it has spent on the ostensible “war on drugs” in Colombia and the greater Andean region. Rather, in what is well-known as the “balloon effect,” all that the U.S. has managed to do is force the drug trade out of parts of Colombia and south to places like Peru, and north to Mexico where over 60,000 innocents have now been killed in the ostensible “war on drugs....”

@32
This sheesh troll (foff, hmm, sftu) cannot disguise his fascist ideology. Fascism has become highly romanticised in places like the Ukraine; the pure flame having been kept burning in exile (in Canada, the US and Germany for example) by anti-communist groups, all former collaborators or themselves Nazis, who then descended on their unfortunate homelands after their "liberation' from the Warsaw Pact.
These trolls not only inherit their views from the neo-liberal governments with which they conform but confirm these ideas by frequent trips to eastern europe, where the living is easy for westerners, where the pimps and bartenders are often fascists living on the margins of crime. They know what the likes of our trolls want to hear...

Posted by: bevin | Jan 29 2014 18:09 utc | 39

Another interesting article at Counterpunch.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/29/ukraine-and-the-rebirth-of-fascism/

Posted by: bevin | Jan 29 2014 18:13 utc | 40

Turkey has started fighting al Qaeda on Syrian territory to prevent its expansion in Turkey.

Turkish jets 'strike ISIL convoy in Syria'
Reports in local media quote army statement that Turkish F-16s struck vehicles of al-Qaeda-linked group in north Syria.
Last updated: 29 Jan 2014 18:27

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/01/turkish-jets-strike-isil-convoy-syria-2014129174915634511.html

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 29 2014 18:37 utc | 41

@ Virgile

Reports in local media quote army statement that Turkish F-16s struck vehicles of al-Qaeda-linked group in north Syria.

This Turkish airstrike on ISIS comes as Erdogan is in Iran for discussions on Syria and Economic ties. No such thing as coincidences in international affairs.

Posted by: Colm O' Toole | Jan 29 2014 19:10 utc | 42

U.S. analysts fear more of those militants will tire of the battle against Assad, whose government shows no signs of collapsing, and they will take their newly acquired, battlefield-honed terrorist skills back to Europe or the U.S., where even a small bomb in a shopping mall can grab much greater headlines than the now-routine reports of car bombs in Syrian cities.

The continued threat to U.S. interests from the al-Qaida brand also shows that though weakened after the 2011 killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, the group is proving resilient.

"They've gone to school us, on how we try to track them," he said. "So the combination of ...the geographic dispersal and the increasing challenges in collecting against them, makes Al Qaida, in all of its forms, a very -- in total, a very formidable threat."

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 29 2014 21:20 utc | 43

Colm O' Toole |

Turkey heavily accused of hosting and training Islamist terrorists want to show off that they are fighting them.
That u-turn will backfire as Turkey may become a new target for Al Qaeda as they are pushed out of Syria. In addition Turkey's flirting with the "heretics" Iranians make them accomplices to Shias.

Posted by: Virgile | Jan 29 2014 21:25 utc | 44

@Colm O' Toole: "Communazis" was a term used by he FBI for leftist German emigres in the U.S. during World War Two that they didn't like. There's a book about it: Alexander Stephan's Communazis: FBI Surveillance of German Emigre Writers.

Posted by: lysias | Jan 29 2014 22:39 utc | 45

Pretty good story in NYRB on the turmoil in Turkey.

Turkey: The Fakir vs. the Pharaoh

The political crisis now gripping Turkey is the country’s second in half a year. Last summer, millions of liberal Turks spent weeks in Istanbul’s Gezi Park and in the streets of other Turkish cities to denounce their increasingly pious, authoritarian, and plutocratic government, but the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was never really under threat. The popular support he enjoyed was much greater than his opponents’. The latest crisis, which began with the arrest of dozens of prominent pro-government figures on December 17, and has continued to spread through ever since, is quite different. It emanates from the prime minister’s own circle of power and pits two groups against each other that are entrenched in virtually all administrative and commercial areas of Turkish life: Erdoğan and his AKP government, on the one hand, and an exiled spiritual leader, Fethullah Gulen, whose powerful religious and social movement has acquired sweeping influence, particularly in the police force and the judiciary, on the other.
..........
And while Erdoğan is a political bruiser of impressive durability, he now faces in Gulen an elusive foe who comes from the old Ottoman tradition of the charismatic holy man. Revered by their followers, their powers embellished by hearsay and rumour, these divines acquired considerable unofficial power in the Ottoman period, acting as a check on the sultan’s authority. Last month Gulen did not shrink from placing a malediction on his enemies, beseeching God to “consume their homes with fire, destroy their nests, break their accords.” This year, Erdoğan has set himself the task of keeping Istanbul and other key municipalities in AKP hands—and, perhaps, standing for the presidency when Turkey’s first direct elections to the post are held in August. But now, for the first time in his career, the Gulenists stand in his way.

Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 29 2014 22:40 utc | 46

Clapper told the Senate Whitewashing Committee today that Al Nusra is planning to attack the United States (and therefore the NSA needs to monitor everything etc).
None of the Senators asked him why, if his fears are real, the US government is arming Al Nusra.

This is from a Kovalik article in Counterpunch today:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/29/the-u-s-assassination-program-in-colombia/

"Thus, there is a seamlessness to the decades-long policy of the U.S. in siding with right-wing death squads which inflict terror against the Colombian population – terror which includes the mass displacement of millions of peasants, with Colombia now having the largest internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million; forced disappearances, with Colombia now far exceeding the former Latin American leader, Argentina under the military junta, with over 50,000 disappeared persons; and the “false positive” scandal in which over 3,000 innocent young men were lured to their deaths by the Colombian military which killed them and then falsely passed them off as guerillas in order to justify continued backing by the United States.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 3:17 utc | 47

Bandar Bush is a really serious terrorist...and as I remember he made serious promises to President Putin some time ago but of course he not elaborate to much...the fact that US is sending "humanitarian help" to mercenaries in Syria and KSA telling rival mercenary groups stop confrontation among them just now few days before Sochi winter games had provoked my mind forming an ominous possible scenario of a major attack on Syria while many can be expecting terrorist attacks on Russia...I hope it is just my imagination

Posted by: Rihard | Jan 30 2014 7:06 utc | 48

Injustice Facts ‏@InjusticeFacts 5h
The September 11th attacks, killed 8 American children, the retaliatory military campaigns have killed 2 million Iraqi and Afghani children.

Posted by: brian | Jan 30 2014 8:36 utc | 49

@45 alnusra is not planning to attack the US....in fact alqaeda itself has never attacked the US mainland territory: the ALS are tools of USraeli interests

Posted by: brian | Jan 30 2014 8:37 utc | 50

@43
communazis...amusing...when US had no worries about importing and employing real nazis

A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/us/14nazis.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

the interesting stuff is usually secret

Posted by: brian | Jan 30 2014 8:40 utc | 51

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2014/01/28/eric-draitser-talking-libya-on-black-agenda-radio/

Posted by: brian | Jan 30 2014 8:48 utc | 52

See? that's what I mean about the level of retardation round here - a quick google 2of the word "communazi" would immediately dispell the moronic idea that's taken hold amongst some of the more dull
-witted here that the phrase has anything to do with the FBI and german leftists.

Seriously, even a not very bright 12 yr old could mangae to do something like check the meaning, but not you geniuses- oh noes, you guys are far too smart to be caught using a search engine, ye clever b@$t@rd$! Eh?

The first link i get after gogglimg communazi brings me to the Urban Dictionaty which gives several definition NONE of which mention the FBI,so whoever came up with that silly claim gets a rubber medalfor complete irrelevancy

UD gives several definitions -two relevant ones are

After the realization that communism and fascism are functionally equivalent ideologies, it was a concern that some people who consider themselves communists and/or nazis may only be insulted by association with the crimes of one or the other group, rather than both as they justly deserve.

As such, the portmanteau 'Communazi' was invented to amend this gaping flaw in the English language.

communazi

a combination of a communist and a nazi. Though supposedlly impossible, since communism and nazism are allegedly opposites, (tell that to the millions of victims murdered by both) it still makes a good insult

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30 2014 9:50 utc | 53

For Moualla, the peace conference is a media parade - but also a battlefield of countries she believes are trying to meddle in the affairs of her country.
"This is the first time I see how big is this game of nations and how the fighters in Syria are manipulated," she says as she sips her coffee in the press bar at the UN building, where the US- and Russian-backed talks are taking place.
"For the first time I pity the [opposition] fighters because I realise just how misled they are. They think they are fighting for the cause of freedom or a religious cause or whatever cause it is. But in reality, they are fighting the battles of other countries," Moualla says.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/state-news-anchor-39-syria-war-105608432.html#ulGX8uZ

Posted by: brian | Jan 30 2014 12:57 utc | 54

Saving Syria: Assessing Options or Regime Change by Daniel Byman, Michael Doran, Kenneth Pollack, and Salman Shaikh

Worth the read, you will not be disappointed.

Posted by: hans | Jan 30 2014 12:58 utc | 55

Despite Louay Safi's elegant suit and smooth talking

Syrian Rebel spokesman IS Muslim Brotherhood
When the main Syrian opposition group speaks, it is often through a longtime U.S. resident whose ties to Islamist extremists were detailed in a 2010 Dallas Morning News report.

The Syrian-born man, Louay Safi, has made big news twice recently. Last month, at a coalition news conference in Turkey, he accused Syria’s government of using chemical weapons. A few days ago, he called President Barack Obama’s consultation with Congress about attacking Syria a “failure of leadership.”

Safi used to work occasionally on U.S. Army bases, teaching soldiers about his Islamic faith. But as we reported in 2010, he was suspended shortly after the Fort Hood massacre and subjected to a military criminal investigation.

Earlier this week, Barack Obama praised the ISNA and its President Mohamed Magid by name in a video.

So if the vast majority of the rebels are moderates, why do they have a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman with ties to terrorists?

Posted by: virgile | Jan 30 2014 14:09 utc | 56

Syrian Rebel spokesman IS Muslim Brotherhood

http://shoebat.com/2013/09/06/syrian-rebel-spokesman-is-muslim-brotherhood/

Posted by: virgile | Jan 30 2014 14:11 utc | 57

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Leader Central Figure In Newly Formed Syrian Opposition Council

http://globalmbreport.com/?p=5046

Posted by: virgile | Jan 30 2014 14:13 utc | 58

brian@48
I know. And so, I presume does Clapper. My point was that he can tell such easily detectable lies to the Senators confident that none of them will challenge them.

Sheesh troll:

The line you are advancing, and have done for months under a variety of aliases (hmm, foff, sftu etc) is central to the neo-fascist Gladio ideology. Fascism and Communism are polar opposites: the first is the capitalist class's defence against egalitarian economic demands (from the 99%)the latter an attack on capitalism- there is no other way of interpreting the history of the C20th.

Your politics are those of the capitalist class which, intent upon preventing the spread of "communism", picked up the infrastructure of European fascism, shook some of the filth from it, replaced its uniforms and founded the Christian Democratic and Conservative parties.

That was in western Europe. In eastern Europe where the fascist remnants were being repressed, rather crudely and with Stalinistic brutality, the US took up the cause of these victims (fascist collaborators, SS veterans and the civil servants who had organised the filling of the Concentration Camps, the little Eichmanns) romanticised them as patriots fighting Soviet repression, subsidised their leaders in exile and armed them to undertake sabotage in their homelands.

You might recall the incident in which the predecessors of the KLA, Albanian fascists armed by the US, were infiltrated into Albania where,thanks to Kim Philby, they were picked up before they could carry out the terrorist attacks that they had been trained for.

What is not true, and makes a nonsense of the Communazi label, is that nothing that the Soviet Union did after 1945 came close to the extent of the brutality and totalitarian terror of the regimes that the west installed around the world: it was cold in the Siberian prisons but they were not as bad as the British gulag in Kenya or the US backed dictatorships’ Operation Condor. The USSR did nothing close to what the US did in Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Colombia or across Africa where it used the South African forces as its instrument.
Compared to the western sponsored bloodbaths in Indonesia the very worst offences of Beria and Stalin were mild and badly organized.

Understand this: the Nazis were a German attempt to reproduce the American Empire in eastern Europe. Its programmes of extermination were modeled upon a distorted reading of the American treatment of aboriginals. The Nazis, even in the darkest days of war with their backs to the Red Army’s inexorable-and life affirming-advance, remained wedded to the capitalist class, the protection of its interests and profits. The labour camps in which millions were starved, worked and beaten to death wr invariably contracted to large corporations eagerly lapping up the disciplined slave labour they promised.
The Soviet experiment was, for reasons that anyone who understands history finds quite unsurprising, not particularly successful. Its great credit is that it destroyed the last incarnation of fascism in arms. Anyone who regards communism and fascism as equivalents is engaged, consciously or because he has been duped by capitalist propaganda, in rehabilitating fascism. It was this which a paranoid, murderous Stalin feared: much of the responsibility for the extreme and violent methods he took to prevent its re-emergence lies with the Kissingers and Churchills of the world who, in their anxiety to serve their privileged class, restored the architects of Auschwitz, Belsen and Peenemunde to prosperity, saving them to use against their most feared enemy, the Communism that the Nazi party had been established to deter.
Show me a man who talks of “Communazis” and I’ll show you a nazi apologist and sympathizer. There is only one place for your sort sheesh: Coventry.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 14:54 utc | 59

brian@48
I know. And so, I presume does Clapper. My point was that he can tell such easily detectable lies to the Senators confident that none of them will challenge them.

Sheesh troll:

The line you are advancing, and have done under a variety of aliases (hmm, foff, sftu etc) is central to the neo-fascist Gladio ideology. Fascism and Communism are polar opposites: the first is the capitalist class's defence against egalitarian economic demands (from the 99%)the latter an attack on capitalism- there is no other way of interpreting the history of the C20th.

What makes the half truths that you spew passable for the light minded is that all states are repressive, the regimes which emerged after the war in the Soviet sphere were, from the first, under intense pressure from the wealthier, much less war damaged, economies of the west. They did engage in very nasty treatment of those who they feared had collaborated in the war and suspected of being ready to ally themselves with the US.
What is not true, and makes a nonsense of the Communazi label, is that nothing that the Soviet Union did after 1945 came close to the extent of the brutality and totalitarian terror of the regimes that the west installed around the world: it was cold in the Siberian prisons but they were not as bad as the British gulag in Kenya or the US backed dictatorships’ Operation Condor. The USSR did nothing close to what the US did in Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Colombia or across Africa where it used the South African forces as its instrument.
Compared to the western sponsored bloodbaths in Indonesia the very worst offences of Beria and Stalin were mild and badly organized.
Understand this: the Nazis were a German attempt to reproduce the American Empire in eastern Europe. Its programmes of extermination were modeled upon a distorted reading of the American treatment of aboriginals. The Nazis, even in the darkest days of war with their backs to the Red Army’s inexorable-and life affirming-advance, remained wedded to the capitalist class, the protection of its interests and profits. The labour camps in which millions were starved, worked and beaten to death wr invariably contracted to large corporations eagerly lapping up the disciplined slave labour they promised.
The Soviet experiment was, for reasons that anyone who understands history finds quite unsurprising, not particularly successful. Its great credit is that it destroyed the last incarnation of fascism in arms. Anyone who regards communism and fascism as equivalents is engaged, consciously or because he has been duped by capitalist propaganda, in rehabilitating fascism. It was this which a paranoid, murderous Stalin feared: much of the responsibility for the extreme and violent methods he took to prevent its re-emergence lies with the Kissingers and Churchills of the world who, in their anxiety to serve their privileged class, restored the architects of Auschwitz, Belsen and Peenemunde to prosperity, saving them to use against their most feared enemy, the Communism that the Nazi party had been established to deter.
Show me a man who talks of “Communazis” and I’ll show you a nazi apologist and sympathizer.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 14:59 utc | 60

three posts have not made it through in the last 24 hours!

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 15:01 utc | 61

brian@48
I know. And so, I presume does Clapper. My point was that he can tell such easily detectable lies to the Senators confident that none of them will challenge them.

Sheesh troll:

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 15:02 utc | 62

Four.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 15:02 utc | 63

hans @55
Very disappointing read. Any thing written by Pollack is likely to be disappointing. Any thing from Brookings is likely to be disappointing

Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 30 2014 15:41 utc | 64

nice article from Al Manar

Shaaban: Tomorrow’s Talks Will Tackle Issue of Terrorism

Syrian Presidential Political and Media Advisor Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban said that Thursday’s talks between the Syrian Arab Republic delegation and the coalition delegation of the so-called “opposition” will tackle terrorism, as UN Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi became convinced that they must discuss how to stop terrorism first.

In statements to the press on Wednesday, Shaaban said that the coalition delegation of the so-called “opposition” doesn’t want to discuss anything other than how it can rise to power, and this is what those who support it want as well.

She pointed out that that former US Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford came out into the open yesterday to confirm that he leads the coalition delegation of so-called “opposition” after he was leading it covertly.

Shaaban said that Ford addressed the Syrian people on Tuesday as if he were a high commissioner, telling the Syrian people what they want, don’t want, and what’s good and what’s not good, forgetting that Syria is 10,000 years old and that the Syrians have dignity, and that those he meets and dictates to don’t represent Syria nor its people.

She pointed out that the coalition delegation of so-called “opposition” doesn’t care about first Geneva communiqué nor about Syria; all they care about is reaching a transitional stage to carry out what its supporters want, adding that the coalition delegation claims to represent part of the Syrian people, but in fact it only represent foreign interests which are hostile towards Syria and its people.

Shaaban wondered if one can imagine that there are Syrians who refuse to denounce US interference in their country and sending weapons to criminals who murder and abduct, and who disagree to liberating occupied and to stopping terrorism and foreign interference.

She reiterated that the Syrian Arab Republic delegation wants to stop terrorism, stem bloodshed, and end the crisis and the tragedy affecting the Syrian people due to foreign interferences, noting that those who started this tragedy want to keep it going, while the Syrian government is trying to find a way to end the war and restore security and safety to Syria so that Syrians can decide upon their future.

Shaaban said the morning session was different, but the talks were positive, with the coalition delegation trying to discuss the issue of a transitional government, and the Syrian official delegation said it doesn’t mind discussing the first Geneva communiqué one item at a time from the beginning, noting that the first item of this communiqué calls for halting violence which has now become terrorism and creating a suitable atmosphere for launching a political process.

She noted that agreeing to discuss counterterrorism came due to the Syrian official delegation’s persistence on this point.

“The coalition delegation talked yesterday with a vision that almost made us feel like they had a magic wand and that they will solve all problems at once, but when we told them to let us bring humanitarian aid to Adra if they’re capable of stopping violence, terrorism and murder with their incredible capacities, they said that they cannot guarantee anything,” Shaaban pointed out.

On the interposition presented by the coalition delegation, Shaaban said this interposition’s main point is that they want a transitional government with full authority which they consider capable of ending violence, defeating terrorism and making Syria a paradise, noting that it’s clear that the coalition delegation need time to coordinate and agree on the ideas they want to discuss with the Syrian government, but it seems that there are sides who give contrary opinions to this coalition.

She pointed out that Friday may be dedicated to discussing when sessions will be continued afterwards, as the Syrian official delegation informed Brahimi that they will stay in Geneva only until Friday because they have commitments in Syria, stressing at the same time that the Syrian government wants to see a wide spectrum of opposition, particularly internal opposition.

On the US Congress decision to continue arming the so-called “opposition” and if this was discussed with Brahimi, Shaaban said that Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari discussed this with Brahimi.

“We know that they are arming and funding and overlooking Saudi Arabia which arms and funds, but declaring this while the Geneva talks are in session shows confusion on the part of the US administration which on one side talks to Russia and says it wants to hold Geneva to resolve the crisis in Syria, and on the other side hinders it, as announcing the arming constitutes real and tangible hindering of any political solution we seek to achieve,” she said.

Shaaban said that it’s unclear whether the contradiction in US step is between different US sides or strategies, contrasting it to the Russian government which has been consistent in its positions and statements.

She said that the results of what is taking place in the conference will be discussed by the Russians and the Americans who sponsored this conference, with an upcoming meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US State Secretary John Kerry, and Brahmi.

Shaaban voiced belief that the meetings in the Geneva conference will reflect positively on the Syrian people and their interests, adding that this optimism is drawn from what is happening on the ground, form the Syrian people, and the army.

She pointed out that the CNN correspondent told her during an interview that the Syrian government is “making a strong performance” which is why they cut down on media coverage, as the Syrian government has things to say while the other side seems not to have much that is convincing.

Shaaban said that the foreign press which had been against Syria and attempted to isolate it now realizes that Syria has convincing things to say, adding “we came to Geneva carrying the tears of the mothers, wives and children of martyrs, the strength of the Syrian Arab Army, President Bashar al-Assad, and the Syrian people, and the Syrians’ interests.”

She asserted that the foremost concern for any Syrian citizen is the restoration of security and stability to Syria, and the Syrian official delegation is representing this and hopes to be able to realize the Syrians’ aspirations.

On social media taking parts of statements she made out of context, Shaaban said this isn’t surprising as media misdirection was employed since the beginning against Syria, its people, and against her in person, adding that this is done by people without the least bit of respect and professionalism, and she will not respond to it because this does not worry her.

On whether there can by a Syrian-Syrian dialogue in Damascus instead of Geneva, Shaaban said that this is the Syrian government’s goal, and when all spectra of the opposition arrive and real dialogue begins, it must take place in Damascus.

Posted by: okie farmer | Jan 30 2014 16:10 utc | 65

(1)Communazi: After the realization that communism and fascism are functionally equivalent ideologies, it was a concern that some people who consider themselves communists and/or nazis may only be insulted by association with the crimes of one or the other group, rather than both as they justly deserve. As such, the portmanteau 'Communazi' was invented to amend this gaping flaw in the English language. (2) Communazi: a combination of a communist and a nazi. Though supposedlly impossible, since communism and nazism are allegedly opposites, (tell that to the millions of victims murdered by both) it still makes a good insult. Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30, 2014 4:50:28 AM | 53

I don't think it "makes a good insult" at all. It's a liberal shibboleth invented immediately after WW2, a sort of gut-level equivalent of the term "totalitarianism", which serves the same function on a slightly higher level. To say that "communism and fascism are functionally equivalent ideologies" is to expose the vacuousness of functionalism, which purports to explain human behaviours by the 'functions' they serve. It's a product of liberal political illiteracy.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 30 2014 16:41 utc | 66

Bevin are you typing your comment in a word processor and then copy and paste it here? Because that's what I was trying to do once and faced th same problem. Try typing it to the comment section directly.

Posted by: Pirouz_2 | Jan 30 2014 16:46 utc | 67

I don't think it "makes a good insult" at all

As Mandy Rice Davies is alleged to have said "well, he would say that, wouldn't he?"

Communists are rarely noted for their sense of humour, Rowan.

(communazis even less so)

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30 2014 17:30 utc | 68

Perhaps Wordpress have installed a "pointless boring verbosity" filter, and poor old bev is getting filtered out for being a world-leader in that particular discipline?

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30 2014 17:33 utc | 69

Thanks Pirouz_2.

Sheesh troll:

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 17:58 utc | 70

thanks pirouz-2
That was the problem. I won't bother to retype it however because it was only aimed at educating the sheesh (formerly hmmm, stfu and foff)troll.
But the fact that sheesh is a nazi sympathiser and probably a low level volunteer functionary for the state apparatus-an intern perhaps- is obvious enough not to require logical demonstration. Except, of course, to dunderheads like him.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 18:03 utc | 71

Sheesh troll:

The line you are advancing, and have done under a variety of aliases (hmm, foff, sftu etc) is central to the neo-fascist Gladio ideology. Fascism and Communism are polar opposites: the first is the capitalist class's defence against egalitarian economic demands (from the 99%)the latter an attack on capitalism- there is no other way of interpreting the history of the C20th.

Your politics are those of the capitalist class which, intent upon preventing the spread of "communism", picked up the infrastructure of European fascism, shook some of the filth from it, replaced its uniforms and founded the Christian Democratic and Conservative parties.

That was in western Europe. In eastern Europe where the fascist remnants were being repressed, rather crudely and with Stalinistic brutality, the US took up the cause of these victims (fascist collaborators, SS veterans and the civil servants who had organised the filling of the Concentration Camps, the little Eichmanns) romanticised them as patriots fighting Soviet repression, subsidised their leaders in exile and armed them to undertake terrorist attacks in their homelands.

What makes the half truths that you spew passable for the light minded is that all states are repressive, the regimes which emerged after the war in the Soviet sphere were, from the first, under intense pressure from the wealthier, much less war damaged, economies of the west. They did engage in very nasty treatment of those who they feared had collaborated in the war and suspected of being ready to ally themselves with the US.
What is not true, and makes a nonsense of the Communazi label, is that nothing that the Soviet Union did after 1945 came close to the extent of the brutality and totalitarian terror of the regimes that the west installed around the world: it was cold in the Siberian prisons but they were not as bad as the British gulag in Kenya or the US backed dictatorships’ Operation Condor. The USSR did nothing close to what the US did in Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Colombia or across Africa where it used the South African forces as its instrument.
Compared to the western sponsored bloodbaths in Indonesia the very worst offences of Beria and Stalin were mild and badly organized.
Understand this: the Nazis were a German attempt to reproduce the American Empire in eastern Europe. Its programmes of extermination were modeled upon a distorted reading of the American treatment of aboriginals. The Nazis, even in the darkest days of war with their backs to the Red Army’s inexorable-and life affirming-advance, remained wedded to the capitalist class, the protection of its interests and profits. The labour camps in which millions were starved, worked and beaten to death wr invariably contracted to large corporations eagerly lapping up the disciplined slave labour they promised.
The Soviet experiment was, for reasons that anyone who understands history finds quite unsurprising, not particularly successful. Its great credit is that it destroyed the last incarnation of fascism in arms. Anyone who regards communism and fascism as equivalents is engaged, consciously or because he has been duped by capitalist propaganda, in rehabilitating fascism. It was this which a paranoid, murderous Stalin feared: much of the responsibility for the extreme and violent methods he took to prevent its re-emergence lies with the Kissingers and Churchills of the world who, in their anxiety to serve their privileged class, restored the architects of Auschwitz, Belsen and Peenemunde to prosperity, saving them to use against their most feared enemy, the Communism that the Nazi party had been established to deter.
Show me a man who talks of “Communazis” and I’ll show you a nazi apologist and sympathizer.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 18:07 utc | 72

communists != nazis. Hitler didn't think so, nor did the citizens of Stalingrad.

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 30 2014 19:36 utc | 73

There is no ideological group that is noted for its sense of humour. None whatever.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 30 2014 19:36 utc | 74

@68&67

Thanks guys- very nice of you 2 chaps to prove my point for me. ;-)

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30 2014 20:12 utc | 75

Ask almost anyone in Poland, Czech, Ukraine, BeloRus, Lithuania, Latvia etc etc, especially people that experienced both Communism and Nazism, who they hate more, and I can almost guarantee that the answer will be "Communists!"

Obviously that doesnt matter to either of you two since clearly the people of those countries are not as clever as you 2 geniuses, and clearly in your minds you know better than those people, eh?

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 30 2014 20:17 utc | 76

Sheesh troll:

In eastern Europe where the fascist remnants were being repressed, rather crudely and with Stalinistic brutality, the US took up the cause of these victims (fascist collaborators, SS veterans and the civil servants who had organised the filling of the Concentration Camps, the little Eichmanns) romanticised them as patriots fighting Soviet repression, subsidised their leaders in exile and armed them to undertake terrorist attacks in their homelands.

Compared to the western sponsored bloodbaths in Indonesia the very worst offences of Beria and Stalin were mild and badly organized.
Understand this: the Nazis were a German attempt to reproduce the American Empire in eastern Europe. Its programmes of extermination were modeled upon a distorted reading of the American treatment of aboriginals. The Nazis, even in the darkest days of war with their backs to the Red Army’s inexorable-and life affirming-advance, remained wedded to the capitalist class, the protection of its interests and profits. The labour camps in which millions were starved, worked and beaten to death wr invariably contracted to large corporations eagerly lapping up the disciplined slave labour they promised.

The Soviet experiment was, for reasons that anyone who understands history finds quite unsurprising, not particularly successful. Its great credit is that it destroyed the last incarnation of fascism in arms. Anyone who regards communism and fascism as equivalents is engaged, consciously or because he has been duped by capitalist propaganda, in rehabilitating fascism. It was this which a paranoid, murderous Stalin feared: much of the responsibility for the extreme and violent methods he took to prevent its re-emergence lies with the Kissingers and Churchills of the world who, in their anxiety to serve their privileged class, restored the architects of Auschwitz, Belsen and Peenemunde to prosperity, saving them to use against their most feared enemy, the Communism that the Nazi party had been established to deter.

Show me a man who talks of “Communazis” and I’ll show you a nazi apologist and sympathizer.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 21:05 utc | 77

That's right.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 30 2014 21:15 utc | 78

http://rt.com/news/granin-nazi-siege-survivor-360/

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 21:31 utc | 79

Unable to post. I greatly lament the hi-jacking of this thread by the fascist troll-hmm,foff, sftu, sheesh.

Posted by: bevin | Jan 30 2014 21:34 utc | 80

The link given at 72, detailing the opinions of some old Russian dude, does absolutely nothing to detract from my point regarding the views of the majority of Non-Russian East European people regarding communism.

The fact that someone seems to think it does, and also seems to think that others will be conned into believing that it does, by the posters predictably dishonest shell-and-pea-games regarding opinions of Russian/NON-Russian, is highly amusing though.

When one has to obfuscate the issue to the degree that the commenter at #72 does, it does not say much for that individual's credibility (or 'LACK of', in this instance)

It is also a means to measure of the mans complete ignorance of, or dismissal of, the opinions of Non-Russian East Europeans regarding Communism - truth is he thinks he knows better than the dumb East European people themselves, regarding the validity of their own opinions of Communism

Posted by: Sheesh | Jan 30 2014 21:56 utc | 81

7 Myths about USSR.
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/seven-myths-about-the-ussr/#comments

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 30 2014 23:56 utc | 82

Fascism is a dead end. It is the apotheosis(love using that word!) of capitalism: a gun to stick up a disarmed world. Capitalism had a long head start. Communism is a new thing. Nobody has made it work, yet. Mebbe that explains the Poles lack of faith. But Russia must have done something right to get from serfdom to spacecraft in what, 60 years? They overcame a lot; the Nazis plucked fruit from the trees.

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 31 2014 0:07 utc | 83

@ bevin, Rowan, Colm, guest77 et al.

In all honestly Sheesh/hmm/foff or whatever it’s handle, is doing a superb job while you all are but spinning your wheels. It is a master of what it does. Trolling! (troll: someone who deliberately sends a rude or annoying or inflammatory message to a discussion group on the Internet with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument)

You are all being diverted off topic and are thus failing in, what I think all of your prime motivations are here, having intelligent polite and informed discussions. Some may call me puerile but until b decides to bounce sheesh/hmm/foff, the only way to proceed with your prime motivations is with the approach of many indigenous cultures; ignore or shun it. I can just read past the crap and move on to your posts if you’ll save me and others the time to read your posts after you have taken the bait.

Thanks for your consideration of my suggestion.

Posted by: juannie | Jan 31 2014 0:29 utc | 84

Communism is a new thing.

No communism is an old enough thing by now. It's almost 100 yrs old now. Old enough that it no longer gets a pass on that score. Yes I know you probably have a silly-line about how long Capitalism has been about, but communism is old enough that you don't get to pretend that it's often tyrannical and authoritarian nature is a result immaturity.

Nobody has made it work, yet.

So like the geniuses you are it's just Keep on Going, despite the fact that it's clearly unworkable over the long run - USSR had over 60 yrs to tinker with it and it collapsed, mainly to to Internal pressures and general lack of enthusiasm of the populace.

Mebbe that explains the Poles lack of faith.

Yeah, cos obviously the massacres, the murders, the police-state and the blatant hypocracy of Soviet Imperialism had absolutely nothing to do with it. /sarc

Russia must have done something right to get from serfdom to spacecraft in what, 60 years?

Yes, Rodina, where prior to the soviets literally everyone was a serf, and afterwards literally everyone qualified from cosmonaut-college, eh?

Might have been easier of course if the Soviets had not massacred large sections of the local intelligensia, non? Oh wait, you're not interested in that aspect of Bolshevism, are you.

they overcame a lot;

Yep -one of the worst things they had to overcome was the effect of Communism itself.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 1:04 utc | 85

I love the way everyone posts stuff about what the Russians thought of communism

Thats not the subject - the subject is what people in Poland, Czech, Ukraine, BeloRus, Lithuania, Latvia etc etc, thought was worse, communism or nazism. The Nazis only stayed 4 years in those places - the Soviets stayed nearly 50 yrs.

Anyone that knows anything knows that NonRussians in East Europe hate communism, Soviets, and by extension Russia, far more than they hate nazism-Nazism is for them something awful but brief, from the distant past, Whereas Communism is much mor recent, lasted much longer and consequently generates far more distaste amongst these people

Attempts to "prove" otherwise just demonstrate either how little you know about that, or else how little you care.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 1:16 utc | 86

"Yep -one of the worst things they had to overcome was the effect of Communism itself."
Posted by: sheesh 76

we have to overcome this bullshit system we have now that so many think is just so peachy keen.. if it isn't one system, it will be another with the same exploitative arrangements that are not in the best interests of anyone.

Posted by: james | Jan 31 2014 1:18 utc | 87

isn't one system, it will be another with the same exploitative arrangements that are not in the best interests of anyone.

Yep, thats what i keep explaining to these people. But they still insist on pimping their stupid Left-right left-right left-right outlook.

Most of it keeps passing right over their pretty little heads.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 1:32 utc | 88

@77, there are splinters in the windmills of your mind.

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 31 2014 1:36 utc | 89

Sheesh, it would be good if you advanced beyond what I call the "coffee table literature" stage in your reading. I know that because of the dumbing-down in your country, it may seem to you that you have already read some 'heavy, serious' books on the subject of political philosophy. But part of the art of dumbing-down is that it presents "coffee table literature" as heavy and serious.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Jan 31 2014 2:04 utc | 90

The stupid replies are perfect. Just what one expects

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 2:06 utc | 91

Good old rowan - that what i love about crusty old communists.

As usual you are Completely oblivious to any evidence that communism was a failure in Eastern Europe, that the long promised "Workers paradise" was a busted flush, at best, but more likely was merely a smokescreen in oreer to gain power but was never intended to become a reality.

Instead make some stupid and innaccurate attempt at insult and hope no one notices how full of ideological left-right left right left right nonsense you are.

All we end up with under communism is just State Capitalism, where the State monopolises ALL resources and hands them over to a different set of tryannical oligarchs to exploit

No one needs to read 50 books of intellectual wank to see that, though you're welcome to keep doing so if thats what turn you on, rowan.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 2:20 utc | 92

It occured to me, rowan, that your post at 81, with all it's childish sneering and plainly ridiculous pretence of intellectual superiority, is probably a result of you trying to disguise just how completely ignorant you are regarding how east europeans view communism, nazism and russia.

Don't worry though, cos yer not alone in that regard rowan, most of your fellow commentors are every bit as ignorant on this subject as you are.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 2:33 utc | 93

"if it isn't one system, it will be another with the same exploitative arrangements that are not in the best interests of anyone"

uh-uh, time is an arrow, things improve, difficulties are overcome, what works is kept, what doesn't is discarded. Darkness is not the opposite of light, it's the absence of light.

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 31 2014 2:39 utc | 94

Fuck, that was like someone opened 6 or 7 chinese fortune cookies and tried to pass the combined contents off as the product of deep philosophical thought

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 2:48 utc | 95

"the product of deep philosophical thought" I didn't lie. That chair you're sitting in, is it not an improvement over a log? Is the world to sit still while Merka shakes its Star-spangled cat-o-nine tails under everyone's nose because the alternative is just as bad?

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 31 2014 2:57 utc | 96

No one said you lied.

Is the world to sit still while Merka shakes its Star-spangled cat-o-nine tails under everyone's nose because the alternative is just as bad?

This is your defence of communist/Soviet imperialism?

Fuckin hell, "Communism is good because as an alternative to the US it is just as bad" ?

You heard it here first folks!

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 3:15 utc | 97

A rhetorical question about Communism vs Capitalism...
Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work?
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/do-publicly-owned-planned-economies-work/
Come on sheesh, don't hide your light under a bushel.
Outsmart yourself.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jan 31 2014 3:23 utc | 98

If you're gonna misquote me, at least wait until my comment is a bit further up the page.

Posted by: ruralito | Jan 31 2014 3:29 utc | 99

But no one is arguing for capitalism, you silly little man.

Copy and paste as many irrelevant articles you like, they'll still be irrelevant

Thats not the subject - the subject is what people in Poland, Czech, Ukraine, BeloRus, Lithuania, Latvia etc etc, thought was worse, communism or nazism.

Posted by: sheesh | Jan 31 2014 3:31 utc | 100

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