Naming Names....... Guardian UK: The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking?

[stockholmer]

The media have been too passive when it comes to Syrian opposition sources, without scrutinising their backgrounds and their political connections. Time for a closer look …

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

A nightmare is unfolding across Syria, in the homes of al-Heffa and the streets of Houla. And we all know how the story ends: with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed, towns and families destroyed, and President Assad beaten to death in a ditch. This is the story of the Syrian war, but there is another story to be told. A tale less bloody, but nevertheless important. This is a story about the storytellers: the spokespeople, the "experts on Syria", the "democracy activists". The statement makers. The people who "urge" and "warn" and "call for action".

It's a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business. The mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes to Syrian sources: billing them simply as "official spokesmen" or "pro-democracy campaigners" without, for the most part, scrutinising their statements, their backgrounds or their political connections.

It's important to stress: to investigate the background of a Syrian spokesperson is not to doubt the sincerity of his or her opposition to Assad. But a passionate hatred of the Assad regime is no guarantee of independence. Indeed, a number of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before the Arab spring broke out.

Though it is not yet stated US government policy to oust Assad by force, these spokespeople are vocal advocates of foreign military intervention in Syria and thus natural allies of well-known US neoconservatives who supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and are now pressuring the Obama administration to intervene. As we will see, several of these spokespeople have found support, and in some cases developed long and lucrative relationships with advocates of military intervention on both sides of the Atlantic.

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related:

Latest Syria "Massacre" - Goebbelsesque Propaganda
Claim "UN blames regime forces for Syria massacre ," admits "neither activists' claims nor the videos could be independently verified."


http://landdestroyer.blogspot.se/2012/07/us-british-caught-peddling.html


July 14, 2012 - Surely if nothing "activists" have so far said about latest so-called "massacre," in Tremseh, Syria can be verified, it is impossible to "blame" anyone for the alleged deaths that are said to have occurred. Nevertheless, the Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, and many other mainstays of the West's corporate-run media machine ran with titles such as, "UN blames regime forces for Syria massacre" (AP), "Syrian regime condemned for Tremseh massacre" (Reuters), "Syria crisis: Tremseh 'massacre'" (Guardian), and "Syria unrest: Kofi Annan shocked at Tremseh 'atrocities'" (BBC).


even below these deceitful titles, clearly implicating the Syrian government and its security forces in what is portrayed as a callous act of mass murder against defenseless civilians, each report concedes, buried toward the end, that Tremseh was in fact the site of a vicious battle between heavily armed NATO-backed "Free Syrian Army" militants and the Syrian military. Under the deceitful headlines and beyond the first several paragraphs purposefully loaded with manipulative Goebbelsesque propaganda, what the Western corporate-media is actually reporting is terrorist forces being defeated by the Syrian military in violence growing SOLELY because the West continues to funnel cash http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47930461/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/saudi-qatar-paying-salaries-syria-rebels-diplomat/ , increasingly advanced arms, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?pagewanted=all and even foreign fighters into the country. http://www.albawaba.com/news/libyan-fighters-join-free-syrian-army-forces-403268

BBC even went as far as literally admitting, after offering up another "Houla-style" narrative, that (emphasis added):

...later, activists told the AFP news agency that rebel fighters had attacked an army convoy, but were beaten back and many were killed in a counter-attack.

"At this stage, though we do not yet have the final count, the number of civilians killed by shelling is not more than seven," said Jaafar, an activist from the anti-regime Sham News Network. "The rest were members of the Free Syrian Army."

So despite even the "activists" themselves admitting they attacked the Syrian military first and simply lost the subsequent battle which appears to have led back to their base of operations in Tremseh, the Western media decided to spin it as a calculated, mass murder of civilians, as the Guardian puts it, "timed" for "boosting morale of Assad's armed supporters and scuppering attempts to find a political solution," quoting a member of the overtly Western-backed "Syrian National Council" (SNC).

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[riderinthestorm]

1. Don't expect accolades from DUers who've bought the "Arab Spring" meme applies universally

to all complicated conflicts. Its all "Libya revolutionaries!!1111!" and "Syria revolutionaries!!11111!!!" and "Down with dictators!!1111!!!"

You bring up complications and tricky side issues and propaganda....

Especially propaganda.

[sabrina 1]

2. No, I think you're wrong about DU. It is only a few who remain committed to a belief that

Libya and Syria are grassroots uprisings. I think most DUers as well as most people around the world know exactly what Libya was about and what is going on in Syria right now, which is unconscionable.

Too much information has come out since the war crimes in Libya proving that those who began to have doubts, who saw the whole pattern, the same as the Iraq lies eg, the 'ex-pats' etc, the old neo-con 'recipe' to destroy and then rebuild the ME according to their PNAC plans, those who expressed doubts, have turned out to be correct.

The 'rebels' are being armed with deadly weapons, troops from Qatar and most likely Blackwater, were in Libya all along, the West now uses 'proxy armies' disguised as rebels, to put 'boots on the ground' because sending in Western Troops is no longer acceptable after the continuing tragedy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, a number of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before the Arab spring broke out.

Yes, brings back memories of the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq, the 'ex-pats' one I remember well, who disappeared and was ever heard from again, once the mission was accomplished. But not before some of us did some digging into his background. Something the MSM never bothered to do.

The blood flowing in Syria right now is as much on the hands of the instigators as it is on the hands of the Assad regime.

Same thing in Libya. But I do not think most DUers are falling for any of this. Libya fooled us for a short time, but there were so many signs that Libya was not Tunisia or Egypt that it became impossible to continue to support it.