The Dirty War on Syria

Oct. 29th. In an important entry to his Landdestroyer blog on Oct. 24th, Tony Cartalucci underscores a point that is often overlooked. The present crisis in nothing new under the sun -- the Baathist government is a hereditary enemy of Islamist extremism. Hafez Assad's reputation as a brutal dictator is attributable in large part to the bloody suppression of the Moslem Brotherhood in the city of Hama in 1982. Constant Islamist pressure to overthrow the secular state forced Syrian government to adopt authoritarian controls.  "Hafez Assad's 'brutality' was aimed at sectarian extremists - fanatics that would later form the foundation of Al Qaeda and serve as a force of violence and destabilization throughout the world."

British and American imperialists have been fostering Islamist extremism for over two centuries, since the founding of the Wahhabi-Saudi partnership, as has been documented by David Livingstone in Terrorism and the Illuminati and by Webster G. Tarpley in 9/11 Synthetic Terror. It is a potent mixture, with Arabia's oil wealth financing reactionary propaganda and ignorance. These dragon's seeds have raised a potentially immense new Mongol horde of ruthless, fanatical jihadis that might overwhelm any progressive or secular state in the region.

But why would the neo-liberal, materialist-atheist USUK foster "religious" extremist Al-Qaeda? For the very same reason the banksters financed the Nazis, the Bolsheviks and the Japanese militarists: the Countergang strategy. Before seeking a war pretext with a powerful rival nation, first infiltrate it with a countergang who hijack it and poison it with an extremist ideology. Then, when your alliance is victorious in your great war with your mad stooges, their moral defeat will be so great that the once proud rival nations become vassals who can never raise their heads from mortal shame again.
 

Oct. 29th. As a footnote to the blog entry from  Oct. 4th, a US general now blithely entertains the possibility that mortar shells on the Turkish border village, that were supposed to invoke the NATO self-defense warmaking clause, might have been -- a false flag. "We are not sure if these shells are from the Syrian army, from rebels who want to get Turkey involved in the issue or from the PKK [Kurdish Workers’ Party]," the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet quoted  commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling. Other reports have noted that the shells were of NATO manufacture.

Oct. 4th - False Flag Suspected as Turkey Vows Revenge for Mortar Shell on Border Village

Transcript of two-minute speech by Syria's representative to the UN Bashar Jafari via Youtube makes clear that Syria is still investigating the source of the shelling, and that FSA mortars are active in the area shelling border posts -- thus the likelihood that the mortars came from the FSA.

"The Syrian authorities are conducting a detailed investigation to find the source of the firing of the shell that fell inside Turkey and the led to casualties.

Until now, the official investigation is NOT over, and the Syrian government, through its Minister of Information, has expressed its condolences to the victims, to the family of the lady who was martyred by the shelling, and to the Turkish people.

However, this was NOT an apology, this as an expression of solidarity with the civilians, of solidarity with this woman and her children, and of sympathy for this family who suffered this tragedy.

This is all based on facts. There are armed groups that are attacking border posts along the Syrian-Turkish border. And this is all happening under the watch of the Turkish border patrol and the Turkish army.

So the story is very clear to the Turkish side, and they very well know what is going on at the border crossings. They also know how these armed groups attack, every now and then, these Syrian border posts on the Syrian-Turkish border."

They certainly know better than anyone else what goes on at the border, as was attested when a Lebanese woman journalist was arrested by the Turkish army on the Syrian side of the border, after she witnessed the Turkish army distributing weapons to insurgent groups.  Posted by SyrianGirlPartisan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvujjlIJdek

Oct. 3rd

The other day Morris108 put up an interview on Youtube with an eyewitness saying that the FSA controls all the border crossings with Turkey but one. That reminded me of the suggestion made here on Aug. 8th

"Secure the international borders, not only to keep new fighters out, but to deny those in country the chance to regroup and re-arm. Ask friendly nations to form a coalition and assist with troops for border guard duty. This will also enormously increase the cost for the US should it be tempted to go over to direct combat support."

What really needs to happen is for Russia and any other willing friendly countries to send peacekeepers to secure Syria's borders.

The incident today where NATO wants to make a casus belli over Syria firing a warning mortar blank shell into Turkey underlines this. The border problem is too critical and explosive to let it continue.

Sep. 21st

An Opening to Reconciliation - Is a whiff of peace in the air floating over Damascus?

Yesterday in an interview in Al Ahram, here or here,  Bashar al Assad repeated his offer of dialogue and reconciliation with the democracy-demanding Syrian opposition.

At the same time Minister of Reconciliation Ali Haidar stated his hope that "the political process in Syria started to crystallize and the results will be shown in the next few days."

Haidar himself is an opposition politician, leader of the Syrian Socialist Party. He got the new portfolio after he won a parliamentary seat in the May 2012 elections, which the global media blacked out. Reconciliation is the agreed centerpiece of the current government platform, he says. In an http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2012/07/interview-of-syrian-national.html ">interview, Haidar says his solution is for all sides to recognize each other, and to isolate the extremists. The second opposition minister is Qadri Jamil Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs.

Hard to tell if there is much new in these statements? And how do you dialogue with armed Salafi fanatics? You can't talk about "both sides" when there is a third side, a NATO proxy force, attempting to take the country by force.

Can the Opposition Save Syria? An Audacious Proposal

The thinking of at least one opposition activist has evolved in a way that signals a readiness for compromise by some in the opposition. Edward E Dark in Aleppo has piqued my curiosity with his tweets of disillusionment with the FSA: He's a top gun among opposition tweeters, with 6,900 followers and 23,000 tweets.

The turning point for Ed was seeing the horror of war in the massive battle for Aleppo in late July-early August. At heart he is a revo and anti-Assad to the core, yet his perceptions are acutely realistic, and he has taken a load of flak for it from his fellow twitter revos on Twitter.

Before the Syrian Arab Army retook Aleppo, Ed was pretty gung ho about the FSA, with no discernable difference from the opposition line.

Selected Tweets by @edwardedark

July 21 I bought a shotgun & a pistol for home protection, but if Assad's bastards assault Aleppo, I'm getting rifles & fighting them

July 23 In a BBC interview Ed Dark was optimistic that Aleppo was "gradually slipping away from the regime" and accepted the fighting as "part of the price people have to pay for getting their freedom back."

All that was before the big SAA reinforcements arrived and all hell broke loose over Aleppo.

By July 28 he realized,
consensus in Aleppo is FSA is making a mistake by holding neighborhoods. just causes death, destruction & suffering for no discernible gain.
the FSA in Aleppo is in no shape to hold the city. it's outnumbered and outgunned by regime forces. just Self destruction & needless killing
the Syrian crisis can only be solved by a military intervention or a power-sharing compromise, and neither is happening
if regime falls what will take its place? competing armed battalions? chaos? a break up of the country?
honestly, Syrians are stuck between a brutal repressive regime, and an incompetent divided opposition. The rest of the world doesn't care

Aug 7
what use is toppling the regime after you've destroyed and fractured the country?
FSA mostly impoverished youths with anger & revenge on their minds, or ideological Islamists. not nation building material
the FSA has taken the revolution hostage, if it f***s up, which its doing, the revolution fails

Aug 10 there is always room for compromise, because the alternative to it is too grim to think about. we basically have no choice anymore

Sept 10 ppl suppose that because I dare criticize & expose the crimes of armed rebels I must be a regime goon. where were u when I was protesting???
that's because I'm now seeing FSA crimes and the misinformation about them first hand. would u prefer I shut up about them?
yes, the only resolution to the Syrian conflict is through dialogue and diplomacy, everyone and his dog has already said so
FSA rebels are executing prisoners which is a war crime. today they executed 20 soldiers. of course "activists" keep quiet about it #Syria

Sept 12 our incapacity to debate and express different opinions without fighting is what brought Syrians into this mess
I was there 8 p.m tonight in Forqan. they detest FSA which has destroyed their homes, its called a backlash
as an armored convoy passed by the Uni dorms inhabited by the displaced in Aleppo, they started cheering for the regime & against the rebels
You know how much I hate Gaddafi & Bashar? That's how much I hate the extremists now. They are not Islam. They are the enemies of Islam.
They claim to be protectors of Islam when in fact they rear their heads as the worst catastrophe that can ever befall Islam & Muslims.

Sept 17 if we knew when we started our peaceful revolution for change, that it'd be hijacked by Islamist militants we wouldn't have started #Syria
the same s**t head backward fundamentalist Islamists who attacked western embassies across the Arab world r now being armed & sent to #Syria
FSA f*****s blew up the historic 700 year old gates with explosives to "liberate" it
rebels attacked checkpoint just down the road from my house. the f*****s rained mortars all over our neighborhood, that's a WAR CRIME #Syria

Sept. 19 we want our freedoms and rights back, we want to change the regime, but we don't want to replace it with extremists and Al Qaeda
Islamist radicals & clerics are very adept at hijacking revolutions, as u saw ( remember Iran?)
civil guard has been distributing water via trucks to most areas in Aleppo, people filling up via containers
been home without water for 3 days because some rebel commander ass***e thought it would be fun to sabotage the water supply Aleppo #Syria

Sept 20 if you fight Assad with force, he wins, you lose. the country gets destroyed.
we vote Assad out in UN monitored elections, it has happened in other countries before.
we should learn from the other non-violent movements from the last century ...time, will & patience will get us our freedom
both sides stop violence, and negotiate a power sharing transitional period leading to UN monitored elections, that's the plan
FSA in #Syria must renounce the foreign Islamic Jihadists fighting in the country & distance themselves from them in order not to be tainted
Syrians of all political persuasions must renounce violence, put the past behind them & work together to build a new, free democratic #Syria

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Thank you Ed.

A free and democratic society is no easy goal. We don't have one in the US, really. True, the police state is not intrusive, the democratic façade still doesn't look that shabby. But greed and corruption make real democracy almost unattainable.

Ed is an idealist. And like so many Syrians, he blames Syrians themselves for the course of events: "our incapacity to debate and express different opinions without fighting is what brought Syrians into this mess." Almost everyone has been fooled into believing the fighting broke out spontaneously. Much more likely it was instigated by NATO special forces provocateurs. Why?

If a real democratic revolution does start to develop anywhere in the world, it is a threat the evil empire cannot afford to leave unpunished. Steps are taken to divert it onto a path acceptable to the Anglo-American money power.

In the pincer between the Syrian Army and the jihadist insurgents, how can the opposition bring democracy to Syria now? They have lost an incalculable amount of goodwill among the population, due to the atrocities and stupidities of the FSA. How are they going to win an election? Aside from a kind of blackmail -- listen to us or Big Brother NATO will intervene -- what bargaining chips do they have to exchange for a share of power? At the moment, power in Syria is primarily military power, anyhow.

There is a great deal that most people in the opposition and the Baath party can agree on. Most Syrians do seem to be OK with the Syrian political philosophy of Arab socialism and nationalism, resistance to Zionism, and secular pluralism. They only want more reforms, and whether one believes him or not, Bashar al Assad has insisted that he wants to give them that. And, Syrians of all stripes really hate Salafis and jihadis.

The impotence of the opposition is a real problem for Syria. It puts all the pressure on the Assad government. This is a terrible burden, fighting on several fronts against NATO, which has a military budget 500 times larger than Syria's. Fighting the terrorists in the cities and on the borders, trying to fight the information war against the world corporate media, struggling with economic sanctions. NATO has devised a cheap means of asymmetrical warfare using Salafi money and proxy fighters. The damage they inflict on Syria is on the order of five to ten times as great as the cost to the aggressors.

Now all this is a real problem for the honest opposition, because if the government cracks under the load, the odds are Syria will be stuck with a jihadist Islamist colonialist regime. That will be far more repugnant and intrusive to the democratic opposition than the Assad dynasty ever was, with Shariah law, no schools or careers for women, an unimaginable great leap backward.

Internal opposition groups are planning a conference in Damascus on Sunday "to save the country", but "the regime" is not invited. Guess they'll have nobody to fight with but each other.

But I'm leading up to an answer here. It seems unorthodox, but in fact it's logical from the fundamental principles of political science: authority rests on power and legitimacy. It's a classic strategy, if a leader can be found to try it.

If the opposition really want power and legitimacy, there is one way to do it..

The opposition must pick up arms, and form a fighting brigade -- like in the Spanish Civil War, where a variety of units joined the fray. By agreement, tacit or express, this opposition force will fight neither against nor alongside the Syrian Army. They won't fight Syrian units of the FSA either, rather they will aim to recruit them. They will create their own power base. The transition which Ed is talking about can take this physical form, of a militia.

The chosen target for the wrath of the weapons of the armed democratic opposition will be the foreign mercenaries and Jihadists (if perhaps inevitably including some Syrians slow enough to still be carrying Al Qaeda banners.) This patriotic stance will help repair the image of the opposition as bunglers who only brought destruction on Syria.

As things stand now, neither side can win militarily in Syria, only more and more of the country is destroyed. This balance of terror means that a new force can swing the outcome in disproportion to its own size. By this means the anti-jihadist opposition fighters can profile as heroes saving Syria (and Ed's revolution), gaining enormous legitimacy, while other opposition groups who stand by merely harping at fate, fade into insignificance.

If the policy is successful, more Syrians will join the bandwagon. The result will be a military victory over the proxies of the evil empire and a political victory for Syrian democracy, where two strong parties that can respect each other's hard-won victory can compete at the polls. The revo military arm can be a guarantee of democracy against a slide back to a Baathist police state.

So no, that's not a whiff of peace in the air. It's gunpowder, if any opposition party prefers winning over whining. The stage is set for patriotic heroes to rise to the hour and defeat the bloody fascist empire.

It's really very simple. If you want to share the power, you need to share the effort, too.

Edward Dark himself recently changed his Twitter icon from a clenched fist to a logo reading, Save Syria. That's exactly what the opposition needs to do to save their revolution.

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Sep. 20th

Be Skeptical of a Spectacle: Illusions and Delusions of the Attack Video

I think it would be better for Muslims to ignore stupid provocations. Now France is reacting by expressly publishing nasty caricatures of the Prophet. They are enjoying the protests with Schadenfreude.

If people would ignore the film, the Zionists would have nothing to show for their dirty $5 million. As it is, they are getting a huge bang for the bunk. Their media can go all out in caricaturing Muslims as excitable terrorists. They timed the killing of the US ambassador by CIA death squads to make it look like he was killed in reaction to this stupid film.

What does the Koran say about this question? I believe that to ignore such provocations is correct in Islam. There is a hadith where a Beduin swore at the Prophet and called him names. Mohamed in return blessed the man and offered him food. The heckler broke down and said, now I admit you are the quality of man they say you are.

Of course the parallel is not perfect, Zionist provocateurs are perverse souls, distant strangers from grace and repentance. But why give them the sadistic pleasure of manipulating you into a crushing psychological warfare defeat? A good old American expression says it very well:  Don't get mad - get even.

Progressive Press specializes in studies of false flag operations and other sophisticated forms of provocation. But this stupid flick was the most common and primitive trick of all -- the playground bully who teases the smaller child to get him to over-react, so he has an excuse to beat him.

Some have rushed to the defense of the Muslim world saying, the protests are not really about the film, they are about the genocidal wars of the evil empire against Muslims. That may well be true. But the way the protests are presented, by making Muslims out to be ignorant savages, only helps set up the Muslim world to be targeted for yet more brutal and bloody aggression. Not a smart way of striking back.

There is generally someone in the background inciting a mob, though. It could be a respected figure, an imam or a sheikh. This is where the plot thickens again. The Muslim world is riddled with these witting and unwitting tools of imperialism. This is why the violence has occurred in Muslim states now being targeted by the evil empire, such as Pakistan and the "Arab Spring" states of North Africa, but not in the empire's vassal regimes in the Arabian peninsula.

---

The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack, by James Petras

Started reading this on-topic up-to-date volume.

"When popular upheavals challenged these US-backed dictatorships, and a social as well as political revolution appeared likely to succeed, Washington responded with a three-track policy: publicly criticizing the human rights violations and advocating democratic reforms; privately signaling continued support to the ruler; and thirdly, seeking an elite alternative which could substitute for the incumbent and preserve the state apparatus, the economic system and support US strategic imperial interests.

"In Latin America in the 1980's, Washington promoted negotiated electoral transitions which replaced dictators with pliable neoliberal electoral politicians, who pledged to ... defend the privileged foreign and domestic elites and back US policies." Just the same sort of  "democracy" Americans get at home.

Excellent insights!

Tet Petras has one blind spot. He ignores the massive body of knowledge about US State and Offense Department funding of Color and Other revolutions, democracy NGO's, and protest movements. Perhaps he is a revolutionary romantic. Or he fears to offend his left-wing readership with conspiracy thinking, which is relegated to the political "right" in the artificial categories maintained by the powers that be.

Revolutionary romantics like to think of the empire as run by intellectual dinosaurs. It is an unacceptable affront to their self-esteem to conceive that the think tankers of the empire, players of the game from every angle on the board, may be more sophisticated than their fist-clenching opponents. Like Smithers in the Simpsons series, the wonks are clever, amoral, highly-paid servants, the brains that money can buy.

The evidence? I have a bunch of it here somewhere. Let's just put a few terms into a search engine: NGO DOD State Department color revolutions. Up comes this: Destabilizing Russia – Clinton State Department Dusts off Color Revolution Model and Threatens Us All 

My favorite quote on the subject is the observation by Tarpley in 9/11 Synthetic Terror:

"Secret intelligence agencies are fatalist or realist in that they regard all large-scale sociological and political changes as inevitable. As soon as they identify a budding phenomenon which they have not yet penetrated, their only thought is how to infiltrate their agents and assets into it, so they can steer or influence it as it ripens. Whenever the leaders of intelligence agencies see a train leaving the station, their only thought is to climb on board, quite irrespective of the destination, as Gen. Paul Albert Scherer, the former head of West Germany’s Military Counter-Intelligence (Militärischer Abschirmdienst) and one of the greatest experts in this field, assured me some years back. This applies to terrorist groups most emphatically. Here the attention of the secret intelligence agencies is so strongly focused that their task is most often that of founding, and much more seldom that of infiltrating and taking over some group which already exists."

Now this is quite logical. If they did not do this, they would not be doing their job. Take revolution. 99% of the people are cheated and downtrodden. Sooner or later they are going to revolt. Look at the history of China. It is pocked with literally thousands of peasant rebellions. So it is a known fact that revolutions happen. Should the caretakers of society, for those who think they own it, just wait for a spontaneous revolution, and then improvise countermeasures? Or, faced with such a predictable phenomenon, should they tunnel away like moles to be the ones who pop to the surface when it's time for the revolution to come out and be defeated once again? They are not being paid $35 billion a year to just let events take their natural course, are they.

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Sep. 15th

Prof. Tarpley interprets the video attack on Prophet Mohammed and the ensuing unrest and slaying of US Embassy personnel as planned provocation and response, to duplicate the effects of the Iran hostage crisis that toppled President Carter, remembered as the October Surprise. Netanyahu and Romney are "joined at the hip since they worked together at Boston Consulting Group." It's the revenge of the neo-cons for Obama's own Color Revolution of 2008. That with a little help from the manufacturers of voting machines could turn the trick. Read the article.on PressTV.  Hear the whole story on World Crisis Radio.

Once again, 9 times out of 10, revolt and revolution are artificially instigated movements serving imperialism.

Embassy personnel believe the actual killing was carefully planned. Stephens was not in the embassy but in a secret safe house, which was compromised. Heavily armed death squads attacked it with RPG's, according to the Independent . "Inside story of US envoy's assassination: America 'was warned of embassy attack but did nothing'."

Update, Sep. 16th.

SyrianGirlPartisan presenting on Youtube her hypothesis that the aim of the video was to create sectarian strife between Muslims and Christians, especially in Egypt, as the alleged producer of the clip is a Copt. The film failed badly in this specific aim, although it might advance the imperialist agenda in other ways. Killing of ambassador probably not intended. She agrees it won't help Obama. Perhaps neo-cons in the CIA turned the plot to their own ends?

Richard Cottrell notes the very close parallels with the 1974 assassination of US Ambassador Davies in Cyprus, as documented in his book, Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe. Cottrell:

Rodger Davies, the leading State Department apologist in the face of rising congressional sentiment against the Greek regime, was an acutely insensitive choice as the new ambassador to Cyprus. He arrived to prepare the ground about a month before the enforced partition. Not long after that he was dead, killed in a remarkable fashion as the embassy came under a sudden and violent siege. A sniper with a deadly aim, and a very accurate picture of the ground plan of the building, fired a single bullet. This travelled through the open doors of several rooms and the full length of a connecting corridor, before finding its target sitting at his desk directing the defence of the embassy. As his Cypriot secretary Antoinette Varnava bent over the stricken diplomat, her head was expertly lopped off by a repeat shot. Marksmen of that expertise were to be found by the score in the ranks of the stay-behind armies.
The death of Rodger Davies indicated a distinct swing of the pendulum. Despite pleadings from officials, Cypriot police made no attempt to quell the riot, or aid the besieged diplomats, thus allowing the gunmen free range. The shot that killed Davies came from a high velocity rifle fitted with uncommonly powerful sights, standard NATO kit. It was precisely the weaponry issued to Gladio Sheepskin commandos recently ordered to the island to assassinate Makarios. Davies’s death was part revenge by bitter men who believed themselves thrown to the wolves by the Americans, and part the beginning of a process which would lead to the appearance of the November 17 death squad, together with its many clones, as guns for hire on the streets of Athens for decades to come.

The assassination attempt on Archbishop Makarios failed. Interestingly, Syrian Girl also mentions a plot against the pope in her new clip.

Sep. 14th

The book Subverting Syria from Progressive Press appears in print next week, priced at $10. The final edition of the e-book is now available for #3.99 here

Progressive Press author Richard Cottrell has just written a  great new blog  LIHOP in Libya -- Useful Idiots and Media Bloodlust as US Consul Sacrificed to Stoke Islamophobia. It's about the killing of the US ambassador in Libya, and the wave of protests shaking the Middle East. His thesis is that this uproar is quasi-planned by the CIA in order to stoke Islamophobia in the West. The technique used is "let it happen," including security stripping. Cottrell is the author of Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, wherein he shows how these tactics were used to foster the Strategy of Tension and prop up right-wing regimes in Europe, from 1945 or even earlier, up to the present.

The fate of ambassador Stephen is oddly reminiscent of the killing of CIA station boss Richard Welch in Athens in 1975, as recounted in Gladio.  I understand Stephens was a point man for the US invasion of Libya, sort of poetic justice if he was hoist by his own petard, but of course, such people are still expendable and for once, I agree with LIHOP.

Stoking Arab rage not only reinforces stereotypes about Muslims, but it also gives psychological cover for the mad jihad against Syria. It has been observed that  the rage is breaking out mostly in the countries targeted in the so-called Arab Spring -- rather than in the regimes of the usual suspects like KSA / Saudia Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain.

Today author F. Wm. Engdahl posted Salafism and the CIA: Destabilizing the Russian Federation on the Global Research website.

Sep. 7th

Fisk Analysis

The final version of our first video clip was posted today. Thanks to suggestions by Syrian Girl Partisan, it has a new title, "The Foreign Subversive Army Massacres its Human Shields in Daraya," and a reference to Robert Fisk's Daraya findings.

How gratifying that Fisk, as the first Western reporter in Daraya after the tragedy, agreed that the evidence points to a massacre by the FSA. Does this invalidate the video's thesis that the mainstream media are Big Lying cogs in the military-industrial complex?

Fisk is an illustrious journalist who has reported on the Middle East for 20 years. It is doubtless presumptuous for an unknown like me to find fault with a writer of his stature. But look at what I posted and what he posted on Aug. 27, the day the MSM hysteria reached a fever pitch blaming the "Assad regime" for the massacre.

Progressive Press: "MSM Close Ranks around Daraya False Flag Coverup"

Robert Fisk: "The Syrian army would like to appear squeaky clean. It isn't... The Syrian military... work with the shabiha, who are a murderous, largely Alawite rabble who have slaughtered hundreds of Sunni civilians."

So how did I get it right two days before Fisk, when I was on the other side of the world and he was in Damascus?

I'm a conspiracy realist, well read in the wiles of deception. Fisk is not allowed to go there. Even if he works for the "Independent" 40 years, they won't give him that long a leash.

Fisk's "shabiha" stance mimics the propaganda churned out by the war machine. He is not allowed to believe in false flags, so he defaults to the distorted MSM version of reality. Here's my long-distance view on the mysterious shabbies:

The word "shabiha" means ghosts, and that is what they are - the ghosts of killed or vanished FSA fighters. These "shabiha" are mythical beings, whose sole role is to propagate the myth of Assad murdering his own people, by shifting the blame for murders of civilians by "thugs" not in uniform. That's why they vanish and turn into anti-government snipers at the approach of the Syrian army or even a journalist. Fisk saw them in his mind's eye on the 27th, but not on the 29th. In the harsh light of day, he saw only anti-government snipers -- indeed he had to dodge their fire.

Sometimes deduction beats induction. You can come to conclusions instantly, and without getting shot at.

Fisk comes so close without getting there. On Aug. 26, he wrote a piece headlined "The bloody truth about Syria's uncivil war. Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics." In it he notes, "Despite the narrative now peddled in the West, armed men were present on the streets of Syrian cities and villages since the very early days of the Syrian awakening 18 months ago." But he doesn't see the conspiracy, or isn't allowed to.

Fisk let show his stubborn immunity to conspiracy analysis in his interview with the Syrian foreign minister Muallem, posted on Aug. 28, 'We believe that the USA is the major player against Syria and the rest are its instruments.'

"When Muallem referred to the Brookings Institution, I groaned, " says Fisk. The Brookings memo is one of the major smoking guns showing how the entire atrocity against Syria was planned by the Evil Empire. He knows about it and can only groan.

Fisk dismisses 9/11 Truth with a groan, too. In "Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11"  he questions the truthers, whom he calls "ravers." He says, "I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan." So who is the conspiracy correspondent? There is none for the Homeland because there are no conspiracies there. Then, with his famous even-handedness, he goes on to list some of the arguments for controlled demolition. Finally, his wooden conclusion: "Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist." Much like the mantra of a candidate for office, perhaps the office of Middle East Correspondent?

Fisk seems to be signalling, "Please, this is as far as I can go."

9/11 is the litmus test between free thinkers and those embedded in the MSM world view. The Independent is not independent, it too is corporate controlled mainstream media.

Fisk (or his editor) also refers to the Syrian government as "the regime," a pejorative term that gave even the BBC a soul-searching moment. He dignifies NATO terrorists with the label, "rebel opponents of the regime," when they are not rebels, but mercenaries. He just can't see or say this is a US conspiracy, even after the Syrian FM tells him.

---

I had a little fun with Shabiha ghost stories in an interchange with a certain Huff Post Super User Nazir Qaib (resident troll) here:

Troll: Typically the regime sends in Shabiha before the official Army arrives.

Progressive Press: The word Shabiha means ghosts. They are the ghosts of the FSA who are killed by the Army after it arrives. The surviving FSA (or their civilian accomplices) then take photos of the dead the FSA have killed plus their own dead, and advertise them as civilian victims of the army. This is why they are always first with the photo evidence. So the FSA are a kind of Fake Shabiha Army or Fake Supernatural Army. The real Shabiha were a fairly small gang of smugglers who were disbanded over 20 years ago. Their continued existence is, like that of ghosts, a myth. A very convenient one for media and destabilization operations by the FSA/USA.

Troll: The Shabiha are rarely killed [one of the plusses of being a ghost]. Assad is paying them. Assad and his family have been taking their bribes for 20 years...Your entire argument holds no water...

Progressive Press: You're so right. Ghosts and ghost arguments don't hold water well. That's why it's so easy to take the piss out of them. That's why they vanish and turn into anti-government snipers at the approach of a camera or journalist not in bed with the FSA.

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Sep. 4.

The first ever video clip from Progressive Press, "How the FSA Massacred Citizens of Daraya," was posted on Youtube yesterday, and has received quite a few views and positive comments, for which we are exceedingly grateful, as the 12-minute production was a big effort. The final version will be posted in a few more days.

Daraya Massacre Timeline

Aug. 25. Massacre in Daraya.
Aug. 25. Activists post video on Youtube of dead bodies in mosque, without evidence regarding perpetrators
Aug. 25. Syrian TV Adunya broadcasts a report with eyewitness interviews, giving a complete account of the massacre by FSA snipers.

Aug. 26. Adunya report with English captions is posted on Youtube
Aug. 26. Mainstream Media release a gushing torrent of hysterical reports blaming “Assad regime” for “biggest massacre yet.”

Aug. 27. “MSM Close Ranks around Daraya False Flag Coverup” posted here.
Aug. 28. Based on the overwhelming majority of news stories blaming “the regime,” a NATO teleconference decides in principle to strike Syria.
Non sequitur, casus belli.
Aug. 29. First Western journalist in Daraya is Robert Fisk of the Independent. He dodges FSA snipers to speak to resident eyewitnesses, who tell that the killings were carried out by armed gangs BEFORE the Army arrived.

Conclusion: we need to see through mainstream lies on their face in real time. It's too late if we wait for someone to debunk them.

Fisk's Aug. 29 article is entitled "Inside Daraya - how a failed prisoner swap turned into a massacre." He believes there were negotiations between the Army and the FSA about an exchange of hostages. When that failed, the Army moved in.

I was skeptical about Fisk's hostage exchange story, because an earlier hostage-taking in Khalidiya resulted only in the FSA dynamiting the building where the victims were held.

Yet Fisk's theory has an interesting aspect. The army has been criticized a lot (including by me) for shelling FSA-held neighborhoods to soften up sniper positions before going in. It was reported that the SAA are making efforts to approach these areas more cautiously.
So now they did that, and what happens? The people are tormented for four days -- as documented in our videoclip excerpts from Adunya -- and then they suffer the biggest massacre yet at the hands of the FSA !

Loyalist Syrians are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Maybe that's because their antagonist is the Great Satan?

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Aug. 27

MSM Close Ranks around Daraya False Flag Coverup

Wall to wall, the mass media are toeing the official warmonger line on Daraya, citing "opposition activist" reports blaming "Assad's troops" -- usually with the hypocritical disclaimer that it's "as yet unconfirmed." Yet those reports were thoroughly debunked by Syrian TV. Let me ask you which account is more coherent:

- The "Activist" (CIActivist!) version. A couple hundred dead bodies are found, nobody really knows who shot them but we ASSUME it was ASSAD. That's the whole short story, folks.

- Syrian survivors version from Addounia TV.
For three or four days, armed gangs roamed the streets, trying to get into houses and sniping at people on the streets. Multiple witnesses agree they were not able to leave their homes. Some of them were in shelters.
Then, on the 25th, the gangs suddenly start to force people out of their houses, saying the Army is coming and is going to kill you. The gangs take groups of people to shelters. There one witness tells how some of the civilians were rounded up and shot.
The Army then arrives and a battle ensues in which the terrorists are driven off.

This more complete narrative agrees with all the witness statements and evidence. Even the quoted statements of the terrorists agree with it. The Army arrived when they said it would.

So here is a logical explanation for the sequence of events.

The insurgency has been suffering military and diplomatic defeats since the ill-fated attack on Aleppo. The little terrorists on the ground need help from the big terrorists in Washington. That means Hitlery Clinton and Barack Obomber need a pretext for a "no-fly zone" (euphemism for carpet bombing an independent nation back to the Ice Age.)

Remember the Houla massacre, blamed on "Assad forces." We soon proved it was to a false flag operation by the terrorist FSA. These facts were ignored, and sanctions were imposed on Syria. They want to repeat this now.

Accordingly, the FSA has been shooting civilians on the streets of Daraya for days, building up a death toll for the time the Army must come in to take the blame. As the Army arrives, they stampede some civilians to add to the death toll, and to use as human shields. As the battle rages, they burn many of the bodies of their dead to hide their foreign identities. As noted by the LandDestroyer blog, the FSA is the successor to the LIFG, the Al-CIAda run Libyan death squads, who destroyed many cities in Libya -- so the FSA should certainly be the prime suspects.

The actions of the CIA-trained FSA insurgents certainly appear to be choreographed by CIA psychological warfare controllers.

In other words, the whole operation was tailor-made for the MEDIA -- the warmongerers of yellow journalism.

The time has come to rename the MSM, or Mainstream Media, as the MMM -- the Mass Murdering Media.

All hits on the first page of a Yahoo search on Daraya today propound the "opposition activist" version. Yesterday the #5 google hit on Daraya was infowars.com, with an excerpt of the Addounia TV report blaming terrorists for the massacre. Now it dropped to #9. All other results are "activist reports." A coherent narrative is put out by Syria, and it's buried.

I could find no major online media outlet that allows reader comments on the Daraya story. My comments to Huffington Post never showed up, but I'll try again. When I tried to post a comment to the "activist" youtube video, it said I have been blocked by the owner.

Clearly, the Mass Murdering Media really, really, really want the Daraya false flag to go unchallenged. 

On Russia Today, UK analyst Neil Clark also reminded us that such massacres seem always to occur just before a UN Security Council meeting.

Another Syrian TV report notes that the dead bodies in the mosque shown by the "activist" video are all males of fighting age. Reason: the FSA  burned their foreign dead and dragged their Syrian dead into the mosque for the false flag photo op. The FSA narrator claims the bodies have "throats slit by shabiha" but no slit throats are visible. The Syrian TV commentator also asks, if the FSA allegedly control great much of the country, then when the SAA enters a town held by the FSA, why the dead are supposedly all civilians and no FSA fighters?

The commentator goes on to cite Al-Arabiya TV, an Arabic-language globalist traitors channel, which showed these words on the screen: "The Free Army takes cover in a populated neighborhood...  its members take cover among residents while awaiting what they call 'Zero Hour.'" (This maneuver corroborates the testimony above about the FSA shouting "the Army is coming.") The eommentator continues, "hiding among civilians in military terminology is taking them as human shields. [A war crime under the Geneva conventions.] This is the idea the Al-Arabiya program concludes with, that the so-called Free Army is taking cover behind civilians and not protecting them [lies will out]. He who takes a civilian as a human shield knows that the other party cares for that civilian and cares for his safety." Yet the MMM channels ignore all these facts and blame all killings on the SAA, who protect the civilians and do not hide behind them.

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Aug. 26

An article "Why Syria Will not Fall," translated from Arabic to English at an Indian website, reveals that the Syrian authorities are already doing one thing I had thought of before I could put it in writing: "especially in the rural areas where the people have become sick and tired, the Syrian state has put in place discreet communication means allowing the population to inform the army about the presence of terrorists, which would explain how and why during these last few weeks, the special units and the air force were able to successfully carry out well designed strikes against the bases of the armed gangs."

Daraya Massacre by FSA

Syria is learning. The latest of a series of large false-flag massacres was cut short by the FSA. About 200 civilians were killed in the town of Daraya by FSA terrorists the other day. I would assume this was a false flag planned in coordination with psy-war controllers in the US Dep't of Offense and MSM. However, the Syrian Army arrived in time to rescue most of the people who had been driven from their homes, and Syrian TV broadcast moving interviews with survivors and soldiers. Worth watching here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzKIkNepyo, click on CC for English captions. The terrorists drove people from homes into a  "shelter" shouting get out, the army is coming. After many civilians were shot in the streets and inside the shelter, the Syrian army appeared and rescued most of them, also driving off and killing many of the terrorists.

Top media hits on Daraya - Comments were disabled on the Guardian, NY Daily News and VOA narratives of the latest big war propaganda lie. I tried posting to Huffingpost, no dice. Infowars is already up among the first 5 google hits with the real story. I tried posting this message below on the youtube video of the massacre uploaded by "activists" but I "have been blocked by the owner of this video". Somebody obviously wants this lie to stick.

Daraya is another in the series of big false flag massacres carried out by US trained mercenaries and blamed on the Syrian Army by the media, which are a key part of the psychological warfare effort. It's timed to push through a "no-fly zone," the code word NATO liars use for bombing an independent nation back to the stone age. The massacre is a lot like Houla last year where a jihadi terror unit slit the throats of families who supported Assad, then claimed they were killed by Syrian Army shelling. Based on these lies the USUK rushed to impose sanctions on Syria. In Daraya, terrorists gangs stormed the town, forcing people from homes, shouting the army is coming, corralled them into a shelter and then started shooting people. The Army arrived in time to save most of the people and drive off the terrorists, killing many of them. See the real time interviews with survivors and soldiers here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPzKIkNepyo (click on CC for captions) or the report by Alex Jones http://www.infowars.com/daraya-residents-dispute-claim-massacre-carried-... .

Here a transcript of the English captions from Addounia.

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Aug. 25

The Not so Independent Independent?

Robert Fisk has been starting to doubt the official line a little in the pieces he's writing from Damascus for the Independent. I submitted two comments to his latest article, "The bloody truth about Syria's uncivil war - Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics."

1. I hope this comment somehow reaches the Syrian Arab Army leadership. Fisk's reports often give indications that the Syrian army needs a well-thought-out counter-insurgency doctrine on how to deal with terrorists, who take over urban districts and use civilians as human shields. That is a war crime, and the FSA are a criminal gang. Nonetheless, tanks and artillery are not really suitable for taking out snipers. Why not empower more civilians and army veterans to defend their own neighborhoods? For more details see the blog "The Dirty War on Syria".

2. Dear Mr Fisk,
I'd like to ask if in repeating that "the revolt began after secret police officers tortured to death a 13-year-old boy," have you checked into this or are you trusting the media -- the corrupt warmongering mainstream media? There are 2 sides to every story and every time I dig out the Syrian side, I find that the tale put out everywhere by the CIA-trained FSA is a Big Lie.
In the case of Hamza al Khateeb, he was 17, not 13, and he was not arrested and tortured for writing graffiti. He joined in an armed mob that was firing at a police station, and was killed by three bullets -- whether fired by the police or perhaps even by provocateurs, commandos tasked with stoking violence. The cause of death -- gunshot wounds, and not torture -- was established by the coroner before it was known who Hamza was. His body was taken from the scene of the shootings directly to the hospital.
The Syrian government narrative "True Story of Hamza al-Khateeb's Death Belies Media Fabrications" can be found online as well as a youtube video "Medical Examiner Interview about Hamza Al-Khateeb."
I think you too, the more you dig into the Syria story, the more you will find it is a dirty war based on a Big Lie against a small, proud, nation that dares to be INDEPENDENT.

(Note - On Aug. 12, Robert Fisk wrote that it was an 11-year old boy. Today it was a 13-year old. Give him another month and he might make it to 17, and tell the other side of the story, too?)

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Aug 24

Give Us Each Day Our Fill of Lies

A top story on Yahoo yesterday blared the headline, "Assad's War on Syria's Children." The casual viewer will assume that Assad is massacring 1000's of kids. Read it and come to find out all they have is two kids who exhibit violent behavior, after their rebel father and uncle fought back against the army instead of evacuating. Moral: terrorists make terrible parents.

Typical, twisted, Goebbelsian MSM war propaganda, from the aptly named "Daily Beast."

For that false flag the US is planning in order to get their war on Syria, I bet you their proxy insurgents the FSA Fanatic Saudi Assassins wipe out a school full of kids with chemical weapons and blame it on Assad. No war propaganda more potent than the killing of babies.

They have already recycled the phony Kuwait / Iraq incubator babies deaths tale from 1990 against Syria now. The FSA massacre at Houla was blamed on the Syrian government and used to justify sanctions against Syria -- even after the truth had come out that it was done by US-sponsored death squads and not the Syrian Army.

They make up their own truth - and it's the Big Lie every time.
 

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Aug. 22

Turnabout is Fair Play - Syria should set up Local Militias, and put a Bounty on Terrorist Heads too

By now I've seen innumerable reports and videos of the gratitude of Syrians for the protection of their Army against the depredations of FSA terrorist gangs. The latest one appeared in The Telegraph, Aug. 21, Robert Fisk reporting:  

At least a dozen civilians emerged from their homes, retirees in their 70s, shopkeepers and local businessmen with their families and, unaware that a foreign journalist was watching, put their arms round Syrian troops.

I also just came across a report from June in Global Research on how the largesse of the oil emirates Qatar and KSA trickles down to the smallest pawns in the game

The young people no longer want to work in the field. You can earn every day 5000, 8000, 1000 pounds, if they kill policemen. A man from Qusseir (Qusair), who has recently reported himself to the authorities, has confessed, that he has 150 000 Syrian pounds for committing the kidnapping and murder of six soldiers.
Syrian soldiers have said that they have received about 180 000 Syrian pounds [about $3000 US], to desert (from the Army), what is a fortune here in Syria.

Fisk also quotes an Army general on the terrorists:
They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese." And Syrians, I said. "Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals," he said.

Juxtaposing these three facts, a tactic occurred to me that could help Syria win the counter-insurgency. Rather than making civilians wait for the army to save them, why not recruit trustworthy veterans or reservists for a neighborhood militia in civilian dress? Some neighborhoods and clans have already done this on their own, Christians in particular, setting up checkpoints with armed guards to protect themselves. Most Syrian men serve two years in the army, so they know how to fire a gun.

As an incentive, declare a bounty for the killing or capture of foreign terrorists. Of course, such a program needs to be well-planned to avoid abuses. Candidates for neighborhood counter-insurgency commando service would need to be vetted and trained to avoid chaos and killings of ordinary civilians, or infiltration by FSA sympathizers. But we already have those problems with the FSA. So with judicious application, such a program could be a game-changer.

Bounties should either be higher, or paid exclusively for, foreign combatants. For their protection, foreign journalists should wear Press jackets, carry a visa, and make themselves known to authorities in the areas where they are working. Reservists might need special training in stalking snipers, and their identities might need to be kept secret, to avoid being singled out by terrorists.

Chairman Mao said, "The guerrilla must swim among the people as the fish swims." The same holds true for counter-insurgents. Well-targeted, hand-in-glove methods will also greatly reduce the physical and moral damage from the use of heavy weapons, which are at any rate poorly suited to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

It is understandable if the Syrian authorities may experience anxiety about loss of direct control over each weapon and soldier under such a policy, but adequate control can be maintained. The fact remains that the heroic Syrian Arab Army was built for a conventional war with Israel. Today's war waged by the US and proxies is an insidious, unconventional model, requiring innovation and cunning to combat it. 

Update Aug. 24. When i see a single FSA sniper terrorizing a whole neighborhood, or one terrorist blowing up a tank with an RPG, i really have to ask if the SAA are using the best mix of weapons. True, they keep killing terrorists, but can they afford the cost? NATO can send more insurgents and wear Syria down in a war of attrition.

Nowadays is the age of open source -- you can't concentrate all tasks and do everything yourself -- got to harness the power of the people. The Evil Empire got to be as big as it is because it learned this long ago. Syria is under attack by a CIA People Power Coup, among other things. The Syrian people are so thankful to their army, I'm sure they would be glad to help.

A comment on Twitter today by @FadiSalem, quoting an Aleppo activist about the FSA: "They have no regards what so ever for civilian life. They hide among them, leave them when shelling starts."

Sell also Update Aug. 26.

Aug. 20

REALITY AND DEMONOLOGY IN THE WAR ON SYRIA

It seems the real situation in Syria is never as bad as the hysteria pushed by the Western media. Of course, no news is always bad news for the media, but with Syria, there is an added motive -- catastrophic reports raise the pressure for intervention.

That's why I liked the concluding words of this unusually low-key, level-headed "Despatch from Damascus" by a German journalist, posted on Aug. 4th:

Damascus itself was placid, and normal life went on.... I walked through the city, speaking to shop owners, taxi drivers, people on the streets, policemen, women in headscarves and in Western outfits. The answer was always the same – the international media completely distort what is happening. They singled out the Qatar-based TV station Al-Jazeera for particular criticism....
A final surprise came at the Lebanese side of the border. There I saw the first time the black-white-green rebel flag waving in the wind. Immediately beyond the Lebanese border station were a dozen Western TV teams, waiting for the ‘refugees’. Some of them were paying interviewees in dollars for short interviews; and the wilder the story, the better they seemed to like it. It seems that reality doesn’t mean all that much when the Western media talk about Syria.

From this account we not only learn of the exaggeration of violence, but also that the people overwhelmingly support the government.

In a recent interview, Alex Jones agreed with guest Syrian Girl Partisan that short of a chemical weapons false flag attack, the empire has few options open to intervene. The latest attempt to drum up such a pretext was aimed as much at Iran as Syria. The claim by Dep't of Offense Secretary Panetta that Iran is training militias in Syria was a masterpiece of duplicity

- the US itself has already invaded both Iran and Syria with commandos, death squads and proxies,
- the allegation of a military intervention by Iran in Syria could be a pretext for an overt attack on either country.
- claims of a loyalist militia are constantly used to shift blame for killings by US proxy death squads onto the Syrian government, and to cover up the fact that Syrian civilians themselves are rejecting and even opposing the US-backed militants

Perhaps the US will be content just do as much damage to Syria as it can using the jihadist cannon fodder available, and let the conflict splutter on. They have been trying to crack Syria for 65 years now. Syria's electoral reform will make it easier to buy influence in the country. Already in 2014, they can try to create a scandal over the question whether the constitution allows Assad to run for president again or not. While one school of thought was that Syria needed to be taken out before tackling Iran, tying up Syria with low-intensity warfare may be enough.

Facts vs. Acts -- Analyzing Activist Assumptions

Let us look at some of the reasons given by opposition activists for supporting armed violence against the Syrian state.
- 42 years of rule by the Assad family
- Security forces allegedly firing on unarmed demonstrators
- Torture
- Shelling in civilian areas

Like Father Like Son?

When you ask Syria opposition activists, "Why not give the new reforms a chance?" they often answer, "Too little, too late. We suffered 42 years under the Assad dictatorship." When you then ask why they are not supporting the protests against the Al Khalifa family of Bahrain, who have ruled there for over 200 years, you get no answer.

The opposition likes to conflate Hafez Assad the strongman with his son. Bashar Assad was chosen to be president by the Baath party, and does not appear to wield absolute, personal power. Yet the opposition blames him for everything from the houseflies to the weather.

My impression is that Bashar is on the soft side for a leader, rather than the strongman dictator type. In interviews, he conscientiously rejects any notion of his own personal power, speaking always of the constitution, the party, the office.
When Bashar was first elected, he announced plans for reforms. Unfortunately, they were too long in coming, true enough. Perhaps he couldn't push them through over the old guard in the Baath party.

Another point of softness was B. Assad's attempt to win Western favor by making concessions. A few years back, he let in the IMF austerity shamans -- an entering wedge for destabilization. This spring, he tried to respect the UN ceasefire, which only let terrorists get more deeply entrenched.
If the US and the activists they support wanted reform, they could have pushed for reform and got it. Instead, the protests immediately turned to violence. Nevertheless, as soon as the protests started in Spring 2011, the Baathists saw the writing on the wall and started the political reform process.

[Update Aug. 26]

Under this head we may also include the complaints about corruption, which doubtless exists. Corruption is an endemic world-wide problem, difficult to eradicate. Do the SNC or FSA have a solution? On the contrary. Most likely it will be far more devastating under a gaggle of imperialists puppets.

The SNC have promised a pie-in-the-sky idyll of a rosy-hued economic paradise, what Webster Tarpley calls "singing tomorrows," watered by the generous spigot of  "international donors." (See "SNC Presents its Vision for the Reconstruction of the Syrian Economy" at Stephen Lendman's blog). Their  "vision" scrupulously avoids any mention of the P-word privatization. Yet this has always been the first, fastest and most furious thing post-color-revolution puppet governments have done. On this score I am an eyewitness for once, having lived in Czecho-Slovakia and Albania from 1990 to 2001, playing a bit part in the privatization process. The vaunted hopes of prosperity it would bring were dashed utterly. In most post-socialist countries, privatization greatly aggravated poverty and corruption.

The R-word of Reconstruction is far worse. It means, Destroy the country in order to bring in corrupt Allied corporations to rebuild it -- or more likely run it into a hell-hole like Somalia, Libya or Afghanistan. The ploy should be clear to any reader of the best-seller, Economic Hit Man, with its lesson that America's foreign policy is foreign plunder. It's no fount of donations, to pay public sector employees, of all things, as in the SNC fairyland fantasy, which targets the juveniles and "revtards" (retarded revolutionaries) who make up the FSA supporter base worldwide. In Libya, as we documented in Subverting Syria,

The United Kingdom would budget $500 million on NATO’s intervention in Libya, while according to the UK Department of Trade and Investment, contracts to rebuild the nation would be valued at upwards of $300 billion over a 10-year period: a 600-fold return on investment.

The evil of corruption on this planet has got to be most putrid at the apex of empire, the USA, where vulture capital rules the roost, and divvies up an enormous pot of carrion from all the wars and other scams like the wealth-care system, more often known by the misnomer of health care. The official corruption indices put out by the OECD and their ilk are not to be trusted. In "less-developed countries," at least corruption gives something to the little guy -- corruption is more democratic in a place where you can get out of a traffic ticket for a couple bucks. And everybody knows perfectly well the government is on the take. In some ways this is better. It creates an atmosphere of skepticism towards politics as a game, rather than the crushing, almost criminal naïveté of the average American, which allows the US government to get away with mass murder.

Under a well-settled authoritarian government, you will find way more political free speech than in a dumbed-down democracy. The people understand a lot more, and have more to say about it, than in some passive communities with a fake two-party system. What use is freedom of speech if no one is even thinking about anything? On these lines my sentiments are echoed by Syrian Girl Partisan in one of her most popular videos, DeMockracy is a Farce.

As I was searching for some mention of privatization plans for Syria (they are keeping it very quiet, loose lips sink partnerships) I chanced on a Jerusalem Post piece about Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf. He made a fortune in Syrian mobile telephony, had a good word to say about his cousin Bashar Al-Assad, and had his assets frozen for his freedom of speech. I was reminded that recently an FSA supporter on twitter, one of the Frenzied Stooge Activists, or more likely a neo-con fellow-travelling troll, claimed that the Assad and Makhlouf family own 60% of the Syrian economy, which sounds fantastic, but then the FSA lie every time.

Compared to the "democracy" gifted by the US-instigated color revolution to Albania, Assad and Makhlouf have been a lot better for Syria. The first thing "freedom" and "revolution" brought to Albania were the wreckers, hooligans who went about smashing factories and greenhouses because they were "state" property. The desired result (for certain countries desirous of "new markets") -- once-autarkic Albania no longer manufactures anything, so the people must try to survive by selling each other imported things. One FSA-sympathizing journo had a brief moment of lucidity when she interviewed a family who told her how one such youth wrecked the only cash machine in their small Syrian town, because it "belonged to the state" -- although it was the only way the town's workers had of getting paid. 

In Albania you now have a grotesque farce of a two-party system, "Democratic" and "Socialist," who take turns robbing the country mercilessly. The party heads are two improbably greedy thieves, Sali Berisha and Fatos Nano. The latter's arrogant young wife is said to have "privatized" (stolen) a big part of the economy. The ill-gotten proceeds are not spent within Albania. The government is practically bankrupt, public school is on half-day sessions with 40 kids to a classroom, there is no water or light most of the time in most districts -- the fount of international largesse sung by the SNC was somehow never connected to the mains. The Albanian state's only major money-maker was the phone company, which was sold off to Turkish "investors." The new mobile phone companies busily sucking up excess cash are foreign, too (owned by British, Greek, and German telecoms).

At least Syria has its own phones, and phone bills go to pay Syrian workers. If Syria is defeated, it will become just another kleptocratic colony, run by "democratic" puppets who sell out their country for a slice of the spoils.

An old corrupt bunch are usually better than a new one. They are satiated, and as they feel they own the place, over time they may see their interests converge with those of the country itself. A new lot of arrivistes are greedy to outdo their predecessors before their term is up. Worst of all, in a Western-leaning clique, the "in thing" is to have everything imported from London. The new kleptocrats will rush to spend every pound outside the country, sucking their own economy dry.

Who pulled the trigger first? Who had the motive and the plan?

Another favorite opposition argument is that peaceful protesters restrained themselves for a long time, until the "brutal crack-down by the Assad regime" stoked their rage and they started to fight back. However, the facts show that violence began almost from the start, so quickly that it is very hard to figure out who fired first. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research analysed the evidence in a May 2011 article, "Syria: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO 'Humanitarian Intervention.'"  He writes,

The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.
Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed "pro-democracy" demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.

Chossudovsky notes that the protests started not in Damascus, where the authentic internal opposition is based, but in Daraa (or Deraa), a small town of 75,000 souls on the border with Jordan. The pattern has held throughout -- the FSA always concentrates on targets near borders, as they must be supplied from foreign countries.

The first fatalities in Daraa were seven policemen and four armed protesters. Some or all of the dead may have been shot by mysterious snipers on rooftops, who were shooting at BOTH police and protesters. In Syrian state TV footage used by the BBC, it says on the screen, "You are seeing gunmen shooting at unarmed civilians and security forces."

Why shoot at both sides? To stoke enmity and violence between the two sides. What would be the motive? For violent elements to take over the protest movement and overthrow the state.

In other words, as the BBC put it in their emotion-charged video "Inside the Secret Revolution," the snipers were "agents provocateur." But the BBC claims these provocateurs were plainclothes government thugs -- the "Shabiha." The word means "spooks," and refers to a gang of Latakia port smugglers, among them a nephew of Hafez Assad, during the 70's and '80s. Hafez Assad suppressed them in the 90s, and they were disbanded in 2000.

Up until the stage of open warfare this summer made it impossible, drumbeaters for war on Syria have blamed all killings by terrorists on the Shabiha. Yet there is very little evidence for their "ghostly" existence (other than the usual "unconfirmed activist reports" and dubious videos).

Of course, the last thing a government wants to do is stoke internal violence, and even less, to kill its own security forces. The Syrian authorities were doing what any state does, to try and restore law and order, not to pour oil on flames and engulf itself.

Rather than "cracking down," the authorities immediately tried to calm the situation by offering to release the students who had been arrested, but the mobs went ahead and set fire to government buildings. Were they paid or incited to do this?

The Biased Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC

The BBC don't try to explain why the government would want to provoke violence. We know, however, from the US Unconventional Warfare manual TC 18-01, that the US does use this kind of violent destabilization tactic. The BBC then present a "witness" (with face dramatically hidden from the camera), allegedly a Syrian army defector. His wild story would have fetched a good price on the Lebanese border. Officers allegedly ordered their men at gunpoint to shoot, saying, "Don't shoot the 'armed groups,' they are with us. There are no rebels, no conspirators, just the people. Shoot the people." According to this Hollywood-cartoon-villain self-indictment, the officers shot dead seven men because they had refused to shoot the protesters! A shocking but inherently absurd script with a slick presentation that still makes a strong impression.

A month later, as the army occupies Daraa to try to restore order, Al-Jazeera reports this hellish scenario: people don't dare to go in the streets because "plain clothes thugs and secret police" snipers on rooftops are shooting both civilians and soldiers. Based on "unconfirmed activist reports" of course. But we have a report from Webster Tarpley on the same situation in Homs in November.  Tarpley told that the people of Homs begged for the Army to come restore orde. Meanwhile the Big Lie Media pinned blame on Assad for the havoc wreaked by the FSA there, always claiming the rooftop snipers were Assad's -- one form of their video lies.

Tarpley on Russia Today, Nov. 2011--

I've just completed about one week of fact-finding tour of the country and I've been in Homs, I've been in Tartus, Banias, I've been in the military hospital here in Baghdad, and I can tell you what average everyday Syrians of all ethnic groups -- Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Druze -- what they say about this, is that they are being shot at by snipers. In Homs in particular they are saying that there are terrorist snipers shooting at civilians, men women and children. Blind terrorism, random killing, simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country.  I would not call this a civil war by any stretch of the imagination. I think that's a very, very misleading term in the following sense. What you're dealing with here are death squads. You're dealing here with terror commandos, the kind of thing that everybody remembers from Argentina and Central America.  This is a typical CIA method. In this case it's a joint production of the CIA, MI-6, Mossad, DGSE of the French. It's got money coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

All throughout 2011 and up until the surge on Damascus and Aleppo, the MSM try to pretend that all killings have been carried out either by the army or the Shabiha, never by the FSA. FSA terrorists sometimes even dress in Syrian Army uniforms, to reflect blame for their terror acts on army. Total casualty figures are inflated, packaged as civilian deaths and laid at the government's door in full, without detailing how many were combatants.

It takes careful analysis, but when the effort is made, it never seems to fail: the MSM narrative is always a Big Lie, where atrocities are groundlessly blamed on government forces. One is tempted to simply ignore the MSM.

When a government carries out a false flag, they are always quick to point the blame at their target. Thus the BBC was quick to blame "government death squads," but the Syrians were puzzled. They did not leap to tell the story that would work for them and say, these are CIA death squads -- they just called them "protesters." A similar time lapse was seen after the Houla massacre, where the media accused the Syrian army of shelling civilians. The government was non-plussed and could only protest innocence. It took a while for the truth to come out -- that the massacre was carried out by FSA jihadists, who had cut the throats of Assad supporters with knives. No traces of government shelling were to be seen, and the photo they had shown of bodies strewn everywhere was from a scene in Baghdad... But the media had scored their points, and the USUK had used the massacre to tighten sanctions on Syria, with no looking back. This is full-blooded war propaganda, creating facts on the ground, and the Anglo-Americans have always been the top specialists at it.

The "Shabiha" -- Ghosts of Ghosts

I have seen innumerable cases where photos of civilians killed by "shabiha" were debunked as fakes, and not one confirmed one yet. If real photos were available, "activists" would not resort to faking them, with the risk of being found out. This leads to the conclusion that there are no real photos, and I have been assured by an anti-FSA activist who checked into this in the first few months and found that all photos of government atrocities were fakes.

It's logical that the intentional civilian killings are carried out by the FSA, as they have the motive -- it destabilizes Syria. One, they can blame the killings on "Shabiha." Two, they hope to terrorize the populace into supporting them. Three, it weakens the country and may weaken the people's will to resist takeover by the US proxies. Some grief-stricken families may turn against the government for not stopping the FSA from killing their loved ones. This is all tried and true insurrectionary tactics.

Meanwhile the government has every motive and makes every effort not to kill civilians, but it must defeat armed insurrection.

Torture

Another reason given for opposition to Assad is torture.
Torture is a bad thing, no question about it.
It causes psychological damage to victims, and even to its practitioners. And to no purpose - it doesn't even work nearly as well as soft indoctrination.
Torture should be eliminated. However, it is not the reason the US wants to topple Assad.
A few years ago, under the practice of "extraordinary rendition," the US even sent "terrorist suspects" to Syria to be tortured. The US also tortures inmates in Guantanamo. Torture is a worldwide problem.
If activists want to end torture, is making war on Syria the best way to go about it? No. Allowing reforms to take root, allowing a multiparty democracy to develop, is the best hope to end the practice.
War on Syria will lead to more, not less terror. Government officials lack experts in soft indoctrination methods, yet feel the need to find out if detainees are just "peaceful protesters" or armed militants. And the torture of civilians by the FSA is much more brutal than that by the state. The Al Berri clan were beaten and bloodied before being shredded in a machine gun fusillade.

Shelling Residential Areas

This is an issue that has worried me, as seen in earlier blog entries below.
The media like to call this "Assad using the army to attack his own people," as they are fishing for a UN resolution under the R2P "responsibility to protect" theory.
Let's ask opposition activists why the FSA is using residential areas as human shields? The activists will probably say it's OK for revolutionaries.
Do they know this is a war crime, as security expert Charles Shoebridge pointed out the other day, in a tweet to Human Rights Watch reminding them of their own position -- "all sides must avoid deploying military targets such as fighters or weapons in or near densely populated areas, and they must try to remove civilians from areas of military operations."
In other words, endangering civilians by mounting a guerrilla warfare operation in cities and towns is a war crime in itself, not to mention the acts of terror against  non-combatants by the invading mercenaries.
While sharing my sentiment that we'd like it if a more limited type of response could eradicate the insurgents' occupation of urban areas, Shoebridge also noted, "A person who knows about military matters knows this is what happens in urban war. Rebels condemned by UN for exactly this."
Sometimes the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shells areas where FSA snipers have occupied the rooftops. Under cover of artillery fire, SAA is able to take back the high ground. It's a question of tactics.
The army has made statements that they are striving to minimize civilian casualties, by advancing slowly on terrorist nests, giving civilians a chance to flee. 
The FSA also do have some heavy weapons and mortars, which they are known to lob unprovoked into peaceful civilian areas.

According to carefully-laid plans

We've seen now that the motivation for violence rests squarely with the Evil Empire, not with the Syrian state. As for the Empire's evil plan, an updated version of it was published by Michel Chossudovsky on Aug. 3 in "Towards A 'Soft Invasion'? The Launching of a 'Humanitarian War' against Syria".  He writes,

Rather than carrying out an all out Blitzkrieg,  the US-NATO-Israel military alliance has chosen to intervene under the diabolical R2P frame of "humanitarian warfare". Modelled on Libya, the following broad stages are envisaged:

1)  A US-NATO backed insurgency [involving] by death squads is launched under the disguise of a "protest movement" (mid-March 2011 in Daraa)
2)  British, French, Qatari and Turkish  Special Forces are on the ground in Syria, advising and training the rebels as well as overseeing special operations. Mercenaries hired by private security companies are also involved in supporting rebels forces
3)  The killings of innocent civilians by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are deliberately carried out as part of a covert intelligence operation. (See SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 2012 )
4)  The Syrian government is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. Media disinformation is geared towards demonizing the Syrian government. Public opinion is led into endorsing a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.
5)  Responding to public outrage, US-NATO is then "forced to step in" under a Humanitarian "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) mandate.  Media propaganda goes into high gear. "The International Community" comes to the rescue of the Syrian people."
6)  Warships and fighter jets are then deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. These actions are coordinated with logistical support to the rebels and Special forces on the ground.
7)  The final objective is "regime change" leading to the "break-up of the country" along sectarian lines and/or the installation of an "Islamist-dominated or influenced regime" modelled on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
8)  War plans in relation to Syria are integrated with those pertaining to Iran. The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. The broader implications of US-NATO intervention are military escalation and the possible unleashing of a regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia, in which China and Russia could be directly or indirectly involved.

Stages 1 through 4 have already been implemented.

Stage 5 has been announced.
 

Progressives for and Against Assad Want the Same Things After All

If you ask progressive pro- and anti-government activists what is their vision for Syria, it probably comes down to the same shopping list:
- secular, pluralist, parliamentary democracy
- freedom of speech and political association
- security and safety, human rights, women's rights, no police brutality
- continuation of the policy of resistance to zionism, no peace without the Golan Heights
- national unity, economic independence and development

For some progressives like me, it was clear before the fiasco of Aleppo and Damascus that the best chance for Syria to reach these goals was to give the reform constitution a chance. After Aleppo, it became clear to many more people that the armed militants would deliver just the opposite. They represent the worst of all possible worlds - a descent into the kind of hell the Ugly American Empire has left behind in Somalia or Afghanistan. A shattered landscape of feuding warlords, a human rights catastrophe that makes feudalism look like Utopia, Syria as a pariah and an appendage of Israel, carved up like the map under the French mandate, and ironically under the same flag.

Why do Revolutions Backfire?

Like begets like. Due process leads to democracy. Violence leads to tyranny.

It's not clear though how many "opposition activists" really are inspired by revolutionary or democratic sentiment, and how many are trolls. Neo-con wolves in lefty clothing reflect perfectly the duplicitous essence of Color Revolution Technology.
 

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Aug. 10

CLASSICAL LORE

To celebrate Syria's victory in Aleppo, let's relax for a moment and muse on some ancient lore of Syria and Iran.

Yesterday’s conference of 30 nations in Tehran reminded me of the famous masterpiece of the Iranian mystical poet Attar, The Conference of the Birds, also translated as The Parliament of the Birds. In this tale, all kinds of birds of the world, thirty in number, convene to elect a King. The wisest of them, the hoopoe bird, proposes they set out in search of the mythical bird Simurgh, a sort of phoenix. When they reach the Simurgh's home, what they find is a pond. As they see themselves reflected in it,  they realize that they themselves are their own King. They are the Simurgh, which in a Persian play on words sounds like “thirty birds.”

The thirty nations assembled in Tehran need no superpower to lord it over them. They only need recognize their own potential, and they can be their own King.

The Thirty nations do not need to subject themselves to the evil king of Wall Street. The real Free World consists of those striving for freedom from the yoke of the Ugly American empire, with its lies, threats, depravity, plunder, genocide, its think tanks and spy banks endlessly churning out malevolent machinations.

The SCO, BRICS, non-aligned movement, the Simurgh of Tehran -- these are the new Free World.

It was in Syria in September of the year 1260 that the Mongol hordes reached the high-water mark of their sweep to world empire, and were turned back at the celebrated  Battle of Ain Jalut. The Mongols had sacked Baghdad and many other cities, so that one city after another surrendered in terror without a fight.

But Qutuz, the Mamluk sultan of Cairo, had the temerity to execute the Mongol emissaries who brought him the demand to surrender. Marching north, he joined forces with a Syrian Mamluk commander. Together they outmaneuvered and routed a Mongol army.

The myth of Mongol invincibilty was broken, and the civilizations of the Middle East and Europe were saved from destruction by the barbaric, ruthless and cunning Mongol armies. The Muslims had carefully studied the Mongol tactics and found their weak point.

Today's Mongol horde has been defeated in Syria once again. For the nations yearning to break free from superpower blackmail, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. As long as Syria listened to the demands of the UN, the emissary of the US reign of terror, she was doomed. Taking their destiny in their own hands, the Syrian army have freed their country from the hordes of terror.

Update. Aug. 13, apropos Iran's mythical Simurgh phoenix bird,  Press TV announced, "Iran to launch indigenous Simorgh satellite carrier"

---

Aug. 9

COLD TURKEY

The MSM are MUM about their twin defeats in Damascus and Aleppo, but reviewing media reports on the margins, it looks like the Evil Empire has taken a pretty bad fall. Excellent analysis here of the predicament Turkey now finds itself in: "Davutoglu: Betting on the Fall of Assad." I particularly liked this pungent comment by one reader:

As EMERGING ECONOMIC GIANT, the game plan to DESTROY TURKEY has Emerged from The West,Russia and China!
The west did NOT want Turkey to dominate and lead Arabs nor any Middle Eastern countries as they already had their ZIONIST Baby!
Russians DID NOT WANT TURKEY as it would threaten Southern Russia,TARTaRISTaN etc etc
And Their STANS who are basically Turkish Origins! Then China was fearful of East Turkistan
Yes,Turkey fell into the CAREFULLY LAID TRAP and it is NOW ON THE PATH OF BALKANISATION!
HOW STUPID THE TURKS ARE ! they thought of themselves as EUROPEANS but EU showed them the door STILL THEY DID NOT GET THE MESSAGE!
By getting INVOLVED IN SYRIA TURKS HAVE LOST A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
BY FOLLOWING THE WEST WHO CANNOT BE TRUSTED!

As I wrote to a friend 10 days ago, "The Turks are not even Arabs. The Anglos are letting the Turkish New Ottoman card be played precisely because it can not work."

Here, another interesting piece on the blowback in Turkey. An apoplectic Erdogan raves that Assad is not even a Muslim!
But Turkey's overconfident leaders have only themselves to blame. They did not keep an eye on their backside - their Kurdish nemesis.

Regarding the summit in Tehran, the theme was as billed, "a political solution by Syrians themselves." Communiquè here, with list of attendees. It supports the right of Syrians to take their path to reform without outside intervention, and calls for humanitarian assistance. Some observers counted it historic that 30 countries even dared to attend to talk about belling the cat, at the invitation of blackballed Iran, at that. The only concrete proposal was the formation of a  "Contact Group on Syria."

We know the Evil Empire is not going to give up easily and that Unconventional Warfare is a long-term war of attrition. Their first new twist may be the old French Foreign Legion. Press TV reports the French are sending soldiers to the Syria-Jordan border to "help the refugees." My French dictionary says this is an idiomatic expression for "re-arm the bandits." Interesting thing in the abbreviations, too. FSA stands for "Force Sioniste Auxiliare."

Strange, at two major French MSM websites (france24 & nouvelobs) featuring this story, they have a window to post a comment... but there are no comments. HMM..MUM.

---

Aug. 8
HOW SYRIA CAN WIN

The small nation of Syria is under attack by the most powerful nation on earth, the USA, with a crew of vassals who are themselves among the most powerful nations in the region: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and hiding in the background, Israel. These powerful enemies are also using one of the most powerful and sophisticated forms of warfare ever devised: the synthetic insurgency.

The doctrine for this advanced type of war is set out by the US Department of  "Defense" (occupied almost exclusively with offense) in their confidential "Unconventional Warfare" (UW) manual (pdf) . This leaked document makes it crystal clear how each step of Syria's destabilization was carefully planned. Online defenders of Syria have typed volumes about the psychological warfare tactics of disinformation, the Big Lies, the video fakery and media bias, that are prescribed there.

So far, however, I have not seen any attempts to use this manual to help devise a winning strategy to defeat a synthetic insurgency, or invasion in disguisen. Of course, once you know how something works, you also see many points where you can stop it from working. That will be the goal of this essay.

LEVELS OF INVOLVEMENT

The UW manual  (txt) begins with three possible stages of UW (Unconventional Warfare): Indirect, direct, and combat support. Indirect support is chosen when "overt US support is undesirable." The US "may indirectly render support though a coalition partner or a third country."    
This "indirect" support already goes quite far, as when we see a nerve center for the "rebels" set up at a US base in Turkey. Yet thanks to proxies such as Libyan jihadists, the US has already escalated to the most advanced phase of combat support, while pretending not to be involved.

Application: Point to this US UW manual (and other documents like the Path to Persia memo) to break down the naïveté of those who refuse to admit the US is the moving force behind the unrest.

FEASIBILITY

"1-13. There are specific physical and environmental conditions that allow for a successful resistance or insurgency. The three main conditions are a weakened or unconsolidated government or occupying power, a segmented population, and favorable terrain from which an element can organize and wage subversion and armed resistance."

These conditions did not exist in Syria, but the US has worked to generate them artificially.

1. "It is extremely difficult to organize successful resistance under a fully consolidated government or occupying power with a strong internal security apparatus."

Under Hafez Assad, the "Arab Spring" would not have been possible, but his British-trained son Bashar al Assad has been solicitous to open up Syrian society to reforms. As commentators like Tarpley,  Meyssan, Chossudovsky or Cartalucci  have ably documented, "pro-democracy" and "human rights" NGO's have created a ferment in recent years, which has markedly weakened the government's hold on raw power -- even though Bashar al Assad's reforms have probably improved its popularity and legitimacy. The "Arab Spring" was always really an Arab Sting.

Application: Authority can be based on respect rather than fear, on delivering basic needs, and using the media well to reinforce positive attitudes, as we see in stable "democracies." A police state is not what Syria wants, but nor is it the only way to consolidate power.

2. A segmented population. While there are different religious affiliations in Syria, most Syrians are Syrian first. They would be about as likely to start a sectarian war as Catholics vs. Protestants in the US today. Foreign observers love to emphasize religious differences. Did US planners think "Sunni" Wahhabite jihadist fighters would strike a chord with the Sunni majority in Syria? More likely they just figured such people are handy cannon fodder to inflict damage cheaply. If they do win, it will be easy to pick leaders to make Syria another emirate -- or a failed state like Afghanistan, to the infinite joy of perennial enemy Israel.

Remedy: In media messages, underline that We Syrians are all together. Lampoon the cartoon-like jihadists and their Wall Street backers as alien and repellent to Syrian values.

3. The "favorable terrain" or safe haven for terrorists is located on Syria's borders, especially with NATO client Turkey. This is why all the unrest has been in cities close to the borders, never in the center of the country.

Remedy: Secure the international borders, not only to keep new fighters out, but to deny those in country the chance to regroup and re-arm. Ask friendly nations to form a coalition and assist with troops for border guard duty. This will also enormously increase the cost for the US should it be tempted to go over to direct combat support. Taking into account the diplomatic necessities of friendly or neutral nations, the border guards might function as replacements for UN monitors. Where acceptable, it may be desirable for them to be under Syrian command.

THE INFOWAR

"1-16. Information activities that increase dissatisfaction with the hostile regime or occupier and portray the resistance as a viable alternative are important components of the resistance effort. These activities can increase support for the resistance through persuasive messages that generate sympathy among populations."

They employ a two-edged policy of damning the government and glorifying the "insurgents."

The tactic of "Bashar-bashing" is rife in the mainstream media. Even sympathetic commentators like Robert Fisk or George Galloway in the West seem compelled to cross themselves and ritually slam Bashar al Assad. Due to media bias, a blackout of the Syrian viewpoint and perhaps unfamiliarity with modern public relations principles by the Syrian government itself, the smear campaign is being contested in English largely by online activists. They are themselves greatly outnumbered by the "Free Syria" variety, especially in English but also in Arabic.

One of the most sinister psywar tactics is the "color revolution" technique appealing to leftists and young people. Thierry Meyssan summed it up thus in his article, "Perfecting The Method of Color Revolutions."

The principle is simple: exacerbate all underlying frustrations, blame the political apparatus for all the problems, manipulate the youth according to the Freudian "patricidal" scenario, organize a coup, and then propagandize that the government was brought down by the “street.”

Some talking points to emphasize in the Syrian narrative.
- the genuine democratic opposition are welcome, responsible adults. They ran in elections and won some seats and two ministerial posts
- protesters are spoiled children who, once they saw they weren't going to win the voting game, want to dash the pieces from the board
- the US escalated hostilities when they saw the election pre-empting their claims of trying to support democracy. They used foreign fighters because real Syrians want a political solution, not to kill other Syrians and destroy Syria.
- Expose the technology of color revolutions, Soros, NED and how it fits into the synthetic insurgency strategy.
- Expose the Big Lie about the "brutal regime attacking its own people" and how it is prescribed in the UW plan. Syrian witnesses note how some protesters (hotheads or agents provocateurs) were violent "from the first day,"  attacking police first, who were then forced to act in self-defence. A planned provocation was for snipers to shoot both demonstrators and police, to instigate mutual hostility; the Syrian Army reported capturing one such provocateur.
- in such cases, the Syrian state media should be active in supplying footage of high propaganda value. A recent example was the capture by the SAA of Turkish and Saudi officers on the ground directing the terrorists. Televised statements by the invaders, perhaps?

With the Ramadan escalation, the carefully prepared disguise of idealistic, defenseless protesters has taken a beating. The foreign jihadists and death squads have shown their ugly face.

REIGN OF TERROR

The jihadist resistance is not a viable alternative because of:
- random killing of civilians, ethnic cleansing of minorities, ransacking and shelling of homes. These foreign elements have no understanding of Syria's tolerant, pluralist secular state. They are paid by the enemies of Syria, and they are a plague.

"1-17. In almost every scenario, resistance movements face a population with an active minority supporting the government and an equally small militant faction supporting the resistance movement (Figure 1-2). For the resistance to succeed, it must convince the uncommitted middle population, which includes passive supporters of both sides, to accept it as a legitimate entity."

At this stage it would appear the "FSA" has lost credibility in their Ramadan surge. Highly publicized defections may be presumed to be bought and don't necessarily reflect the attitudes of the street.

However, the danger is that the US is using the jihadists to cause damage, as a pretext for responsibility to protect, or to play the broker who will sponsor another stripe of "rebels." They may do this by recruiting mercenaries and activists within Syria, and taking more care to keep the militants on message with the alleged political program.

The broad majority want security, and if terrorists are allowed to institute a reign of terror, people will be forced to surrender to them. Therefore Syria is doing the necessary thing by taking vigorous military action to restore order.

WE ARE THE REVOLUTION

Meyssan again:  
"A genuine revolution entails an upheaval in social structures that takes place over several years, while a 'color revolution' is a regime change that occurs within weeks. The other term for a forced change of leadership without social transformation is a "coup d’état'".

In other words, Assad's new constitution, which ends the one-party state and bars him from serving again after his term expires in 2014, and the new elections -- these reforms ARE the Syrian revolution. The crowds of over one million cheering for Assad are the revolution. The handfuls of fools protesting violently are part of the counter-revolution, as they provide a useful mask for the provocateurs hired by the US and proxies. They are only a fraction of a thousandth of the population, yet they receive 99% of mainstream media (MSM) attention, while the huge pro-government rallies are ignored or dismissed. This is because the MSM are part of the UW arsenal.

Distinguish Bashar al-Assad from Hafez al-Assad. Hark back to early reports of his intentions for reform. The Syrian old guard probably resisted these notions, knowing (even without reading the UW manual, of course) that this would open the country to subversion by the US. As Joe Quinn noted in Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction?

"Some Arab governments that refuse to submit to Western and Israeli dominance are continually harassed and destabilized to the point that they are forced, in order to survive, to develop a security infrastructure that is, to one extent or another, totalitarian. Western powers and the Israelis can then, when it suits them best, decry the lack of ‘freedom’ within the targeted nation and begin overthrowing the government."

The road to reform is very risky because it opens society to subversion. Friendly media and commentators should not fall into the trap of being politically correct and making ritual references disparaging Assad or the "brutal regime" (allowing that in many cases the pill may be poison-coated by editors.) The old trick of "giving a dog a bad name to hang it" is being used by the US to try and escalate, from the stage of proxies to a full-fledged aerial and ground NATO attack on Syria, under the insidious "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) theory.

UW is military aggression, facilitated by the diplomatic and media sides of the enemy offensive. It is not about diplomacy per se. Enemy rhetoric to the contrary, their aim is not any kind of political compromise or accommodation, no matter how nice a target nation tries to be. The aim is to destroy Syria sheer and simple, for long-held and sufficient strategic reasons of the US and Israel.

Hoping to curry favor by obeisances to themes of the "international community" is self-defeating. One example was Assad's attempt to abide by the UN-sponsored cease-fire, which only allowed the invaders to entrench their position. The Syrian army held back too long from a counter-attack in Homs, which allowed jihadists to paralyze and destroy much of the city, and ethnically cleanse the Christian community.  In past years, Syria attempted to play along with the IMF, which led to the creation of a nouveau riche élite with a motive to overthrow the socially-oriented Syrian state.

WHO IS KILLING CIVILIANS?

Syrian voices must hammer away at the counter-theme that the civilians are being killed by the invaders; thus the UN has a responsibility to protect Syria from the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their hired death squads. Popular support is the Syrian government's chief asset, which it would be suicidal to squander. The invaders, on the contrary, are motivated to apply a satanic win-win rule.
- in the early phase the insurgent military action is mainly for show. It is more in the nature of a prop for psychological warfare, than a serious bid for military victory. Their killings will be blamed on the government by the media the US controls.
- even though terrorist killings may alienate the population, this will not be reported. The people soon become too terrorized to even dare to voice their views. Invader-held areas experience a reign of terror, which, of course, was the modus operandi of the great historical revolutions in France and Russia.
 
A hint of this kind of thinking is contained in the UW manual.
"1-43. If retaliation occurs, the resistance can exploit the negative consequences to garner more sympathy and support from the population by emphasizing the sacrifices and hardship the resistance is enduring on behalf of “the people.” If retaliation is ineffective or does not occur, the resistance can use this as proof of its ability to wage effect combat against the enemy. In addition, the resistance can portray the inability or reluctance of the enemy to retaliate as a weakness, which will demoralize enemy forces and instill a belief in their eventual defeat."

PHASES

The manual sets out seven phases through which a UW operation may develop:

Figure 1-3

PHASE I: Preparation. Resistance and external sponsors conduct psychological preparation to unify population against established government or occupying power and prepare population to accept U.S. support.
PHASE II: Initial Contact. USG [United States Government] agencies coordinate with allied government-in-exile or resistance leadership for desired U.S. support.
PHASE III: Infiltration. Special Forces team infiltrates operational area, establishes communications with its base, and contacts resistance organization.
PHASE IV: Organization. Special Forces team organizes, trains, and equips resistance cadre. Emphasis is on developing infrastructure.
PHASE V: Buildup. Special Forces team assist cadre with expansion into an effective resistance organization. Limited combat operations may be conducted, but emphasis remains on development.
PHASE VI: Employment. UW [Unconventional Warfare] forces conduct combat operations until linkup with conventional forces or end of hostilities.
PHASE VII: Transition. UW forces revert to national control, shifting to regular forces or demobilizing.

Phase VI was definitely reached with the surge after the May elections and the recent attempts to seize Damascus and Aleppo.

A U.S. PROXY INVASION, NOT AN INSURGENCY

In Ch. 2, "Fundamentals of Resistance and Insurgency," the UW Manual states,

"Insurgents are inherently indigenous... Even when the U.S. forces or foreign fighters support an insurgency or resistance movement, planners should not categorize them as part of the insurgency."

This is more than semantics -- there is quite a revealing insight here. It means that in fact, THERE IS NO INSURGENCY IN SYRIA. Any Syrians in the "Free Syrian Army" were hired or influenced and swept up by the foreign-led hysteria. This fact bears thinking about.

First of all, names are important. We should not refer to the conflict as an insurgency. This would lend it a mythic legitimacy it never had. I recommend to use instead the term U.S. PROXY INVASION.

I have also coined several names for the FSA, the not free and not Syrian army, that don't require one to constantly remember to put them in quotation marks:
Fanatical Sectarian Assassins, the jihadists.
Foolish Stooge Activists, for the Syrians camp followers and their leftish fellow travelers in the West.
Filthy Swine Army, who commit the atrocities.
Foreign Subversive Army, the umbrella group. I recommend using this term regularly and establishing it as the new definition of the FSA.

Once we are talking about a U.S. proxy invasion we can think more clearly about the problem, and communicate the issue clearly to others.

The first thing that becomes immediately clear is the utter depravity and hypocrisy of U.S. calls for intervention to protect the Syrian people.

The second thing is the hollowness of calls for a political solution by the Syrians themselves, without offering Syria material or military assistance or protection. If the US proxy invasion is not blocked, "leaving it to the Syrians" amounts to leaving foreign bullies a free hand to smash Syria. As we have seen, the problem is military, not political, and it did not arise from Syria, but from the Pentagon.

With the invasion paradigm, we can now begin to think about a coalition of friendly nations to supply monitors, border guards or troops secure Syria's borders against further incursions. This would be the best guarantee of Syrian independence, as set out in this blog on Aug. 6th, "A Call To Syria's Friends To Help Secure Her Borders."

Presenting the conflict as a foreign invasion will help people reject aggression against Syria, both in the West and within the Syrian opposition. Similarly the fighters should not be termed rebels; the Syrian government already calls them terrorists.

Being clear on this basic concept of a U.S. proxy invasion should lead to many fruitful ideas on how to conduct the media and military campaigns against the invasion.

What the Pentagon has done is to generate very small, artificial elements of a resistance organization, only a few thousand activists. These are greatly magnified by the MSM. Onto this wispy chimera they have grafted hard-bitten, heavily-armed foreign and foreign-led guerrilla bands..

They were following the classic steps for creating a color revolution followed by an insurgency, but the effort was pre-empted by the government's reforms, and frustrated by the refusal of over 99% of the population to participate. They then had to resort to a video-edited fake insurgency under the banner of clueless activists.

STRUCTURE OF AN INSURGENCY

Here are the steps they prescribe and follow in promoting an insurgency. Arranged in an obelisk form, with the final step at the top, it is presented in reverse chronological order.  

Figure 2-2. Structure of an insurgency or resistance movement

17. Large Scale Guerrilla Actions
16. Minor Guerrilla Actions
15. Increased Political Violence and Sabotage
14. Intense Sapping of Morale (Government, Administration, Police, Military)
13. Increased Underground Activities to Demonstrate Strength of Resistance Organization and Weakness of Government
12. Overt and Covert Pressures Against Government (Strikes, Riots, and Disorder)
11. Intensification of Propaganda; Psychological Perpetration of Population for Rebellion
10. Expansion of Front Organizations
9. Establishment of National Front Organizations and Liberation Movements; Appeal to Foreign Sympathizers
8. Spreading of Subversive Organizations into All Sectors of Life of a Country
7. Penetration into Labor Unions, Student and National Organizations and all Parts of Society
6. Recruitment and Training of Resistance Cadres
5. Infiltration of Foreign Organizers and Advisors and Foreign Propaganda, Material, Money, Weapons, and Equipment
4. Increased Agitation, Unrest, and Disaffection; Infiltration of Administration, Police, Military, and National Organizations, Boycotts, Slowdowns, and Strikes
3. Agitation; Creation of Favorable Public Opinion (Advocating National Cause); Creation of Distrust of Established Institutions
2. Creating of Atmosphere of Wider Discontent Through Propaganda and Political and Psychological Effects to Discredit the Government
1. Dissatisfaction with Political, Economic, Social, Administrative, and Other Conditions; National Aspiration (Independence) or Desire for Ideological and Other Changes

This entire process could take a long time, and we can see that they have mostly skipped over steps 6 through 14. The development has gone from
5. Infiltration of Foreign Organizers and Advisors and Foreign Propaganda, Material, Money, Weapons, and Equipment
straight to
15. Increased Political Violence and Sabotage
16. Minor Guerrilla Actions
17. Large Scale Guerrilla Actions

This could indicate that the Proxy Invasion has short legs. If Syria can score a victory over the major guerrilla actions and deny entry to further fighters, it should have a chance to consolidate support and frustrate the building of the resistance envisioned in the skipped steps six to fourteen. It may also indicate that even in the case of a short-term Syrian victory, the Pentagon goes back to the drawing board to keep working on a longer term plan.

"2-12. In general, the strategic objective is to gain concessions or remove the regime in power."
Assad has already made the concessions noted - a multi-party system in which he will not run for re-election. Any real insurgency would have a problem in offering an objective.

Talking point: the opposition has no realistic objectives beyond the reforms already set in motion.

DEPENDENT ON FOREIGN SUPPORT

"2-16. Historically, insurgencies do not succeed without some form of external support. This support can be in the form of—
• Moral or political support in the international forum.
• Resources, such as money, weapons, food, advisors, and training.
• Sanctuary, such as secure training sites, operational bases over a border, or protection from extradition."

Syria should work to cut off the proxy invasion from all three support channels. Friendly nations can drum on the proxy invasion message at the UN. Borders must be secured.

OUTRIGHT WAR

Phase II—Guerrilla Warfare
2-24. A campaign of guerrilla attacks and sabotage degrade the government’s military and police forces...

Phase III—War of Movement
2-27. The goal of the insurgency in Phase III is to bring about the collapse of the established government... This tactic can  only succeed if the insurgency effectively removes the military first.

2-28. As the insurgency gains control over the country, the insurgent leadership becomes responsible for the population, resources, and territory under its control. If the insurgency fails to plan and execute posthostility activities, the population may lose confidence in the insurgency and turn to the old government, a breakaway faction, or a splinter group of the insurgency.

The fighters are not prepared to run the country. The proxy invasion campaign appears to have been launched opportunistically in hopes the Damascus government might collapse, or create opportunities for a direct NATO intervention. The fighters grossly mistreated people in areas they held.

Talking points: savage, fanatical bandits have no program for Syrian people.

For our current purposes we may pass over the rest of the discussion in Ch. 2 concerning organization of the terrorist bands. Ch. 3, Concept of Employment, is operational in nature. One important point here is that guerrilla or unconventional warfare is a long-term affair.

Given the long-term enmity of the Great Zionist Entity USA against Syria, this means the US will probably not give up if their Aleppo offensive fails. They can easily keep up a war of attrition to continue to weaken Syria, which makes it a paramount necessity to secure the borders. As I wrote here on Aug. 4th,

"Just as it is easier and cheaper to pull down a house than to raise one, the cost of war damage to Syria, already in the billions, is a large multiple of what it is costing the aggressors.  Moreover, the US empire and its vassals have virtually unlimited resources.  To win, it is necessary for Syria to apply an efficient strategy to maximize gains and minimize losses."

DAMAGE CONTROL

One more point relating to problems of maintaining public support for the anti-terrorist war. In my blog from Aug. 4th, "Syria Needs New Counter-Insurgency Tactics," I expressed concern that shelling buildings held by urban guerrillas could be self-defeating. I noted the cost in damage to Syria is much higher than to the invaders and questioned whether other tactics need to be found to deal with low-grade, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare. One tactic is to occupy the high ground, or roofs in the city. The SAA often uses shelling as cover for their sharpshooters to get into rooftop positions. Normally shelling occurs after residents have evacuated. The FSA also use RPG's and mortars to shell buildings, even occupied ones. Notwithstanding, I believe it may be useful in future to develop slower but less costly siege tactics to smoke out terrorists.

Two phrases from Vietnam stick in my mind: "Destroy the village in order to save it," and "The battle for hearts and minds."
And here a new quote, from a soldier in Homs: "A house, street and store may have been ruined, those can be rebuilt. If our country goes, we can't replace it." Well said.

Suggestion: A smaller cordon sanitaire around each terrorist stronghold, cutting them off from supplies and ammunition. A great big cordon sanitaire securing the nation's borders to likewise deny the terrorists entry or escape. The SAA knows this; In Aleppo-Salaheddin this week, they nearly encircled the FSA, causing them to flee with great losses.

OFFENSE IS THE BEST DEFENSE
Although Syria is badly outgunned in the media battlefield, she has a powerful message. The Syrian model offers Arab dignity, resistance to zionism, religious tolerance, a pluralist democracy, and a progressive system providing social justice - values that attract the Arab masses.

When I first heard of Color Revolutions for the Arab world, the Arab Spring, I thought someone in Washington had made a huge blunder. Give the Arabs real democracy, and they will join the Axis of Resistance, send the IMF packing, put the oil fields into a trust for the Ummah, strip the effete, backward emirs of their ill-deserved titles and property, and withdraw support for the US dollar fiat scrip.

A majority of the Turkish people oppose Erdogan's criminally insane venture against Syria. Syria knows it can play the Kurdish card by offering autonomy within its pluralistic democracy, as Iraq has already done for their piece of Kurdistan. Turkey, with its own history of dirty wars against the Kurds, will then be the odd man out.

The recent uprisings in the grotesquely feudal dictatorship of Bahrain and in the Eastern, Shiite part of Saudi Arabia may also be harbingers. The Sunni majority in Saudia is still quiescent as yet, but the oil is concentrated in the eastern part of the country.

Talking points for the Offensive: Syria should appeal to the Arab world to rise up against those false leaders who are so corrupt they write a blank check for the US rape of Syria. Call on their people to follow the Syrian way.

Efforts should be made to reason with prisoners of war to convert them to this view. This will give experience in dealing with the psychology of these people. They can then be sent as experienced operatives to organize opposition against the ilk of Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and even the "democratic" United States, where two out of three people oppose involvement against Syria.

Well, I know I'm dreaming, but if anyone can get this to the meeting of foreign ministers in Tehran tomorrow, Aug. 9th, that would be wonderful.

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Aug. 7.

A CALL TO SYRIA'S FRIENDS TO HELP SECURE HER BORDERS.

On Aug. 9, Tehran is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers "for consultations on the Syrian crisis in order to find political ways out of the current situation," as announced here. http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/100331-tehran-to-host-foreign-ministers-meeting-on-syria-on-aug-9-

I posted the following comment at this page (comments are moderated and so far none have been published).

How can there be any political solution possible so long as the instigator of the troubles, the USA and its proxies, are seeking a solution by force, invading Syria with their special forces - fanatics, mercenaries and death squads, attempting to spark a civil war and tear the country apart.
The only solution possible for Syria against this military attack is to defeat the insurgency militarily.
Countries who wish to preserve the peace in Syria, and give the Syrian army a chance to defeat terrorism within its borders, would be most helpful by sending defensive troops to secure Syria's borders, preventing further incursions.
It is easier to carry out a guerrilla war than a counter-insurgency operation. Even a few thousand insurgents create enormous problems for the Syrian army. If Iran, Russia and other friends of Syria offer only words, that is not enough to stop the bullets and bombs of further thousands of trained insurgents. Concrete action to defend Syria is called for. Securing the borders against foreign invaders would be the appropriate step, leaving the internal fight to the Syrian Army.
The US redoubled its campaign of terror in June, after the elections held by the Syrian government in May, which had opened the way to a multi-party system, and in which a number of sincere opposition candidates were elected. Thus the US showed it had zero interest in a political solution.
The fake "opposition" which has been carefully fostered by the US, as part of its Unconventional Warfare practices, heaped scorn on the elections, knowing they had far too little popular support to gain power through the ballot.
Mr. Assad has taken great pains to open Syria to a democratic transition, but this is not what the US and its proxies want. They know that a freely elected government in Syria, or in any Arab state, would not agree to be a US puppet.
The fight is about imperialism and neo-colonialism, and not about democracy. If Iran, Russia, China etc. do not defend Syria, it will not be long before they, too, are targeted by this most sinister form of attack.

In other words, a friend in need is a friend in deed. When our friend is assailed by a band of murderers, to offer mere words is to consign him to his fate.
Words alone never put out a fire, saved a drowning man, or put one brick on top of another. If Syria's friends value the Syrian Arab Republic, it is time they showed their true colors, took their courage in their hands and helped Syria face down the enemy.

It might be a lot to ask of any one country to bell the USUK-NATO cat on its own. Much more impressive, too, would be a multinational force. Call it a coalition... call it a cordon sanitaire, call it standing fast against terrorism.  There is no better topic and time for the ministers to discuss on Thursday.

Update (Aug. 9) We have it from a highly reliable source that this is exactly what needs to be done. On Aug. 7,  Hillary (Aka Hitlery Aka Killery) Clinton threatened anyone “attempting to exploit the misery of the Syrian people, either by sending in proxies or sending in terrorist fighters.” Such an exact description she could only have found from looking in the mirror. So thanks for the hot tip, little Hitlery. U R a textbook psychiatric case.

If that wasn't enough, today it was reported that France is sending troops to the "Syria-Jordan border to aid refugees." As PartisanGirl said on Twitter, "probably training terrorists."

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Aug 4.

SYRIA NEEDS NEW COUNTER-INSURGENCY TACTICS

Following early reports on the battle for Aleppo, I see a danger that Syria may become entrapped in a strategy that appears to bring victories over Foreign Subversive Army units, while actually achieving a US objective: massive collateral damage and destruction in Syria's own cities. A further problem arises from the fact that such damage will be distorted by the heavily biased global controlled media to underline calls for "humanitarian" military intervention à la Libya.

Just as it is easier and cheaper to pull down a house than to raise one, the cost of war damage to Syria, already in the billions, is a large multiple of what it is costing the aggressors.  Moreover, the US empire and its vassals have virtually unlimited resources.  To win, it is necessary for Syria to apply an efficient strategy to maximize gains and minimize losses.

Syria's army is a conventional force suitable for engaging another army such as Israel's in a conventional conflict.  However, Syria now faces a different type of foe, an armed insurrection. Looking for more information about counterinsurgency tactics,  I found this article, written from the American viewpoint with regard to insurgency in Iraq: "Military Doctrine, Guerrilla Warfare and Counterinsurgency" http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/military_doctrine_guerrilla_warfare_and_counterinsurgency

The authors note that conventional armed forces are "not particularly effective against guerrilla forces."

"The essential problem is that the basic unit of guerrilla warfare is the individual and the squad. They are frequently unarmed -- having hidden their weapons -- and when armed, they carry man-portable weapons such as rifles, rocket-propelled grenades or mortars. When unarmed, they cannot be easily distinguished from the surrounding population. And they arm themselves at a time and place of their choosing -- selected to minimize the probability of detection and interception.

"Guerrilla war, particularly in its early stages, is extremely resistant to conventional military force because the massed systems that dominate mainstream operations cannot engage the guerrilla force. Indeed, even if collateral damage were not an issue -- and it almost always is -- the mass annihilation or deportation of a population does not, in itself, guarantee the elimination of the guerilla force. So long as a single survivor knows the location of the weapons caches, the guerrilla movement can readily revive itself.

"Therefore, in modern military thinking, a second, parallel military structure has emerged: counter-insurgency forces. Operating under various names, counter-insurgency troops try to overcome the lack of surgical precision of conventional forces. They carry out a number of functions:

"1. Engage guerrilla forces on a symmetrical level, while having access to technologically superior force as needed.
2. Collect intelligence on guerrilla concentrations for use by larger formations.
3. Recruit and train indigenous forces to engage guerrilla forces.
4. Organize operations designed to drive a wedge between the guerrillas and population.

"The basic units carrying out these counter-insurgency missions have two components. First, there are Special Forces -- highly trained and motivated light infantry -- intended to carry out the primary missions. Second, there are more conventional forces, either directly attached to the primary group or available on request, designed to multiply the force when it becomes engaged."

The article goes into the problems of a foreign power carrying out a counter insurgency, and from its dependence on indigenous forces. This is the reverse of the Syrian case, where it is the insurgents who are dependent on foreign mercenaries. It then notes,

"The paradox of guerrilla war is that it is easier to defeat militarily once the guerrilla force has matured into a more advanced, and therefore more vulnerable, entity. However, by the time it has evolved, the likelihood is that the political situation has deteriorated sufficiently that even heavy attrition will be overcome through massive recruitment within the disaffected population."

The key to victory for Syria then is to engage the invader militarily without alienating the population through excessive collateral damage. Being an indigenous entity, the Syrian government has more possibilities, such as using pretended defectors to infiltrate insurgent units.

In terms of military tactics, there should be alternatives to shelling one's own buildings. The counterinsurgents should try to hold the high ground, stationing sharpshooters on roofs. I believe the government does try to use this tactic, as well as to organize local defense militias. It should also be possible to lay siege to terrorist nests. Cordon them, starve them or smoke them out, or storm them during their hours of sleep. In other words, commando or SWAT operations -- Special Weapons and Tactics. Terrorist nests should be surrounded, with no possibility of escape, rendering the  "run" in hit and run inoperative. Then, when they run out of ammunition, they can be easily mopped up.

Organizing militias carries its own problems of reliability, plus the Goebbelsian global media is sure to employ their Big Lie about brutal killings by "shabiha" brigades. However, when they have no facts to distort, they simply fabricate them from whole cloth, so Syria can't be deterred in its choice of tactics by that.

What if some SAA units were to start wearing civilian clothes and pretending to be rebels? With the necessary precautions to avoid friendly fire, of course. Some rebels dressed up in army uniforms were arrested recently for planning to carry out false-flag atrocities, http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=564561&l=a4329f3fe6&id=110113882437314 . The government is doing the right thing by setting up check points.

Another American viewpoint on the Iraq war: "Mao set out the guerrilla's viewpoint 80 years ago: 'The enemy wants to fight a short war, but we simply will not let him.'" I do get the impression that the Syrian government is striving for a quick, decisive victory. That might well be the right thing to do, but I hope they are also building a long-term strategy. When I see buildings collapse, I wonder.

Allowing for a certain amount of boasting for propaganda, this account from Damascus does sound like a classic example of the advantages that guerrillas have over standing armies: "Rebels give inside account of Damascus fighting, saying holding neighborhoods was never plan." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/08/02/159561/rebels-give-inside-account-of.html Basically, they can hit and run.

It might seem the US got tired of losing wars against guerrillas, and decided to synthesize their own guerrillas to pit against target countries instead (of course, the USA itself was founded by winning a guerrilla war). To this end, US strategists prepared the infamous  Unconventional Warfare Manual, described here, http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/7688; full report here http://www.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/Special_Forces_Report.pdf .

This report notes that guerrillas ordinarily lack level-headedness and tenacity, and require professional organizers to make them combat-ready. From this viewpoint, Syria's tactic to inflict heavy casualties quickly may help crush their morale. However, the report (Ch. 3) goes on to note that UW involves long-term planning and coordination.

This report should be studied in developing counter-insurgency tactics. For example, it notes that guerrillas need safe havens, such as international borders. It is imperative for Syria to secure its borders to deny supplies and reinforcements from getting in.

The report sets out seven phases for a UW operation: Preparation, Initial Contact, Infiltration, Organization, Buildup, Employment, Transition.

The operation against Syria is now in the sixth phase of launching the attack on the state. It involves attacks on high-value targets and seizing "critical national infrastructure, for very limited periods of time." Recent examples were attacks on radio stations, and assassination of top security leaders.  

The literature on counter-insurgency discusses the problems of suppression of an indigenous resistance by a foreign occupying power. The book on how a nation state can defeat a synthetic insurgency created by that foreign power has probably not yet been written. The important thing is that Syria should recognize this is a new and unique situation, and search for innovative approaches to exploit its own strengths and the terrorists' weaknesses.

###

Note (Aug 5): I'm grateful to Oksana Boyko of Russia Today for supplying information about SAA shelling practices from an eyewitness perspective. The SAA is taking care to avoid injury to civilians, shelling buildings held by insurgents after ordinary residents have fled. In one infamous example, an Austrian newspaper photoshopped a picture of a refugee family over a background of damaged buildings, to make it appear people were leaving after their homes were destroyed.
I have uploaded a plain text version of the Unconventional Warfare Manual here for the convenience of researchers wishing to quote passages.

---

Aug 3.
UPDATE on CHEMICAL WEAPONS FALSE FLAG RISK

The war on Syria is being waged on the cheap by USUK, and a false-flag at the megabucks Olympics carnival would be a blow to the British and US economies.

The tracks are leading in a different direction - a false flag by the Foreign Subversive Army in Syria itself. The US has supplied both chemical weapons and gas masks to their death squads, as reported today by Syrian Girl Partisan in a short video . She shows a photo of FSA unpacking gas masks, which are the US type, not Russian, and thus not from Syria. The plot is for the FSA to use poison gas in  neighborhoods and then claim the Syrian government used the gas offensively. The US would thus cook up an intervention pretext with another Weapons of Mass Deception recipe like the "Let them eat yellow-cake" lies against Iraq.

Syrian Girl cites a Russia Today story from June 10, "Syrian Rebels aim to use chemical weapons, blame Damascus."  For some weeks top Western officials have been scripting the background music, sanctimoniously feigning concern that Syria might lose control of its chemical weapons stocks. Just today at the UN, the "Israeli am-bastard-or" spewed the venom that "a regime that cuts the throats of children today will be prepared to gas them tomorrow"  -- hyping the Big Lie of the brutal Syrian regime. Israel's Debka file and the Telegraph reported that "free Libya" is sharing chemical weapons with the Libyan "insurgents" in Syria. Syrian Girl reports here that the US gave chemical weapons to one of their client tribes during the invasion of Libya to use against another tribe that supported Qaddafi.
She emphasizes that if Syria does have chemical weapons, they will never be used on its own people. They would only be used against foreign attack, or as a deterrent against Israel's nuke stockpile

Paul Joseph Watson wrote on July 31, "We are now clearly entering a new phase in the propaganda war with regard to Syria, heralded by the NATO-aligned establishment now using the presence of Al-Qaeda fighters in the country, many of whom were airlifted into Syria by NATO powers, as a justification to launch a wider military assault." How do they keep track of which side they are on?

At the same time, videos of repulsive madmen and murderers screeching Allahu Akbar are a great bonus for Zionism, as they put Islam to shame even among Muslims. Especially blasphemous were the cries of  "God is Great" after lining up bloody, beaten middle-aged prisoners against a wall in Aleppo and shredding them with a torrent of bullets. Pro-Syrian bloggers on Twitter reported that the clan has since got revenge and wiped out a contingent of Fanatical Sectarian Assassins. The media will of course label the clan as "shabiha."

Watson also relayed reports that an Israeli attack on Iran may be imminent. The fight for Syria could be a prelude to taking out Iran.
.
One of the Global Goebbels Media Big Lies of the Day today was that the Filthy Swine Anarchists had seized the Aleppo Citadel, but pro-Syrian bloggers produced clips of a quiet day in the city, and reports that FSA vermin have been routed from many positions. FSA propaganda relayed by the McClatchy report claimed these were tactical retreats after inflicting disproportionate damage. The term "tactical retreat" was greeted by a rash of jokes on Twitter.

A video rogues gallery of foreign fighters, mainly Libyan NATO mercenaries, has now been supplied with English subtitles by Syrian Truth, which has an excellent facebook page . A recent photo there is labeled "Repentant Qabbani: Armed Terrorists Shoot Demonstrators to Accuse Syrian Army," from SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency.   This story was one of several posted to a Reuters blog today but later taken down by the agency, claiming they were hacked.

"Mohamad Salim Qabbani, a former collaborator with Mass Media means of lies and fabrications against Syria, narrated last night to Syrian Satellite TV Channel his personal involvement in fabricating news about the ongoing in Syria. Qabbani disclosed the presence of scores of specialized so-called news rooms to invent, edit and fabricate news items and stories to be aired by scores of media outlets like B.B.C., al-Jazeera, France 24, al-Arabyia and others."

His account confirms much of what we already know about FSA-MSM false flag video fakery. The allegedly "brutal" Syrian regime did not punish him, but let him go free. A far cry from the "justice" meted out by the FSA.

It wasn't a hack, though, when the New York Times printed an Op-ed on Aug. 3 noting, "Many who once saw Prez Assad's regime as a kleptocracy now view it as best guarantor of Syria endangered pluralism." The occasion is the ethnic cleansing of Christian communities by fanatical jihadists -- 80,000 are now homeless in Homs. In June, the Vatican voiced concern over the expulsion of Christians from Qusayr. "Christian" Zionists in the US power structure take no notice, and blithely continue to worship their devil or their dollar, of course.

Some other pundits voiced mild protests over the alliance with the Al-Ciada destabilization death squads. Security analyst Charles Shoebridge's "The West Should Not Support Syrian Rebels" appeared in the Huffington Post, while the pro-Palestinian commentator Robert Fisk asked, "Has there ever been a Middle Eastern war of such hypocrisy?" in the Independent. Neither of these half-brave souls rose completely above hypocrisy, though, as they shielded themselves behind the mantra of the brutal dicatatorship. Fisk also made an obeisance to the 9/11 myth. How much risk is enough, Mr. Fisk?

With the defeat on the ground in Aleppo, are these timid demurrals any indication the USUK may take a tactical retreat, once a fallback objective of wreaking tens of billions in damage on Syria is achieved? We'll see.

---

July 30.

The F.SA.S.
Today in Syria we had our "SAS in Basra moment," when British death squads were identified among the terrorists of the Foreign Subversive Army. Two Western journalists were captured by a platoon of rebel-rabble, and there was not one single Syrian in the troop of fanatical jihadists. Some spoke with a Birmingham accent. As anyone who knows England knows, foreigners do not acquire a regional accent. These had to be Brits.

We can now state the equation:

FSA = (F)SAS.

(The New York Times muffled the accent issue by noting, "their captors apparently included no Syrian fighters, but instead jihadists from Bangladesh, Britain, Chechnya and Pakistan," so one would assume they were Pakistani Brits.)

IMPORTANT -- TACTICAL ERROR

Oksana Boyko of RT, an independent observer sympathetic to the government, confirmed that the SAA (Syrian Arab Army) do shell their own cities. Although civilians have usually fled by this time, this is still an awful strategic blunder. Innocent civilians are hurt, killed, or lose their homes. Not only will you have to rebuild the destroyed buildings, but it is a huge propaganda gift to the FSA and MSM who are out to bring Syria down. In short, a suicidal mistake.

There have to be more innovative ways to clear terrorists from the neighborhoods. Use tear gas, SWAT team tactics. Occupy the rooftops with sharpshooters. Cordon off areas and starve them out. Any males of fighting age leaving the area as "refugees" could be held for questioning. If foreign then POW, if Syrian, then do background checks to try and found out if FSA or innocent civilian.

Not that this will be all easy. Tony Cartalucci reported on his Landdestroyer blog on July 27 that the mercenaries have smuggled in chemical weapons and gas masks. Probably for double use -- military, and in creating propaganda fakery. It's understandable that troops with tanks and mortars would rather use them than risking their lives at close range.

Still, it is a top priority to stop the shelling. Own-goal attacks give the likes of US Dep't of Offense Secretary Panetta cause to crow , "if they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think it ultimately will be a nail in Assad's own coffin." I'd sure hate for the doo from the DOO to be true.

Anybody got any ideas how to get the message to the Syrian defense?

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July 28, 2012.
DEADLY STRAWS IN THE WIND

The Evil Empire has been quieter about Syria the last couple days, even putting out the line "World to Syrians -- fight it out among yourselves." Are they pretending the Empire is giving up, after doing all it can for Syria, but being blocked by three UN vetoes, poor dears?

This act of lying down and playing dead smells very suspicious. Yesterday, on the opening day of the Olympic Games, they chose to hammer on the keynote of alleged Syrian chemical weapons, with a Really Big Lie of Hitlerian Proportions, in a Reuters hit piece, "Analyst: Assad may attack Turkey, Saudi Arabia with chemical weapons." Thanks to Richard Cottrell who provided the link, and the tip that "Reuters political risk analyst Peter Apps" is a Pentagon mole.

Suddenly, somehow, I saw an opening on the chessboard for the Evil Ones, to lunge at their longed-for chance to bomb Syria into dust. A bit as if they have been thinking out loud, or like the moment when you hear your chess opponent swallow hard, to hold back the urge to shout "Eureka, I got you."

And what a smashing breakthrough they have laid the groundwork for. In brief, this is how I tweeted it around.

Warning! Evil Empire can do 1.False Flag chem atak on London + 2.Cyberhijack Syria TV + 3.Fake Syria claiming it attacked. Please go viral!

That's all it would take!

1. Their plans for a major false flag bombing on the Olympics have been rumbling in their casus belli for over two years. In May 2010, NWO flagship Rockefeller.org published "Scenarios for the Future," envisioning 13,000 killed by a terrorist bombing at the 2012 London Olympics...

2. In Libya last year, US psy-war experts accelerated the government's downfall by taking over the state TV frequency and broadcasting fake footage depicting rebels taking central Tripoli -- an event that did not occur until days later. Thierry Meyssan, Webster Tarpley and soon the Syrian government and pro-government activists have been telling anyone who will listen that such cyber-hijack plans are in place. According to pro-Syrian activists on twitter, an actual takedown of the Syrian News Agency SANA did occur in recent days. That could be a drill for the big one...

Note in context that there is almost no evidence of a spontaneous Syrian "uprising" over the last 15 months. It has been one big phony videomontage purveyed by the MSM, the empire's mainstream media, the great Bakery of Fakery. The Counter-Revolution IS being televised.

3. As for a precedent for blowing things up and then supplying a video of the chosen culprit allegedly taking blame, that already exists in regard to 9/11. Spurious audio and video tapes were distributed by Al Jazeera, purporting to reveal Osama bin Laden taking credit for 9/11 -- the most enormous -- and the most obvious -- false-flag terror act of all time. Qatar-based Al Jazeera is a CIA-MI6 channel...

Last week's bombing attempt to decapitate Syria's top security officials could also fit into the scenario. When the fake Syrian TV report comes up, it might defiantly declare that the Olympics bombing is in revenge for the assassination of top Syrian leaders.

Other pieces on the board that can be brought into play are the bought and paid-for "defectors," real or fake, who for a price will corroborate any lies needed. FSA members, given to feeble-mindedness and fanaticism, could make perfect patsies. Constantly whooping Allah Akbar, they are ripe for martyrdom. It ought to be easy to recruit a few of these pathetic pawns to sacrifice themselves in an attack on the Olympic Games -- they are ready to do anything to get NATO to overthrow Assad.

Thus, the chess pieces are all in place for a blitz strike, a checkmate combination. So I'm asking everyone to pass on this message. If this is their hellish plan, the way to stop it is to blow the whistle beforehand. Spread the word about this combination for catastrophe, to unnerve them -- or even shame them, if sociopaths and psychopaths are capable of knowing shame.

I hope nothing happens after all, and I will be the red-faced one instead. I also hope I haven't given the Devil any ideas, but that's not likely. They have think tanks working full-time dreaming up such dirty deeds. And that seems to be just what they're doing -- creating the conditions to enable such a plan, if that's what the final decision is going to be.

Update, July 30. Richard Cottrell wrote: http://www.todayszaman.com/news-288087-israels-barak-plays-down-syrian-c... .

Good to know that Mr Barak is reading this blog attentively and issuing denials! ;-)

===========

July 28. It's clear the Foreign Subversive Army (FSA) have no intentions of winning in a fair fight. Symbolic actions are only props for war propaganda to pave the way for aerial bombardment to smash Syria.

By FSA we also mean the Fascist Subversive Axis of USA, Al Qaeda, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and MSM the corporatist mainstream media. 

---

July 26. I've been following Aleppo last few days on twitter, and it appears that small bands of FSA (the Foreign Subversive Army) are taking a beating from the SAA (Syrian Arab Army).

BIG LIE FROM THE BBC

The BBC makes it sound like the FSA is in control of the city and the SAA is going to encircle and invade it with heavy weapons, causing a bloodbath, so the citizenry are fleeing in alarm.

This is absurd, as the government is largely in control, so why would they invade their own city? Maybe the West thinks in terms of invasion because that is what they are doing to Syria.

As evidence for their crackpot theory, the BBC show a photo of a pickup truck carrying a mattress. This is supposed to prove people are fleeing the city in fear of the offensive. You’d think refugees would have smaller and more valuable things to take with them than just a mattress!

It is true some have been forced to leave by firefights. Which means, to avoid the FSA who have been killing civilians, according to twitter reports from Aleppo. FSA "activists" on twitter report "big protests" but their videos show quite small ones, biggest a few 100 - remember the pro government rally in October 2011 attracted 1.5 million - about 5,000 times as many. So much for democracy and objective reporting.

If the Syrian army is encircling Aleppo, it would be to keep the FSA from going in and out.

The BBC manage to twist the facts against the government and still pretend to be a little bit objective by putting the ridiculous part about FSA control and government encirclement first. Later they cite two sources who say "the rebels were moving around the city to avoid attacks."  In other words the "Free" "Syrian" Army  (Foreign Subversive Army) have no control over the city. They are making hit and run attacks, with some of them terrorising civilians, when they are not impersonating civilans to escape the army. This urban guerrilla tactic has obviously been thought out.

Alongside the CIA veterans from Libya and elsewhere, it appears Syrian FSA elements are mostly young hoodlums (petty criminals and dope dealers) who have been recruited by foreign mercenary leaders with lots of money (e.g. $100 - $200 a day)  - see excerpts below from Voice of Russia.

What is going on in Aleppo? Aleppo resident Fatima Banauwi, an Aleppo University employee, has agreed to an interview with the Voice of Russia. According to her, the rumors about the battles in the city have been grossly exaggerated. But all the same, it is not safe in Aleppo.

We try not to go out into the streets because it’s unsafe there right now. Some kind of rallies are being held all the time organized by the so-called Free Syrian Army. But there are no locals at those rallies.

Who comes to the rallies then?

Some from Idlib, some from Hama.

Have you seen them yourself?

Yes, they are young, around 15-16. They look very strange, walk with weapons, curse and shoot in the air. Seems like they’re not themselves, either drunk or drugged...

And how do the Syrian defense units operate in the city?

The soldiers probably try to make it so that the local residents don’t get hurt. But the militants shoot wherever, they don’t care who they kill. They even kill children! And then they put horrible pictures of those killed children on the internet and write that they are victims of the regime.

In other cities, including Damascus, the rebels forced citizens out of their homes and occupied their houses…

We’re not leaving our homes! The militants would ransack them. Those people have no education, no faith - they’re savages!

---

SUBVERTING SYRIA: How CIA Contra Gangs and NGO's Manufacture, Mislabel and Market Mass Murder, by Tony Cartalucci

 

An E-book to beat the bombing - Expose the Big Lie in time to stop the war. The Syrian "uprising" is actually a cynical US-engineered plot using provocateurs, mercenaries, wahhabi fanatics and corrupt NGO's. The US, UK and Israel are determined to smash this independent Arab socialist state where oil wealth is spent on human welfare, like Libya before it was torn apart in the same way. Neighboring nations move in for the kill, like jackals and hyenas fawning at the feet of the US lion.

The US and Saudi-financed plot turns on the tactic of "Countergangs." Terrorists -- mercenaries and irregulars, the "CIA foreign legion" -- they shoot both demonstrators and police, blow up buildings, massacre innocent villagers -- and then blame the carnage on the targeted government!

NGO's like the "National Endowment for Democracy" (NED) promote "activists," whose leaders are ambitious sociopaths, eagerly carving out a piece of the carcass for the moment the state is brought down. The media eagerly lap up and magnify the Big Lie, creating a fake "reality" that the average person has little chance of seeing through.

Subverting Syria is a warning of the horror that the "Empire of the Almighty Dollar" is preparing to bring down upon Syria, the same horror of last year's obscene war on Libya, in which an egalitarian state was trampled into mud, blood and chaos under the banner of human rights and a pack of vicious lies.

Subverting Syria reveals how the crusade to destroy Syria follows tactics explicitly set out in the Pentagon's Unconventional Warfare Manual, the same maneuvers so recently used to lay waste to Libya.
- fund NGO's to create a climate of protest in the target country
- provocateurs organize demonstrations, then fire on protesters and security forces alike to stoke violence
- staged and mislabeled video footage creates the illusion of repression by the regime
- mass media endlessly repeat the Big Lie that the nation's leader is a brutal dictator. Give a dog a bad name and hang him.
- invade border towns with special forces death squads, the CIA Foreign Legion of Al Qaeda psychopaths, fanatics and guns for hire
- foment a civil war and fabricate pretexts for military intervention by the UN, or NATO
- bomb the country into the stone age, to be conquered by NATO’s Islamic terrorist puppets
- eradicate Arab socialism and government for the people, replacing it with a corrupt clique beholden to Wall Street and London bankers
- isolate Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, giving free rein for Greater Israel to dominate the Middle East
- US corporations write multi-billion-dollar contracts for "reconstruction" and "security"

Subverting Syria shows how these wars are engineered by manipulation of the kinder instincts of mankind, the hoodwinking and harnessing of elements that normally oppose "interventions", especially pacifist and leftist forces -- entrapping them in the service of mass murder and the global dictatorship of the money power.

Syria’s situation is truly serious, under ruthless attack by enemies within and without. Please help pass on the word about Subverting Syria. Free copies available on request to book reviewers and social media activists, who will publicize this urgent effort to defeat lies and genocide with an appeal to the facts.

Because of the urgency, a key feature of this book is that it is presented as a work in progress. It will be continually updated until it is a full-length, fully-edited book. Thanks to E-book technology, readers will be able to continually retrieve updates as this work goes forward as quickly as it can -- racing with the work of the warmongers, as they call for NATO aggression unleashing their WMD against the innocent Syrian people.

Introductory price of $2.49 entitles you to all updates including the final E-book version (which will be priced at 4.99 or 5.99). Order soon, price could go up Aug. 1.

For a sampling of the evidence in the book please see the author's blog  http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/

Edited, adapted and amplified by Nile Bowie.

Table of Contents
Prelude: The Arab Spring (completed)
- The Timeline - 2008-2010: Preparing the Battlefield
- Year of the Dupe: 2011
Chapter 1, complete. Mystery Gunmen, Armed Militants, and Foreign Intrigue (The covert arming and support given to Syrian rebels and the atrocities they commit. Complete version.)
Chapter 2, Media Propaganda (distortion by western media, video fakery - largely complete). Perception Management in Psychological Warfare, via Lies, Disinformation, Fabrications and Misrepresentations.
Chapter 3: Geopolitical Implications (Analysis, who benefits if Assad falls, prospects for regional war, etc)

67,000 words, final edition as of 9/11/12. See also Print Edition.

Order here:See all our e-books.

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