Monday
'The war underway is pure criminal folly. Its principal victims are those who are slain in order to fuel the killing, not those who fall fighting' #Syria
I understand the yearning for biased writing. It lets off steam, especially with regard to Syria. There is too much duplicity and obfuscation here, not only out of fear of assassination, but also to avoid angering the reader – and the Syrian reader, for those who know, is very dear to the heart.
I understand the yearning for frankness, for taking sides and making up one’s mind. I understand readers’ irritation at moral sermonizing, which they often find tedious not to say patronizing. I too yearn for something to unburden me when I read, and I cannot stand evaders and sophists. I might be one of them myself sometimes, but that does not prevent me not standing them. For I cannot stand myself when I dissemble, in deference to the requirement of living under our “democratic” regimes and in our well-meaningly bigoted societies.
There are Syrian reasons for vacillating on the subject of Syria: The regime in Damascus has two faces, one gentle and one bloody, and the revolution in Damascus has two faces, one secular and one Islamist. There is endless confusion and an abundance of ulterior motives.
If we read Asharq al-Awsat or al-Hayat (Saudi newspapers), we find that the perpetrator is the regime alone. If we read Al-Akhbar, we find that the regime is the victim of a worldwide conspiracy because it resists American imperial schemes. If we watch Al Jazeera, we marvel that there are still people left alive in Syria amid the incessant barrage of shelling, not to mention the participation of tanks, warplanes, shabeeha and mercenaries. If we watch al-Dunya or the official Syrian satellite channel, all is calm on the front other than a few crimes committed by armed gangsters.
Should we blame the media? The media are an extension of (or facade for) the regimes and sects. It would be unfair to the Arabs to confine the description to them. We saw the deceptions in the US media and the European press before, during and after the invasion of Iraq. Nobody, neither Bush nor Blair, has been made to answer for their falsification of history. America’s allies and its free media were never held to account for the genocide in Iraq, the looting of its oil and treasures, and the tearing apart of the great country called by al-Masudi the “key to the world”. Our Arab media – despite their laughable and lamentable biases – remain innocent in comparison to the American media and its European affiliates.
Nobody any longer wants to avoid erring, or remain above the crime. There is something more strife-provoking than death and live: There is the trap. Sometimes, minds (and pockets and claws) can no longer resist falling into it. If they were to do so alone, the fall would be bearable. But they drag peoples down with them. And while dragging down the peoples, they themselves usually avoid having to pay any price whatsoever.
***
I wish I could take sides: with the Shia Crescent, the Sunni Oceanus , the Kurds, the Copts, Wahhabism or the Taliban, with Hassan al-Sabbah or Osama bin Laden, with Nato, the CIA, or with fairytale figures. I wish I had the luxury. But I am too vague to be categorized, and too undecided to join lines. Single-mindedness is not for me. I am air above water.
I wish I could take sides: with the Shia Crescent, the Sunni Oceanus , the Kurds, the Copts, Wahhabism or the Taliban, with Hassan al-Sabbah or Osama bin Laden, with Nato, the CIA, or with fairytale figures. I wish I had the luxury. But I am too vague to be categorized, and too undecided to join lines. Single-mindedness is not for me. I am air above water.
I am a child of 1958, and of 1975 and its aftermath. I am a child of when we were all taken for a ride. I am the child of fearing the Muslims who will slaughter me, or the Druze or Christians who will slaughter me. I am the child of fearing every slap in the face lest it turn into a civil war.
I am a child of the realization that we Arabs are politically backward, blind and unreading, deaf and unhearing, and mute except in our farcical shows of shouting and lamentation. I am firm in my view because my innocence was assaulted, and sparing in my sympathies because I spent a lifetime being torn by those who sought to pull me to the right or left. There is something of both within me, something of neither, and something I am still looking for. Neither the Christians nor the Muslims represent me, and the Lebanese, with their gullibility and insanity, drive me to suicide at times, and to suffocation at others.
I do not want to be divided. The Syrian army’s shells during the Lebanon’s wars did not make me hate Syria, and the secularism of the Assad regime does not persuade me to side with it against a people oppressed in body and spirit. I do not want to be two halves...
The Assad regime does not appeal to me, nor any dictatorial regime that deems the country to be its private property and the people an enemy. I am unpersuaded by a secularism which breeds confessionalism, and will not believe in the secularism of any Arab regime until the day religion and state are fully and finally separated.
On the other hand, I can find nothing in common with the Arab regimes that are stoking the Syrian revolution. On the contrary, the fact that these regimes in particular are stoking it makes me deeply apprehensive about Syria’s fate. However much I try not to be, I am suspicious of the motives, and fearful of what is sought for our countries after the downfall of our tyrants: The democracy of Salafism? The democracy of anarchy and sectarianism? The deluge of ethnic, sectarian and tribal fragmentation? Or extinction by means of endless civil wars, and secessions spawning more secessions?
Back to the question of what position to take on developments in Syria. With whom, and against whom? With what Assad could have done in the first weeks of the peaceful protests, but which he failed to do, and which is too late to do now. We want freedom for the Syrians even if it takes them to hell. Freedom to speak and write, to oppose or support, and to resume their normal civilian lives without being spied on, without confiscations, arrests or the paranoia that has plagued Syria for half a century . We are for a Syria that resembles Lebanon before 1975, and before 1970, and before 1967. We are for a Syria that resembles Syria before the Baath and before the ruinous military coups initiated by Hosni al-Zaim. We want a Syria without sectarian, ethnic or confessional complications, a Syria at the heart of the East and not just of Arabism.
I do not take sides because I do not possess the truth and dislike those who do.
I take the side of the children, the ordinary and the weak.
I take the side of the defenseless and abducted.
I side against the cold-blooded and the hot- and lukewarm-blooded killers.
I side against the sources of fear wherever they are.
Tuesday
And the Imbeciles Award of The Day goes to...
Adidas:
‘JS Roundhouse Mids’, to be released in August
(resembling the chains worn by black slaves in the 19th century.)
Got to give it to the marketing virtuosos: Few other areas of "expertise" dare to be so crude at ostentatiously insulting gray matter. Even fewer, are such an eloquent mirror of "satan's little helpers"
Sunday
Friday
Monday
Everything
is transitory.
EVERYthing.
Nothing lasts.
Strings
of nothing life as.
The
answer to the question was:
…………………………………………..………
Another
question!
And
another,
And
another…. On and on and on.
That’s
life: The answer is always bigger than life,
Like
you never went far enough,
High
enough,
Low
enough….
They
say ‘god never throw upon you more than you can carry’, but I say, he never
throws upon you enough for you to care.
you
don’t really care. What you know is inconvenient so you want to forget.
You
can not forget so you keep your lives trying. The questions go unasked.
Questions.
“what a way to start a fire!”
2012 strange place as all.
Tuesday
Incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin on the Houla Massacre
THE HOULA MASSACRE: Opposition Terrorists "Killed Families Loyal to the Government"
Detailed Investigation
by Marat Musin
| |
The town was attacked from the north-east by groups of bandits and mercenaries, numbering up to 700 people. The militants came from Ar-Rastan (the Brigade of al-Farouk from the Free Syrian Army led by the terrorist Abdul Razak Tlass and numbering 250), from the village of Akraba (led by the terrorist Yahya Al-Yousef), from the village Farlaha, joined by local gangsters, and from Al Houla.
The city of Ar-Rastan has long been abandoned by most civilians. Now Wahhabis from Lebanon dominate the scene, fueled with money and weapons by one of the main orchestrators of international terrorism, Saad Hariri, who heads the anti-Syrian political movement “Tayyar Al-Mustaqbal” (“Future Movement”). The road from Ar-Rastan to Al-Houla runs through Bedouin areas that remain mostly out of control of government troops, which made the militant attacks on Al Hula a complete surprise for the Syrian authorities.
When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of the Abdul Razak. Many of those killed were “guilty” of the fact that they dared to change from Sunnis to Shiites. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies.
The idea that the UN observers had heard artillery fire against Al-Houla in the Safir Hotel in Homs at night… I consider nothing short of a bad joke. 50 kilometers lie between Homs and Al-Houla. What kind of tanks or guns has this range? Yes, there was intensive gunfire in Homs until 3 am, including heavy weapons. But, to give an example, on the night of Monday to Tuesday shooting was due to an attempt by law enforcement to regain control for a security corridor along the road to Damascus, Tarik Al-Sham.
After a visual inspection of Al Hula it is impossible to find traces of any of fresh destruction, bombing and shelling. During the day, several attacks by gunmen are made on the last remaining soldiers at the Taldou checkpoint. Militants used heavy weapons and snipers made up of professional mercenaries were active.
Note that once, the exactly same provocation failed at Shumar (Homs) and 49 militants and women and children were killed, when it was organized just before a visit of Kofi Annan. The last provocation was immediately exposed as soon as it became known that the bodies of the previously kidnapped belonged to Alawites. This provocation also contained serious inconsistencies – the names of those killed were from people loyal to the authorities, there were no traces of bombings, etc.
However, the provocation machine is running all the same. Today, the NATO countries directly threat to bomb Syria, and a simultaneous expulsion of Syrian diplomats has begun … As of today, there are no troops within the city of Al Hula, but there are regularly heard bursts of automatic fire, nonetheless. Moreover, it is unclear whether the militants are fighting with each other, or whether supporters of Bashar al-Assad are being cleaned out.
Militants opened fire on virtually everyone who tries to get closer to the border town. Before us a UN convoy was fired upon and two armored jeeps of the UN observers were damaged, when they tried to drive up to an army checkpoint in Tal Dow.
In the attack on the convoy a twenty-year-old terrorist was spotted. The fire was directed on the unprotected slopes of the first jeep, the back door of the second armored car was hooked by a fragment. There are wounded among those accompanying.
According to a wounded soldier: “The next day, UN observers came to us at the checkpoint and as soon as they arrived, gunmen opened fire on them. And three of us were injured. One was wounded in the leg, the second – in the back, and I was hit in the hip.
When the observers came, they could hear a woman who was standing next to them and cried, the woman stood and pleaded the observers’ help – to protect her from the bandits. When I was wounded, the observers watched as I fell, but none of them tried to help. Our checkpoint no longer exists. There are no civilians any longer in Taldou, only militants remain. Our relationship to the locals was excellent. They are very good to us; they called on the army to enter Taldou. We were attacked by snipers.”
Unfortunately, many of the militants are professional snipers. 100-200 meters from our group TV-crew, militants attacked a BMP that went to replace soldiers at the checkpoint. During this a soldier – draftee got a concussion and slight tangential wound in the head by a sniper bullet. Looking at the pierced Kevlar helmet, it seems he did not even realize that he survived by a miracle.
Snipers kill up to 10 soldiers and policemen at checkpoints each day. It is true, that the daily casualties of law enforcement agencies in Homs were dozens of victims daily. But, unfortunately, at 10 am, six dead soldiers were taken to the morgue. Most were killed by a shot in the head. And the day had just begun…
So, these are the names of those were killed by snipers in the early morning hours of May 29:
1. Sergeant Ibrahim Halyuf
2. Sergeant Salman Ibrahim 3. Policeman Mahmoud Danaver 4. Conscript Ali Daher 5. Sergeant Wisam Haidar 6. the dead soldier’s family name could not be clarified
The bandits even fired an automatic burst on our group of journalists, although it was clear that this is a normal filming crew, consisting of unarmed civilians.
HOW THE ATTACK BEGAN
After Friday prayers at about 2 PM on May, 25th a group from the Al Aksh clan started firing on a checkpoint of law enforcement officers from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Returning fire from a BRDM hit the mosque, and this was the very aim to lead to a bigger provocation.
Then, two groups of militants led by the terrorist Nidal Bakkour and Al-Hassan from the Al Hallak clan, supported by a unit of mercenaries, attacked the upper checkpoint on the eastern outskirts of the city. At 15.30 the upper checkpoint was taken, and all the prisoners executed: a Sunni conscript had his throat cut, while Abdullah Shaui (Bedouin) of Deir-Zor was burned alive.
During the attack on the upper checkpoint in the east, the armed men lost 25 people, which were then submitted to the UN observers, together with the 108 dead civilians – “victims of the regime”, allegedly killed by bombing and shelling of the Syrian army. As for the remaining 83 bodies, including 38 young children, they were from the families that were executed by militants. These families were all loyal to the government of Syria.
Interviews:
with a law enforcement officer: “My name is Al Khosam, I am a law enforcement officer. I served in the village of Taldou, the district of Al-Houla, a province of Homs. On Friday, our checkpoint was attacked by a large group of militants. There were thousands.
Q: How do you protect yourself?
Answer: A simple weapon. We had 20 people, we called support, and when they were coming for us, I was wounded, and regained consciousness in the hospital. The attackers were from Ar-Rastan and Al-Hula. Insurgents control Taldou. They burned houses and killed people by the families, because they were loyal to the government. Raped the women and killed the children.”
Interview with a wounded soldier:
“I am Ahmed Mahmoud al Khali. I’m from the city Manbej. Was wounded in Taldou. I come from a support group that came to the aid of our comrades, who were stationed at the checkpoint.
Militants destroyed two infantry fighting vehicles and one BRDM standing at our checkpoint. We moved out to Taldou in a BMP, to pick up our wounded comrades from the checkpoint within the city. We drove them back in the BMP, and I filled in their place.
And after a while the UN observers came. They came to us, we led them to the homes of families who were cut by thugs.
I saw a family of three brothers and their father in the same room. In another room we found dead young children and their mother. And another one- an old man killed in this house. Only five men, women and children. The woman raped and shot in the head, I covered her with a blanket. And the commission had seen them all. They put them in the car and drove away. I do not know where they took them, probably for burial.”
A resident of Taldou on the roof of the police department:
“On Friday afternoon I was home. Hearing the shots, I came out to watch what was happening and saw that the fire came from the north side, towards the location of army checkpoint. As the army did not respond, they started to approach the homes, were subsequently the family was killed. When the army started to return fire, they used the women and children as human shields and continued firing at the checkpoint. When the army began answered, they fled. After that, the army took the surviving women and children and brought them into safety. At this time, Al Jazeera aired pictures and said that the Army committed the massacre at Al Hula.
In fact, they killed the civilians and children in Al-Hula. The bandits did not allow anyone to carry out their work. They steal everything that they can get their hands on: wheat, flour, oil and gas. Most of the fighters are from the city of Ar Rastan.”
After they captured the city, they carried the bodies of their dead comrades, as well as the bodies of people and the children they killed to the mosque. They carried the bodies in KIA pickups. On May, 25th, at around 8 PM, the corpses were already in the mosque. The next day at 11 o’clock in the morning the UN observers arrived at the mosque.
Media Disinformation
To exert pressure on public opinion and change the positions of Russia and China, texts and subtitles in Russian and Chinese languages were prepared in advance, reading: “Syria – Homs – the city of Hula. A terrible massacre perpetrated by the armed forces of the Syrian regime against civilians in the town of Houla. Dozens of victims and their number is growing, mainly women and children, brutally killed by indiscriminate bombing of the CITY.”
Two days later, on May 27, after the residents’ stories and video recordings made showed that the facts do not support the allegation of shelling and bombing, the bandits’ videos had undergone significant changes. At the end of the text appeared this postscript: “And some were killed with knives.”
Marat Musin, Olga Kulygina, Al-Houla, Syria
Original text / source: http://maramus.livejournal.com/86539.html
video: Russian
The translation is based on the impressive work of Soldatovich and Elena. Thank you very much for the translation of this text about the recent events near the Syrian city of Homs and in the area of al-Houlah.
Global Research Editor's Note
This incisive report by independent Russian journalist Marat Musin dispels the lies and fabrications of the Western media. The report is based on a chronology of events as well as eyewitness accounts. Entire pro-government families in Houla were massacred. The terrorists were not pro-government shabbiha militia as conveyed, in chorus, by the mainstream media, they were in large part mercenaries and professional killers operating under the auspices of the self-proclaimed Free Syrian Army (FSA): "When the rebels seized the lower checkpoint in the center of town and located next to the local police department, they began to sweep all the families loyal to the authorities in neighboring houses, including the elderly, women and children. Several families of the Al-Sayed were killed, including 20 young children and the family of Abdul Razak. The people were killed with knives and shot at point blank range. Then they presented the murdered [corpses] to the UN and the international community as victims of bombings by the Syrian army, something that was not verified by any marks on their bodies." We call on our readers to forward this report far and wide, post it on facebook. . The massacre in Houla is being blamed on the Syrian government without a shred of evidence. The objective is not only to isolate Syria politically and economically, but to develop a pretext and a justification for waging an R2P humanitarian war on Syria. The US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has hinted that if the Security Council does not act, the US and its allies may consider "taking actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of the [UN Security] Council.” This report by Marat Musin confirms that crimes against humanity are being committed by terrorist militia. It is essential to reverse the tide of war propaganda which uses civilian deaths as a pretext to wage war, when those killings of civilians were carried out not by government forces but by professional terrorists operating under the helm of the US-NATO sponsored Free Syrian Army. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, Montreal, June 1, 2012 |
Syrian Houla Massacres: Divide & Conquer Strategy Exposed
The Houla Hoaxsters
Another “Benghazi moment” – this time in Syria
by Justin Raimondo, June 04, 2012
It was supposed to be another “Benghazi moment” – an incident so horrific that it would spark Western military intervention in Syria’s increasingly violent civil war. The massacre at Houla was reported to be just such a moment: Syria’s security forces stand accused of killing 32 children under ten years of age, and more than 60 adults, by bombing the rebel-held village of Houla. Photos of the massacre soon appeared onTwitter: and on YouTube, videos of the slaughter, uploaded by anonymous “activists,” appeared on cue. There was just one problem with this “evidence” of a massacre committed by the Syrian government – much of it was completely made up.
Take the photo the BBC used to illustrate the atrocity: it showed a young boy jumping over piles of corpses neatly laid out in preparation for burial. Very dramatic, and very disturbing – except it wasn’t a photo of anything that happened in Houla. Instead, it was a photo taken by Marco Di Lauro in Iraq, in 2003, and appropriated from his web site. The stolen photo was accompanied by a caption that read:
“Photo from Activist. This image – which cannot be independently verified – is believed to show bodies of children in Houla awaiting funeral.”
“Somebody is using illegally one of my images for anti [S]yrian propaganda on the BBC web site front page,” Di Lauro says, “I almost fell off my chair when I saw it.” When confronted by Di Franco, BBC editors took it down, and, by way of explanation, pointed to the caption as somehow exonerating.
Yet it is the very phrasing of that caption that condemns them out of their own mouths, the key word being believed. Why was it believed by the BBC when they received it from some anonymous “activist”? Because it suited their propagandistic purposes – that is, the purposes of the British government, which runs and funds the BBC, just as the Syrian government runs and funds their own state-controlled media. The photo was believed to be an accurate representation of events taking place in Houla because the editors wanted to believe it.
It isn’t just the photos purporting to show the massacre, it’s the “reporting” that is also thrown into doubt: after all, these accounts are all coming from the very same “activists” who have no compunctions about supplying fake photos to the very same media who report their every word as gospel. It is claimed the Syrian army bombarded Houla, and yet the photos shows people with their throats cut, and shot in the head at very close range: this seeming contradiction required a revision of the “activist”-supplied narrative, which was duly changed to depict government-controlled “militias” coming into the village after the bombardment. Yet even this hasty revisionist version didn’t cover all the bases: for example, one of the victims was a candidate in Syria’s recent elections who had refused to stand down at the demand of opposition “activists.” He, too, was brutally murdered, and the question is – by whom?
The BBC’s falling for – or enabling – “activist” fakery is hardly the only such incident: there was the case of “Syria Danny,” whose on-camera antics were exposed in flagrante delicto as he staged a Syrian army “attack” for the benefit of CNN. And don’t forget the fake “blogger” who purported to be “Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari,” a 35-year-old lesbian living in Damascus, supposedly kidnapped by the Syrian regime and abused. “Amina” turned out to be a middle-aged married American schmuck and “Middle Eastern activist,” one Tom MacMaster, studying for a degree at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. The cause of “Amina” was taken up by those ubiquitous Syrian “activists” and trumpeted by their online propaganda apparatus – which has sprung up with weed-like rapidity. That’s what a healthy infusion of money from Western governments will buy you.
Yet even all that money apparently can’t buy competent sock-puppets, with amateurs like MacMaster, “Syria Danny,” and whoever supplied the BBC with Di Lauro’s photo running wild.
Speaking of running wild with enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars, the rebels – already receiving cash, arms, and other emoluments from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Gulf sheikdoms – have already handed a $12 billion bill for “post-Assad development” to the Western “Friends Group,” led by Germany. That, you can be sure, is just the beginning. With the Eurozone going down into the economic abyss, and the Germans berating their Greek (and now Spanish and Italian) partners as unproductive free riders, one has to wonder about German priorities. The British, too, are on the hook, having just upped the amount they’re sending – at a time when government subsidies to the very needy are on the chopping block. And of course there’s no telling how many American tax dollars have been funneled in “non-lethal” aid to the rebels-who-couldn’t-get-their-lies-straight, but one thing is clear: their American trainers and advisers have their work cut out for them.
The US State Department has posted aerial photos of Syrian troops massed near the village, which purportedly show the government was in control of the area when the massacre occurred. The Syrians, for their part, claim they were in a defensive posture, and “activist”-supplied videos are unreliable for all the reasons detailed above. We will probably never know the truth about what happened at Houla – at least, not before the regime-changers in Western capitals and their Saudi allies kick the propaganda ball over the goal post.
Remember that the aim of war propaganda is to create a general impression, not to establish the truth (or falsehood) of any particular disputed fact. The idea is to hurl as many accusations against the target as rapidly as possible, without regard for their source, so as to generate the kind of murkiness where the truth can be created, rather than merely reported. It’s all about establishing a narrative, and any bothersome facts cropping up and getting in the way are hurriedly kicked aside.
Amid all the loud lamentations over the Syrian regime’s brutality, one fact downplayed by Western media outlets is that there are over 60 different rebel militias operating in Syria, whose activities are indistinguishable from the shabihas, or pro-government militias, which are getting the brunt of the blame. As the Washington Post reports:
“As the shabiha’s ranks and violence have grown and widened, groups have sprung up to counter them. Analysts say shabiha-style militias made up of the Sunni Muslims who represent the majority of the population have also started to emerge in regions such as Homs province, where Houla is located and where Sunni and Alawite communities sit side by side, increasing the potential for sectarian violence.”
In funding and arming rebel groups, whose violence is now being unleashed on civilians caught in the middle, the US and its allies are actively undermining Kofi Annan’s peace plan, which the Syrians have accepted. The rebels are determined to destroy the plan, which leaves them out of power: they won’t be happy until they’ve given the West a pretext to intervene militarily. As Hillary Clinton’s publicpronouncements acquire a certain shrillness, that prospect is becoming increasingly likely.
By supporting the “Free Syrian Army,” the US and its allies are openly engaged in another Libya-style intervention, with the same radical Islamists as their armed wing, while a supposedly “secular” and “democracy”-oriented “youth movement” serves as the public face of a deeply reactionary rebel army.
Imagine, for the moment, that some group of foreign powers were involved in financing and arming a “Free American Army,” which launched attacks on US army bases and carried out terrorist acts – car bombings, as have occurred in Damascus, for example – in Washington, D.C. Imagine this rebel army had acquired footholds in key areas, and called for the overthrow of the “regime” in Washington. Do we even have to ask what would be the reaction of the US government?
The Western powers are intent on establishing international rules of governance they have no intention of applying to themselves, and, in this instance, are utilizing the United Nations as their chosen instrument. However, it is by no means certain the UN will go along with the game plan, as Annan’s peace plan – which calls for mutual disarmament and an end to hostilities – would indicate. In which case, the West will do everything it can to undermine the Annan plan and destabilize Syria to the point where they can declare it a “failed state” – and move in for the kill.
The “activist”-authored narrative of a ruthless dictator slaughtering his own people – complete with fake photos, phony videos, and tall tales legitimized as “news” – is aimed at a Western audience. In Syria – where the majority fears the opposition as much, or more, than the dictator Assad – they know better. Unfortunately for them, they have no power to stop the Western-initiated juggernaut headed in their direction.
Saturday
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