Syria - Update and Information thread

m.washingtonpost.com... 0/a05e541a-4343-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html

Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton
pulled out of a weeklong trip to
the Arab world because of a
stomach virus, officials said
Monday, as the Obama
administration declared a Syrian
rebel group with alleged ties to
al-Qaida as a terrorist
organization.

No doubt she's sick about their plans falling apart...

Originally posted by curiouscanadian777
m.washingtonpost.com... 0/a05e541a-4343-11e2-8c8f-fbebf7ccab4e_story.html

Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton
pulled out of a weeklong trip to
the Arab world because of a
stomach virus, officials said
Monday, as the Obama
administration declared a Syrian
rebel group with alleged ties to
al-Qaida as a terrorist
organization.

No doubt she's sick about their plans falling apart...

the link doesn't work, what do you mean by 'No doubt she's sick about their plans falling apart'?

I was just making a little joke there...lol

Y'know, they're just tryyyyying sooooo hard and Assad just.will.not.co-operate...

Here's a new link:

news.yahoo.com...

Canada ready to join NATO coalition if chemical weapons used in Syria

NATOSource ‏@NATOSource
Canada already has a navy frigate near Syria & may also send a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) + engineers

Well now, more cluster#ery:

"Syrian Rebels Pledge Allegiance To Newly Named 'Terrorist' Militant Group"

www.businessinsider.com...

Rebel groups across Syria are defying the United States by pledging their allegiance to a group that Washington will designate today a terrorist organization for its alleged links to al-Qaeda.
A total of 29 opposition groups, including fighting "brigades" and civilian committees, have signed a petition calling for mass demonstrations in support of Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist group which the White House believes is an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
The petition is promoting the slogan "No to American intervention, for we are all Jabhat al-Nusra" and urges supporters to "raise the Jabhat al-Nusra flag" as a "thank you".
"These are the men for the people of Syria, these are the heroes who belong to us in religion, in blood and in revolution," read a statement widely circulated on Syrian opposition Facebook pages.

I imagine they're feeling betrayed and bewildered; this is obviously more theatre...Of course the US knows and has known all along exactly who they are...

Panetta: Syria chemical weapons intelligence has "leveled off"

found a link to this on twitter:

www.twitlonger.com...

edward dark (@edwardedark)
Posted Tuesday 11th December 2012 from Twitlonger
I am posting here my answer to a reporter about the humanitarian situation in Aleppo, plz read & spread #Syria :

To address your questions, Aleppo has been in a worsening situation ever since rebels stormed it in late July, but now the situation is nearing a catastrophe, thousands will die of mass starvation very soon if nothing is done.

The people most affected are obviously the poorer classes, and those are usually found in the areas under rebel control. the main staple food for most people here is bread, which used to be made in government subsidized bakeries and sold for about 25 lira a bag before the current crisis. now it sells for 200-250, if you can find any. so more than 10x increase, which means people cant afford it which means a lot of people are now facing starvation. the reason for the bakeries shutting down is a lack of diesel fuel to run them, and no materials for making bread as the grain storage silos of the city were looted by rebels and sold off to buy weapons.

the prices for everything, including basic goods has shot up 100% and more. there are no jobs because most businesses and factories have shut down, and people who were once middle class are now in poverty.

all the gas stations in the city closed down when the rebels arrived, so you can only buy petrol at black market vendors and smugglers for 4x normal prices. there is no cooking gas, and no heating oil. the power and water supply is cut off for days at a time in the city, some neighborhoods, both in rich and poor areas, regime controlled or rebel controlled havent had electricity for 2 weeks now because damage to the power grid isnt getting repaired. the only way people can get warm is to chop down trees in the streets and use them for firewood. a lot of the city's trees are now gone.

both regime and rebels dont care and are not providing any aid or assistance to the people. what little aid there is either comes from private donors, or the Syrian red crescent, the only NGO working in Aleppo at this time, but the aid is no where near enough.

Please let the world know about the desperate situation here, thanks

"Exclusive: UK military in talks to help Syria rebels - International coalition could offer air and sea support as well as military training" Tue 11, Dec/12

www.independent.co.uk...

The prospect of Western intervention comes as opposition groups, which have been disorganised and divided, at long last formed an umbrella political group and a command structure for their militias.
Their foreign backers are said to believe that the 22-month-long civil war has now reached a tipping point and it has become imperative to offer help to the revolutionaries to enable them to make a final push against the regime.
The head of Britain’s armed forces, General Sir David Richards, hosted a confidential meeting in London a few weeks ago attended by the military chiefs of France, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE, and a three-star American general, in which the strategy was discussed at length. Other UK government departments and their counterparts in allied states in the mission have also been holding extensive meetings on the issue. The commanders’ conference was held at the request of the Prime Minister, according to senior Whitehall sources. David Cameron is said to be determined that more should be done by Britain to bring to an end the bloody strife which has claimed 40,000 lives so far and made millions homeless.

There is also a growing belief among the Western backers of the opposition that intervention in some form is necessary now to influence the future political shape of Syria. Jihadist groups among the rebels, some like Jabhat al-Nusra linked to al- Qa’ida, have steadily gained in power and influence because of their access to weapons and money coming from the Gulf states putting more secular groups at a severe disadvantage.

The Obama administration is considering proscribing Al-Nusra as a terrorist organisation, making it illegal for American citizens to fund it and sending a warning message to Arab states not to back it.At the same time Western help will be directed at and strengthen the mode rate groups. The unified rebel command structure set up in Turkey, at the behest of the US and UK, has excluded the Islamist militias.

Britain, France and the US have agreed that none of their countries would have “boots on the ground” to help the rebels. The training camps can be set up in Turkey. However, the use of air and maritime force would, in itself, be highly controversial and likely to lead to charges that, as in Libya, the West is carrying out regime change by force.

Any such military action will have to take place without United Nations authorisation, with Russia and China highly unlikely to back a resolution after their experience over Libya where they agreed to a “no-fly zone”.
The plan will also draw accusations that the decision to station Nato Patriot missile defence systems at the Syrian border, at the request of Turkey, was, in reality, to camouflage intervention. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Foreign Secretary William Hague and the alliance’s Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, had all insisted at a meeting in Brussels last week that the deployment was a purely defensive measure.

***Note: I had copied this bit from an article, then accidentally closed the page, and found it again on a different page, so the layout may be a bit different.

I'd say they're getting pretty serious when we hear language like that; same narrative as Libya, especially the "...now reached a tipping point and it has become imperative to offer help to the revolutionaries to enable them to make a final push against the regime...", and no doubt why they made the move to declare some of the islamists terrorists, so "they must move now before things really get out of hand...".

Any time now, I think.

"Bombings in Syria Alawite village leave 125 victims: NGO" December 11, 2012

www.dailystar.com.lb... m_medium=twitter

A series of bomb attacks on a village in central Syria mainly inhabited by members of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority on Tuesday left more than 125 civilian casualties, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The bombings struck the village of Aqrab in Hama province, the Britain-based watchdog said, adding that it could not immediately give an exact death toll.

"We cannot know whether the rebels were behind this attack, but if they were, this would be the largest-scale revenge attack against Alawites," said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

"We call for the establishment of an independent commission of jurists who can investigate the attack. We want a Syria which is free and democratic, not one which is based on sectarian hatred," Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Well, it's official:

"US recognizes Syrian opposition body"
rt.com...

US President Barack Obama has recognized the main Syrian opposition group as the sole "legitimate representative" of Syria. This brings the US in line with its allies, including Britain, France and several Arab states.

"We've made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime," Obama said in an interview with ABC.

The recognition marks a major boost for the Syrian rebels seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"Obviously, with that recognition comes responsibilities," Obama said in the interview on Tuesday. "To make sure that they organize themselves effectively, that they are representative of all the parties, that they commit themselves to a political transition that respects women's rights and minority rights." government.

"That they are representative of all parties..." sounds good, but according to their media release, earlier in thread, they are only appointing 'revolutionaries' to their party, so...We'll see what happens I guess.

NMSyria ‏@NMSyria
State TV: Three explosions outside the main entrance to Interior Ministry and reports of casualties on site. #Damascus #Syria

NMSyria ‏@NMSyria
#Damascus issues arrest warrant for former Lebanese PM Saad al-Hariri. #Syria

ETA:

The New York Times ‏@nytimes
Breaking News: Syrian Forces Have Fired Scud Missiles at Insurgents, U.S. Says nyti.ms...

apparently one is not allowed to make an own thread for this issue, because mine was deleted.. then I'll just post the link here: Syria Fires Scud Missiles at Insurgents, U.S. Says

I've just found a couple of new sources of info on Syria.

Robert Dreyfuss, who has articles dating back to at least 2005, chronicling the regime change plans, very interesting! Here's a couple so far, I've just started reading them myself :

Here's a bit of his bio: www.robertdreyfuss.com...

Perhaps I am best known for what I consider to be ground-breaking stories about the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy. In 2002, I wrote the first significant profile of Ahmed Chalabi by a journalist, for The American Prospect. Also in 2002, I also wrote the first analysis of the war between the Pentagon and the CIA over policy toward Iraq, which included the first important account of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. Other stories in The American Prospect included detailed accounts of neoconservative war plans for the broader Middle East. In 2004, I co-authored what is still the most complete account of the work of the Office of Special Plans in manufacturing misleading or false intelligence about Iraq, for Mother Jones, entitled “The Lie Factory.”

Before 9/11, I wrote extensively about intelligence issues, including pieces about post-Cold War excursions by the CIA into economic espionage, about the CIA’s nonofficial cover (NOC) program, and about lobbying by U.S. defense and intelligence contractors over the annual secret intelligence budget.

"Syria In Their Sights" January 16, 2006
www.theamericanconservative.com...

A couple of articles which reference the above article, but provide more info and links:

"Regime change in Syria"
www.sourcewatch.org...

"Tomgram: Dreyfuss on Bush's Deadly Dance with Islamic Theocrats"
Posted by Tom Engelhardt November 29, 2005
www.tomdispatch.com...

Here is Robert Dreyfuss's old blog:

www.robertdreyfuss.com...

And his new one:

www.thenation.com...



And here is another blog that he mentioned on the newer blog:

Sic Semper Tyrannis turcopolier.typepad.com... (the posts tagged 'Syria')

Here's the bio from the site:

Colonel W. Patrick Lang is a retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces (The Green Berets). He served in the Department of Defense both as a serving officer and then as a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service for many years. He is a highly decorated veteran of several of America’s overseas conflicts including the war in Vietnam. He was trained and educated as a specialist in the Middle East by the U.S. Army and served in that region for many years. He was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. In the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) he was the “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism,” and later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service.” For his service in DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” This is the equivalent of a British knighthood. He is an analyst consultant for many television and radio broadcasts.

FSA using child to behead handcuffed man

Well I don't know if this is verified or not but never the less it is sickening. I won't post the video because of a possible T&C breach.. I haven't watched the video myself and don't intend to. Be warned, from the report, the video will be very graphic.. Hes a few snippets from the report..

In the video below you can see how the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) terrorists get a child to behead a handcuffed man with a machete who is lying on the ground.

The head is then shown to the camera while they’re shouting “Allahu akbar!” – one can further see more corpses with severed heads.

The report further states

According to experts, the Arabic in the video is not Syrian dialect but an accent from Saudi Arabia. (In the Syrian city of Homs, there was a lot of intermarriage that could also explain this.)

From Saudi Arabia, criminals condemned to death are said to have been released from the prisons with the requirement that they have to go to Syria as jihadists in order to slaughter the “infidels” there, which could also explain the Saudi dialect in this horrible video.

I don't know whether the above could be confirmed anywhere, but by the sounds of it, it wouldn't surprise me if the Saudis are using prisoners..

Just remember who these murderers are represented by now.

The “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) is the military arm of the “Syrian National Coalition” (SNC) and therefore Germany supports the worst terrorists, which even commit massacres – thus, Germany is complicit in the murders in Syria.

And the UK, and France, and the USA.. This is a disgrace and all we seem to be worried about is a few scud missiles from which there is no confirmed evidence that they have been used.

Yup. It's becoming clearer who the 'rebels' are. Adding them to the terrorist list serves a few purposes - to (try to) cover their ass, and then, something like "Well, if we can't save 'em from Assad, by God, we'll save 'em from al qaeda"...Still of course pretending that they weren't behind it all along..."Oh no, AQ has high-jacked the revolution!" What a cluster#.

Here's another blog; I warn you, the guy has some umm, strong opinions (ie, he sees the 'rebels' as 'vermin', and therefore wouldn't be unhappy if Assad did use the chemical weapons on them . I suppose if it was my country being destroyed and all the world's media lying about it to create sympathy for the destroyers, I guess I might have some strong opinions...). However, he does link to many relevant articles and has a lot of info on day to day happenings. And he does some great satire pieces.

syrianperspective syrianperspective.blogspot.gr...

Some recent relevant threads:

Syrian rebels set to execute Ukrainian
journalist
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Syrian opposition victory possible, but
at an absolutely unacceptable price' –
Moscow
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Syria is firing SCUD missiles at the
rebellion forces
www.abovetopsecret.com...

A few new posts at Penny's blog, as well as a few others. I won't post articles atm, just a few links:

Penny
pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com...

Land Destroyer
landdestroyer.blogspot.com...

Global Research
www.globalresearch.ca...

Voltairenet
www.voltairenet.org...

"Hundreds Reported Slain in Attack on Syrian Alawite Village" Dec 12th, 2012

news.antiwar.com...

A massive death toll has been
reported over the past two days
in attacks on the Alawite village
of Aqrab, with some opposition
groups saying that as many as
300 may have been killed.

Tolls vary, but most seem in the
realm of 150-200, with some
higher. The question then is who
is responsible for the attacks...

Various conflicting reports of who's responsible.

Al Arabiya English ‏@AlArabiya_Eng
#BreakingNews: Head of NATO's Syria committee says President Bashar al-Assad will be forced out of power

Here's a new article up at Global Research:

"Syria Chemical Weapons: Canadian Special Forces to Assist “Opposition”?" Dec 15/12

www.globalresearch.ca... ria-chemical-weapons-canadian-special-forces-to-assist-opposition

Love this line:

France and Britain have begun to circle Syria like vultures (my apologies to vultures, who politely wait for their prey to die)