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And next, Syria?

Activists in Syria: Muffled by Violence:
The militarization of the uprising has dismayed many anti-regime activists who were involved in the protests from the outset, and wanted them to remain peaceful, popular and spontaneous, unsullied by political manipulation or foreign meddling. Despite the current blood-letting, which has extinguished all signs of peaceful protest and made it seem futile to many, some insist that it remains the only way forward.
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The elements of the opposition that the Saudis and Qataris are backing:
When Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera do comment directly on Syrian affairs, they tend to paper over the rebels' flaws and emphasize the conflict's religious fault lines. Perhaps the low point of both channels' Syrian uprising coverage was when they gave a platform to extremist Sunni cleric Adnan al-Arour, who once said of Syria's Alawite minority that Sunnis "shall mince them in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs" for their support of President Bashar al-Assad. While Al Arabiya referred to "the sheikh" as a "symbol of the revolution," Al Jazeera introduced him as the "biggest nonviolent instigator against the Syrian regime."
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl..._the_arab_news?page=full#.UBsWOw0u3Jk.twitter
 
Reports the rebels are getting AA missiles from Turkey though there's some doubt. Seems only a matter of time until they do though. Meanwhile the regime's heavy weapons are being used against them or are wearing out. Looks like time is on the side of the rebels.

With diplomatic efforts dead and the future of Syria playing out on the battlefield, many of the Syrian government’s most powerful weapons, including helicopter gunships, fighter jets and tanks, are looking less potent and in some cases like a liability for the military of President Bashar al-Assad.

Rebels have turned part of Mr. Assad’s formidable arsenal on his own troops. Anti-Assad fighters on Wednesday shelled a military airport in the contested city of Aleppo with captured weapons. On Tuesday, rebels used commandeered Syrian Army tanks in a skirmish with Mr. Assad’s troops.

Perhaps even more worrying to Mr. Assad, his military has come to rely more heavily on equipment designed for a major battle with a foreign enemy, namely Israel, rather than a protracted civil conflict with his own people. Close observers of his military say Syria is having trouble keeping its sophisticated and maintenance-intensive weapons functioning.

The strain is likely to grow more acute as the government depends on helicopter gunships to extend its reach to parts of the country rendered impassable to logistics convoys and even armored vehicles by the rebels’ improvised bombs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/w...a-assads-arms-face-strain.html?pagewanted=all
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IC3D said:
There were popular protests in cities all over Syria for months that were met by brutal suppression by the Shabiha and security forces, hundreds if not thousands of activists were being locked up and tortured, but this didn't quell dissent and protests continued culminating in massacres as the the military were ordered to shoot demonstrators. The FSA is primarily composed of defected military units (presumably horrified by what's going on) and Syrian citizens, all this has been going on for ages and Assad has been laying siege to entire cities. Diplomacy really, Assad has destroyed his chances and his country.
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Fact is we don't know the full story of how this situation has developed over the past 17 months apart from what we've been shown on our screens, but a hundred quelled peaceful protests will still not equal the horrors to come as this thing decends further. Foreign agendas have swooped in to seize opportunities for their own percentage. I find it beyond beleif that even the Assad regime thinks it a good idea to start levelling their own cities. More is going on than is visible to us who have to rely on the likes of Channel 4, the BBC, Al Jazeera, US media or RT and hundreds of blurry mobile phone footage video's on youtube. On the basis of such shaky, manipulated and unsound knowledge I for one am not about to start cheer-leading the escalation, let alone one managed by notorious terrorist organization the CIA and its ilk.

The road to hell isn't paved with good intentions (it's actually paved with crushed skulls and the finger-bones of small children) but I see the point of the saying.
 
Unfortunatly the assad has previous for full on destruction of his citys.
Majority of syrian kit is soviet/russian in orgin so hardly at the high endof maintence requirements.
Its a bloodbath and its going to get worse:(
 
IC3D said:
As the article above suggests the state news agencies from all sides seem to pull stories off Twitter to suit the position it's sponsor has or flavour of the week. Now there's instagram.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/pwkaplan/syrians-instagram-their-revolution?s=mobile
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99b667.jpg


with Instagram cynical propaganda is impossible.
 
Them dern Sunnis. Always causing trouble. Been overthrowing dictators all over the place lately. Good thing the Israelis keep "their" Sunnis under control, eh?
 
thriller said:
this post wins the 2012 "no shit, sherlock" award. Also the "stating the abvious" award 2012.
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You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you...

War is Hell.
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-Michigan Military Academy (19 June 1879)

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it...
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sherman2.gif

-William T Sherman.
 
Conspiraloon nonsense?

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, ...a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. ...[to] be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, ...

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals. ...Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus …

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention... the CIA and SIS [MI6] should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.” (Joint US-UK leaked Intelligence Document, London and Washington, 1957)
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Ok, so the above alleges that the Usual Suspects have previous for this sort of thing in Syria...

The "protests" did not emanate from internal political cleavages as described by the mainstream media. From the very outset, they were the result of a covert US-NATO intelligence operation geared towards triggering social chaos, with a view to eventually discrediting the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad and destabilizing Syria as a Nation State.
"British Special forces have met up with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)... The apparent goal of this initial contact was to establish the rebel forces' strength and to pave the way for any future training operations. ... More recent reports have stated that British and French Special Forces have been actively training members of the FSA, from a base in Turkey. Some reports indicate that training is also taking place in locations in Libya and Northern Lebanon. British MI6 operatives and UKSF (SAS/SBS) personnel have reportedly been training the rebels in urban warfare as well as supplying them with arms and equipment. US CIA operatives and special forces are believed to be providing communications assistance to the rebels." Elite Forces UK, January 5, 2012 (emphasis added)​
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I think this^ has been established as true...

Since the middle of March 2011, Islamist armed groups --covertly supported by Western and Israeli intelligence-- have conducted terrorist attacks directed against government buildings including acts of arson. Amply documented, trained gunmen and snipers including mercenaries have targeted the police, armed forces as well as innocent civilians. There is ample evidence, as outlined in the Arab League Observer Mission report, that these armed groups of mercenaries are responsible for killing civilians.

While the Syrian government and military bear a heavy burden of responsibility. it is important to underscore the fact that these terrorist acts --including the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children-- are part of a US-NATO-Israeli initiative, which consists is supporting, training and financing "an armed entity" operating inside Syria.

The evidence confirms that foreign intelligence operatives, according to reports, have integrated rebel ranks:
"As the unrest and killings escalate in the troubled Arab state, agents from MI6 and the CIA are already in Syria assessing the situation, a security official has revealed. Special forces are also talking to Syrian dissident soldiers. They want to know about weapons and communications kit rebel forces will need if the Government decides to help.​
​
“MI6 and the CIA are in Syria to infiltrate and get at the truth,” said the well-placed source. “We have SAS and SBS not far away who want to know what is happening and are finding out what kit dissident soldiers need." " Syria will be bloodiest yet, Daily Star). (emphasis added)​
​
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a creation of the US and NATO. The objective of this armed insurrection is to trigger the response of the police and armed forces, including the deployment of tanks and armored vehicles with a view to eventually justifying a military intervention, under NATO's "responsibility to protect" mandate.
A NATO-led intervention is on the drawing board. It was drafted prior to the onset of the protest movement in March 2011. According to military and intelligence sources, NATO, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have been discussing "the form this intervention would take".
US, British and Turkish operatives are supplying the rebels with weapons. Britain's Ministry of Defence confirms that it "is drawing up secret plans for a NATO-sponsored no-fly zone [in coordination with its allies] "but first it needs backing from the United Nations Security Council." (Syria will be bloodiest yet, Daily Star). According to these secret plans: "fighting in Syria could be bigger and bloodier than the battle against Gaddafi".(Ibid ).
A "humanitarian" military intervention modeled on Libya is contemplated. NATO Special Forces from Britain, France, Qatar and Turkey are already on the ground inside Syria in blatant violation of international law. Reports from British military sources (November 2011) confirm that:
"British Special forces have met up with members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA)... The apparent goal of this initial contact was to establish the rebel forces' strength and to pave the way for any future training operations. ... More recent reports have stated that British and French Special Forces have been actively training members of the FSA, from a base in Turkey. Some reports indicate that training is also taking place in locations in Libya and Northern Lebanon. British MI6 operatives and UKSF (SAS/SBS) personnel have reportedly been training the rebels in urban warfare as well as supplying them with arms and equipment. US CIA operatives and special forces are believed to be providing communications assistance to the rebels." Elite Forces UK, January 5, 2012 (emphasis added)​
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Action is in the reaction etc, fairly standard....

The Insurgency: The Libya Model
The insurgency in Syria has similar features to that of Libya: it is integrated by paramilitary brigades affiliated to Al Qaeda, which are directly supported by NATO and Turkey.
Reports confirm that NATO and Turkey's High Command are providing the rebels with weapons and training: "NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces." (DEBKAfile,NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)
Military sources also confirm that Syrian rebels "have been training in the use of the new weapons with Turkish military officers at makeshift installations in Turkish bases near the Syrian border." (DEBKAfile, Ibid). Recent reports confirm that British and Qatari Special forces are on the ground in the city of Homs, involved in training rebel forces as well as organizing the supply of weapons in liaison with the Turkish military.
As in the case of Libya, financial support is being channelled to the Syrian rebel forces by Saudi Arabia: "Ankara and Riyadh will provide the anti-Assad movements with large quantities of weapons and funds to be smuggled in from outside Syria" (Ibid). The deployment of Saudi and GCC troops is also contemplated in Southern Syria in coordination with Turkey (Ibid).
NATO's activities are not limited to training and the delivery of weapons systems, the recruitment of thousands of "freedom fighters"` is also envisaged, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA's jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:
This recruitment of Mujahideen was part of NATO`s strategy in Libya, where mercenary forces were dispatched to fight under the helm of "former" Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) Commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj.
The Libyan model of rebel forces integrated by "Islamic brigades" together with NATO special forces has been applied to Syria, where "Islamist fighters" supported by Western and Israeli intelligence are deployed. In this regard, Abdel Hakim`s LIFG brigade has now been dispatched to Syria, where it is involved in terrorist acts under the supervision of NATO Special Forces.
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So, assuming you managed to wade through all that^ lot, where on the conspiraloon-scale would you put the overall situation as described?
 
camouflage said:
So, assuming you managed to wade through all that^ lot, where on the conspiraloon-scale would you put the overall situation as described?
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I confess I didnt wade through it in full, I skimmed it. It seemed to fit a fairly typical template.

Conspiracies involving military, intelligence agencies, global 'diplomacy', civil wars etc are some of the more interesting for a number of reasons. They are sometimes true or partially true, they are often subject to veils of secrecy or are sort of acknowledged but not dwelt upon, and both true and untrue ones are a major ingredient in a variety of forms of propaganda, especially a certain old-fashioned and vulgar form of state propaganda. And its grass-roots equivalent, the fearful whispers on the street and the conveniently simplified version of reality that make it easier to think you know the real story and either condemn or support the apparent events and responsible actors.

For these reasons I would at least leave the word conspiraloon out of it, save that for the more fanciful delusions that fit well with holywood but poorly with actual history.

My main beef with these sorts of articles and stances is the disregard for detailed truth, and that it all ends up with that familiar tone of news we've known in ourlifetimes where bloody events are mostly considered in terms of the powerful players pulling the strings, and the legitimate aspirations of masses of people dont seem to feature very often, or are used as one-dimensional propaganda props.

The early days of the arab spring were a breath of fresh air to many people to start with, precisely because momentum largely appeared to be coming from masses in the street losing their fear, not just the same old players and the same old strings being pulled. As time went on and some revolutions faltered or were crushed, and unrest spread to countries whose regimes were not 'special friends with the west' or whose dictators were considered peskily unpredictable despite coming in from the cold (Gaddafi), both deserved and undeserved cynicism was bound to come into play. As soon as weapons are involved this ratchets up further, especially when we look at who might be supplying them.

This thread, certainly recently, reflects somewhat inevitably this stuff, and it was always going to be pronounced when it comes to Syria for multiple reasons I dont think I need to repeat. But we only have to look to either the propaganda from various sides or the posts here and see how often very loaded cliche's inevitably enter the stage. Al Qaeda , Sunni's, NATO, terrorists, freedom fighters, etc. Its not all complete bollocks, but these bits need to be sliced and mixed with a bunch of other stuff in order for the full picture and truth to stand much of a chance.

Personally when thinking about my own stance in regards to places like Libya, I am concerned at how easily my normal defences against ending up backing something dodgy being sponsored by the west or associates were bypassed by the nature of the beginnings of the uprising. However I could not just condemn everything outright, or get horribly carried away with confident theories that everything was just a setup engineered from outside, because this stance easily leads to a position which is equally disregarding of the multitude and their role in great events. Since I am not looking for untainted heroes and all these situations are utterly beyond my control anyway, I have the luxury of being able to observe and try to moderate my cynicism by looking for signs of hope and fruitful struggle wherever it may be found. There are no lack of signs to the contrary, but to give up on people just because things are grim, or to end up backing a stale old regime because some of its opponents are unsavoury beasts, is not a position I can justify either.
 
The rebels will probably be driven out of Aleppo due to their inferiority in firepower. But the fight will go on.
 
elbows said:
Personally when thinking about my own stance in regards to places like Libya, I am concerned at how easily my normal defences against ending up backing something dodgy being sponsored by the west or associates were bypassed by the nature of the beginnings of the uprising. However I could not just condemn everything outright, or get horribly carried away with confident theories that everything was just a setup engineered from outside, because this stance easily leads to a position which is equally disregarding of the multitude and their role in great events..
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I'm with you there brother.

Having dug a little deeper into this whole Syria mess one thing is clear, it's best to beleive nothing. The narrrative being sold to us by the media is dodgy as fuck, but then who can beleive the point of veiw of a blatant dictator? It is notable that the support base of the Assad regime is divere, secular and multi-ethnic/multi-cultural/multi-religious, and for me if in doubt I think it a good rule of thumb to consider the secular-polyethnic position to probably be the more sympathetic one. All seem to accept that Assad has at least considerable support, and yet we see a screamingly suspicious absense of any pro-Assad voices in the Western media, anyone would think that this is merely a vicious regime trying to stamp-out all life in Syria. Yet this from the same people that bought us the Iraq war (let alone the Yugaslave break-up, the Afghan war and the Libyan revolution that has led to this...



From the Pro-Assad point of veiw Syria really is being terrorised by hordes of foreign fighters infiltrating the Syrian border to wage a war of terror against the Syrian state (snipers targeting police and army and government officials etc) and civilian life by creating a battle-ground of suburbs and business districts. Snipers, bombers, mujahadeen funded by insidious-millions provided courtesy of Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Fucking Nasty as Fuck Arabia for fucks sake... (while on the other side of their smirking faces the clamp-down in Bahrain rumbles on utterly un-challened by the same concerns).

The GlobalResearch stuff is at least a little suspect due if nothing else to the 9/11 stuff (but I must admit I have not taken the time to see what exactly they are saying about 9/11, not wanting to get drawn in to anything silly) but I do feel they make some valid points in terms of Syria, I don't see anything I wouldn't beleive the likes of 'our side' are capable of. We've seen it all before from El Salvadore to Afganistan, it's the standard M.O. with which any student of 20th Centuary history is surely familiar.

Now watching reports about Syria from the likes of Al Jaz, the BBC, Chennel 4 (I've mentioned em all before) just reeks of lies and misinformation. It's scary actually, how comprehensively it may be possible to pull the wool over our eyes such that the likes of TomUS can be pretty much egging the CIA and it's ilk on in a manner that is to me remenicent of that male-rape scene in the movie Pulp Fiction.

I hereby coin a new term; war-gimp.
 
The problem with that Global Research article is not that it discusses conspiracies but that it reduces the entire revolt to conspiracies. The agency of the people themselves is removed and explained away. It's insulting.
 
Knotted said:
The problem with that Global Research article is not that it discusses conspiracies but that it reduces the entire revolt to conspiracies. The agency of the people themselves is removed and explained away. It's insulting.
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Actually one of the bits I read does say that there is a genuine indigenous movement for change in Syria. Pulling back to a broader veiw then just this particular website, I think is taken generally by the shall we say Critical Community, that this peaceful internal pressure for political change in Syria has had their message hijacked by forces outside of the country (with undemocratic islamist forces at the business-end at that, to add insult to injury). Apparently the poltical opposition is (according to the link anyway) in large part to do with the IMF austerity measures Syria has been forced to apply, rising prices, liberalisation of the market, retreat from Ba'athist social principals and so on... so effectively it's the Washington Regime and dollar-inflation that may well be the instigation of the genuine movements in Syria... of all this, nothing, not a jot, as was the case elsewhere. Commodity price inflation in food-staples, and energy it seems are outisde of history and need not be mentioned at all, ever, according to the narrative we are commonly led to consume by the media corporations we are dependant on.

Another thing I've noticed in the media and among western governments is the way the (so I am tolde) genuinly significant changes to the Syrian constitution have been completely ignored. It's like the Washington Regime and it's allies are saying "Fuck your peaceful process of negotiated outcome you Fuck! Only rivers of scorched blood will surfice as a solution, only olympic-sized swimming-pools of corpses represent any kind of real progress toward the scammy ethnocentric sort of political market we like to call 'a democracy'."

"Let the bodies hit the floor let the bodies hit the floor!" chants TomUS, and for that matter John Snow from the sidelines.

Someone mentioned above that the mass protests had no effect on the Syrian regime, but this appears to be completely untrue, clamp-downs on peaceful protests have been widely reported but frankly I don't know how far these reports can be trusted, if at all. There's evidese of footage from Libya being used as footage from Damascus, stories of empty streets at 5 am on a friday morning being shown as evidense of abandoned terrorised streets,people leaving mosques described as anti-government protests, pro-government protests described as anti-government protests, people who were said to have been executed by the government turning up alive and well, pictures of dead people in Yemen shown as victims of Syrian government clamp-downs... When you get into it it is seriously fucked-up how blatantly unreliable the entire picture is. I'm sure there have been clamp-downs but I seriously doubt the picture we have of the situation is trustworthy, certainly not trustworthy enough to start supporting CIA/Isreali/Turkish/Qatari/Saudi arms smuggling operations for the benefit of islamist fighters and suicide bombers anyway.

And besides the significant changes to the Syrian constitution and other concessions by the Syrian government to the demands of the peaceful movement for change in Syria that we are being told nothing about; there is also the reports of vast, vast mass rallies in support of the Syrian government. We have no way to gage how genuine these rallies are because we're not being told anything about them, or that they even exist (over a million in one case, that's a fucking big propaganda stunt if it was one). We're told by the BBC and ITV that journalists aren't allowed into Syria, but that also seems to be in doubt if you look into it by RT (ok forget them for obvious reasons) but also independant journo's like Phil Geraldi, Pepe Escobar and others who say there are no restrictions on reporting in Syria (frustratingly I can't say for sure because I am not a journalist that has treid to get in there, it's all quite maddening).

We're told of Syrian government troops massing outside cities, whereas according to the pro-Assad message people are crying out for their government to be more forthright in terms of delivering security from sniper-infested city rooftops and the like. The screeching absense where the known-to-be significantly large amount of support for Assad is (even among Assads political opposition that are pro-Assad in terms of sovereign security) is never engaged with let alone really examined in any detail or rigour. Therefore we're absolutely clueless one way or the other about how the majority of Syrians feel about government military action, for all we know they may well be for the most part desperate for military patrols, wouldn't you be calling for 'Our Lads' to come marching in if jihadi's were taking pot-shots at you from rooftops? As for Homs, fuck knows the real story (fuck knows to this day what went down in Falluja too but I guess that's another thread).

Sure, war is confusing and the first victim is truth etcetera, but I for one find it alarming how easily people who should know better will swallow the message delivered by agencies with a proven history of neferious and terroristic foreign intervention for the purposes of furthering a neo-liberal agenda. It's deeply dissapointing, seriously.
 
thriller said:
Looks like the Sunni's are up to it again.
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About 74% of the population is Sunni, so bollocks to your stupidly simplified attempts to find a straightforward bad guy to dehumanise. If you want to go on about the dodgy agenda of Saudi Arabia or whatever then fine, this stuff is obviously important, but more recently you seem to have descended into much cruder sectarianism and regime cheerleading.
 
Sunni's, Shiites, Christians, Druze... all are being picked off by the same people, and there is pro-Assad support among all of them as well.
 


Finally, some information apart from the usual manipulative/conspiraloon bollocks. Militarization is certainly the enemy of the Syrian people.
 
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