The truth is hard to find

Everybody lives in her/his individual reality and we are interpreting, filtering, and distorting the incoming sensory signals according to our believes, biases, misconceptions, and limits of imagination.

Especially in these precarious times, when information of all kind is available in abundance, it is good to have professionals, who lend a helping hand and do some preliminary filtering and interpretation for us so that we don't have to exhaust ourselves and to work overly hard while trying to find out what is really behind the myriads of often conflicting and confusing bits and pieces of information.

For most of the population in Western countries the professionals who help to make sense of the world are the journalists and pundits of mainstream media and it is good to see and hear, it is reassuring, that their message is mostly coherent and easily comprehensible.

Mainstream media means in this context TV broadcasters like MSNBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, Fox, Al-Jazeera, BBC, France 24 and newspapers like NY Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Their message is coherent and coordinated and yet, for people who have a fairly good memory and who apply common sense the facts often don't add up.

For instance: Saddam Hussein's was accused of standing behind the 9/11 attacks and his "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were such an eminent threat that the coalition forces had to invade Iraq, leaving at least 160,000 of Iraqis dead and the country in ruins. But where were the weapons of mass destruction? And what was the benefit of this endeavor? A brutal dictator got removed but are Iraqis indeed better off now than ? 

A second example: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was reported to have unleashed a bloody crackdown on Libyan dissenters, slaughtering peaceful protesters with airstrikes and heavy machine gun fire. To stop the carnage, NATO had to bomb Libya for seven month, arm and train rebel groups, and deploy special commandos. 

But why did NATO reject Gaddafi's offer to hold elections? Where is the evidence of Gaddafi's atrocities? Where is the proof that his was a reign of terror and tyranny? Where are the mass graves and the massacre sites? 

Until now the conflict has caused about 40,000 casualties and Libya is in chaos, with rival militias staking out and defending their territories and armed men terrorizing the population.

A third example: According to media reports, Syria's bloodthirsty dictator Dr. Bashar al-Assad cracks down on the opposition with an iron fist. This is even more despicable because he is a medical doctor who even trained in the UK to specialize in ophthalmology. Dr. Bashar al-Assad is not only betraying his people but also betraying his medical profession and flagrantly violating the Hippocratic Oath "to do no harm".

An estimated 5400 people are reported to have died until now and the call for a no fly zone, this time imposed by fighter planes from the Gulf monarchies and Turkey, backed by US logistic support, grows louder. Arab countries (except Lebanon and Iraq) plus Turkey have already imposed sanctions including a freeze on Syrian government assets. 

France proposes "humanitarian corridors" with armed protection. In December the USS George H.W. Bush, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, was parked off the Syrian coast and Western nations are urging their citizens to leave as soon as possible. How will this conflict end?

It is mystifying that before 2011, Libyan and Syrian humanitarian records and various social indicators tracked by UN organizations were quite favorable, especially compared with the Arab monarchies in the Gulf.

A forth example: Iran is accused of developing nuclear weapons capability, which would be an unacceptable threat to all other countries in the region. European Union foreign ministers just imposed sweeping sanctions, freezing the assets of Iran's central bank in EU nations and banning the import of Iranian crude oil and petroleum products. 

The proliferation of nuclear weapons increases the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe and therefore all measures to diminish and finally ban them are welcome news. Nobody until now though is discussing Israel's nuclear weapons program in Dimona, nobody seems to be worried about the estimated 200 nuclear bombs that Israel has built.

In December US district Judge George Daniels ruled that Iran and Hezbollah were responsible for the 9/11 attacks -- so it was not Saddam Hussein? Can it be, that now, 10 years after the attacks and after the destruction of Iraq, finally the truth comes out?

The viability of a military strike against Iran by Israel and the US is discussed since many month but the time seems not yet be right for decisive action. Syria, which signed a defense agreement with Iran in 2006, is first.

Can it really be that these are all unrelated incidents? Can it be that there is no global far reaching strategy behind all this? This series of events looks so much like power politics, that inevitably serious doubts and questions arise. As the saying goes: "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it must be a duck."

This looks and smells so much like power politics, so much like a far reaching strategy to achieve hegemony and secure the access to vital resources, mainly crude oil and water, that any independent thinker will be tempted to look for alternative news sources who will maybe paint a different picture and allow the construction of a different reality.

The alternative sources used here are: Syrian news media (Syria News, Syria Today, SANA), Russian media (Russia Today, Pravda, Voice of Russia), Iranian Media (Press TV, CHN), independent journalists and individuals who visited Syria or have strong connections to the country, like Pierre Piccinin, Juergen Todenhoefer, Webster Tarpley, Alexander Fominco, Qaleb Qandil, Jeremy Salt, Kamel Wazne, Ramzy Baroud, Jamal Wakim,  Julie Leveque, Lizzie Phelan.

The mentioned sources will maybe make some readers shudder as they are deemed to be biased and untrustworthy, yet they are a welcome alternative to Western media outlets, which have themselves discredited profoundly countless times and displayed a level of bias and dishonesty that is hard to top. One example:

On January 26, Liam Stack wrote in the NY Times: "Torture and death in detention have become widespread problems in postwar Libya, international humanitarian groups said Thursday, a troubling indication that some Qaddafi-era abuses continue."

This is brilliant, this is an example of propaganda at its best, and Goebbels would have been proud of Liam Stack, whose name should be memorized as he maybe will one day even reach the status of Ethan Bronner.

Readers of this blog will have noticed my comprehensive discussion about Gaddafi's alleged atrocities and the conclusion, that they were fabrications. More details here: http://mato48.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/a-few-notes-about-libya/.

Western media rules about countries in the US crosshairs are very clear: Atrocities reported by opponents of the government are presented as facts, atrocities by US supported rebels are either ignored, labelled as "alleged," "not confirmed," or declared as understandable retaliation and unavoidable side effects of war.

"The fog of war" has become an excuse for "the fog of journalism", similarly deception and outright lying have become the code of conduct for every professional journalist who pursues a career in Western media corporations.

Compared to Western media, the Syrian media landscape seems quite diverse and it is astonishing, that institutions like "Syria Today" can acidly criticize Ba'ath party rule and US-born blogger Razan Ghazzawi or Hussein Ghrer, who openly call for regime change are still allowed to publish. In the USA such people would be already in indefinite detention or facing trial for "providing material support to terrorists".

Many networks were able to film and report in Syria despite a reported media ban. But Western broadcasters like BBC and CNN were not interested in sound reporting and rather used and misrepresented YouTube video clips of a so-called uprising in Homs as proof, that the regime in Syria was "gunning down" innocent protesters.

Technical advances have made it more difficult for governments to hide repression, but have also made the work of propagandists easier. Various kinds of misinformation and propaganda lies can be presented as witness reports and video clips can be edited and mislabeled and show the victims as perpetrators and vice versa.

The journalists in Western newspapers and radio and television stations know of course about the dubious nature of much of the information they are conveying but nevertheless present them as facts. For example: The frequently cited UN report that 5,400 Syrians have been killed is solely based on rebel sources. The accounts of mass defections from the Syrian army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers appear to be a fabrication and were never confirmed by credible sources. And while mainstream media has now for month condemned a purportedly ferocious government crackdown, the rising casualties figures of Syrian soldiers and police tell another story.

The casualties figures of soldiers and police are now well beyond 2,000, even the Syrian rebels acknowledge that and point it out proudly. But this fact alone should make every one, who is not totally brainwashed and sedated by Western propaganda aware, that this is not a brutal crackdown on dissent but an armed insurrection launched by the USA, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf monarchies.

This is of course not be allowed to be reported, it will be maybe reported after the job is done.

On January 19 the BBC informed us, that special commandos from MI6 and SAS trained Libyan rebels, directed air strikes and coordinated rebel movements.

One has to imagine a scenario where an outside power would bring weapons into the USA, including modern sniper rifles like M40A5 , Barrett M107A1, Sig Sauer 3000, heavy machine guns like Browning M2, HK223, or L1A1, and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). One has to imagine a scenario where these weapons and accompanying sophisticated military telecommunication and spy equipment would be distributed by special commandos which would also provide training, technical advice, and maintenance.

A pretext for such a move would be easy to find, the growing social gap, the political corruption (in the USA called lobbying), and the curtailment of civil liberties have already caused significant grief and the constant arrests of OWS (Occupy Wall Street) protesters could be easily framed as a ferocious government crackdown.

The imported equipment would for sure find appreciative recipients from all political fringes. Right wing libertarians, Klansmen, Nazis, NRA -splinter groups, remnants of "Army of God", Aryan Nation, Phineas Priesthood, Symbionese Liberation Army, Weathermen, The Order, Jewish Defense League, they all would gladly take it. Urban street gangs would also like to have these toys, and there would be a good change to get deranged and traumatized veterans, drug addicts, homeless, and the many unemployed and disenfranchised young men interested into the cause. The foreign commandos could also orchestrate mass prison escapes and arm the freed criminals.

The armed rebels would have sharply differing goals and visions but they would be united by one big desire, the desire to overthrow the US government. They armed rebels would postpone their divisions till victory was achieved and the hated government was overthrown.

As the US police and the military are extremely well armed, the fight would be protracted and bloody but if there were a no-fly zone imposed by the UN chances would be quite good to destabilize the USA and finally break the regime.

This is of course an impossible scenario because any country who would hatch such a plan and start to ship weapons would be obliterated, wiped out from the face of the earth in no time. A plan like this can only be executed by the imperial powers: USA, the NATO allies, the Arab monarchies.

=================

After this long introduction, here is the alternative story about Syria, constructed from alternative media sources:

Syria has a diverse population with many ethnic groups (Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, Turks) and religions (Sunnis, Alawis, Christians, Druzes, Ismailis). The Alawites comprise only about 12 percent of Syria's population but largely dominate the government. Sunnis have a long list of grievances against Alawi rule. They consider Alawis to be socially and religiously inferior and they resent the socialist ideology of the Ba'ath Party, which reduces their wealth.

Corruption is widespread but not more severe than in any other Arab nation. The Syrian intelligence services yet are not only corrupt but also incompetent and infiltrated by Mossad and CIA. The chief of state security in Homs and 90 percent of his employees have been arrested. They informed insurgents and apparently they did it for money.

Dissent is not universal and not widespread.

According to an opinion poll commissioned by The Doha Debates and published in January, Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad and 56 percent don't want him to resign. Even a blatantly biased Al-Jazeera Facebook  poll showed a majority support for President Assad.

Public protests against Ba'ath Party rule are dwarfed by massive rallies in support of the government. The NY Times on January 13 had to grudgingly admit: “The turnout [at least tens of thousands] in Sabaa Bahrat Square in Damascus once again underlined the degree of backing that Mr. Assad and his leadership still enjoy among many Syrians, nearly seven months into the popular uprising. That support is especially pronounced in cities like Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest.”

Other media outlets are not as timid in fabricating/fixing numbers. The roughly 10,000 opposition protesters in Hama were by many news organizations boldly inflated to the enormous amount of 500,000.

The government tries to appease the dissenters with the adoption of a new law about political parties and is facilitating their creation. Although formally the constitution envisages a multiparty system and seven parties are represented in the parliament, in compliance with clause 8 of the constitution the leading role belongs to the ruling Ba'ath party. Currently there is a wide discussion in Syria about this clause. A national referendum about a new constitution is scheduled for February and the government states, that this clause would be abolished if most of the public and political forces spoke against it.

The Syrian government will maybe be able to appease the dissenting population with such concessions, but it will not be able to appease the armed insurgents and their enablers. The USA, Israel, Britain, France, Turkey, and the Gulf monarchies jointly organize insurgent attacks. Funds and heavy weapons are supplied by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Operations are coordinated out of America's Incirlik air base and Iskenderun Naval Base in Turkey.

There are training camps for insurgents in Turkey and Lebanon, Instructors from Britain, France, Turkey, and the Gulf states are in charge for the training and armament of the insurgents.

The script is exactly the same as it was for Libya:

1. Inciting ethnic and sectarian divisions

2. Labeling the ensuing unrest as uprising

3. Organizing an armed insurgency

4. International sanctions
5. UN Resolution imposing a no-fly zone
6. NATO bombing campaign

The plan has reached phase four.

Who is fighting?

CIA, Mossad, MI6 commandos are masquerading as Syrian soldiers and initiating attacks in order to demonize the Syrian regime. Groups of gunmen are terrorizing the population. Snipers and terrorist bombings are indiscriminately killing civilians, which is then blamed on government forces.

The insurgents attack Syrian soldiers and military facilities, police stations, oil pipelines, and railroads. They also murder persons which are deemed to be regime supporters (In the city of Homs insurgents killed five well known scientists), burn down schools, and assault teachers. 900 schools have been set on fire and 30 teachers have been killed since March 2011. Two terrorist attacks in Damascus on December 23 and January 6 killed 70 Syrians and wounded 220. Some victims were police officers but most were by-passers.

It should not be left unnoticed that an Arab League statement calling for an end to the violence of the state and of armed gangs was censored by the BBC, who reported that the Arab League called on the Syrian government to end the violence.

The main insurgent group is called FSA (Free Syrian Army). The group has declared itself as the armed wing of the "Syrian National Council" and it is led by Colonel Riad al-Asaad. The FSA fighters are positioned about a mile from the Turkish border, near enough to escape across if the situation turnes dire. FSA operatives admitted, that "The Turks gave us our freedom to move,” and they also told, that "every FSA group in Turkey has its own job."

In November, Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group who helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, met in Turkey with Free Syrian Army leaders for negotiations about sending Libyan fighters to train insurgents. Between 800 and 1400 Libyan fighters were subsequently airlifted to Turkey by NATO.

Another part of the insurgency is the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which is trained and armed by NATO. This group is linked to al-Qaeda and the CIA.

All insurgence groups have their bases outside Syria in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon and can easily retreat and escape across the borders. CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), a Wall Street-funded US think-tank estimated, that the groups together have 15,000 fighters.

On Democracy Now, which was an important platform for propaganda against Libya and sadly keeps up this policy to promote now regime change also in Syria, the US based Syria expert Karam Nachar spoke of 40,000 members of the FSA organized in 12 divisions. If that is true, the question must be asked, who could train and arm and coordinate a force of 40,000 in half a year? This can only be done by a combined and intense effort of the USA, NATO, and the Gulf states. One has to call it as it is: The Syrian insurgents are not (or only to a minor part) an armed opposition but a mercenary army set up by the US and her allies in violation of international laws and codes of conduct.

The traditional opposition groups in Syria always were the Kurds, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Federation of Tenseekiet Syrian Revolution, and the Salafi sect.

At the beginning of the unrest in March, most Kurds supported the unarmed opposition and pressured the government to use Kurdish as their official language and educate the children in their mother tongue. The government has granted them these concessions and the Kurds are currently waiting to see how things pan out and are not actively participating in the armed insurgency.

The Muslim Brotherhood has decrease the level of its hostility toward the Syrian government after President Bashar al-Assad supported the Palestinians during the December 2008/2009 Gaza Massacre (Operation Cast Lead) and until now has not played a major role in the crisis, though the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” is propagandizing the overthrow of the Ba'ath party. In December, the leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood stated, that President Assad would fall in the next few months.

The Federation of Tenseekiet Syrian Revolution acquired more freedom to conduct activities after President Assad came to power in 2000 and, like the Muslim Brotherhood, is standing on the sidelines and not actively participating in the protests. 

The Salafi sect is directly sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and most Salafis are joining or at least actively supporting the armed insurgency. Lebanese Salafis and elements associated with the al-Mustaqbal party are also reported to be involved in the insurgency.

Salafis in northern Lebanon are led by Mustaqbal lawmaker Khaled al-Daher and his brother Rabi, who are considered as the link between the US-backed Mustaqbal party and the Salafis. The Lebanese Salafis have attacked the Syrian border station in al-Hajana and regularly fire across the border on Syrian soldiers.

Salafi clerics in north Lebanon provide refuge to insurgents and are issuing provocative decrees. Salafi mosques in the region are being used as weapons storage. 

Who supplies the propaganda bits?

The already mentioned London-based “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, its director is Rami Abdel Rahman. The group receives reports via phone and YouTube videos from inside Syria. It works in close coordination with two US-funded NGOs (the Damascus Center for Human Rights and Humanity United) as well as with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

All news agencies get their informations from this organization, which single-handedly forms Western public opinion.

Another Syrian propaganda group is the Syrian National Council in Istanbul. It is headed by Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian-French political scientist at the Sorbonne in Paris. The Syrian National Council is a heterogeneous formation which comprises groups with vastly differing goals. They represent the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni organizations, Kurdish separatists, and dissident  expatriates from Europe and the USA.

Beyond that there exist also the "General Syria Revolution Committees" and the "Local Coordination Committees (LCCSyria)." These groups are mainly known by their internet presence and it is not clear who is behind them. One has to bear in mind that websites or blogs about Syria can easily be created by any computer literate and Arabic speaking person.

One last word about anti-Syrian propaganda: It has recently been revealed that the UN report about alleged Syrian crimes against humanity was co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank "Middle East Policy Council", which includes representatives of the oil industry and the US government as well as the president of the US-Qatar Business Council. Members of the US-Qatar Business Council are among others Al-Jazeera, Chevron, Exxon, Raytheon, and Boeing.

Why Syria needs to be destroyed:

Israel has its sights set on both the Golan Heights and South Lebanon. Israel is pumping water from springs in the Golan Heights to the shrinking Sea of Galilee, depriving Syria of major water resources. Water from most springs exploited by Israel would naturally stream downhill to Syria. 

Water disputes triggered military confrontations between Syria and Israel in the past. In 1964, Syria diverted the Hasbani and Banyas rivers and Israel retaliated by launching airstrikes at Syrian constructions.

Turkey also needs water and is already blocking the course of the Euphrates with dam projects, depriving Syrian agriculture. Syria saw an ally over this cause in the PKK (the Kurdish independence movement), as the Kurds were grieved that the South Anatolia water project was drowning Kurdish villages and orchards. Open tolerance of PKK camps in Syria particularly enraged the Turks who want to weaken and neutralize Syria to root out PKK refuges in Syria.

The Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuweit, Oman want to destroy the last remaining bastion of the Ba'ath Party and its socialist ideology once and for all. The Ba'ath Party has branches in many Arab countries though it only held power in Iraq and Syria. Without an actual involvement in the politics of a country the Ba'ath ideology would be far less appealing to Arab populations.

Syria is Iran's main ally and signed a defense agreement with Iran in 2006.

=================

Call it neocolonialism or imperialism, the simple truth is, that the USA needs to spread democracy in the Middle East to secure the access to vital resources, mainly oil and water. Iraq had to be democratized to secure oil, Libya for oil and water and to prevent African countries to escape IMF claws, Syria needs to be democratized for access to water, for consolidating Israeli expansion (Golan Heights, south Lebanon), and for removing an obstacle to the democratization of Iran. Iran has to be democratized to secure oil and to achieve absolute hegemony in the region.

So what? It is all for the benefit of us Western consumers, it is to secure the fuel for our cars and airfares and the supply of iPhones, iPads, iWhatever. The question arises, why anybody in the West should oppose this policy and less crucial but all the more puzzling: Why does the Western media machine even take the effort to misinform, deceive, and conceal the real story?

Maybe one should consider these propaganda campaigns as test runs or field tests of media strategies. The lying and deceiving is not an essential part of the plan to enslave and recolonialize another nation, the accompanying propaganda campaigns are clearly just a side show.

A sweeping and impeccable propaganda campaign will be yet of significant importance when it comes to the ultimate aim, the ultimate plan: the enslavement and exploitation of the Western populations by the ruling plutocracy. The situation is already heating up and thousands are demonstrating, dissent is widespread.

There'll come a time, when more people are laid off, or lose their pensions and social security entitlements, when droughts, catastrophic storms, floods are devastating wide areas and many, many get sick from industrial and agricultural poisons. There'll come a time, when thousands and not only hundreds of OWS protesters, peace activists, and environmentalist are arrested, and when a violent uprising is not only a remote possibility in a distant future.

Then the Liam Stack's and Ethan Bronner's will have to prove, that they are worth their money. Then they will have to use every trick in the book, they will have to lie and deceit like never before and write whatever is necessary to confuse, distract, dumbfound, daze, numb the population.

They will do everything to obscure and hide the truth -- and yet by their very effort they will make the truth of their existence and their purpose even easier to find. Will their unmasking help or will it be too late then?

We better uncover the truth now!