There's an excellent article by the ever-reliable McClatchy News, analysing the various 'inconsistencies and hinges' in the Obama administration's 'red line' case against Syria. In the light of the latest allegations by French intelligence services, it raises several unanswered and often unasked questions:

by Matt

1. Why would Syria carry out a chemical weapons attack in its capital, within 72 hours of the arrival of the UN Inspection Team, which it had invited to the country to investigate the earlier alleged use of chemical weapons?

2. Which of the UN Security Council members agreed to limit the mandate of the Weapons Inspection team to investigating whether chemical weapons attack had taken place, but not their provenance?

3. According to the case presented by Kerry, the US had 'collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence”' that showed the Syrian regime preparing for an attack three days before it took place. Why didn't the administration issue a public warning beforehand in an attempt to prevent it?

4. Why did the US immediately seek to undermine the UN Weapons Inspection team when news of the Ghouta attack first became public, by declaring that any further investigation would be irrelevant and 'too late'?

5. Sarin gas traces can last not only for months, but for years. Why have the US, Britain and France insisted that any evidence at Ghouta will have been destroyed by the regime or become 'degraded' and therefore useless to the UN Inspectors - a barefaced, flat out lie?

6. The US and France claim to have collected traces of sarin in samples of hair and blood from first responders that were 'provided to the United States.' How were these samples collected and why were they provided to the US and not the UN?

7. What explains the huge discrepancy between the alleged casualty figures provided by the US, Britain and France?

8. Why has the US insisted that the rebels have no chemical weapons capability, even though Carla del Ponte, a senior member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria claimed in May that UN investigators in May had found ' strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof' that rebel forces may have used them?

9. Is there any truth in the reports by the MintPress News that Saudi-backed rebels may inadvertently have set off a sarin gas explosion?

10. Do the US and its allies actually want a full, scientifically-based, independent investigation into what happened at Ghouta, or are they merely ignoring any contrary facts that contradict their allegations and using stitched-up 'intelligence' information as a pretext for 'humanitarian' bombing?

Matt | September 3, 2013 at 8:22 am | URL: http://wp.me/p1wQsg-IJ

War criminals and serial liars, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, and their Australian accomplices, Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr

This coming Saturday 7 September, most Australians will be forced to make the unpalatable choice between, on the one hand, the Opposition Liberal Party and the ruling Labor Party. The Liberal Party is resolved to destroy 7,000 public service jobs, remove the right of trade unions to enter workplaces and give the Green light to destructive and horrifically expensive projects such as the East-West Link and the Phillip Island industrialisation project. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as well as promoting rampant population growth and section 457 visas has, on the international stage, facilitated military aggression against Libya in 2011 and has done his utmost to repeat the exercise with Syria. Fortunately for Syria and the rest of the world, President Obama's war plans against Syria have been defeated by international and domestic opposition as described in the included article of 30 Aug 2013 by Paul Craig Roberts. It is vital, if peace and democracy are to survive that Kevin Rudd, Bob Carr and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott be held to account for their support for the U.S. Government's criminal actions.

Editorial comment

In recent days world public opinion prevented war criminals and serial liars, U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and French 'socialist' President François Hollande from launching a war against Syria on the pretext of the laughable allegation that the Syrian Government had killed between 300 and 1,400 of its citizens with poison gas. Whilst evidence supporting that claim was non-existent, a body of evidence that implicated the U.S.-sponsored anti-government terrorists was growing day by day. In site of the lack of evidence and the sheer implausibility of the allegation that the Syrian Government, which even NATO admits, enjoys the support of 70% of Syrians, would attempt to murder its citizens, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr were quick to give their strident support to President Barack Obama against Syria.

Fortunately, world public opinion, which had already been twice deceived by similar lying allegations against Iraq, saw through these lies and opposed the war. Opinion polls in the U.S. showed only 11% supported war. In the U.K., in response to overwhelming public opposition, the U.K. Parliament voted to not participate in the planned war. Over the following days, Francois François Hollande also decided not to participate in the planned war. left on his own and faced with overwhelming domestic opposition, President Barack Obama has decided to delay the war until after he has put his case to the U.S. Congress.

The likelihood that the 'evidence' that Obama and Kerry say they are going to present will stand up to the vast amount of evidence to the contrary is close to nil.

America Totally Discredited

Paul Craig Roberts, 30 August 2013

A foolish President Obama and moronic Secretary of State Kerry have handed the United States government its worst diplomatic defeat in history and destroyed the credibility of the Office of the President, the Department of State, and the entire executive branch. All are exposed as a collection of third-rate liars.

Intoxicated with hubris from past successful lies and deceptions used to destroy Iraq and Libya, Obama thought the US "superpower," the "exceptional" and "indispensable" country, could pull it off again, this time in Syria.

But the rest of the world has learned to avoid Washington's rush to war when there is no evidence. A foolish Obama was pushed far out on the limb by an incompetent and untrustworthy National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, and the pack of neoconservatives that support her, and the British Parliament cut the limb off.

What kind of fool would put himself in that vulnerable position?

Now Obama stands alone, isolated, trying to back away from his threat to attack without authorization from anyone--not from the UN, not from NATO, not from Congress who he ignored--a sovereign country. Under the Nuremberg Standard military aggression is a war crime. Washington has until now got away with its war crimes by cloaking them in UN or NATO approval. Despite these "approvals," they remain war crimes.

But his National Security Advisor and the neocon warmongers are telling him that he must prove that he is a Real Man who can stand alone and commit war crimes all by himself without orchestrated cover from the UN or NATO or a cowardly US Congress. It is up to Obama, they insist, to establish for all time that the President of the United States is above all law. He, and he alone is the "decider," the Caesar, who determines what is permissible. The Caesar of the "sole superpower" must now assert his authority over all law or Washington's hegemony over the world is lost.

As I noted in an earlier column today, if Obama goes it alone, he will be harassed for the rest of his life as a war criminal who dares not leave the US. Indeed, a looming economic collapse could so alter the power and attitude of the United States that Obama could find himself brought to justice for his war crimes.

Regardless, the United States government has lost its credibility throughout the world and will never regain it, unless the Bush and Obama regimes are arrested and put on trial for their war crimes.

Obama's destruction of US credibility goes far beyond diplomacy. It is likely that this autumn or winter, and almost certainly in 2014, the US will face severe economic crisis.

The long-term abuse of the US dollar's reserve currency role by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, the never-ending issuance of new debt and printing of dollars to finance it, the focus of US economic policy on bailing out the "banks too big to fail" regardless of the adverse impact on domestic and world economies and holders of US Treasury debt, the awaiting political crisis of the unresolved deficit and debt ceiling limit that will greet Congress' return to Washington in September, collapsing job opportunities and a sinking economy all together present the government in Washington with a crisis that is too large for the available intelligence, knowledge, and courage to master.

When the proverbial hits the fan, the incompetent and corrupt Federal Reserve and the incompetent and corrupt US Treasury will have no more credibility than Obama and John Kerry.

The rest of the world--especially Washington's bullied NATO puppet states _{#fnSubj1" id="txtSubj1">1} --will take great delight in the discomfort of "the world's sole superpower" that has been running on hubris ever since the Soviet collapse.

The world is not going to bail out Washington, now universally hated, with currency swaps, more loans, and foreign aid. Americans are going to pay heavily for their negligence, their inattention, their unconcern, and their ignorant belief that nothing can go wrong for them and that anything that does is temporary.

Two decades of jobs offshoring has left the US with a third world labor force employed in lowly paid domestic nontradable services, a workforce comparable to India's of 40 years ago. Already the "world's sole superpower" is afflicted with a large percentage of its population dependent on government welfare for survival. As the economy closes down, the government's ability to meet the rising demands of survival diminishes. The rich will demand that the poor be sacrificed in the interest of the rich. And the political parties will comply.

Is this the reason that Homeland Security, a Nazi Gestapo institution, now has a large and growing para-military force equipped with tanks, drones, and billions of rounds of ammunition?

How long will it be before American citizens are shot down in their streets by "their" government as occurs frequently in Washington's close allies in Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain?

Americans have neglected the requirements of liberty. Americans are so patriotic and so gullible that all the government has to do is to wrap itself in the flag, and the people, or too many of them, believe whatever lie the government tells. And the gullible people will defend the government's lie to their death, indeed, to the death of the entire world.

If Americans keep believing the government's lies, they have no future. If truth be known, Americans have already lost a livable future. The neocons' "American Century" is over before it begun.

Update: I have heard from educated and aware friends that the presstitute media on the evening news are beating the drums for war. This shows what paid whores the US media is and their total disconnect from reality. Anyone who wastes their time on the US media is a brainwashed idiot, a danger to humanity.

Update 8:52 PM August 30: Is the White House idiot going to be a victim of his own careless presidential appointments?

Does he have no one to tell him how to escape the dilemma his moronic Secretary of State and National Security Advisor have put him in? Someone needs to tell the WH Fool that he must say that he accepts the conclusion of the world

community that there is not sufficient evidence for launching a military attack on Syria and killing even more people

than were killed in the alleged, but unproven, chemical attack, and that he awaits further and better evidence.

God help the moron and the unfortunate country that the fool represents.

#updates_3424" id="updates_3424">Appendix: Updates#frontPage_3424">↑

Why have were updates included in the first place? Why were they moved out of the teaser and into this appendix?. I was motivated to include so many updates, because I knew it was not possible to publish enough material, whether original or reposted, to inform readers about the Syrian conflict. One alternative was to link directly to news about Syria from the front page. However, this became unwieldy due to the large number of news items. As an alternative, visitors our now advised which are the most prominent web-sites carrying truthful news about the Syrian conflict on the #frontPage_3424">main front page.

Another goal was to show visitors links to deceitful mainstream media (other) web pages about Syria, so that they could be compared to the other articles, which are supported by evidence and logic (informative). The sites that lie about Syria include ABC News, the Age, SBS News, the Sydney Morning Herald and Rupert Murdoch's Australian (behind a paywall). - GT

Whilst the UK Parliament has acted to prevent that country's armed forces from participating in the planned act of war against Syria, the United States is apparently still prepared to take action "on its own" in the face of the evidence and ovewhelming domestic and international opposition.

We must act to stop this outrage!

Where: Outside State library, 328 Swanston St, Melbourne
When: 2:00PM, Sat 31 August.                            Be there!

Syria chemical warfare "Evidence" by "Brown Moses Blog" debunked

Saturday 31st Melbourne Syria Protest military attack plan

Dear AMRIS and friends,

There will be a rally on Saturday 31st at 2pm outside the State library, Melbourne (328 Swanston St Melbourne VIC 3000 - Cnr La Trobe St) to protest the planned military attack on Syria. Various groups will be involved. Layla will be speaking on behalf of AMRIS.

Please circulate this, an update on my previous email, in which the Mother Agnes link didn't work. Also a second article from today by Alastair Crooke, and below that a message from Robert Bekhazi on the dangers to Christians in particular from the threatened attack, and the assistance it will give to Takfiri groups:

Mother Agnes Mariam was interviewed by James Corbett yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCCBnnHgfs&feature=c4-overview&list=UUvtTGZEcS8mbWdB7prg4QNw
(Also here)

She asks some important questions about the children killed in the 'chemical attack' last week. Where did so many children come from when that area had lost a lot of its population after the 'rebels' took over? I was disturbed by the fact that there were virtually no signs of women - mothers and grandmothers, aunts etc - showing care for the children or lying beside the children, also killed by the chemical attack. If the children had been in a normal family situation when there had been a chemical attack, then where were their mothers? It raises the question: had the children been kidnapped from Lattakia, for example, for this attack? The men around the bodies show little to no anguish. Is this because they are the children of 'infidels'? (This is a news report from Syria showing interviews with relatives of people killed by Takfiris in villages around Lattakia earlier in August. They show the enormous heart-felt grief one would expect from family members in this situation.)

Alastair Crooke, ex-MI6, warned against war in Afghanistan decades ago and has been warning about the use of propaganda for war purposes, the information war. His article, Straining Credibility, is an excellent reference.

He has also just written this article on the US committing an 'Act of War', which succinctly exposes the false pretext being used by the West, as well as the evident culpability of the 'rebels'. : US Attack on Syria Would be Illegal 'Act of War'.

Dr Jeremy Salt, Australian ME expert who spoke at the last AMRIS information night, presents an analysis of the current crisis, "The Guardian of what? The Media and War Propaganda"

On the AMRIS Youtube page, there is an interview with Jeremy about the media and war propaganda.

Regards,

Susan

Breaking news : (30 August, 11:30AM GMT+10) UK Parliament votes against war

In response to an as yet unattributed use of chemical weapons in Syria, the US and its allies are seriously considering military action against including surgical air strikes in Syria. Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria (AMRIS), regards these proposals as an extreme escalation of the conflict. Updates inside.

Military escalation in Syria cannot defuse the crisis, limit the casualties of war or produce peace. Instead, some believe it can lead to a world war.

[#updates_3413" id="updates_3413">Updates for this article: Selective ‘obscenity’: US checkered record on chemical weapons of 29 August (with video) on RT, Obama ‘not yet made a decision’ on Syria as UK political rows stall intervention of 28 August (with video) on RT, Team of chemical weapons experts to leave Syria Saturday: UN of 29 August on PressTV, Calls for strike on Syria challenge UN Charter: Russia of 29 August on PressTV (with video), UK government forced to put off plans for war on Syria of 29 August on PressTV (with video), Syria asks UN to immediately investigate 3 new ‘chemical attacks’ by rebels of 28 August in Bloomberg, U.S., U.K. Pressure for Action on Syria Hits UN Hurdle of 28 August in Bloomberg,Poland against military operations in Syria of 28 August in Poland - News Review, Investigate Chemical Weapons Attack In Damascus (2) of 25 August, Dennis Kucinich: Bombing Syria would make US pilots ‘Al-Qaeda's air force’ of 25 August on RT, Church statements on possible attack on Syria of 27 August, Obama should be stripped of his Nobel Peace prize if he starts Syria war of 29 August on RT, CIA files implicate Washington in chemical weapons use against Iran of 29 August by Paul Craig Roberts. (This article originally posted 2013-08-27 16:07:36 +1000)]

Protest in London on 28 Aug 2013 against planned war against Syria. To watch video, see Syria 'chemical weapons' crisis: LIVE UPDATES on RT or download mp4 file (13.5Mb).

Facing strong opposition in the UK parliament, military action against the Syrian regime over the alleged use of chemical weapons could be delayed until next Tuesday.

On Thursday, the House of Commons will be asked by the government to approve a "strong humanitarian response" to the Syrian government’s alleged war crimes.

However, British opposition leader Ed Miliband said he would call on his MPs to vote against the government motion if the amendment calling for the delay of any military action is defeated, the Guardian reports.

"We will continue to scrutinise this motion but at 5.15pm David Cameron totally ruled out a second vote, an hour and a half later he changed his mind," a Labour source told the Guardian. "Ed was determined to do the right thing. It has taken Labour forcing a vote to force the government to do the right thing."

The delay of parliamentary approval could push back the military response timetable until next Tuesday when MPs are expected to have another vote.

Among other conditions the Labour Party said it would support military action only if members of the UN Security Council saw the chemical weapons inspectors report first.

A motion in the UK parliament has been called to let the UN Security Council see findings from chemical weapons inspectors before backing any military action in Syria.

"The United Nations Security Council must have the opportunity immediately to consider that briefing and that every effort should be made to secure a Security Council Resolution backing military action before any such action is taken," the motion says.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, informant for the US embassy since the 1970's

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who colluded in the invasion of Libya by calling for a "no-fly" zone

Breaking news : (30 August, 11:30AM GMT+10) UK Parliament votes against war

(Originally posted: Mon, 26 Aug 2013, 01:20:28 +1000) See also: Syria 'Chemical Weapons' Crisis: Live Updates on RT, Appendix 1: Links to factual reporting on Syria, Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda.

Unlike Syria, Australia has participated in several unjust wars since the end of the Second World War.₁ As a result of two of those wars, 1,300,000 Iraqis, fled to Syria. The illegal wars, in which Australia participated include: The Korean War,₂ the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of 1991, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In its "demographics" section The Wikipedia Syria article, states:

According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. The vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), but sizeable populations from the former Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) also lived in the country.[106]

So, as a result of the illegal wars against Iraq in which Australia participated in 1991 and 2003 and the sanctions in which Australia also participated, which even denied medicine to critically ill Iraqi children and food to starving Iraqi children, 1,300,000 Iraqis fled to Syria, where they have since been cared for.

By rights, Syria should have received aid from Australia to help it cope with a problem of Australia's making.

Instead, Bob Carr, who claims to have opposed the wars against Iraq, found a convenient excuse to side with the world's bullies against Syria.

In May 2012, on the pretext of the unproven allegation that the Syrian Government had massacred 108 unarmed civilians at Houla, 'Labor' Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr expelled the Syrian ambassador and tightened existing sanctions against Syria.

#app1facts" id="app1facts">Appendix 1: Factual reporting on Syria #introFacts">↑

Regarding allegations that government had killed its citizens with chemical weapons

The links below do not include links to articles on Global Research (http://globalresearch.ca). At around 10:00PM (GMT +10) on 27 Aug 2013, the web browser showed the message "Error establishing a database connection" every time I tried to view a page on that site.

Lying about Syria, and the lying liars who lie about the lying ₃ of 25 Aug 2013 by David Swanson, Moallem: We Dare Anyone to Reveal Evidence that Damascus Used Chemical Weapons of 27 Aug 2013 in Almanar News, Sarin Gas : a new propaganda campaign against Syria of  Aug 2013 Voltaire Network, Strike on Syria serves Israel interests: Syrian FM of 27 Aug 2013 on PressTV, of 27 Aug 2013 on The Voice of Russia,
Congress Should Veto Obama's War of 27 Aug 2013 by Patrick J. Buchananan on antiwar.com , Information Minister : US has no evidence on Syria's use of chemical weapons (SANA) of 27 Aug 2013.

Other aspects of the Syrian conflict

Syria opposition handed Western powers lists of targets for strike of 27 Aug 2013 in The Voice of Russia, Aleppo Christians Fear Iraq-Style
Ethnic Cleansing of 26 Aug 2013 on Almonitor of  Aug 2013.

#app2lies" id="app1facts">Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda #introLies">↑

To understand the stories listed below, first read Lying about Syria, and the lying liars who lie about the lying ₃ of 25 Aug 2013 by David Swanson (also linked to above).
Mainstream media war propaganda: UN to inspect site of alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack, US say it's too late (includes embedded interview with Lisa Millar) of 26 Aug 2013 on ABC News, Obama's Guns of August of 24 Aug 2013 in Slate, Baird, counterparts express 'outrage' over alleged chemical attacks in Syria of 26 Aug 2013 on CTV, Air, missile strikes on Syria considered by US, UK of 26 Aug 2013 in Rupert Murdoch's Australian (possibly behind a paywall), Kevin Rudd's Syria briefing 'could have been by phone' of 26 Aug 2013 also in Murdoch's Australian, DFAT urges 64 Australians to leave Syria of 25 Aug 2013 in Murdoch's Sydney daily Telegraph, Australia to use UN role to push for Syria solution: Kevin Rudd of 25 Aug 2013, Syria to allow UN to inspect 'chemical weapons' site of 25 Aug 2013 in the BBC, Cameron and Obama warn of 'serious response' to Syria attack of 25 Aug 2013 also on the BBC, Caution needed in considering intervention in Syria ₄ of 26 Aug 2103 on ABC TV's Lateline, Carr says West could act on Syria without UN as US, allies gear up for probable military strike of 28 Aug 2013 and embedded video,
US intelligence to justify looming missile strike against Syria of 28 Aug 2013, 10 Simple points to help you understand the Syria conflict ₅ of 28 Aug 2013, Kevin Rudd talking to 'global leaders' on Syria, suggests he may attend G20 of 28 Aug 2013 in the Australian (includes another video of Bob Carr again making the lying claim that "evidence [is] accumult[ing].").

Footnotes

#fnSubj1" id="fnSubj1">1. #txtSubj1">↑ Contrary to some misguided "left-wing" narratives of the Second World War, the fight by the Western allies, the Soviet Union and other allies against German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese colonialism was one in which all the people of the world have a vital stake, as Oliver Stone has shown in the TV series "The Untold History of the United States" (2012) and book of the same name. For all the flaws of the Allied nations, humanity is greatly indebted to them. Had the Allies lost, a new and more terrible of barbarism would have begun.

#fnSubj2" id="fnSubj2">2. #txtSubj2">↑ Whilst the Korean war can be technically viewed as the defence of 'South' Korea against aggression from 'North' Korea, in reality, it was an extension of the national war of liberation against the brutal regime of former Japanese collaborators, which had been imposed on 'South' Korea by U.S. occupiers in 1945. From 1945 until 1950, a guerrilla war had been fought against the southern regime.

#fnSubj3" id="fnSubj3">3. #txtSubj3">↑ This otherwise insightful and informative story is flawed by the following words: "5. Both sides in Syria have used horrible weapons and committed horrible atrocities. ...". In conducting a war against ruthless insurgents who use unarmed civilians as human shields and who conceal conceals themselves inside their residences, the Syrian Army has bombarded these residences and undoubtedly caused death and injury. However, in conducting an armed struggle to ensure that the terrorist killers do no triumph the Syrian Army would have little other choice. David Swanson seems to have been influenced by the false "far-left" opinion that every government (except for a truly "revolutionary socialist" of the old Leninist-Trotskyist paradigm) must necessarily be corrupt. However, it appears that a number of notable historical figures who have risen to the top are indeed well-meaning and courageous individuals. One obvious example is the late President Kennedy. President Bashar al-Assad may be of a similar mould. Certainly I have yet to see any evidence that he is corrupt.

#fnSubj4" id="fnSubj4">4. #txtSubj4">↑ On the surface, Bob Carr appears fair, calm and rational in this interview by Lateline presenter Emma Alberici. However, as this interview only likely to be viewed by a very small minority of the public who take the time to watch Lateline and would be overshadowed by news of the strident beating of the drums of war by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and John Kerry, Bob Carr's apparent urging of caution would have negligible impact, particularly given that Bob Carr has repeated the lies about Syria and has not made the effort to question them.

#fnSubj5" id="fnSubj5">5. #txtSubj5">↑ The 'points' are anything but simple. Includes some token pretences at being objective and not biased, for example: "5. And pretty soon, bad guys on both sides are killing civilians…".

Reposted from article of same title of 26 Aug 2013 on Paul Craig Roberts' web-site, http://www.paulcraigroberts.org.

The US and UK governments have revealed none of the "conclusive evidence" they claim to have that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. Listening to their voices, observing their body language, and looking into their eyes, it is completely obvious that John Kerry and his British and German puppets are lying through their teeth. This is a far more shameful situation than the massive lies that former Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell claims that he was deceived by the White House and did not know that he was lying. Kerry and the British, French, and German puppets know full well that they are lying.

The face that the West presents to the world is the brazen face of a liar.

Washington and its British and French (and Australian - Ed) puppet governments are poised to yet again reveal their criminality. The image of the West as War Criminal is not a propaganda image created by the West’s enemies, but the portrait that the West has painted of itself.

The UK Independent reports that over this past week-end Obama, Cameron, and Hollande agreed to launch cruise missile attacks against the Syrian government within two weeks despite the lack of any authorization from the UN and despite the absence of any evidence in behalf of Washington’s claim that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the Washington-backed "rebels", largely US supported external forces, seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Indeed, one reason for the rush to war is to prevent the UN inspection that Washington knows would disprove its claim and possibly implicate Washington in the false flag attack by the "rebels," who assembled a large number of children into one area to be chemically murdered with the blame pinned by Washington on the Syrian government.

Another reason for the rush to war is that Cameron, the UK prime minister, wants to get the war going before the British parliament can block him for providing cover for Obama's war crimes the way that Tony Blair provided cover for George W. Bush, for which Blair was duly rewarded. What does Cameron care about Syrian lives when he can leave office into the waiting arms of a $50 million fortune.
Syria: UN weapons inspectors attacked as they try to reach site of alleged poison gas attack

The Syrian government, knowing that it is not responsible for the chemical weapons incident, has agreed for the UN to send in chemical inspectors to determine the substance used and the method of delivery. However, Washington has declared that it is "too late" for UN inspectors and that Washington accepts the self-serving claim of the al Qaeda affiliated "rebels" that the Syrian government attacked civilians with chemical weapons. Syria: UN weapons inspectors attacked as they try to reach site of alleged poison gas attack See also Syria Accepts UN Inspectors, US Spurns Call as 'Too Late'

In an attempt to prevent the UN chemical inspectors who arrived on the scene from doing their work, the inspectors were fired upon by snipers in "rebel" held territory and forced off site, although a later report from RT says the inspectors have returned to the site to conduct their inspection. UN inspectors visit site of alleged Syria chemical attack despite sniper fire

The corrupt British government has declared that Syria can be attacked without UN authorization, just as Serbia and Libya were militarily attacked without UN authorization. In other words, the Western democracies have already established precedents for violating international law. "International law? We don't need no stinking international law!" The West knows only one rule: Might is Right. As long as the West has the Might, the West has the Right.

In a response to the news report that the US, UK, and France are preparing to attack Syria, the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov, said that such unilateral action is a "severe violation of international law," and that the violation was not only a legal one but also an ethical and moral violation. Lavrov referred to the lies and deception used by the West to justify its grave violations of international law in military attacks on Serbia, Iraq, and Libya and how the US government used preemptive moves to undermine every hope for peaceful settlements in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Once again Washington has preempted any hope of peaceful settlement. By announcing the forthcoming attack, the US destroyed any incentive for the "rebels" to participate in the peace talks with the Syrian government. On the verge of these talks taking place, the “rebels” now have no incentive to participate as the West’s military is coming to their aid.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

See also: Defeated NATO Dangerously Desperate in Syria -- Did the West Gas Thousands to Rescue Failed Syrian War? of 25 Aug 2013 by Tony Cartalucci, Head of International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (Hans Blix) questions chemical attack allegations in Syria of 22 Aug 2013, Information Minister: We have incontrovertible proof that terrorists used chemical weapons of 24 Aug 2013 on SANA, General Command of the Army: terrorists' possession of chemical materials is clear-cut evidence of their use of chemical weapons of 24 Aug 2013 on SANA.

Misreporting: Syria, rebels deny using chemical weapons as NGO says 355 people died of 'neurotoxic symptoms' of 25 Aug 2013 on the ABC (includes embedded speech by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd feigning moral indignation), Thousands fell victim to Syria's chemical poisoning, say doctors in the UK Telegraph of 23 Aug 2013, Don't rush to conclusions on Syria: Kevin Rudd of 25 Aug 2013 in the Australian (the content, including much of the same embedded speech mentioned above, is contrary to the somewhat more objective headline).

Anyone informed about the Syrian conflict would know that the Syrian Government has nothing to gain by killing, in cold blood, hundreds of unarmed Syrians. The fact that the Syrian Government, without the help of a foreign occupying army, has withstood the insurgency for over two years now, is surely proof that it enjoys the support of the Syrian people. No Government, as hated by its own people as the Western newsmedia claims the Syrian Government is, could hope to crush a popular uprising by those people for more than a fraction of the time that has elapsed. Indeed in June, it was revealed that a study by NATO (which is helping to orchestrate the terrorist war against Syria) found that 70% of Syrians supported the Syrian Government.

The Orwellian mainstream newsmedia, which, in recent weeks has ignored the spate of deadly terrorist bombings against Syrian civilians, has made the baseless accusation that the Syrian Government has killed hundreds of its own citizens and is feigning moral outrage. Mainstream media misreporting, as well as that listed above, includes:

'A crime against humanity': Ban Ki-moon (SBS, 23 Aug 2013);Proof of chemical weapons use in Syria would be a 'crime against humanity', UN says (ABC News, 23 Aug 2013); Syria pressured to allow weapons inspectors in after suspected chemical attack (The Australian, 23 Aug 2013); France says force needed if Syrian chemical attack claims prove true (ABC News, 23 Aug 2013); Call for investigation into Syria 'chemical attack' (Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Aug 2013);

Truthful reporting, about the alleged "Crime against humanity" by the Syrian Government, as well as that listed above, includes:

Syria gas attack story has whiff of Saudi war propaganda by William Engdahl (RT, 23 Aug 2013); Syria 'Chemical Attack' was 'Planned Provocation' by Rebels (RT, Global Research, 23 Aug 2013); China calls for 'objective' UN investigation in Syria (PressTV, 23 Aug 2013); UN: Investigation needed into Syria chemical attack report (RT, 22 Aug 2013); Vatican calls to not issuing judgment of chemical weapons use in Syria without evidence (SANA, 22 Aug 2013);

Those who stand to gain from the deaths of so many Syrians, and not just for their propaganda value, are the same criminals who waged genocidal wars against Iraq which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

See also: Syria: Only Rebels Benefit from Recent Chemical Attack - grtv of 22 Aug 2013 (Includes embedded Global Research TV broadcast).

by Barbara Nimri Aziz. Republished from Syria News, Global Research.

The blockade on Syria -- on Syrian life not weaponry -- reaches into the heart of social, historical and cultural life.This policy is integral to the US-led assault against the country and against Arab national integrity.

Includes: Editorial comment: Australia's shameful complicity in the war against Syria.

(Original image)

This policy is integral to the US-led assault against the country and against Arab national integrity.

No-fly zone, poison gas, foreign guerrillas, sectarian massacres. These frightening yet alluring, ambitious yet wearying thoughts define Syria today. More reason to take time for other dramas--Syrian TV serials and their politics.

Apart from an opportune 'Ramadan' reference, this topic may seem inconsequential or out of place for a nation engulfed in conflict. Yet the subject isn't too slight a target for US policies.

Extending its aggression against Syria into every corner of the economy, the United States has seen TV productions by its longstanding enemy dumped from international satellites, a move that essentially severs global access. This move followed withdrawal of supporting infrastructure for widely popular Syrian programs by US-Gulf state allies, erstwhile co-sponsors, customers and distributors of TV dramas originating in Damascus.

Now, why would anyone censor Syrian TV? Are we not led to believe that Syrian media's sole purpose is to mislead rather than inform? How could anything of value originate from that 'brutal dictatorship'? Anyway, how can 'mindless' TV soaps warrant an international embargo?

People familiar with the range of public issues which Syrian producers address through popular drama will understand.

Over the past decade the Damascus-based industry rose to become a major center of high quality TV drama. Its productions won admiration across the Arab-speaking world, rivaling once dominant Egyptian dramas.

What Syrian dramas, most of which are made by private companies, offer is best illustrated by two productions:-- 'Bab al-Hara' (http://www.istikana.com/en/episodes/bab-el-hara-1-1), first released during Ramadan month in 2006, and a hugely successful 2010 production, 'Ma Malakat Aymanukum' (http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=41098).

'Bab al-Hara' is a colonial period drama typical of the historical productions Syria excels in. This and dramatizations of early epochs hold special significance throughout the Arab world through portrayals and reflections of Arab civilization's accomplishments and historical events.

By contrast with 'Bab al-Hara', 'Ma Malakat' explores contemporary social concerns: --religious fanaticism, homosexuality, abuse of women. Written by Syrian author Halla Diyab (), 'Ma-Malakat' was directed by her accomplished compatriot Najdat Ansour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Najdat_Anzour).

The work of these and other brilliant Syrian artists is renowned.

Yes, armed conflict itself thwarts artistic production. Hundreds of Syria's most talented and liberal-thinking people-- actors, designers, musicians, writers, technicians-- are jobless today. Many flee in search of outside employment, like those featured in a token CNN Ramadan story. By contrast view your yourself the Syrian Ramadan 2013 series broadcast over lbc TV. Theater is one of many institutions devastated by war. But the destruction of this industry is not collateral damage. It's deliberate. The sale of Syrian series came to a standstill when networks in Saudi Arabia and UAE (where major distributors are located) cancelled orders for Syrian productions.

Next, in June 2012 the Arab League itself ordered satellite transmitters Hotbird, Nilesat and Arabsat to cease carrying Syrian media including Syrian TV and Syrian Drama TV. Whereas Syria exported 25 new TV series in 2010, the following year producers were able to sell only one--a direct effect of the US-designed embargo.

Of course this blockade has significant economic consequences for Syria. But its real target is Syria's cultural and ideological position in the region.

The Arab public and specialists recognize that Syrian productions are unrivaled in their authenticity and ideology. Syria is known to have the highest standards in historical research (applied to the arts) and in Arabic language. Besides the technical, literary and entertainment value of specific stories, Syria's dramatic productions represent a struggling political consciousness--the Arab nationalist ideal. (This includes celebration of Palestinian resistance.)

Syrian dramas invoke regional pride and values largely absent in productions from neighboring countries. The industry's collapse was targeted because these productions embody and espouse values which the West seeks to eliminate. Nothing is overlooked, it seems, in the US design against Syria. Meanwhile Turkish TV serials, translated into Arabic, heir focus limited to romance and family conflict, keep people distracted. A coincidence?

Barbara Nimri Aziz

#AustralianComplicity" id="AustralianComplicity">Editorial comment: Australia's shameful complicity in the war against Syria

Barbara Aziz has provided further confirmation that the justifications given by the likes of US Secretary of state John Kerry, for the arming of the supposed 'rebels', the threats of "no fly zones" and outright military invasion, are barefaced lies. How could it be possible for a country ruled by a corrupt and brutally repressive despot to have made such an outstanding contribution to culture?

The role of Australia and its Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Bob Carr, has been particularly shameful.

As a result of the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 in which Australia participated (and which Bob Carr, incidentally, claimed to oppose), 1,300,000 Iraqis fled to Syria
according to wikipedia. This is in addition to the many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis -- 3,300,000 according to one estimate -- who were killed in the fighting or died through disease or starvation as a result of sanctions imposed by the US, Australia and their allies.

Syria should rightly have expected, at the very least, massive financial aid from Australia for having helped to create such a huge problem for the Syrian government. Instead, in May 2012, on the pretext of the absurd and fraudulent allegation that the Syrian government had massacred 108 of its own supporters in the town of Houla, Bob Carr expelled the Syrian ambassador and tightened existing sanction against Syria.

Prior to that, in May 2012, the current 'Labor' Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as a roving Australian ambassador in the Middle East, helped initiate the invasion of Libya by urging the establishment of the United Nations "no fly zone".

In 2001, Australia participated in the invasion of Afghanistan on the pretext of the lie of 9/11. One result is that opium production, which had almost been eliminated by the Taliban government has since skyrocketed.

That the war in Syria is no more than an attempt by the United States, Israel, the Arab dictatorships including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and their European allies to conquer and subjugate the Syrian people has even been acknowleged by NATO, which in June admitted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad enjoys the support of 70% of the Syrian people.

In the embedded interview Oksana Boyko and her guest Ammar Waqqaf presume that their viewing audience do not need to be convinced of this. The interview, instead, focuses on how Syria, led by President Bashar al-Assad, after the crushing of his terrorist enemies, will relate to the rulers of the surrounding countries all led by sworn enemies of Bashar al-Assad, who have staked their reputations on ousting him. This discussion between two people, who are not even native English speakers, is the most informative and insightful I can recall ever having seen.

Also included: FSA Place Food Embargo on West Aleppo - Interview with an Aleppo resident by the Syrian Girl.

Editorial content: The only long term solution that could hope to bring stability and prosperity to the entire region would have to be a reverse of the "regime change" that the surrounding dictatorships are attempting to impose upon Syria, that is, "regime change" by popular revolt from below.

FSA Place Food Embargo on West Aleppo - Interview with an Aleppo resident

#AleppoFoodEmbargo">

Syrian mother giving food to Syrian soldier at checkpoint

Update, 23 June 2013 : Israeli Intelligence News: Syria Rebels Possess Chemical Weapons, US-NATO Delivering Heavy Weapons to the Terrorists on Global Research by Prof Michel Chossudovsky. (This article originally published 8 May 2013.)

See also: The Forbidden Truth: The U.S. is Channeling Chemical Weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama is a Liar and a Terrorist of 14 June 2013 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky on Global Research.

The mainstream media, including the Australian Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) no longer disputes that the pretexts used to justify the United States' wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 were lies. Yet, in spite of the appalling consequences, including as many as 3.3 million Iraqi deaths according to one recent estimate, the SBS has shown itself willing to echo a new series of lies, which have been contrived by the same people responsible for the Iraq War. This time the target is Syria.

The new set of lies are to justify their ongoing proxy terrorist war against Syria and, if they see it necessary, escalation to an all-out conventional invasion. That war has so far claimed 70,000 Syrian lives. In spite of this terrible human cost, the Syrian Governemnt and the Syrian Arab Army have still shown themselves to be capable of defending their country and of infliciting crushing defeats upon the terrorist killers.

Chemical warfare claims blamed on wrong side

The latest of many examples of lies used by the SBS against Syria are their reporting of claims by the United States that the Syrian Government has used chemical warfare against its own people. For many weeks now, the truth of from where the real threat of chemical attack has been understood by people prepared to look at the evidence. This includes alternative news services such as Global Research, Tony Caretalucci's landdestroyer.blogspot.com and the Corbett Report. That threat was not from the Syrian Government, which has nothing to gain by killing the same people who support it and have stood with it against the terrorists for more than two years. The threat of chemical warfare came from the terrorists.

Independent commission interviews many but finds no chemical weapons evidence against Syrian government

It was more recently confirmed by the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria. As reported on PressTV and elsewhere:

The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria could not find any evidence that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons against militants, commission member Carla Del Ponte has said.

"Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in television interview.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," said Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Undue prominence given to statements of disbelief from Whitehouse

In its news report of 6 May, the SBS gave prominence to the unfounded claims of US White House spokesman Jay Carney that the Syrian Government, and not its terrorist opponents, has used Chemical weapons. The effect of this report was to diminish the impact the more credible story of Carla Del Ponte's report, which was founded upon evidence, that the perpetrators of the chemical attack were the US-backed terrorists.

Originally published as Johnson: Syrian opposition weapons would be pressing weapons into maniacs & al-Qaeda thugs on 17 June 2013 on SANA. See also: "Don't arm maniacs": London's mayor opposes weapon support for Syrian rebels of 17 June 2013 on Russia Today.

London, SANA Arming the Syrian rebels would be "pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs and al-Qaeda thugs," London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, has said, warning British Premier David Cameron of the risks of arming the Syrian opposition fighters.

Writing for British publication "The Telegraph", Johnson said that the UK must not use Syria as an arena for muscle flexing.

"We can't use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won't get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs," Johnson added.

He joins a number of prominent British political and social figures in an attempt to dissuade Prime Minister David Cameron from sending arms to the Syrian opposition.

"This is the moment for a total ceasefire, an end to the madness," Johnson said, adding: "It is time for the US, Russia, the EU, Turkey, Iran, Saudi and all the players to convene an intergovernmental conference to try to halt what is happening in Syria."

Johnson's comments came after many statements made by high-ranking officials who are opposing arming the opposition and Cameron's stand by U.S. President Barack Obama in providing more aid to the opposition.

Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, also warned Cameron of the dangers of supplying the Syrian opposition with weapons. Former Commander of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, said he feared any such assistance would lead Britain into further intervention, while the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, urged Cameron to "tread very warily".

The statements of Johnson, Clegg, Dannatt and others agree with the remarks made yesterday by Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in which he called on G8 summit to act on Syria without violating the international rules.

Putin wondered how to support the people who not only kill others, but open up their bodies and eat their intestines, in a reference to a video footage on the internet of a armed terrorist apparently eating the heart of a government soldier.

Russia believes the crisis in Syria will only be brought to an end through negotiations.

Ghossoun /

Originally published on candobetter: 2013-06-19 23:14:45 +1000.

The following two interviews, in addition to the interview embedded here from PressTV below and the Sunday Times interview of 3 March 2013 are only four of many interviews of President al-Assad available on YouTube. It is perplexing that a national leader, who is so prepared to be critically scrutinised in the media, is held, even by some active and outspoken opponents of the terrorist war against Syria, to be 'corrupt' and a 'dictator'. In comparison to the way many of the West's formally democratic politicians have mis-ruled their constituencies, for example, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Car (pictured), who mis-ruled the State of NSW from 1995 until 2005, President al-Assad appears remarkably able.

All the evidence seems to suggest that, to the contrary, President al-Assad is a courageous and humane national leader who has capably led his country against the foreign terrorist proxy invasion since March 2001. Had Syria been less capably led, the cost to the Syrian people by now would have been even greater than the already terrible death toll, put at more than 70,000 by most estimates. In all probability, the Syrian government would have been overthrown, Syria would have been partitioned and bloody sectarian strife similar to what occurred in Iraq after the United States and its allies invaded in 2003, would now be under way.

President al-Assad, in charge of a nation threatened with invasion, has repeatedly faced close media scrutiny

Above video of 33 minutes, 36 seconds duration can also be viewed here.

Video of 4 minutes, 13 seconds duration can also be viewed here.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr echoes media lies against Syria

Readers may be interested to compare President al-Assad's words with those of Australian Foreign Minister Bob Car 10 months ago in July 2012 in an interview with SBS television's Anton Enus. In that interview, both Bob Carr and Anton Enus predicted the imminent overthrow of the Syrian Government and made claims, contrary to the known evidence of the time, that the Syrian Army and 'pro-government militias' had committed atrocities against the Syrian people.

Video of 5 minutes, 57 seconds duration can also be viewed here.

It is striking that while, on the one hand Russia and China are criticised by Bob Carr and Anton Enus for vetoing motions for military intervention against the Syrian Government on the United Nations Security Council, on the other hand the tragic consequences for the Libyan people of the failure of Russia and China to veto the resolution for a "no-fly zone" in 2011, are not even mentioned.

No mention is made either of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in which Australia participated. That invasion was found by the UK Government Chilcot inquiry to have been in breach of international law.

Assad will not willingly allow Syria to suffer fate of Iraq

Many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result and President al-Assad is rightly resolved not to let the likes of Carr and Obama and the governments of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and other criminal entities on the international arena do the same to his country.

#BobCarr">Bob Carr's misrule of NSW, 1995-2005

Australia's current Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, ruled the state of New South Wales from 1995 until 2005. Unlike President al-Assad, whose country has, faced threatened invasions of Syria for much of the time since he assumed office, he was formally democratically elected Premier of New South Wales in 1995.

However, many of the policies Carr imposed or attempted to impose --- privatisation, the massive expansion of global-warming coal exports, enabling the trashing of bushland in Western Sydney against popular protest, etc. -- were harmful to the public and the environment and benficial to vested wealthy corporate interests. Had President Bashar al-Assad ruled Syria as ineptly and unconscionably as Carr ruled New Sout Wales, he would have been removed from office a long time ago.

Republished from Voltaire Network. See also: German Intelligence: 95% of free army non-Syrian extremist groups republished from SANA of 13 Jun 2013. The Anglo-American press reports on an internal NATO study (dated June 2013), which takes stock of Syrian public opinion.₁

The study shows that 70% of Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad, 20% adopt a neutral position and 10% support the "rebels."

See also: Humanitarian Crisis in Syria: "The West should Pay War Reparations to Syria". Interview with Michel Chossudovsky of 9 Jun 2013 (includes embedded interview and text transcription).
Mother Agnes Mariam; UN Human Rights Council; Commission of Inquiry on Syria, 7 June,
Anti-Syrian Blame Game Escalates: Who is Behind Killings of Civilians? of 6 June 2013 on Syria News, Senator John McCain Meets Leaders of Terror Brigade in Syria. The NGOs that Made it Happen of 9 June 2013 by Phil Greaves on Global Research, Syria's Qusair Victory Matters: US-NATO-Israel Supported Death Squads Defeated of 10 June 2013 by Stephen Lendman on Global Research, The Forbidden Truth: The U.S. is Channeling Chemical Weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria, Obama is a Liar and a Terrorist of 14 June 2013 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky on Global Research.

These figures are presented as reflecting a change of heart. The population is tired of the abuses and divisions of the armed opposition. From NATO’s perspective, what we are witnessing is not a phenomenon that is occurring in view of the approaching "Geneva-2" peace conference.

For two years, the events in Syria have been portrayed by the Atlanticist and GCC press as a peaceful revolution cruelly suppressed by a tyrant. The Syrian and anti-imperialist press, on the contrary, brands them as a foreign attack, armed and funded to the tune of billions of dollars.

[#fntxt1" id="fn1">1] #fntxt1">↑ NATO data: Assad winning the war for Syrians’ hearts and minds?, World Tribune, May 31, 2013.

#nonSyrianExtremists">German Intelligence: 95% of free army non-Syrian extremist groups

13 June 2013

Berlin, (SANA)- German "Die Welt" daily said that only 5% of the armed terrorists in the so-called Free Army are Syrians, while 95% of them are extremist groups which came from several African countries to jihad in Syria baked by the Gulf and Arab countries.

The daily quoted intelligence experts in Germany as saying : "The German intelligence has an official and detailed account of the nationalities of the rebels in Syria and their locations in the country,"

A member of the German intelligence said that some terrorist groups in Syria work in full coordination with al-Qaeda, but the extremist groups are more dangerous than al-Qaeda since they commit genocide against children and women and use them as human shields to achieve the possible biggest number of casualties.

According to a semi-official statistics the number of the gunmen in Syria estimated at 14,800 including experts in many fields like the preparation of improvised explosive devices. Most of those gunmen previously participated in several attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The biggest danger lies in the Arab countries' help releasing Islamic detainees and sending them to Syria with the aim of Jihad against the Syrian state violating the standards of anti-terrorism Conventions.

The armed terrorist groups of the so-called Jabhat al-Nusra have committed a large number of massacres against children, women and elderly in different regions of Syria, the most recently massacre was carried out in Hatleh village in Deir Ezzor Province claiming the lives of over 30 people because of their refusal to support terrorists in their hostile acts against civilians.

H. Zain/ Ghossoun

This article writes about changes in attitudes to Syria, in the foreign media and in a former 'pro-revolutionary' reporting source from within Syria.

On Sunday 2 June, 2013, on the 8pm French news on France2, there was a change in reporting on Syria. Prior to this French reporting had been as counter-Assad as Australia's.

Here is a link to the original news video. The Maria Saadeh interview starts at about 15.10 minutes in.

This report of June 2 showed how the people of Damascus were continuing to do business and enjoy recreation due to the protection of the Syrian army, which was providing them with remarkable safety in the interior of Syria's capital.

The road out of Damascus was not choked with refugees fleeing the city. Showing the reporter around Damascus was Marie Saadeh, a French-speaking mother of a family and former independent member of parliament who said that when in parliament she had been able to criticise the government.

She asked, "Why do France and Europe give support to the opposition and arm rebel groups?"

French reporter, Renaud Bernard, said, "Because they believe that the Syrian government is doing the same thing against its people, shooting its people, and torturing its people."

The ex-MP shakes her head in disbelief and disagreement. "Monsieur, there is a government and a state."

Renaud Bernard gave his impression: The Syrians are wondering why France and Europe are abandoning them and supporting their attackers. They wonder why the world is not helping Syria to survive as the last secular Arab state in the region. They are not fleeing the country because they are relying on the government to defend it. They are united by the war in support of the government (headed by Assad) and rely on the government to support them.

In other words, they prefer a stable government to a revolution or the state of chaos that masquerades as the promise of a revolution.

Edward Dark on Al-Monitor wonders why they threw peace away

There is an interesting article called "How we lost the Syrian Revolution," posted by Edward Dark on 28 May at Al-Monitor. Edward Dark is better known as a middle-class sympathiser with the 'revolution', but in this article he says,

"Away from all the agendas, whitewashing, propaganda, and outright lies of the global media stations, what we saw on the ground when the rebel fighters entered Aleppo was a far different reality. It hit home hard. It was a shock, especially to those of us who had supported and believed in the uprising all along. It was the ultimate betrayal."

[...]But why was this so? Why were they doing it? It became apparent soon enough, that it was simply a case of us versus them. They were the underprivileged rural class who took up arms and stormed the city, and they were out for revenge against the perceived injustices of years past.[...]

[...] Over the course of our activist work, some of our group were jailed and injured, one was even killed. That is why it never hit home so hard, and never have I felt as sad as when, shortly after Aleppo was raided by the rebels, I received messages from some of those people I used to work with. One said, “How could we have been so stupid? We were betrayed!” and another said, “Tell your children someday that we once had a beautiful country, but we destroyed it because of our ignorance and hatred."

It was around about that time that I gave up on the revolution, such as it had become, and saw that the only way to Syria’s salvation was through reconciliation and a renunciation of violence. Many felt this way, too. Unfortunately, that is not a view shared by the warmongers and power brokers who still think that more Syrian blood should be spilled to appease the insatiable appetites of their sordid aspirations.[...]

In an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, on 4 October 2012, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."

Carr's support for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consistent with allegations that for 40 years he was an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party. His relationship with the CIA is the subject of Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia in the Melbourne Age of 8 April 2013 and the article, by Murray Hunter, Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 in the Independent Australian, which cites evidence from the Age article and which we republish below. The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins, and worse, against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. A number of its own Presidents including JFK and a number of popular American political leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.

See also: Assange slams Carr as a 'well-known liar' in the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May 2013.

How Australian governments helped kill 3.3 million Iraqis

Since 1990, Australia has participated in two illegal wars against Iraq._#fn1">1 The Hawke Labor Government led Australia into the first war of 1991 whilst the Liberal/National Coalition Government of John Howard led Australia into the second war of 2003. In addition, Australia participated in the imposition of sanctions which have prevented vitally needed food and medicine from reaching the people of that devastated country. It is now well known that the pretexts used to launch these wars, including the Kuwaiti Incubator babies story and the claim that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) were lies.

According to one estimate, 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children consequently died. To escape death through war, disease or starvation, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled. According to Wikipedia, 1,300,000 fled to Syria.

Syria, which gave refuge to Iraqis fleeing Australian aggression, now bullied by Australia

No aid has ever been sent by Australia to help Syria deal with the consequences of Australia's shameful past actions. Instead, on 27 May 2012, Australia's foreign Minister, Bob Carr, expelled the Syrian ambassador and tightened Australian sanctions against Syria supposedly in reprisal for the demonstrably false claim that the Assad Government had masssacred its own supporters at Houla on 25 May.

Carr calls for the assassination of Assad

Prior to that on 4 October 2012, in an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."

Carr's support for the assassination of the Syrian President seems consistent with his alleged 40 year record of being an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party . The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. One of its own Presidents and a number of popular American political leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.

Carr's record has been documented in the Age article Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia of 8 April 2013 by Phillip Dorling and by the Independent Australian article Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 included below.

The above introduction was written by Geoffrey Taylor for candobetter.net.

#IsCarrASpy" id="IsCarrASpy">Is Bob Carr a spy?

Republished from Independent Australian admin in Australian history, International, Politics on 11 April, 2013 12:01 am / #commentspost">24 comments

The Age exposes the Australian foreign minister as an "agent" under US influence; Murray Hunter asks -- is U.S. influence in Australian politics destroying policy objectivity?

Foreign Minister Bob Carr (image courtesy ABC).

JUST AROUND a week ago in Beijing, Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr entered the US-Korea conflict by trying to persuade the Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi to adopt sanctions against North Korea.

On Monday (8 April), an investigative journalist from The Age, after going through 11,000 cables from the U.S. embassy in Canberra and consulates in Sydney and Melbourne, leaked by US Army Private Bradley Manning and published by WikiLeaks, found that the current Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr had been briefing the US embassy since the 1970s on both the internal decision making of the Australian Government during the Whitlam Labor Government (1972-75) and internal workings of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Bob Carr has been Australia's foreign minister for 12 months, replacing Kevin Rudd, who resigned after challenging Julia Gillard for the prime ministership. Carr has been involved in the Australian Labor Party for more than 40 years and was New South Wales premier from 1995-2005.

Carr began his relationship with US embassy officials in the mid 1970s, when he was president of Young Labor and education officer of the NSW Labor Council. According to The Age investigative report Philip Dorling he would regularly brief the US Consul General over labour issues and the prospects of the Labor Government in Canberra. From the information gathered from Carr and also NSW Labor President John Ducker, intelligence reports on Australian politics and labour issues would be sent onto Washington. Leaked US cables to WikiLeaks also indicated that the former Labor Senator Mark Arbib was also a "protected" US embassy source passing on information and commentary on Australian politics.

Bob Carr is very well known for his staunch support for the Australian-US alliance as an non-negotiable pillar of Australian foreign policy and often dismisses critics as being in "emotional silly expression lacking in any substance and characteristic of the silly leftwing fringe of the ALP".

With such rigid advice to the prime minister and cabinet at a time where many academics and commentators like Professor Hugh White of the Australian National University are calling for a re-appraisal of this alliance and much more strategic engagement with China, it is very difficult to see how the Australian Government's pending 2013 Defense White Paper will signal any major shifts in policy on this matter.

At the very least, hanging on to the Australian-US alliance without any objective appraisal and redefinition may not serve the country's strategy interests in the Asia-Pacific Region well if the U.S. continues a competitive stance against China.

These revelations add to past suspicions by many in the labour movement about members of the party and government (when Labor was in power) who have been involved in close relationships with U.S. officials.

Labor suspicion of U.S. intelligence operating in Australia mainly stems from the election of the reformist and nationalistic Whitlam Labor Government in 1972, after 23 years in opposition. Whitlam immediately pulled Australia out of the Vietnam conflict, recognized the Peoples' Republic of China, campaigned for a nuclear free Indian Ocean, spoke up for Palestinian rights in the United Nations, and opposed French nuclear testing in the Pacific.

In 1973, the then Attorney General of Australia Lionel Murphy led a raid on the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), the equivalent to the U.S. CIA, over concern with the organisation's involvement with the training of fascist Croatian groups, and the launching of terrorist operations from Australian soil. According to the Hope Commission back in 1977, ASIO was handing over to the CIA information on Australian opposition politicians and kept files on all ALP members.

The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) was assisting the CIA in undertaking clandestine operations in Cambodia and Chile, even though Australia was officially neutral in Cambodia and supported the Government of Salvador Allende in Chile, without the knowledge of the Australian Government.

Many felt that when the Whitlam Government took measures to control the operations of the US Naval Communications Station on the North-West Cape of Western Australia, the Defence Signals Directorate in Melbourne, the Joint Defense research facility at Pine Gap and Nurrunger in South Australia, that the U.S. became vitally concerned.

After Whitlam discovered that ASIO and ASIS had secretly assisted the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, he dismissed the heads of both organizations. Whitlam then hinted that he may not renew the Pine Gap agreement with the U.S. due for signing on 9th December 1975, which would have severely dented U.S. intelligence gathering ability. Labor mythology believes that the U.S. ambassador to Australia at the time, Marshall Green, had a hand in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November 1975 by the then Governor General Sir John Kerr. Of course, Kerr's time working for a closely aligned Australian intelligence organization to the U.S. OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, has always added spice to such conspiracy theories.

After Whitlam discovered that ASIO and ASIS had secretly assisted the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, he dismissed the heads of both organizations. Whitlam then hinted that he may not renew the Pine Gap agreement with the U.S. due for signing on 9th December 1975, which would have severely dented U.S. intelligence gathering ability. Labor mythology believes that the U.S. ambassador to Australia at the time, Marshall Green, had a hand in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in November 1975 by the then Governor General Sir John Kerr. Of course, Kerr's time working for a closely aligned Australian intelligence organization to the U.S. OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, has always added spice to such conspiracy theories.

During the first week after the dismissal of the Labor Government, the army was on stand-by at their barracks in case there were mass demonstrations. However, it was the Australian Council of Trade Unions then president Bob Hawke who summoned the labour movement to be calm. US diplomatic cables also implicate the former prime minister, saying he regularly conferred with the U.S. Consulate in Melbourne during his ACTU years. It was generally believed that the Labor Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Canberra was in reality the CIA station chief (McKnight, D., "Labor and the Quiet Americans", The Age, February 20, 2003, p15). The future Hawke Government, elected in 1984, went on to implement many pro-U.S. initiatives, and prevented public disclosure of documents relating to the Nugan Hand Bank during his term as Prime Minister, which were believed to implicate the CIA with drug trafficking and organized crime.

This is the first time that leaked U.S. documents have confirmed what many believe to be the truth surrounding U.S. infiltration within the Australian Labor Party. The issue is likely to be very quickly dismissed in Australia by the argument that the U.S. is an ally. However, within these documents there is some proof and support that the U.S. has meddled in the affairs of the Australian union movement and political parties for many years. What is even more astounding is that some Labor politicians showed disloyalty to their party to a foreign power during the Whitlam years.

Bob Carr has been forthright in exposing past politicians as members of the Communist Party of Australia, so should take the accusations against him seriously, either stepping aside for the duration of an inquiry or resigning outright. David Combe's relationship with a Soviet diplomat Valery Ivanov back in 1984 led to swift action on the part of the Hawke Government at the time. In the interests of transparency and sovereignty, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO should conduct an inquiry.

Somehow I doubt this will happen.

Footnotes

#fn1" id="fn1">1.#txt1">↑ See UK Chilcot Inquiry: "The Iraq War Was Unlawful". Unanimous Legal Opinion of Foreign Office Lawyers of 4 Jan 2013 by Carl Herman on #10;<p>This work is licensed under a <a href=" http:="">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

#YarraAbbas">See also : Yara Abbas, Syrian TV Reporter Assassinated in Qussayr, republished from www.syrianews.cc/yara-abbas-syrian-reporter-assassinated-qussayr

Martyr Yara Abbas Syria’s Ikhbariya TV Reporter

Embedded broadcast was originally published as What is the future for Syria? Truthloader LIVE debate. See also: Turks slam Ankara's support for terrorist groups in Syria of 19 May 2013 on PressTV. Israeli peace activist tells the truth about Israel
Three Syrian supporters of the Syrian Government debate three Syrian supporters of the terrorist insurrection in the embedded broadcast.

Those not familiar with the Syrian conflict will have to pay close attention in order to gain much from this discussion. The debate is somewhat tiresome due to the evasions, repetition and circular logic of the supporters of the insurrection. In spite of this, I think that their opponents, particularly the Syrian Girl, won the debate quite definitively.

Written on-line debate enables truth to be found more easily

Whilst verbal debate has great value, I still think it is easier to find where the truth lies from written online debate. However, in my experience, supporters of such causes as that of the terrorists fighting against the Syrian people and their government instinctively know that evidence and logic are against them and so will be even less willing to participate in written forum discussions than they are to participate in verbal discussions.

Those seeking the truth from written sources therefore should try to find opposing written views, compare the evidence and form their own judgement. Examples of opposed written online views of the Syrian conflict are, on the one hand on Global Research and, on the other hand, the lying Mainstream Media

Difficulties faced by Syrian Government

In fighting to defend their people, the Syrian Government will unavoidably cause the deaths and injury of Syrian human shields used by the terrorists and the destruction of Syrian homes in which the terrorists hide. In addition, the Government will inevitably make mistakes that will cause yet more destruction and cost more Syrians their lives.

This has been used by the mainstream media.

Whilst the loss of lives and the destruction made necessary by the terrorist war will inevitably be used against the Syrian Government by the lying mainstream media and inevitable mistakes made by the Syrian Government in prosecuting the war will compound the problem, it would be a still greater mistake on the part of the Syrian government and armed forces to fight with any less ferocity and determination against the terrorists for fear of making such mistakes.

First published on PressTV, 12 May 2013 as Protesters tell Erdogan to resign. Other reporting (and misreporting) of Reyhanli terrorist bombing, and issues arising, includes: Information Minister: Turkey Bombings Terrorist Act Condemned by All Standards - SANA, Turkey blames Syria over Reyhanli bombings - Guardian, Turkey says Syrian forces behind border town bombings - Reuters, Dozens dead in Turkey car bombings - Brisbane Times, Turkey claims Assad loyalists bombed Reyhanli - , Blasts kill dozens in Turkish town Reyhanli on Syria border - BBC, Iran slams explosions in Turkish city of Reyhanli - PressTV.

Turkish protesters have called for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to step down following two car bombings in a town near the Syrian border.

Scores of people took to the streets of the town of Reyhanli in Hatay province on Saturday after more than 40 people were killed in two car bombings that jolted the town earlier in the day.

The angry demonstrators said the outbreak of violence was due to the Erdogan administration’s anti-Syria policy.

Security was tight in the center of Reyhanli, near the scene of the blasts, with the security forces setting up checkpoints to control entry into and exit from the town, witnesses said.

A similar demonstration was briefly held in Ankara, in which dozens of people marched in the street and chanted slogans criticizing Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics and has supported the foreign-backed militants fighting to topple his government.

Turkish opposition parties have censured the Turkish government for its intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.

Last July, the leader of the Republican People’s Party warned the government against dragging the country into the “Middle Eastern quagmire” with its aggressive anti-Syria stance.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of soldiers and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

Editor's comment:

As has been explained on Twitter, "The province which was attacked supports the Syrian government." This is why that town was targeted by terrorists. The Turkish government and the mainstream media have not reported that protests against the Turkish Government have been held in the Turkish town of Reyhanli in which 46 were killed in the terrorist outrage of 11 May. Instead, unfounded claims, originating from the Turkish and U.S. governments, which try to attribute blame to the Syrian Government, have been reported. An example is the report Turkey blames Syria over Reyhanli bombings of 13 may in the Guardian The Syrian Government has condemned the outrage and comprehensively refuted any suggestion that it could have been behind the outrage.

#postscript_17may13">Postscript: More Turkish protests against Erdogan over Reyhanli bombings

Adapted from Turkish protesters blame government for blasts from PressTV of 16 May 2013.

Relatives cry as pallbearers carry the coffin of Fehmi Karaca, 69, a shop owner killed in Saturday’s bombings, for burial in Reyhanli, Turkey, Sunday, May 12, 2013.

Hundreds of Turkish citizens have held demonstrations in the southern Turkish province Hatay and in the country’s largest city Istanbul to protest against Saturday’s twin car bombings, which killed 46 people and injured over a hundred others in the town of Reyhanli.

On Thursday, the protesters condemned the violence, noting that the outbreak of bloodshed was due to the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s support for armed militants in Syria.

In Istanbul, the police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators who were marching towards the office of Erdogan.

A similar demonstration was held in Ankara on Saturday, in which dozens of people marched in the street and chanted slogans criticizing Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkey has accused Damascus of being behind the attack but Syria has dismissed the claim.

Syria Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi told a news conference on Sunday that his country "did not commit and would never commit such an act because our values would not allow that."

He blamed Ankara for the Saturday bombings in Reyhanli as well as the ongoing unrest in Syria by facilitating the flow of arms, explosives, vehicles, militants and money across the border into the Arab country.

"It is Erdogan who should be asked about this act... He and his party bear direct responsibility," Zohbi said.

The Syrian minister also stated that Turkey has planned the attacks to use them as a pretext to justify foreign intervention in Syria.

"Why this timing? Why these attack, just days before the meeting between Erdogan and (US President Barack) Obama? Does he (Erdogan), whose country is a NATO member, want to incite the United States (into intervening in Syria) by telling him his country has been attacked?" Zohbi said.

He added that the Turkish government has turned its border areas with Syria into centers for international terrorism.

Syrian rebel fights
Assad 'tyranny' by
cutting off prisoner's
head with a knife.
See #FsaSadism">embedded video
- NOT suitable for
viewing by children.

In recent days, world public opinion and the global balance of power has shifted markedly in favour of the embattled nation of Syria and its allies. Nevertheless, it is imperative for every person opposed to mass murder to give whatever support they are able to the courageous Syrian people in their fight against the terrorist 'Free' 'Syrian' Army (FSA) proxies of the US and its allies.

The included article by Tony Cartalucci was originally published as World Must Unite Against US-Saudi-Israeli Proxy War in Syria on the Land Destroyer Report on 31 March. See also: Al-Jazeera anti-Syria propagandists expelled by Palestinians. Ex-CNN Reporter: I Received Orders to Manipulate News to Demonize Syria and Iran, BRICS Challenges Unipolar World and US Dollar Hegemony, Pan-Arab Popular Forum for Supporting Syria's Steadfastness Concludes Activities- SANA, Al-Jaafari..Arms' Treaty Draft Resolution didn't Include Ban on Supplying Weapons to Terrorist Groups - SANA, PA Speaker Calls on World Parliaments to Exert Pressure on Terror-Supporting Governments - SANA, Algerian Foreign Minister: Giving a Country's Seat to Non-State Entity Against AL Convention- SANA, Syria, Churkin: Russia Will Firmly Prevent Attempts to Grant Syria's UN Seat to Opposition- SANA.

Since early 2011, following the start of NATO's bloody war against Libya, the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad has faced the start of a similar attempt at 'regime change' by terrorist 'Free' 'Syrian' Army (FSA) proxies of the United States and its allies. Unlike the tragic course of events which unfolded in Libya, the Syrian Arab Army (hereafter referred to as simply the "Syrian Army") has withstood the terrorists, contrary to repeated pronouncements by the lying mainstream media that Assad's downfall was imminent, although as many as 70,000_#fn1">1 Syrians may have already perished.

Since Tony Cartalucci wrote this article, world public opinion and the international balance of power has shifted markedly in Syria's favour. As an example the Summit of the BRICS coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which concluded on 27 March, opposed moves to escalate the war against Syria and threats to invade Iran. Russia has given a firm show of support for its Syrian ally by conducting large naval exercised off the Black Sea coast of NATO member Turkey, which has been supplying FSA terrorists and giving them sanctuary.

In spite of these developments, the survival of the Syrian nation, which traces its roots back to before the beginning of the Christian era, is not yet assured.

World Must Unite Against US-Saudi-Israeli Proxy War in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci, 31 March 2001

• US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have conspired to destroy Syria by way of arming sectarian extremists since 2007.
• The West now admits it, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have
  provided thousands of tons of weapons to militants in Syria - while also
  conceding that Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra is the best armed, most well equipped militant front in the conflict.
• US, Saudi, Israeli-backed terrorists are now committing a myriad of
  horrific atrocities against all of Syria's population, including Sunni
  Muslims - meaning neither "democracy" nor even "sectarianism" drives the
  conflict, but rather the destruction of Syria in its entirety. 
• US State Department acknowledges Syria faces threat from Al Qaeda,
  demands blockade of arms/aid from reaching government to fight
  terrorists the US State Department admits are present in every major
  Syrian city.

March 30, 2013 (LD) - Since 2007, the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel documented as conspiring to overthrow the Syrian government by way of
sectarian extremists, including groups "sympathetic to Al Qaeda," and in
particular, the militant, sectarian Muslim Brotherhood. While the West
has attempted to portray the full-scale conflict beginning in Syria in
2011 as first, a "pro-democracy uprising," to now a "sectarian
conflict," recent atrocities carried out by US-Saudi-Israeli proxies
have shifted the assault to include Sunni Muslims unable or unwilling to
participate in the destruction of the Syrian state.

Such attacks included a mortar bombardment of Damascus University, killing 15 and injuring dozens more, as well as the brutal slaying of two prominent Sunni Muslim clerics - the latest of which was beheaded,
his body paraded through the streets of Aleppo, and his head hung from
the mosque he preached in. While the West attempts to mitigate these
events by labeling the victims as "pro-government," the reality is that
the forces fighting inside Syria are funded, armed, directed, and
politically supported from abroad - and therefore do not represent any
of the Syrian people's interests, including those Syrians who do not
support the government.

It is abundantly clear that the West's goal is neither to institute
"democracy," nor even take sides in a "sectarian conflict," but rather
carry out the complete and permanent destruction of Syria as a
nation-state, sparing no one, not even Sunnis.

Such a proxy war exists contra to any conceivable interpretation of
"international law." The world is left with a moral imperative to not
only denounce this insidious conflict brought upon the Syrian people,
compounded and perpetuated entirely by external interests, but demands
that concrete action is taken to ensure that this act of aggression is
brought to an end.

The US, UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have admitted to colluding together,
flooding Syria with thousands of tons of weapons via Jordan to Syria's
south, and NATO-member Turkey to Syria's north. And in an otherwise
inexplicable conundrum, while the likes of US Secretary of State John
Kerry insist this torrent of weapons is being directed to "moderates,"
neither the US nor its allies are able to explain why Al Qaeda terror
front Jabhat al-Nusra has emerged as the most heavily armed, best equipped militant organization in the conflict.

AP reported specifically in their article, "Officials: Arms shipments rise to Syrian rebels," that:

US Secretary of
State John Kerry said on the sidelines of a Syrian opposition meeting in Italy last month that the weapons are ending up in the hands of secular groups. "I will tell you this: There is a very clear ability now in the Syrian opposition to make certain that what goes to the moderate, legitimate opposition is in fact getting to them, and the indication is
that they are increasing their pressure as a result of that," he said,
without elaborating.

But even AP admits that

Syrian opposition
activists estimate there are 15-20 different brigades fighting in and
around Damascus now, each with up to 150 fighters. Many of them have
Islamic tendencies and bear black-and-white Islamic flags or
al-Qaeda-style flags on their Facebook pages. There is also a presence
of Jabhat al-Nusra, one of the strongest Islamic terrorist groups
fighting alongside the rebels.

The US State Department's own statement regarding the designation of al-Nusra as a listed Al Qaeda terror organization states:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks --
ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised
explosive device operations -- in major city centers including Damascus,
Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr.

According to the US State Department, al-Nusra is carrying out hundreds
of attacks with a wide array of weaponry, across the entire nation of
Syria, indicating a massive front and implying an equally massive
network of logistical support, including foreign sponsorship. What's
more, is that the US State Department acknowledges al-Nusra's presence
even in cities close to Syria's borders where the CIA is admittedly
overseeing the distribution of weapons and cash. The New York Times, in
their June 2012 article, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," reported that:

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern
Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across
the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according
to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

And in New York Times' more recent March 2013 article, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.," it is admitted that weapons are being funneled into Syria across both its borders with Turkey and Jordan:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply
increased their military aid to Syria's opposition fighters in recent
months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the
uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic
data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of
rebel commanders.

The article would also state:

Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi
Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition
since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed
late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of
air shipments to accelerate, officials said.

Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia
and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in
southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating
from there, several officials said.

The US State Department acknowledges that the well armed, prominent
terror front al-Nusra is operating in the very areas the CIA is feeding
weapons and cash into.

Image: (Above) West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's 2007 report,Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq"
indicated which areas in Syria Al Qaeda fighters filtering into
Iraq came from. The overwhelming majority of them came from Dayr Al-Zawr
in Syria's southeast, Idlib in the north near the Turkish-Syrian
border, and Dar'a in the south near the Jordanian-Syrian border. (Right)
A map indicating the epicenters of violence in Syria indicate that the
exact same hotbeds for Al Qaeda in 2007, now serve as the epicenters of
so-called "pro-democracy fighters" and also happen to be areas the US
CIA is admittedly distributing weapons and other aid in. 

Such a reality directly
contradicts the US State Department's official position, and no
explanation is given as to how "moderates" can be provided with such
extensive support, and still be eclipsed militarily and logistically by
terror-front al-Nusra. That is, unless of course, the US, British,
Saudi, and Qatari weapons aren't simply just handing the weapons
directly to terrorists, precisely as planned as early as 2007.

The Destruction of Syria Began in 2007, Not 2011

While the West has attempted to reclaim Syria as part of its sphere of
influence for decades, concrete plans for the latest proxy war were laid
at least as early as 2007. It was admitted in 2007 that the US, Saudi
Arabia, and Israel conspired together to fund, arm, and direct sectarian
extremists including militants "sympathetic" to Al Qaeda, particularly
the Muslim Brotherhood, against the governments of Iran and Syria. In
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker
article,  "The Redirection: Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" the conspiracy was described as follows:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in
the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has co-operated with
Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh also cited US, Saudi, and Lebanese officials who indicated that,
"in the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new
strategic direction," and that, "the Saudi government, with Washingtons
approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad,
of Syria. The report would also state:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The
clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving
the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to
work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current
and former officials close to the Administration said.

Mention of the Muslim Brotherhood already receiving aid even in 2007 was also made:

The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a branch of a radical Sunni movement
founded in Egypt in 1928, engaged in more than a decade of violent
opposition to the regime of Hafez Assad, Bashir's father. In 1982, the
Brotherhood took control of the city of Hama; Assad bombarded the city
for a week, killing between six thousand and twenty thousand people.
Membership in the Brotherhood is punishable by death in Syria. The
Brotherhood is also an avowed enemy of the U.S. and of Israel.
Nevertheless, Jumblatt said, "We told Cheney that the basic link between
Iran and Lebanon is Syria--and to weaken Iran you need to open the door
to effective Syrian opposition."

There is evidence that the Administration's redirection strategy has
already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front
is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a
faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who
defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A.
officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political and
financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial
support, but there is American involvement."He said that Khaddam, who
now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the
knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front's
members met with officials from the National Security Council, according
to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the
Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

The Wall Street Journal in 2007 would also implicate the Muslim
Brotherhood and more specifically, the so-called "National Salvation
Front," in its article, "To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers."

It is clear that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel planned to use
sectarian extremists against the nation of Syria starting at least as
early as 2007, and it is clear that now these sectarian extremists are
carrying out the destruction of Syria with a massive torrent of weapons
and cash provided by the US and its regional allies, just as was
described by Hersh's report.

A Moral Imperative to Save Syria 

Syria is under attack by an insidious, premeditated foreign assault,
intentionally using terrorist proxies in direct and complete violation
of any conceivable interpretation of both national and international
law. The world has a moral imperative to support the Syrian people and
their government as they fight this assault - both politically and
logistically. While US Secretary John Kerry is unable to account for how
his nation's support for moderates has left Al Qaeda's al-Nusra front
the premier militant faction in Syria, he has demanded that Iraq help
stem the flow of alleged aid Iran is providing the Syrian government as
it fights these terrorists.

Does US Secretary of State John Kerry deny that Syria is fighting a
significant (and continuously growing) Al Qaeda presence within their
borders, which according to the US State Department's own statement, is
operating in every major city in the country? What conceivable
explanation or excuse could be made to justify the blockading of aid
sent to Syria to fight Al Qaeda terrorists? In fact, why isn't the US
aiding the Syrian government itself in its fight against Al Qaeda - a
terrorist organization the US has used as an excuse to wage unending
global war since 2001 when Al Qaeda allegedly killed some 3,000 American
civilians?

Does Secretary Kerry believe that further arming "moderates" is a
legitimate strategy to counter Al Qaeda's growing presence in Syria when
these "moderates" openly defend Al Qaeda's al-Nusra? The US' own
hand-picked "Syrian opposition leader,"  Mouaz al Khatib, demanded
the US reconsider its designation of al Nusra as a terrorist
organization. Retuers reported in their article, "Syrian opposition urges U.S. review of al-Nusra blacklisting," that:

The leader of
Syria's opposition coalition urged the United States on Wednesday to
review its decision to designate the militant Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra
as a terrorist group, saying religion was a legitimate motive for Syrian
rebels.

"The decision to consider a
party that is fighting the regime as a terrorist party needs to be
reviewed," Mouaz Alkhatib told a "Friends of Syria"
meeting in Morocco, where Western and Arab states granted full
recognition to the coalition seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

The US is directly responsible for the emergence and perpetuation of Al
Qaeda and other extremist groups in Syria. The statements of Secretary
John Kerry are made merely to maintain an increasingly tenuous
"plausible deniability." The precedent being set by the US and its
allies is one of using full-scale proxy invasions, that if successful in
Syria, will be directed into Iran, up through the Caucasus Mountains in
Russia, and even onto China's doorstep via extremists the West is
cultivating amongst the Uighurs. It is also clear that
the West is directly responsible for the extremists within their own
borders, and that these extremists are being used as a political tool
against the people of the West, just as they are being used as a
mercenary force abroad.

A united front between nations against this wanton
state sponsorship of terrorism is needed - with nations pledging
political and logistical support to the Syrian people to defeat this
open conspiracy. Individually, we can identify, boycott, and permanently replace the corporate-financier interests
who conceived of and are driving this agenda. Failure to stop such wide
scale criminality against the Syrian people now, will only invite
greater criminality against us all in the near future.

#FsaSadism" id="FsaSadism">Appendix: Video of prisoner's head being removed with knife

The following video is not recommended for children. It is one of a number irrefutable examples of the sadism of those fighting against the Syrian Government.

Stills from the above video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sajZmgNiU3w) shown below.

Footnotes

#fn1" id="fn1">1. The figure of 70,000 dead, has been provided by the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) which is opposed to the Government of President Bashar al-Assad, and so has an obvious motive to either fabricate death tolls or to inflate deaths resulting from actions by the Syrian Army (or the Syrian Arab Army to use its full name). However the toll in Syrian military and civilian dead cannot be light and, judging from the staggering death tolls of many hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq following the illegal 2003 invasion, the toll stands to become much higher, should the Syrian Army be defeated.

Update, 27 Sep 2013 : CNN's fake translation of Iran President Rouhani's statement regarding Holocaust (also added as an Appendix). (This article was originally published 31 March 2010.) From Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), 30 Mar 2013.

PRAGUE, (SANA)- Ex-CNN reporter Amber Lyon revealed that during her work for the channel she received orders to send false news and exclude some others which the US administration did not favor with the aim to create a public opinion in favor of launching an aggression on Iran and Syria.

See also: WARNING: "Final" Psy-Op Vs. Syria Begins of 29 March 2013 by Tony Cartalucci, Syrian Conflict: The Price of Defying the West and Obstructing a US-Israeli Attack on Iran of 28 Mar 2013 by Tony Cartalucci (also here), How Obama Chose War Over Peace in Syria of 28 March 2012 by Shamus Cooke. Follow Amber Lyon on Twitter

Lyon was quoted by the Slovak main news website as saying that the mainstream US media outlets intentionally work to create a propaganda against Iran to garner public opinion's support for a military invasion against it.

She revealed that the scenario used before launching the war on Iraq is being prepared to be repeated where Iran and Syria are now being subject to constant 'demonization'.

The former reporter clarified that the CNN channel manipulates and fabricates news and follows selectiveness when broadcasting news, stressing that the Channel receives money from the U.S. government and other countries' governments in exchange for news content.

H. Said

Editorial Comment: As only one of countless examples of how the Australian public have been similarly deceived about the Syrian conflict, see Fisk says the Arab states are no longer afraid of the US on ABC's Lateline of 28 March and read Socrates' response, The Truth According To Robert Fisk.

#FabricatedTranslation" id="FabricatedTranslation">Appendix: CNN's fake translation of Iran President Rouhani's statement regarding Holocaust

Originally published on Global Research on 27 Sep 2013

TEHRAN (FNA)- American news channel CNN fabricated the remarks made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in response to the network’s question about the Holocaust.

The CNN aired its interview with Rouhani on Tuesday but the news channel added to or changed parts of his remarks when Christiane Amanpour asked him about the Holocaust.

Here is the exact transcript of the Farsi text according to the CNN broadcast:

(Text is omitted for now as this installation of Drupal cannot display Farsi characters. To view Farsi text, see the original story on Global Research.)

Here is the exact English translation of President Rouhani’s remarks:

Rouhani’s: “I have said before that I am not a historian and historians should specify, state and explain the aspects of historical events, but generally we fully condemn any kind of crime committed against humanity throughout the history, including the crime committed by the Nazis both against the Jews and non-Jews, the same way that if today any crime is committed against any nation or any religion or any people or any belief, we condemn that crime and genocide. Therefore, what the Nazis did is condemned, (but) the aspects that you talk about, clarification of these aspects is a duty of the historians and researchers, I am not a history scholar.”

And here is what the CNN translation says:

CNN Question:

“One of the things your predecessor (President Ahmadinejad) used to do from this very platform was deny(ing) the holocaust and pretend(ing) it was a myth, I want to know you, your position on the holocaust, do you accept what it was, and what was it?”

CNN’s Translation:

“I’ve said before that I am not a historian and then, when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust, it is the historians that should reflect on it. But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime that Nazis committed towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn, the taking of human life is contemptible, it makes no difference whether that life is Jewish life, Christian or Muslim, for us it is the same, but taking the human life is something our religion rejects but this doesn’t mean that on the other hand you can say Nazis committed crime against a group now therefore, they must usurp the land of another group and occupy it. This too is an act that should be condemned. There should be an even-handed discussion“.

FNA NOTE: The Red parts have been added or completely altered. The Yellow parts are the product of conceptual, and not precise, translation.

Yet, the underlined parts are the worst parts of the fabrications which totally change what President Rouhani has said.

After the CNN released the interview, hundreds of news agencies, TV and news channels, websites and weblogs broadcast this title: “Iran’s President Rouhani Calls Holocaust ‘Reprehensible’ Crime Against Jews”, a title quoted from the CNN; Or “Rouhani Recognizes the Holocaust as Crime against Jews”.

In 2011, barely eight years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, shown conclusively to to have been illegal and a monstrous crime against humanity, the same criminals were able to deceive a sizable component of public opinion into accepting the truth of their claims against Libya whilst sowing confusion in the minds of much of the remainder. That would not have been possible without the complicity of many supposed 'left-liberal' and 'far-left' organisations. The imperialists were thus able to complete their invasion and destruction of Libya and enable the plunder of its natural resources by oil corporations.

This article is a response to the #comment-197736">censorship of discussion about the current Syrian conflict on johnquiggin.com, a site for discussion from a supposedly "social-democratic perspective". See also: Syrian Foreign Ministry: UNHRC Resolution rejected as it ignores support for terrorism in Syria of 25 Mar 2013.

Phoney 'left' cover-up of 2011 Libya invasion, attempted proxy invasion of Syria

For the past two years, at least, much of the supposed 'alternate' Internet has been an essential component of the government and corporate media machine to deceive public opinion about critical world-changing events. Two of the most notorious of a number of terrible examples include: (1) NATO's illegal invasion of Libya in 2011; and (2) the current terrorist war against Syria by the jihadist and mercenary proxies of the U.S. and its allies.

The same is now happening to Syria. Fortunately, a more sizeable proportion of public opinion has seen through the deceit, whilst the Syrian people, their government and their armed forces have demonstrated much bravery, skill and resourcefulness in fighting the terrorist invasion. However, no country the size of Syria can hope to hold out indefinitely against such large, powerful and determined enemies. Unless public opinion in countries which are waging war against Syria (or imposing sanctions in the case of Australia) can learn the truth, the prospects for the Syrians are not good.

Public wisdom about Syria possible with open Internet discussion

A good start to spreading the truth would be proper discussion and debate on Internet forums and the whistle must be blown on phony progressives on the Internet who #comment-197736">refuse to allow free and open discussion.

I wrote a post, entitled #copyof-31491">Online forum: How to stop the Syrian 'civil' war?.

I wrote that post after two contributors to a discussion on johnquiggin.com posted questions to me on that site.

The article that the post was in response to is #comments">Sceptics and suckers: A look back at Iraq of 21 March.

Censorship of views contrary to war popaganda

After I had put myself to all that trouble, the post was promptly deleted by the site owner, Professor John Quiggin.

I consider the action taken by Professor Quiggin to have been grossly inconsiderate to me and to his other site visitors, in particular to the two to whom I was responding. I also consider such censorship of the expression of views, which are clearly relevant to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, unacceptable on a web-site that ostensibly exists to promote discussion and thought about current events.

The supposed justification for this censorship given by Professor John Quiggin #comment-197736">was:

As previously advised, I don't propose to entertain this kind of thing on my blog. All comments should be directed to the candobetter site -- JQ

Exactly what he meant by "this kind of stuff," and how it differs from the material in his article and subsequent discussion, was not explained.

I can only presume that Professor Quiggin, and many who visit and contribute to his site, prefer to academically discuss events of the distant past, the outcome of which we cannot hope to change, rather than acting to help stop the wars and killing that are going on right now.

What you can do

If you agree that such censorship, on the supposedly free Internet, supposedly outside of the control of the corporate newsmedia, is unjustified and harmful to free speech, democracy and, ultimately, world peace, please make your views known #comment-197736">on that site and post a copy here also. Should those posts also be censored, I expect Project Censored would be most interested to hear from you.

#appendix" id="appendix">Appendix: Copy of "Online forum: How to stop the Syrian 'civil' war?"

The following is a response to #comment-197676">questions put to me in a debate on the Iraq War of 2003 on johnquiggin.com. This post was deleted on 25 March 2013.

J-D (@ #comment-197676">#41), Ken_L (@ #comment-197705">#42)

Thank you both for your interest. My apologies, on my part, for my slow response. I was intending to write a sizeable article to publish on my web-site (candobetter -dot- net -slash- syria) in response to your questions. Please consider the response below to be only interim:

Whilst it could seem hyperbolic to liken the crimes, committed the New World Order against Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Libya, and now Syria, with those of the Third Reich, given that the death toll of 3.3 million, so far killed since 1990 in Iraq alone, is barely an order of magnitude less than that caused by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Second World War, this likening is not unreasonable.

Given that the rulers of the New World Order have, in their hands, vastly more terrible and sophisticated weapons of war than those possessed by Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, it is not hard to envision the death toll greatly surpassing the terrible toll of 60 million deaths in the Second World War should they triumph against Syria.

So, the whole civilised[1] world has a vital stake in the Syrian Army defeating the so-called "Free Syrian Army" and its New World Order controllers in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Israel, the Arab monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Israel, etc.

Given the effective abolition of the rights guaranteed in the US constitution by President Barack Obama, it will only be a matter of time before democratic rights, free speech, parliamentary democracy are abolished in Western Nations, should the Syrian people be defeated.

J-D #comment-197676">wrote:

I am confused by your questions and wonder whether you could clarify.

J-D, I was simply pointing out that the history of which Professor Quiggin has written has been repeated in Libya and now threatens to be repeated in Syria and Iran. Surely, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we need to consider whether that illegal invasion was a once-only occurrence or whether it was only one in a pattern of events which is now being repeated. If the latter, in the case of Syria, is true, then we should surely be interested in applying the terrible lessons of the Iraq war so as to prevent their repetition in Syria.

Ken_L #comment-197705">wrote:

@malthusista, I would also appreciate clarification of exactly how you believe 'we' could stop the Syrian civil war? A little elaboration of who 'we' are would also be helpful.

Ken_L, The civil war in Syria could be ended simply if the U.S., Israel, etc., accepted the principle that any people have a right to national self-determination. It is obvious that President Bashar al-Assad and his government enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of Syrians. Those, who have waged the terrorist war against the Syrian government, comprise, at most, a small minority of Syrians. The vast majority of the FSA is comprised of sectarian Islamist extremists from countries like Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, mercenaries, the U.S. SAS, the U.K. SAS, the French Special Forces, the C.I.A., Mossad, etc.

Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel should cease giving these killers sanctuary and passage into and out of Syria.

An unprovoked attack on the armed forces of Syria or on the armed forces of any sovereign country is a crime and, even more so, the murder of unarmed civilians. Supplying weapons to those killers by the U.S. and its allies is complicity in that crime and should cease. Were that to happen, the war in Syria would be finished in days.

Early last year, the Syrian government received overwhelming support (and, I might add, far more than U.S. politicians typically get in national elections with barely 50% of the population in participating in most) from its people in a referendum proposing constitutional reform. Part of the reform was to remove from the Syrian constitution, any privilege give to the Ba'ath Socialist Party. President Assad and every member of the Syrian Parliament must now stand for re-election. Any one of them will be voted out were they not to enjoy popular support.

Were there ever to be free elections in Syria, which cannot possibly be held in the middle of the war now raging, there can be little doubt that President Assad would win overwhelmingly and that the FSA would get a miniscule vote.

The war and killing in Syria only continue because the rulers of the U.S. and their allies wish it to continue.

Footnote to #appendix" appendix="">

[1] I don't mean 'civilised' in the sense of the European colonialists claims of bringing 'civilisation' to the 'backward' people of the Third World in previous centuries.

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- Syria strongly rejects the selectiveness adopted while drafting the resolution which was endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Friday, saying such resolutions are continuation of attempts to sabotage efforts seeking political settlement for the crisis, said an official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry on Saturday.

"Once again the UNHRC gets carried along by a wide misleading campaign led by countries supporting terrorism in Syria to provide a political cover for the crimes committed by the armed terrorist groups," the source added.

See also: Syrian People's Assembly Speaker: Time for international community to listen to the truth, not mainstream media lies of 24 Mar 2013, Murder of 42 in mosque bombing a continuation of the war against the Syrian people of 22 Mar 2013, Censorship Alert of 26 Mar 2013.

It lashed out at those countries for submitting "unilateral and politicized resolutions that seek to place responsibility on the Syrian government for the ongoing events based on fallacies and false claims."

The source also slammed those countries' ignoring of the crimes perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups on which the Syrian government has presented tens of proofs to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

"This kind of resolutions, which became a tool used to target countries and interfere in their internal affairs, are continuation of the attempts of the countries involved in backing terrorism in Syria, prolonging violence and bringing foreign military intervention and sabotaging the efforts seeking a political settlement for the crisis through a Syrian-led national dialogue among the Syrians," said the official source.

"Syria completely rejects this resolution as it ignores the immoral role played by the countries supporting terrorism in Syria," the source stressed, noting that terrorists are being funded, trained, armed and dispatched from over 28 countries to carry out terrorist crimes in Syria, the latest was the bombing in al-Iman Mosque in Damascus on March 21.

The source highlighted that these crimes are being perpetrated by al-Qaeda-linked groups that are guided by fatwas that approve the shedding of the blood of innocents and obscurantist thinking seeking Syria's destruction and sabotaging co-existence among its people.

The source stressed that "such biased, non-objective and unbalanced resolutions" consolidate the double standards policy practiced by some countries that claim to defend human rights while at the same time they ignore the outrageous record of human rights in the countries sponsoring this resolution.

H. Said

#CensorshipAlert" id="CensorshipAlert">Censorship Alert

Editorial comment: The appendix originally posted here has been adapted to become the article Censorship Alert of 26 March 2013.

The Syrian people have barely been able to come to terms with with their grief at the murder of 35 in an attack with chemical weapons, when the war against them, sponsored by the U.S., it's European NATO allies, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel, resumed with a terrorist suicide bombing

Almost two dozen more Syrians including top Sunni cleric Mohammed Saeed Ramadan al-Bouti were killed in a terrorist blast at the al-Eman Mosque in Damascus.

The report has been adapted from the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

See also: Suicide bomber kills pro-regime cleric in Syria: TV in PressTV of 21 Mar 2013,
18 Killed Including Top Cleric as Suicidal Blast Rips Apart a Mosque in Damascus of 22 Mar 2013,
Senior cleric, others killed in Syria mosque bombing of 21 Mar 2013,
Syria: Top Sunni preacher among 42 killed in suicide bombing inside mosque of 21 Mar 2013,
Damascus mosque attack kills top cleric: Syria TV of 21 Mar 2013,
Suicide bomber kills pro-regime cleric in Syria: TV of 2 Mar 2013

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-Great Scholar, Dr. Mohammad Said Ramadan a-Bouti was martyred on Thursday after a suicide terrorist blew himself up in al-Eman Mosque in Damascus while the late martyr was giving a religious lesson.

The terrorist act claimed the lives of scores of prayers, while tens others were injured.

An official source told SANA that the suicide terrorist intended to blow himself up among the students who were listening to a religious lesson, leading to the martyrdom and injuries of scores of people and causing big material losses.

A source at the Health Ministry stated that the death toll of the terrorist act rose to 42, while 84 others were injured.

The wounded prayers were admitted to a number of Damascus hospitals.

See original report in SANA for more grim images.

Biography

Martyr scholar al-Bouti was born in 1929. He accomplished his Sharia Baccalaureate certificate at the Islamic Tawjih Institute in Damascus.

In 1953, he joined al-Sharea Academy at al-Azhar University and acquired the global certificate in 1955, then he got a diploma in education in the same year.

He was appointed as a teacher in Al-Sharea Academy at Damascus university in 1960, then he was delegated to al-Azhar university to get the doctorate in the Islamic Sharea Originals and got it in 1965.

In 1965, he was nominated as a professor in al-Sharea Academy at Damascus University in 1965, then a dean and chairman of the religions sector at the University.

In 2012 he was nominated as President of the Levant Scholars' Union.

Member of the Higher Council of Oxford Academy.

He wrote more than 40 books in the sciences of Sharea, literature, philosophy, society and civilization.

Ministry of Awkaf announces the death of Scholar al-Bouti

Ministry of Awkaf ( Religious Endowments ), Syria scholars, intellectuals, teachers and the Levant Scholars' Union announced the death of scholar al-Bouti who was martyred while giving a religious lesson in al-Eman mosque.

"The malicious hands of traitors killed the great Scholar because he was the voice of Syria, the right of Syria and the image of Syria. They targeted his body, but they didn't target his mentality or spirit," Minister of Awkaf Mohammad Abdul-Satar al-Sayyed said in a statement.

Al-Baath Party Condemns the heinous Crime

Regional leadership of al-Baath Arab Socialist Party condemned the brutal crime in al-Eman mosque in Damascus which claimed the lives of the great scholar and the prayers.

"This massacre adds to the crimes perpetrated by the mercenary terrorists against the Syrians. They target everything including the mosques and houses of worship," the leadership said in statement.

Archbishop al-Khouri: al-Bouti will remain the word of right

Archbishop Luka al-Khouri, the general vicar of the patriarchate of Antioch and all the East said that the late scholar al-Bouti will remain the word of right that we have learned from. His teachings will remain remembered in the brains of all Syrians.

"We all pray for the rest of our martyr whom we respect..," Archbishop Khouri said in a speech to the Syrian TV.

This is the text of the introductory speech by Susan Dirgham to what turned out to be an uplifting evening on the politics of war in Syria, as interpreted by members of AMRIS (Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria). The speakers formed a panel of two young women and one man, all with different connections to Syria and different perspectives. The level of political sophistication was very high, impressive, and stimulating. For those of you who were not able to attend the Unitarian Church on Wednesday 6 March, I filmed the event in four films. The films are embedded in this article and available at http://youtu.be/HifmWKE0cg4; http://youtu.be/exoNr8r4UEU; http://youtu.be/BpWjdzlOheg and http://youtu.be/obw4M40CeDM

AMRIS (Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria).
Susan Dirgham: On behalf of AMRIS [Australians for Mussalaha (Reconciliation) in Syria] I’d like to thank the Unitarian Church, particularly the Social Justice Committee for hosting this evening.

What unites all the speakers you will hear tonight is a love for the people and secular societies of Syria and/or Lebanon.

That word ‘love’ isn’t sniggered at in Syria, as it might be in Australia. People use it frequently and it has meaning.

I don’t want to idealize Syrian society and the people, but in my mind, there is something in the air in Syria, or there was in the Syria I knew when I lived there and visited. It is very human, and very precious, and genuine.

The other main speakers at the forum were Edward, Nina and Leyla, pictured below. Each of his/her pictures is linked to the embedded video of his/her talk.

#edwardEmbedded">

#ninaEmbedded">

#laylaEmbedded">

I used to believe I could take something of value from our modern affluent world to Syria. Like a 21st Century missionary.

I took diaries with beautiful photos of Australian landscapes and I took koalas.

But I found so much in Damascus and other parts of Syria that was precious and that couldn’t be packed in a bag. It was both a physical and metaphysical expression of the history of humanity, something grand and sweeping, and tragic and triumphant, and still very much present - being lived by the people in Syria who have Arab, Turk, French, British, Palestinian, Russian, Roman, Greek, Circassian, Armenian, Kurd etc etc in their blood.

In the classrooms of the British Council, I felt that my Syrian students had a common purpose in bringing their society together, in modernizing it and uniting the disparate peoples, despite the enormous challenges and the threats from outside. It was hard work that the people of Syria were committed to, the women as much as the men.

In Syria, I was very conscious of the plight of the Palestinian people and of the war in Iraq. On television, we saw images of US soldiers walking the streets of Baghdad looking as alien there and as unwelcome as say Saudi Arabian soldiers would if they were striding the streets of Australia with AK47s.

But Syria was on the list of countries the neo-cons in the US planned to topple. Now the US and its allies are waging a modern day Cowboy and Indian fight in Syria, a 21st century digital crusade against Syria, with support from Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Israel and Australia.

So it is a love for Syria and Lebanon which unites the speakers tonight. And it is Mother Agnes Mariam who has brought us together. Mother Agnes, as described by Angela Shanahan in The Australian (6 Oct 2011) was the mother superior of a 1500-year-old monastery in Syria.

For me, she is a modern day hero in a time when we imagine we don’t need heroes because our suburban life-style and city scape look so permanent. But trust me, we need heroes. The grand architecture and monuments or Syria appeared permanent to me; and the free and easy lifestyle which allowed young women to go out alone at night in Damascus did, too.

We need heroes. And we need to search hard for the truth, and demand that people in our media and the government do the same.

As in the 1930s, there are signs that a most terrible genocide could be committed in Syria and the region. It has to be prevented.

Questions and discussion in the latter half of the forum

Given that the supporters of the armed insurgency against the Syrian Government of President Bashar al-Assad, namely the governments of United States, Australia, their NATO allies and the Arab dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, are the same who waged the illegal wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, from which 3.3 million Iraqis died, according to one estimate shouldn't we expect Australia's newsmedia, this time to subject the claims made by these same governments to more scrutiny? Shouldn't the Syrian government, which is being accused by the Western newsmedia of making foreign intervention necessary, at least, be allowed to put its case? Evidently not, judging by the Australian newsmedia's failure to report on the included interview of Bashar Al-Assad conducted by The Sunday Times on 3 March.

This page has been copied from the English language section of VoltaireNet. Includes embedded YouTube broadcast of some of the interview

Sunday Times: Mr. President your recent offer of political dialogue was qualified with a firm rejection of the very groups you would have to pacify to stop the violence: the armed rebels and the Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition alliance.

So in effect you are only extending an olive branch to the loyal opposition, mostly internal, that renounces the armed struggle, and who effectively recognizes the legitimacy of your leadership, who are you willing to talk to, really?

President Assad: First of all, let me correct some of the misconceptions that have been circulating and that are found in your question in order to make my answer accurate.

Sunday Times: Okay.

President Assad: Firstly, when I announced the plan, I said that it was for those who are interested in dialogue, because you cannot make a plan that is based on dialogue with somebody who does not believe in dialogue. So, I was very clear regarding this.

Secondly, this open dialogue should not be between exclusive groups but between all Syrians of every level. The dialogue is about the future of Syria. We are twenty three million Syrians and all of us have the right to participate in shaping the country’s future. Some may look at it as a dialogue between the government and certain groups in the opposition - whether inside or outside, external or internal -actually this is a very shallow way of looking at the dialogue. It is much more comprehensive. It is about every Syrian and about every aspect of Syrian life. Syria’s future cannot be determined simply by who leads it but by the ambitions and aspirations of all its people.

The other aspect of the dialogue is that it opens the door for militants to surrender their weapons and we have granted many amnesties to facilitate this. This is the only way to make a dialogue with those groups. This has already started, even before the plan, and some have surrendered their weapons and they live now their normal life. But this plan makes the whole process more methodical, announced and clear.

If you want to talk about the opposition, there is another misconception in the West. They put all the entities even if they are not homogeneous in one basket – as if everything against the government is opposition. We have to be clear about this. We have opposition that are political entities and we have armed terrorists. We can engage in dialogue with the opposition but we cannot engage in dialogue with terrorists; we fight terrorism. Another phrase that is often mentioned is the ‘internal opposition inside Syria’ or ‘internal opposition as loyal to the government.’ Opposition groups should be loyal and patriotic to Syria – internal and external opposition is not about the geographic position; it is about their roots, resources and representation. Have these roots been planted in Syria and represent Syrian people and Syrian interests or the interests of foreign government? So, this is how we look at the dialogue, this is how we started and how we are going to continue.

Sunday Times: Most have rejected it, at least if we talk about the opposition externally who are now the body that is being hailed as the opposition and where the entire world is basically behind them. So, most of them have rejected it with the opposition describing your offer as a “waste of time,” and some have said that it is “empty rhetoric” based on lack of trust and which British Secretary William Hague described it as “beyond hypocritical” and the Americans said you were “detached from reality.”

President Assad: I will not comment on what so-called Syrian bodies outside Syria have said. These bodies are not independent. As Syrians, we are independent and we need to respond to independent bodies and this is not the case. So let’s look at the other claims.

Firstly, detached from reality: Syria has been fighting adversaries and foes for two years; you cannot do that if you do not have public support. People will not support you if you are detached from their reality. A recent survey in the UK shows that a good proportion British people want “to keep out of Syria” and they do not believe that the British government should send military supplies to the rebels in Syria.

In spite of this, the British government continues to push the EU to lift its arms embargo on Syria to start arming militants with heavy weapons. That is what I call detached from reality–when you are detached from your own public opinion! And they go further in saying that they want to send “military aid” that they describe as “non-lethal.” The intelligence, communication and financial assistance being provided is very lethal. The events of 11th of September were not committed by lethal aids. It was the application of non-lethal technology and training which caused the atrocities.

The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria; we all know that we are now fighting Al-Qaeda or Jabhat al-Nusra which is an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies. This is beyond hypocritical! What is beyond hypocrisy is when you talk about freedom of expression and ban Syrian TV channels from the European broadcasting satellites; when you shed tears for somebody killed in Syria by terrorist acts while preventing the Security Council from issuing a statement denouncing the suicide bombing that happened last week in Damascus, and you were here, where three hundred Syrians were either killed or injured, including women and children - all of them were civilians. Beyond hypocrisy when you preach about human rights and you go into Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and kill hundreds of thousands in illegal wars. Beyond hypocrisy is when you talk about democracy and your closest allies are the worst autocratic regimes in the world that belong to the medieval centuries. This is hypocrisy!

Sunday Times: But you always refer to the people fighting here as terrorists, do you accept that while some are from the Jabhat al-Nusra and those affiliated to Al-Qaeda but there are others such as the FSA or under the umbrella of the FSA? That some of them are the defectors and some of them are just ordinary people who started some of the uprising. These are not terrorists; these are people fighting for what they believe to be the right way at the moment.

President Assad: When we say that we are fighting Al-Qaeda, we mean that the main terrorist group and the most dangerous is Al-Qaeda. I have stated in many interviews and speeches that this is not the only group in Syria. The spectrum ranges from petty criminals, drugs dealers, groups that are killing and kidnapping just for money to mercenaries and militants; these clearly do not have any political agenda or any ideological motivations. The so-called “Free Army” is not an entity as the West would like your readers to believe. It is hundreds of small groups – as defined by international bodies working with Annan and Al-Ibrahimi - there is no entity, there is no leadership, there is no hierarchy; it is a group of different gangs working for different reasons. The Free Syrian Army is just the headline, the umbrella that is used to legitimize these groups.

This does not mean that at the beginning of the conflict there was no spontaneous movement; there were people who wanted to make change in Syria and I have acknowledged that publically many times. That’s why I have said the dialogue is not for the conflict itself; the dialogue is for the future of Syria because many of the groups still wanting change are now against the terrorists. They still oppose the government but they do not carry weapons. Having legitimate needs does not make your weapons legitimate.

Sunday Times: Your 3-staged plan: the first one you speak of is the cessation of violence. Obviously there is the army and the fighters on the other side. Now, within the army you have a hierarchy, so if you want to say cease-fire, there is a commander that can control that, but when you offer cessation of violence or fire how can you assume the same for the rebels when you talk about them being so many groups, fragmented and not under one leadership. So, that’s one of the points of your plan. So, this suggests that this basically an impossible request. You speak of referendum but with so many displaced externally and internally, many of whom are the backbone of the opposition; those displaced at least. So, a referendum without them would not be fair, and the third part is that parliamentary elections and all this hopefully before 2014; it is a very tall list to be achieved before 2014. So, what are really the conditions that you are attaching to the dialogue and to make it happen, and aren’t some of the conditions that you are really suggesting or offering impossible to achieve?

President Assad: That depends on how we look at the situation. First of all, let’s say that the main article in the whole plan is the dialogue; this dialogue will put a timetable for everything and the procedures or details of this plan. The first article in my plan was the cessation of violence. If we cannot stop this violence, how can we achieve the other articles like the referendum and elections and so on? But saying that you cannot stop the violence is not a reason to do nothing. Yes there are many groups as I have said with no leadership, but we know that their real leadership are those countries that are funding and supplying their weapons and armaments - mainly Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

If outside parties genuinely want to help the process they should be pressuring those countries to stop supplying the terrorists. As with any other sovereign state, we will not negotiate with terrorists.

Sunday Times: Critics say real and genuine negotiations may be the cause of your downfall and that of your government or regime, and that you know this, hence you offer practically impossible scenarios for dialogue and negotiations?

President Assad: Actually, I don’t know this, I know the opposite. To be logical and realistic, if this is the case, then these foes, adversaries or opponents should push for the dialogue because in their view it will bring my downfall. But actually they are doing the opposite. They are preventing the so-called ‘opposition bodies outside Syria’ to participate in the dialogue because I think they believe in the opposite; they know that this dialogue will not bring my downfall, but will actually make Syria stronger. This is the first aspect.

The second aspect is that the whole dialogue is about Syria, about terrorism, and about the future of Syria. This is not about positions and personalities. So, they shouldn’t distract people by talking about the dialogue and what it will or will not bring to the President. I did not do it for myself. At the end, this is contradictory; what they say is contradicting what they do.

Sunday Times: You said that if they push for dialogue, it could bring your downfall?

President Assad: No, I said according to what they say if it brings my downfall, why don’t they come to the dialogue? They say that the dialogue will bring the downfall of the President and I am inviting them to the dialogue. Why don’t they then come to the dialogue to bring my downfall? This is self-evident. That’s why I said they are contradicting themselves.

Sunday Times: Mr. President, John Kerry, a man you know well, has started a tour that will take him this week end to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, where he will be talking to them about ways to ‘ease you out.’ In London and Berlin earlier this week, he said that President Assad must go and he also said that one of his first moves is to draft diplomatic proposals to persuade you to give up power. Would you invite him to Damascus for talks? What would you say to him? What is your message to him now given what he said this week and what he plans to say to his allies when he visits them over the weekend? And if possible from your knowledge of him how would you describe Kerry from your knowledge of him in the past?

President Assad: I would rather describe policies rather than describing people. So, it is still early to judge him. It is only a few weeks since he became Secretary of State. First of all, the point that you have mentioned is related to internal Syrian matters or Syrian issue. Any Syrian subject would not be raised with any foreigners. We only discuss it with Syrians within Syria. So, I am not going to discuss it with anyone who is coming from abroad. We have friends and we discuss our issues with friends, we listen to their advice but at the end it is our decision as Syrians to think or to make what’s good for our country.

If anyone wants to ‘genuinely’ – I stress the word genuinely – help Syria and help the cessation of violence in our country, he can do only one thing; he can go to Turkey and sit with Erdogan and tell to him stop smuggling terrorists into Syria, stop sending armaments, stop providing logistical support to those terrorists. He can go to Saudi Arabia and Qatar and tell them stop financing the terrorists in Syria. This is the only thing anyone can do dealing with the external part of our problem, but no one from outside Syria can deal with the internal part of this problem

Sunday Times: So, what is your message to Kerry?

President Assad: It is very clear: to understand what I said now. I mean, not a message to Kerry but to anyone who is talking about the Syrian issue: only Syrian people can tell the President: stay or leave, come or go. I am just saying this clearly in order not to waste the time of others to know where to focus.

Sunday Times: What role if any do you see for Britain in any peace process for Syria? Have there been any informal contacts with the British? What is your reaction to Cameron’s support for the opposition? What would you say if you were sitting with him now, especially that Britain is calling for the arming of the rebels?

President Assad: There is no contact between Syria and Britain for a long time. If we want to talk about the role, you cannot separate the role from the credibility. And we cannot separate the credibility from the history of that country. To be frank, now I am talking to a British journalist and a British audience, to be frank, Britain has played a famously (in our region) an unconstructive role in different issues for decades, some say for centuries. I am telling you now the perception in our region.

The problem with this government is that their shallow and immature rhetoric only highlight this tradition of bullying and hegemony. I am being frank. How can we expect to ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarize the problem? How can you ask them to play a role in making the situation better and more stable, how can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supplies to the terrorists and don’t try to ease the dialogue between the Syrians. This is not logical. I think that they are working against us and working against the interest of the UK itself. This government is acting in a naïve, confused and unrealistic manner. If they want to play a role, they have to change this; they have to act in a more reasonable and responsible way, till then we do not expect from an arsonist to be a firefighter!

Sunday Times: In 2011 you said you wouldn’t waste your time talking about the body leading opposition, now we are talking about the external body, in fact you hardly recognized there was such a thing, what changed your mind or views recently? What talks, if any are already going on with the rebels who are a major component and factor in this crisis? Especially given that your Foreign Minister Muallem said earlier this week when he was in Russia that the government is open to talks with the armed opposition can you clarify?

President Assad: Actually, I did not change my mind. Again, this plan is not for them; it is for every Syrian who accepts the dialogue. So, making this initiative is not a change of mind. Secondly, since day one in this crisis nearly two years ago, we have said we are ready for dialogue; nothing has changed. We have a very consistent position towards the dialogue. Some may understand that I changed my mind because I did not recognize the first entity, but then I recognized the second. I recognized neither, more importantly the Syrian people do not recognize them or take them seriously. When you have a product that fails in the market, they withdraw the product, change the name, change the packing and they rerelease it again – but it is still faulty. The first and second bodies are the same products with different packaging. Regarding what our minister said, it is very clear.

Part of the initiative is that we are ready to negotiate with anyone including militants who surrender their arms. We are not going to deal with terrorists who are determined to carry weapons, to terrorize people, to kill civilians, to attack public places or private enterprises and destroy the country.

Sunday Times: Mr. President, the world looks at Syria and sees a country being destroyed, with at least 70,000 killed, more than 3 million displaced and sectarian divisions being deepened. Many people around the world blame you. What do you say to them? Are you to blame for what’s happened in the country you are leading?

President Assad: You have noted those figures as though they were numbers from a spreadsheet. To some players they are being used to push forward their political agenda; unfortunately that is a reality. Regardless of their accuracy, for us Syrians, each one of those numbers represents a Syrian man, woman or child. When you talk about thousands of victims, we see thousands of families who have lost loved ones and who unfortunately will grieve for many years to come. Nobody can feel this pain more than us.

Looking at the issue of political agendas, we have to ask better questions. How were these numbers verified? How many represent foreign fighters? How many were combatants aged between 20 and 30? How many were civilians – innocent women and children? The situation on the ground makes it almost impossible to get accurate answers to these important questions. We all know how death tolls and human casualties have been manipulated in the past to pave the way for humanitarian intervention. The Libyan government recently announced that the death toll before the invasion of Libya was exaggerated; they said five thousand victims from each side while the number was talking at that time of tens of thousands.

The British and the Americans who were physically inside Iraq during the war were unable to provide precise numbers about the victims that have been killed from their invasion. Suddenly, the same sources have very precise numbers about what is happening in Syria! This is ironic; I will tell you very simply that these numbers do not exist in reality; it is part of their virtual reality that they want to create to push forward their agenda for military intervention under the title of humanitarian intervention

Sunday Times: If I may just on this note a little bit. Even if the number is exaggerated and not definitely precise, these are numbers corroborated by Syrian groups, however they are still thousands that were killed. Some are militants but some are civilians. Some are being killed through the military offensive, for example artillery or plane attacks in certain areas. So even if we do not argue the actual number, the same applies, they still blame yourself for those civilians, if you want, that are being killed through the military offensive, do you accept that?

President Assad:Firstly, we cannot talk about the numbers without their names. People who are killed have names. Secondly, why did they die? Where and how were they killed? Who killed them? Armed gangs, terrorist groups, criminals, kidnappers, the army, who?

Sunday Times: It is a mix.

President Assad: It is a mix, but it seems that you are implying that one person is responsible for the current situation and all the human casualties. From day one the situation in Syria has been influenced by military and political dynamics, which are both very fast moving. In such situations you have catalysts and barriers. To assume any one party is responsible for all barriers and another party responsible for all the catalysts is absurd. Too many innocent civilians have died, too many Syrians are suffering. As I have already said nobody is more pained by this than us Syrians, which is why we are pushing for a national dialogue. I’m not in the blame business, but if you are talking of responsibility, then clearly I have a constitutional responsibility to keep Syria and her people safe from terrorists and radical groups.

Sunday Times: What is the role of Al-Qaeda and other jihadists and what threats do they pose to the region and Europe? Are you worried Syria turning into something similar to Chechnya in the past? Are you concerned about the fate of minorities if you were loose this war or of a sectarian war akin to that of Iraq?

President Assad:The role of Al-Qaeda in Syria is like the role of Al-Qaeda anywhere else in this world; killing, beheading, torturing and preventing children from going to school because as you know Al-Qaeda’s ideologies flourish where there is ignorance. Ideologically, they try to infiltrate the society with their dark, extremist ideologies and they are succeeding. If you want to worry about anything in Syria, it is not the ‘minorities.’ This is a very shallow description because Syria is a melting pot of religions, sects, ethnicities and ideologies that collectively make up a homogeneous mixture, irrelevant of the portions or percentages. We should be worrying about the majority of moderate Syrians who, if we do not fight this extremism, could become the minority – at which point Syria will cease to exist.

If you worry about Syria in that sense, you have to worry about the Middle East because we are the last bastion of secularism in the region. If you worry about the Middle East, the whole world should be worried about its stability. This is the reality as we see it.

Sunday Times: How threatening is Al-Qaeda now?

President Assad: Threatening by ideology more than the killing. The killing is dangerous, of course, but what is irreversible is the ideology; that is dangerous and we have been warning of this for many years even before the conflict; we have been dealing with these ideologies since the late seventies. We were the first in the region to deal with such terrorists who have been assuming the mantle of Islam. We have consistently been warning of this, especially in the last decade during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. The West is only reacting to the situation, not acting. We need to act by dealing with the ideology first. A war on terror without dealing with the ideology will lead you nowhere and will only make things worse. So, it is threatening and it is dangerous, not just to Syria but to the whole region.

Sunday Times: US officials recently, in particular yesterday, are quoted as saying that US decision not to arm rebels could be revised. If this was to happen what in your view will the consequences in Syria and in the region? What is your warning against this? Now, they are talking about directly equipping the rebels with armament vehicles, training and body armaments.

President Assad: You know the crime is not only about the victim and the criminal, but also the accomplice providing support, whether it is moral or logistical support. I have said many times that Syria lies at the fault line geographically, politically, socially and ideologically. So, playing with this fault line will have serious repercussions all over the Middle East. Is the situation better in Libya today? In Mali? In Tunisia? In Egypt? Any intervention will not make things better; it will only make them worse. Europe and the United States and others are going to pay the price sooner or later with the instability in this region; they do not foresee it.

Sunday Times: What is your message to Israel following its air strikes on Syria? Will you retaliate? How will you respond to any future attacks by Israel especially that Israel has said that we will do it again if it has to?

President Assad: Every time Syria did retaliate, but in its own way, not tit for tat. We retaliated in our own way and only the Israelis know what we mean.

Sunday Times: Can you expand?

President Assad: Yes. Retaliation does not mean missile for missile or bullet for bullet. Our own way does not have to be announced; only the Israelis will know what I mean.

Sunday Times: Can you tell us how?

President Assad: We do not announce that.

Sunday Times: I met a seven year old boy in Jordan.

President Assad: A Syrian boy?

Sunday Times: A Syrian boy who had lost an arm and a leg to a missile strike in Herak. Five children in his family had been killed in that explosion. As a father, what can you say to that little boy? Why have so many innocent civilians died in air strikes, army shelling and sometimes, I quote, ‘Shabiha shootings?’

President Assad: What is his name?

Sunday Times: I have his name ... will bring it to you later.

President Assad: As I said every victim in this crisis has a name, every casualty has a family. Like 5 year-old Saber who whilst having breakfast with his family at home lost his leg, his mother and other members of his family. Like 4 year-old Rayan who watched his two brothers slaughtered for taking him to a rally. None of these families have any political affiliations. Children are the most fragile link in any society and unfortunately they often pay the heaviest price in any conflict. As a father of young children, I know the meaning of having a child harmed by something very simple; so what if they are harmed badly or if we lose a child, it is the worst thing any family can face. Whenever you have conflicts, you have these painful stories that affect any society. This is the most important and the strongest incentive for us to fight terrorism. Genuine humanitarians who feel the pain that we feel about our children and our losses should encourage their governments to prevent smuggling armaments and terrorists and to prevent the terrorists from acquiring any military supplies from any country.

Sunday Times: Mr. President, when you lie in bed at night, do you hear the explosions in Damascus? Do you, in common with many other Syrians, worry about the safety of your family? Do you worry that there may come a point where your own safety is in jeopardy?

President Assad: I see it completely differently. Can anybody be safe, or their family be safe, if the country is in danger? In reality NO! If your country is not safe, you cannot be safe. So instead of worrying about yourself and your family, you should be worried about every citizen and every family in your country. So it’s a mutual relationship.

Sunday Times: You’ll know of the international concerns about Syria’s chemical weapons. Would your army ever use them as a last resort against your opponents? Reports suggest they have been moved several times, if so why? Do you share the international concern that they may fall into the hands of Islamist rebels? What is the worst that could happen?

President Assad: Everything that has been referred to in the media or by official rhetoric regarding Syrian chemical weapons is speculation. We have never, and will never, discuss our armaments with anyone. What the world should worry about is chemical materials reaching the hands of terrorists. Video material has already been broadcast showing toxic material being tried on animals with threats to the Syrian people that they will die in the same way. We have shared this material with other countries. This is what the world should be focusing on rather than wasting efforts to create elusive headlines on Syrian chemical weapons to justify any intervention in Syria.

Sunday Times: I know you are not saying whether they are safe or not. There is concern if they are safe or no one can get to them.

President Assad: This is constructive ambiguity. No country will talk about their capabilities.

Sunday Times: A lot has been talked about this as well: what are the roles of Hezbollah, Iran and Russia in the war on the ground? Are you aware of Hezbollah fighters in Syria and what are they doing? What weapons are your allies Iran and Russia supplying? What other support are they providing?

President Assad: The Russian position is very clear regarding armaments - they supply Syria with defensive armaments in line with international law. Hezbollah, Iran and Russia support Syria in her fight against terrorism. Russia has been very constructive, Iran has been very supportive and Hezbollah’s role is to defend Lebanon not Syria. We are a country of 23 million people with a strong National Army and Police Force. We are in no need of foreign fighters to defend our country. What we should be asking is, what about the role of other countries, - Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, the US, - that support terrorism in Syria directly or indirectly, militarily or politically.

Sunday Times: Mr. President, may I ask you about your own position? Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov recently said that Lakhdar Ibrahimi complained of wanting to see more flexibility from your regime and that while you never seem to say ‘no’ you never seem to say ‘yes’. Do you think that there can be a negotiated settlement while you remain President, which is a lot of people are asking?

President Assad: Do not expect a politician to only say yes or no in the absolute meaning; it is not multiple choice questions to check the correct answer. You can expect from any politician a vision and our vision is very clear. We have a plan and whoever wants to deal with us, can deal with us through our plan. This is very clear in order not to waste time. This question reflects what has been circulating in the Western media about personalizing the problem in Syria and suggesting that the entire conflict is about the president and his future. If this argument is correct, then my departure will stop the fighting. Clearly this is absurd and recent precedents in Libya, Yemen and Egypt bear witness to this. Their motive is to try to evade the crux of the issue, which is dialogue, reform and combating terrorism. The legacy of their interventions in our region have been chaos, destruction and disaster. So, how can they justify any future intervention? They cannot. So, they focus on blaming the president and pushing for his departure; questioning his credibility; is he living in a bubble or not? is he detached from reality or not? So, the focus of the conflict becomes about the president

Sunday Times: Some foreign officials have called for you to stand for war crimes at the International Criminal Court as the person ultimately responsible for the army’s actions? Do you fear prosecution by the ICC? Or the possibility of future prosecution and trial in Syria?

President Assad: Whenever an issue that is related to the UN is raised, you are raising the question of credibility. We all know especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union – for the last twenty years - that the UN and all its organizations are the victims of hegemony instead of being the bastions of justice. They became politicized tools in order to create instability and to attack sovereign countries, which is against the UN’s charter. So, the question that we have to raise now is: are they going to take the American and the British leaders who attacked Iraq in 2003 and claimed more than half a million lives in Iraq, let alone orphans, handicapped and deformed people? Are they going to take the American, British French and others who went to Libya without a UN resolution last year and claimed again hundreds of lives? They are not going to do it. The answer is very clear. You know that sending mercenaries to any country is a war crime according Nuremberg principles and according to the London Charter of 1945. Are they going to put Erdogan in front of this court because he sent mercenaries? Are they going to do the same with the Saudis and the Qataris? If we have answers to these questions, then we can talk about peace organizations and about credibility.

My answer is very brief: when people defend their country, they do not take into consideration anything else.

Sunday Times: Hindsight is a wonderful thing Mr. President. If you could wind the clock back two years would you have handled anything differently? Do you believe that there are things that could or should have been done in another way? What mistakes do you believe have been made by your followers that you would change?

President Assad: You can ask this question to a President if he is the only one responsible for all the context of the event. In our case in Syria, we know there are many external players. So you have to apply hindsight to every player. You have to ask Erdogan, with hindsight would you send terrorists to kill Syrians, would you afford logistical support to them? You should ask the Qatari and Saudis whether in hindsight, would you send money to terrorists and to Al-Qaeda offshoots or any other terrorist organization to kill Syrians? We should ask the same question to the European and American officials, in hindsight would you offer a political umbrella to those terrorists killing innocent civilians in Syria?

In Syria, we took two decisions. The first is to make dialogue; the second is to fight terrorism. If you ask any Syrian, in hindsight would you say no to dialogue and yes to terrorism? I do not think any sane person will agree with you. So I think in hindsight, we started with dialogue and we are going to continue with dialogue. In hindsight, we said we are going to fight terrorism and we are going to continue to fight terrorism.

Sunday Times: Do you ever think about living in exile if it came to that? And would you go abroad if it increases the chances of peace in Syria?

President Assad: Again, it is not about the president. I don’t think any patriotic person or citizen would think of living outside his country.

Sunday Times: You will never leave

President Assad: No patriotic person will think about living outside his country. I am like any other patriotic Syrian.

Sunday Times: How shaken you were you by the bomb that killed some of your most senior generals last summer, including your brother-in-law?

President Assad: You mentioned my brother-in-law but it is not a family affair. When high-ranking officials are being assassinated it is a national affair. Such a crime will make you more determined to fight terrorism. It is not about how you feel, but more about what you do. We are more determined in fighting terrorism.

Sunday Times: Finally, Mr. President, may I ask about my colleague, Marie Colvin, who was killed in the shelling of an opposition media center at Baba Amr on February 22 last year. Was she targeted, as some have suggested, because she condemned the destruction on American and British televisions? Or was she just unlucky? Did you hear about her death at the time and if so what was your reaction?

President Assad: Of course, I heard about the story through the media. When a journalist goes into conflict zones, as you are doing now, to cover a story and convey it to the world, I think this is very courageous work. Every decent person, official or government should support journalists in these efforts because that will help shed light on events on the ground and expose propaganda where it exists. Unfortunately in most conflicts a journalist has paid the ultimate price. It is always sad when a journalist is killed because they are not with either side or even part of the problem, they only want to cover the story. There is a media war on Syria preventing the truth from being told to the outside world.

14 Syrian journalists who have also been killed since the beginning of the crisis and not all of them on the ground. Some have been targeted at home after hours, kidnapped, tortured and then murdered. Others are still missing. More than one Syrian television station has been attacked by terrorists and their bombs. There is currently a ban on the broadcast of Syrian TV channels on European satellite systems. It is also well known how rebels have used journalists for their own interests. There was the case of the British journalist who managed to escape.

Sunday Times: Alex Thompson?

President Assad: Yes. He was lead into a death trap by the terrorists in order to accuse the Syrian Army of his death. That’s why it is important to enter countries legally, to have a visa. This was not the case for Marie Colvin. We don’t know why and it’s not clear. If you enter illegally, you cannot expect the state to be responsible. Contrary to popular belief, since the beginning of the crisis, hundreds of journalists from all over the world, including you, have gained visas to enter Syria and have been reporting freely from inside Syria with no interferences in their work and no barriers to fulfill their missions.

Sunday Times: Thank you.

President Assad: Thank you.

Source : “Bashar Al-Assad’s Interview with The Sunday Times”, by Bashar al-Assad, Voltaire Network, 3 March 2013, www.voltairenet.org/article177726.html

See also:
Speech by Bashar al-Assad on Syrian crisis
Russia Today interview with Bashar al-Assad
Bashar el-Assad interview by Ad-Dounia TV
Speech Delivered by H.E. President Bashar al-Assad At the People’s Assembly
ABC’s Barbara Walters’ Interview With Bashar al-Assad
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