A Year Later, HRW Admits Syrian Rebels Guilty of Atrocities

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Kidnapping, Torture, & Murder of Civilians by Syrian Opposition Confirmed.

Human Right Watch (HRW), just as it did in Libya, waited until the very last possible moment to admit what the alternative media had been reporting for over a year - that Syria's rebels are craven, torturing, kidnapping, murdering terrorists committing widespread and systematic atrocities not only against security forces, but against anyone suspected of supporting the Syrian government as well as randomly targeted civilians.


Image: Human Rights Watch knew all along that Syria's opposition was armed and conducting a systematic campaign of kidnapping, torture, and mass murder but waited until the last possible moment to acknowledge it. As we can see, HRW is funded by George Soros' Open Society as well as a myriad of corporate-funded foundations all disingenuously leveraging the cause of human rights to carry out their agenda of achieving global corporate-financial hegemony. (click on image to enlarge)

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The HRW report titled, "Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses," is broken into three parts, kidnapping, torture, and executions. And while the report attempts to focus mainly on atrocities carried out against security forces and government supporters, the mention of civilian victims is made as well. The report states:

"Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians."

Stratfor Emails: US Government Contractor Was Involved In Gaddafi Killing; Now Aiding Syrian “Regime Change”

Source: Prison Planet
Steve Watson

Government “fact finding mission” used as cover for training terrorist fighters.

Emails obtained from intelligence gathering outfit Stratfor and leaked by Wikileaks show that a former director of Blackwater, the US mercenary contractor organization, was sent by the US government to fight alongside rebels in Libya, and was even involved in the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.

In addition, a US government committee has now overseen the mercenary’s assignment to Syria where he is tasked with protecting rebel fighters and finding ways to “help in regime change.”

Al-Akhbar English reports on the email stash leaked by Wikileaks, that shows former Blackwater director Jamie F. Smith struck up a rapport with Stratfor vice president Fred Burton.

Smith, now the chief executive of the security firm SCG International, was contracted by the US government to protect Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) members and train Libyan rebel fighters following the announcement of the NATO no-fly zone over Libya one year ago.

Smith fed intelligence back to Stratfor under the codename LY700, and was even apparently involved in the assassination of the former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the town of Sirte.

In one email exchange, Burton praised Smith’s intelligence gathering efforts writing “Good skinny. This is what is defined as a credible source. Not some windbag Paki academic belching and passing gas.”

Smith continued to pass intelligence to Stratfor right up until the outfit’s email servers were hacked in December.

Damascus Terror Blasts Prove Outside Forces at Work in Syria

Source: Corbett Report

The Syrian opposition leaders are admitting some foreign governments are sending weapons to the rebels. Independent journalist James Corbett believes those outside forces have no thoughts about humanitarian aid and are only concerned with regime change.

Engdahl: Arab Spring a Pentagon Strategy

Source: RT

The UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has urged the UN Security Council to break the political deadlock on Syria. He said 'unity over the crisis will help his peace mission' - comments he made during his briefing to the body about his findings following his recent visit to Damascus. William F. Engdahl, researcher and author of "Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order"

Genocidal Turkish Government Eyes Syria

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Once again Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, is considering the partial military invasion of Syria to give foreign terrorists and extremist militants attempting to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a reprieve in their failing campaign.

Cross-border mass murder is a routine procedure for Turkey, who has been carrying out a very real genocidal campaign against the Kurd minority within and beyond its own borders for decades - this after the early 1900's Armenian genocide which the government of Turkey to this day still denies.

Photo: Turkish tanks entering Iraq to raid Kurdish towns and hunt suspected rebels in 2008. More recently, Turkey has been bombing "suspected" rebel bases in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as conducting mass nationwide arrests. Strangely, as Turkey verifiably does what Libya's Qaddafi and Syria's Assad have been accused of doing, the West's myriad of disingenuous rights advocacy groups are quiet as is the Wall Street/London beholden UN Security Council and the West's corporate media editorials.

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Turkey is currently strafing and rolling tanks over its own people.

Turkey has been waging a decades-long bloody campaign against its own armed uprising in predominately Kurdish areas bordering Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In fact, at one point, the US allowed Turkish tanks to cross into American-occupied Iraq to attack villages suspected of harboring armed Kurdish separatists in 2008, mirroring the very tactics Erdogan is now condemning Syria for. The Guardian reported in their 2008 article, "Iraq demands Turkey withdraw from border conflict with Kurds," that the conflict had been raging since 1984 and had cost the lives of 40,000 people - dwarfing the UN's fabricated death toll for Syria's current conflict.

Empire, Power and People with Andrew Gavin Marshall - Episode 10

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Andrew Gavin Marshall

Road to Tehran

The Western imperial powers seem intent on regime change in Iran. It has been said that, “the road to Tehran is through Damascus,” and such sentiments have been expressed by the King of Saudi Arabia, a ruthless tyrant who represses his own and neighboring populations (such as in Bahrain), and who calls for Syria to show “restraint” against its ‘repression.’ The hypocrisy of the West and its regional allies knows no bounds. The Western puppets, as we know from Wikileaks releases, favor a U.S. military strike against Iran, yet the Arab world as a whole does not. In fact, the wider world – and the vast majority of the global population – supports Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment, but we are told that Iran “defies” the so-called “international community.” From official report, documents, and statements, we know that Iran has no nuclear weapon or any nuclear weapons program, but still, Iran is presented as a “threat.” What is the basis for this threat? What are the intentions and actions of the imperial powers against Iran? How do the sanctions affect Iran and its people? Are we, indeed… on the road to Tehran?

Amnesty International's Ultimatum to Russia

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

US State Department-run Amnesty International demands Russia allow US & NATO to commence the ruination and plundering of Syria.  

As Libya splinters into infighting factions, with racist genocidal death squads scouring "undesirables" across the nation, entire regions of the country peeling off as semi-autonomous terror-emirates and with a BP, Shell, and Total-funded Petroleum Institute chairman installed as "Prime Minister," one can clearly see the tens of thousands of deaths brought about by the UN sanctioned US-lead NATO campaign against the North African nation was an absolute failure. That is, if preserving innocent life was indeed its goal.

However, if the goal was to fracture the nation into ineffectual, infighting micro-states, while installing a proxy government in Tripoli to green-light contracts with Western corporations to plunder the nation's national wealth, it was a resounding success.

However, clearly the world was deceived by the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the United States government, the British and French governments, and of course NATO in the execution of their "responsibility to protect" mission. To allow a repeat of the vast criminality that has irreparably ravaged Libya would be unconscionable. Yet that is exactly what Amnesty International is demanding of the Russian Federation.


Image: Amnesty International using the same "activism 2.0" gags employed by their junior partners at Invisible Children, the perpetrators of the Kony 2012 scam. Note the "Donate Now: Fight bad guys with every dollar," and how like Invisible Children, Amnesty addresses its audience as if they are children. Ironically, Amnesty and Invisible Children also both so happen to cultivate a myriad of connections with the US State Department and corporate interests.

Junk Journalism: The "Assad" E-mails

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Guardian skewers own credibility with hamfisted Wikileaks knock-off aimed at Syria.

"It is impossible to rule out the possibility of fakes in the email cache, but..." "The Assad E-Mails," London Guardian, March 14, 2012.

This sentence right here should have immediately halted the publication of anything revolving around an alleged cache of e-mails provided to the Guardian by the obviously compromised "Syrian opposition." The source is clearly biased, politically motivated, and their information unconfirmed. Yet the Guardian decided to run with the story anyway, casting doubt on their own objectivity, journalistic integrity, and their true motivation, which now is clearly not "journalism."

The Guardian, in their explanation as to why they decided to publish unconfirmed information included the following statement, "we believe the more detailed picture of the workings of Assad's inner circle that emerges from the mails, and the extent to which he and his wife have managed to sustain their luxurious lifestyle, are also of public interest." A "more detailed picture" that is in fact unverified and most likely a politically motivated fabrication is indeed of "public interest" if you are trying to sell a particular narrative regardless of the actual facts.

The job of a journalist is to report the facts impartially to help inform the public and enable them to make accurate decisions in regards to a vast array of issues that affect their daily lives as well as the collective well-being of their communities and nations. A journalist is not to irresponsibly publish anything that comes across their desk, applying sensational headlines while making incredible innuendos only to post disclaimers halfway down the page that the information they are attempting to foist upon the public as fact and "truth," "may not be verified or true."

CNN, Al Jazeera Caught Red-Handed Staging War Propaganda

Source: RT

Syria's turmoil has been laid bare on our TV screens for more than a year, but some networks are being accused of affecting rather than reflecting the conflict. Maria Finoshina reports now, on how there's more to the coverage on the Qatari-owned Al Jazeera TV channel, than meets the eye.

"Kony 2012" A New Recruiting Tool for US-UK Aggressions and Genocide in Africa

Source: Infowars

Editor's Note: Dr. Tarpley aslo discusses Russian elections and Syria's destabilization

Source: Land Destroyer Report

Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it "Rhodesia."

Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market" was one of AFRICOM's guiding principles. Of course by "global market," the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.

In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM's expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.

Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.

For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie's "Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa," and BlackStarNews.com's "KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda."

Al Jazeera Journalists Quit Channel Citing Bias on Syria Coverage

Source: RT

Qatar's aggressive stance towards Assad has led to a string of resignations at the country's al-Jazeera TV news channel. Those who left describe bias at the station which they say has become a tool to target the Syrian regime. RT's Paula Slier describes those accusations.

Military Attack Against Syria Without Congressional Approval Could Lead To Obama’s Impeachment

Source: RT


‘Impeach Obama’ Bill: Use of military without Congress approval ‘high crime’

An American military attack on Syria could effectively lead to the impeachment of President Barack Obama. Congressmen say that any war without congressional authorization would be “unconstitutional”.

Republican Representative Walter B. Jones Jr. has come up with a resolution demanding Obama’s impeachment in case his administration starts another military action without the approval of Congress. This came as a reaction to the American Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announcing that in order to carry out the offensive, the US military needs permission from the UN and NATO alone. 

Jones’s resolution states that the prime authority to rule on the attack is the US Congress, not international bodies, be it NATO or UN. 

“Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the constitution,” Jones’s resolution said. 

In an exchange which occurred at a session of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that in case the Obama administration decides to strike Syria, it would merely “inform” Congress after the decision has been made. 

“Our goal would be to seek international permission and we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this,” Panetta said. “Whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress, I think those are issues I think we would have to discuss as we decide what to do here.”

Responding to Panetta, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said he was “breathless” to hear the statement.

The Bloody Road to Damascus

Source: Boiling Frogs Post
Prof. James Petras

The Triple Alliance’s War on a Sovereign State

 

There is clear and overwhelming evidence that the uprising to overthrow President Assad of Syria is a violent, power grab led by foreign-supported fighters who have killed and wounded thousands of Syrian soldiers, police and civilians, partisans of the government and its peaceful opposition.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Due to a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

Libya's Big-Oil PM Rolls Over for Western Masters

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

El-Keib obfuscates/defends Libyan support for terrorist militants in Syria.  

Libya's Prime Minister, and British Petroleum, Total, and Shell-funded Petroleum Institute chairman Abdurrahim el-Keib, flatly denied allegations by Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin that Libya was directly funding, training, and arming militants in Syria. El-Keib's denial stands in direct contradiction of reports like the London Telegraph's "Leading Libyan Islamist met Syrian Army Opposition Group," where it was revealed that "the new Libyan authorities had offered money and weapons to the growing insurgency against Bashar al-Assad."


Images: Screenshots from the Petroleum Institute's "Partners and Sponsors" page, as well as el-Keib's profile page (inset). (click image to enlarge)

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Additionally, VoltaireNet.org would confirm Abdul Hakim Belhaj, Tripoli's military commander and leader of the US State Department-listed terror organization Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), was not just assisting Syrian militants but in fact leading them in NATO's armed destabilization of Syria.

Clearly, Libya is assisting the US by admittedly training, arming, and providing foreign-terrorists to fight alongside Syrian militants, in yet another example of post US-engineered "Arab Spring" nations emerging as US client-states. Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki, a US-funded activist leader installed upon a wave of destabilization triggered by US-backed activists, has likewise supported US efforts to isolate and topple the Syrian government. Marzouki announced that Tunisia would begin withdrawing recognition of the Syrian government and prepare to expel the Syrian ambassador from Tunisia.

Russia Accuses Libya of Training Syrian Rebels

Source: Lacrosse Tribune

Russia demanded Wednesday that NATO apologize for civilian casualties during the uprising in Libya last year and accused the Libyan government of supporting a training center for Syrian rebels, provoking a sharp response from the U.S. and Libya’s prime minister.

The sparring was another indication of how deeply divided the international community remains over the turmoil in the Middle East, particularly the bloody uprising in Syria.

Russia and China have accused NATO of overstepping its Security Council mandate to protect civilians in Libya during the uprising last year, and have strongly opposed any similar action in Syria.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said his country has received information that “a special training center for Syrian revolutionaries” has been established in Libya with support from government authorities.

He did not elaborate but expressed concern about “the uncontrolled proliferation of Libyan arms in the region” and said training fighters to attack Syria’s government was undermining stability in the Middle East.

Pentagon Launches Desperate Damage Control Over Shocking Panetta Testimony

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Alex Jones: “This represents absolute 100 per cent proof that the military industrial complex which runs the United States is under the control of foreign central banks who are imposing a military dictatorship.”

The Pentagon is engaging in damage control after shocking testimony yesterday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at a Senate Armed Services Committee congressional hearing during which it was confirmed that the U.S. government is now completely beholden to international power structures and that the legislative branch is a worthless relic.

During the hearing yesterday Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey brazenly admitted that their authority comes not from the U.S. Constitution, but that the United States is subservient to and takes its marching orders from the United Nations and NATO, international bodies over which the American people have no democratic influence.

Panetta was asked by Senator Jeff Sessions, “We spend our time worrying about the U.N., the Arab League, NATO and too little time, in my opinion, worrying about the elected representatives of the United States. As you go forward, will you consult with the United States Congress?”

The Defense Secretary responded “You know, our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”

Despite Sessions’ repeated efforts to get Panetta to acknowledge that the United States Congress is supreme to the likes of NATO and the UN, Panetta exalted the power of international bodies over the US legislative branch.

John McCain: Founding Father of the Terrorist Emirate of Benghazi

Source: Land Destroyer Report
Tony Cartalucci

Benghazi declares autonomy, raises Al-Qaeda flag. McCain seeks to spread terrorist empire to Syria.  

"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it." - Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011.

Image: And yet, the very courthouse McCain uttered his lies in front of is now flying the flag of Al Qaeda, while crowds have been photographed in the streets of Benghazi carrying it aloft since the fall of Qaddafi. Clearly, the senator from Arizona was "mistaken." (click images to enlarge)

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Even as McCain deceived the world with his comments in pursuit of overthrowing and destroying the sovereign nation-state of Libya, it was already a matter of record, according to America's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center, that Benghazi, and much of eastern Libya known as Cyrenaica, served as an epicenter for global Al Qaeda recruitment. Militants hailing from the eastern region's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) would end up in both Afghanistan and Iraq fighting Western troops and participating in sectarian violence.

CNN Botches Effort to Refute 'Syrian Danny' Propaganda Scandal

Source: Infowars
Paul Joseph Watson

CNN’s attempt to refute claims that dubious activist Danny Dayem, known as ‘Syria Danny’, was caught staging sounds of gunfire during a recent interview with the network only resulted in further embarrassment, when Dayem admitted that the suspect video “should have been deleted,” presumably to hide the evidence of his propaganda stunt.

Following our exposé yesterday morning, which documented how Dayem, who has become the establishment media’s poster child for a military invasion of Syria, had ordered staged gunfire sounds to be made off camera during an interview, CNN’s Anderson Cooper invited him to engage in damage control during last night’s show.

During the interview with Cooper, Dayem only succeeds in virtually admitting the fact that the video is suspect. Asked how the footage was leaked, Dayem starts to say ‘we should have deleted it’ before hastily stating, “this has all been deleted.”

“I don’t know how they got it, this is all private, we should have, this has all been deleted, we have to delete all this stuff,” said Dayem.

Why Dayem is so insistent that the footage should be deleted, unless it contains something incriminating, is not explained. The interview from the footage has already been broadcast globally by CNN, so why the need to delete the rest of the footage? Perhaps because Dayem finds it hard to explain why he tells someone off camera during the clip, “Did you tell him to get the gunfire ready?”

This quote is not even addressed during Dayem’s interview with Cooper.

Furthermore, on his official Twitter feed, Dayem claims a different excuse to explain away him being rumbled as staging the gunfire.

“This was camera tricks by the Assad regime helped by Russians,” claims Dayem, citing no actual evidence.

In addition, in the original CNN interview with Cooper, Dayem claims he recovered dead bodies from civilians who had been killed “400 meters” away from his location, yet in last night’s interview he claims the shelling was taking place 15 kilometers away in a different city.

China Votes Against an Excuse for War

Source: China.org.cn
Qu Xing - President of the China Institute of International Studies

In February, China voted twice against a UN draft resolution which strongly condemned the Syrian President Bashar Assad's cruel crackdown on domestic uprising and calls for his resignation.

This action is a comprehensive judgment that considers the basic principles of the Charter of the United Nations, basic guidelines of contemporary international relations, China's national interests, and bilateral relations between China and the related countries.

In fact, China appreciates the Arab League's peace efforts; the reason why China voted against the draft resolution is related to its certain sections: they would provide a foundation for Western countries to launch a future Syrian war.

For example, the draft resolution agreed to solve the issue according to the schedule of the Arab League, and reserved the right to take further action if the draft cannot be carried out. But that hides acquiescence for free interpretation which would be nothing less than starting the vicious dominoes of foreign armed intervention in the Syrian conflict.

Libya has served a good example in this regard, where the Security Council resolutions had been overstepped and the Security Council authorization had been abused.

During the six-month war in Libya, at least 25,000 civilians lost their lives, and no one can tell the exact number of the people injured. If the Libyan model is applied to the case of Syria, a similar disaster will undoubtedly occur, and the wounds of war will be difficult to heal.

Obama Administration Moves to Aid Syrian Opposition

Source: Cryptogon

In the piece below, we read that this, “Stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition.”

If you want to read detailed, voluminous accounts of how the U.S. covertly and illegally provides weapons to any state or group it pleases, see, Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq by Alan Friedman and, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed.

In other words, planeloads of weapons are going to be given to Al Qaeda (See: Syria: Clinton Admits U.S. On Same Side As Al Qaeda).

Via: Foreign Policy:

The Obama administration is moving to provide direct assistance to the internal opposition in Syria for the first time, marking a shift in U.S. policy toward a more aggressive plan to help oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Last week, a group of senior Obama administration officials met to finalize a package of options for aiding both the internal and external Syrian opposition, to include providing direct humanitarian and communications assistance to the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable. This meeting of what’s known as the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council set forth a new and assertive strategy for expanding U.S. engagement with Syrian activists and providing them with the means to organize themselves, but stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition.