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Abu Ghassan looks more like a hipster than a revolutionary. Decked out in a pink shirt and black jeans, he clutches a pack of cigarettes and begins to talk hesitantly about his activities. He is eager to get back to the beleaguered city of Homs in Syria but quickly warms to questions about how he learned to fight Bashar Assad with an AK-47, a video camera and the Internetand how Americans helped turn him into a cyberwarrior.
Abu Ghassan (not his real name) told TIME on June 8 that he has been a two-fisted warrior for a whilewith the scars to show for it. While filming an antiregime demonstration in December in Homs, he heard a blast and was told that two government tanks were headed toward the crowd. Abu Ghassan, 26, had to decide: Keep filming or pick up a weapon? He decided to do both, grabbing an AK-47 from his car and setting down his video camera in an elevated spot to catch the action. As he ran ahead, an armored Land Rover swerved in front of the crowd, and regime soldiers opened fire. Abu Ghassan and fighters with the Free Syrian Army, the rebel force protecting the demonstrators, fired back to allow the civilians to scramble for cover. As bullets whizzed back and forth, Abu Ghassan was clipped in the shoulder by shrapnel. I dont know how I didnt get more injured or killed, he says.
As the opposition was then just learning to do, Abu Ghassan uploaded the combat video to the Internet. Soon after, local dissident leaders picked the former engineer to go abroad for even-more-sophisticated training in computer encryption, circumvention of government firewalls and secure use of mobile phonescourtesy of the U.S. State Department. The training has helped give the rebels the upper hand in one front in the battle against Syrias President. Even as the Assad regimes army crushes the opposition on the ground, the dictator has been losing the war online.
In the process, the Obama Administration has tiptoed across an invisible line. Washington has said it will not actively support the Syrian opposition in its bid to oust Assad. Officially, the U.S. says it abides by the U.N. process led by Kofi Annan and does not condone arms sales to opposition groups as long as there are U.N. observers in Syria. Nevertheless, as U.S. officials have revealed to Time, the Obama Administration has been providing media-technology training and support to Syrian dissidents by way of small nonprofits like the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and Freedom House. Viral videos of alleged atrocities, like the footage Abu Ghassan produced, have made Assad one of the most reviled men on the planet, helping turn the Arab League against him and embarrassing his few remaining allies almost daily. If the [U.S.] government is involved in Syria, the government isnt going to take direct responsibility for it, says Lawrence Lessig, director of Harvards Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. The tools that you deploy in Internet freedom interfere with tools deployed by an existing government, and that can be perceived as an act of aggression.
LONDON, June 14 (Reuters) - Syrian government forces are killing civilians in organised attacks on towns and villages that amount to crimes against humanity, Amnesty International said on Thursday, citing evidence from over 20 locations in the country's northwest.
The rights group repeated its call for the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and to impose an arms embargo.
Amnesty's findings, detailed in a 70-page report, add to reports of massacres elsewhere in Syria as a 15-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad moves closer to a civil war.
Its researchers visited 23 towns and villages in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces between April and May, conducting interviews with more than 200 people, including many whose relatives had been killed or whose homes had been destroyed.
Amnesty adviser Donatella Rovera told Reuters TV she had found repeated examples of brutality against civilians during two months of unauthorised visits to northwest Syria.
"Wherever I went, in every town, in every village, there was a very similar pattern - soldiers who went in, in very large numbers, for very short but very brutal incursions where they extra-judicially executed young men, burned down their homes. Those who they arrested were then tortured in detention," she said.
"And that was really repeated in every town and every village that I visited ... The bulk, the overwhelming majority of the violations are being committed by the government security forces and their paramilitary militia against the civilian population," she added.
A peace plan brokered by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan has failed to end bloodshed that has cost the lives of more than 10,000 people.
Atrocities are committed by both sides. What's an atrocity to us, is normal warfare for them. If we would stop arming terrorist rebels like the muslim brotherhood, Assad would dispatch them quickly and it would be over. Instead, the US will continue to facilitate the import of foreign fighters to greatly increase the misery of the Syrian people.
This is another fight that we cannot win. We did not win in Libya and made things much worse in Egypt. We have no concept of what victory is. Russia does. Assad does. They aren't interested in fighting to a stalemate and keep fighting until the other side gives up in boredom. There is no idea that somehow wars can be won by winning hearts and minds. It's ludicrous to even imagine such a method of warfare.
Hillary telling Assad to engage in a peaceful transition is the single most stupid comment that any politician has made at any time in human history. His answer was real, get attack helicopters from Russia.
BEIRUT--A bomb-laden car driven by a suicide attacker exploded Thursday near a major Shiite shrine outside the Syrian capital of Damascus, injuring 14 people and damaging part of the shrine, according to Syrian state media and news agency reports.
It was the latest in a series of car bombs that have killed scores of Syrians and elevated tensions in Syrias two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, where the bombings have been the most dramatic manifestation of the 15-month insurrection. Authorities have blamed Al Qaeda-linked Islamic militants from Syria and other nations, including neighboring Iraq and Jordan, for previous suicide bombings.
The Associated Press reported that it was unclear if the intended target of Thursdays strike was a nearby police station or the golden-domed Sayyida Zainab shrine, one of Shiite Islams holiest and most magnificent sites and a favored destination of Shiite pilgrims, especially Iranians. The shrine is said to be the burial place of a revered grand-daughter of the prophet Mohammed.
The blast Thursday shattered shrine windows, knocked down chandeliers and ceiling fans, and cracked mosaic walls inside the religious site, AP reported.
Official Syrian state media said 14 people were injured in Thursdays explosion , which occurred inside a parking lot. State media displayed photos from the scene showing destroyed vehicles, a shattered cement building and a crater where the bomb car apparently detonated.
BEIRUT The head of the U.N. observers in Syria said Friday a recent spike in bloodshed is derailing the mission to monitor and defuse more than a year of violence and could prompt the unarmed force to pull out.
The observer mission is the only functioning part of an international peace plan that Kofi Annan brokered two months ago. Western powers have pinned their hopes on the plan, in part because there are no other options on the table. There is little support for military intervention, and several rounds of sanctions have done little to stop the bloodshed.
"Violence over the past 10 days has been intensifying willingly by the both parties, with losses on both sides and significant risks to our observers," Maj. Gen. Robert Mood told reporters in Damascus. "The escalating violence is now limiting our ability to observe, verify, report as well as assist in local dialogue and stability projects."
Mood also said there was a concern among the states providing observers that the risk is approaching an unacceptable level for continuing the mission. He did not provide further details.
Mood's comments were the clearest sign yet that Annan's peace plan is disintegrating. The regime and the opposition have ignored a cease-fire that was supposed to go into effect April 12.
On Friday, the Syrian regime kept up a ferocious offensive on rebel areas around the country in one of the most serious escalations in violence since Annan brokered the truce.
BEIRUT, June 15 (Reuters) - Government forces have used rape and other sexual violence against men, women and children during the Syrian uprising, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.
The U.S.-based group said it had recorded 20 incidents from interviews inside and outside Syria with eight victims, including four women, and more than 25 other people with knowledge of sexual abuse - including medical workers, former detainees, army defectors, and women's rights activists.
"Sexual violence in detention is one of many horrific weapons in the Syrian government's torture arsenal and Syrian security forces regularly use it to humiliate and degrade detainees with complete impunity," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.
"The assaults are not limited to detention facilities - government forces and pro-government shabiha militia members have also sexually assaulted women and girls during home raids and residential sweeps."
Cases were reported all around Syria, but most of all in Homs province, an epicentre of the revolt.
HRW quoted a man who said he had been held in the Political Security branch in Latakia in a cell with over 70 other people. He said young boys were treated worse than adults, brought back to the cell raped and with their fingernails pulled out.
"One boy came into the cell bleeding from behind. He couldn't walk. It was something they just did to the boys. We would cry for them," the man said.
Obama the dog is too busy fundraising in NYC to care that hundreds, if not thousands, of children have been murdered to do something useful.
The only item of importance to him is the next dollar raised - while ass-ad the turd murders women and children by the truckload.
On a different note, I do find it quite interesting that the scum of the earth filth like eots, tin-douche, loincloth, etc., that posts in the other sections railing against Israel are VERY quiet regarding syria's mass slaughter...very interesting
The young woman who achieved notoriety for a short stint as media adviser to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad downplayed the significance of her role in the brutal regime, telling The Daily Telegraph she had been made a scapegoat.
"Any ambitious American girl would do the same thing I did, Sheherazad Jaafari told The Daily Telegraph. You get an interesting offer, you challenge yourself and you go for it.
Jaafari, who is the daughter of Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, reportedly spent three months working for al-Assad, during which she helped set Barbara Walters up with an exclusive interview with the dictator.
While Jaafari maintains she was just an intern with minimal responsibility, she was apparently close enough to al-Assad to write "hey handsome" and "I love u" in emails obtained by CNN.
"This man is loved by his people," she gushed in another. She emailed al-Assad 118 times between August 2011 and January 2012, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Jaafari was recently accepted to Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, where she will start as a graduate student in the fall. Barbara Walters, who advocated on behalf of Jaafari in emails to a Columbia University journalism professor, has since apologized for intervening.
Syrian rights groups have demanded Columbia University rescind Jaafari's admission. We are outraged with what is happening, a spokesman for the National Alliance for Syria, Sarab al-Jijakli, told the New York Post. Columbia and Barbara Walters must ensure that they right the wrong and not accept someone from the inner circle of the al-Assad regime into their university."
In an email to Fox News, Jaafari said contrary to reports, she was not an aide to al-Assad. "My duties were limited to fulfill instructions related to communicating with some English-speaking media reporters under the supervision of the media advisers," she wrote. I volunteered as an intern in the Syrian media and communication circles... During these three months I was never on payroll.
MOSCOW Two Russian navy ships are completing preparations to sail to Syria with a unit of marines on a mission to protect Russian citizens and the nation's base there, a news report said Monday. The deployment appears to reflect Moscow's growing concern about Syrian President Bashar Assad's future.
The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Russian navy official as saying that the two amphibious landing vessels, Nikolai Filchenkov and Caesar Kunikov, will be heading shortly to the Syrian port of Tartus, but didn't give a precise date.
The official said the ships will carry an unspecified number of marines to protect Russians in Syria and evacuate some equipment from Tartus, if necessary.
Each ship is capable of carrying up to 300 marines and a dozen tanks, according to Russian media reports. That would make it the largest known Russian troop deployment to Syria, signaling that Moscow is becoming increasingly uneasy about Syria's slide toward civil war.
Interfax also quoted a deputy Russian air force chief as saying that Russia will give the necessary protection to its citizens in Syria.
"We must protect our citizens," Maj.-Gen. Vladimir Gradusov was quoted as saying. "We won't abandon the Russians and will evacuate them from the conflict zone, if necessary."
Asked whether the air force would provide air support for the navy squadron, Gradusov said they will act on orders.
The Defense Ministry had no immediate comment, and an official at the Black Sea fleet declined to comment.
Asked if the Pentagon is concerned about the plan, officials in Washington said it depends on the mission. They had no comment on the stated goal of protecting Russian citizens and the Russian military position there, something the U.S. would do in a foreign country if in a similar situation.
"I think we'd leave it to the Russian Ministry of Defense to speak to their naval movements and their national security decision-making process," said Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that it's not the business of the U.S. Defense Department to "endorse or disapprove of an internal mission like that."
What would greatly concern the U.S., he said, is if the Russian naval ships were taking weapons or sending people to support the Assad regime in its crackdown.
"The secretary of defense (Leon Panetta) remains concerned about any efforts by external countries or external organizations to supply lethal arms to the Syrian regime so that they can turn around and use those to kill their own people," Kirby said.
Tartus is Russia's only naval base outside the former Soviet Union, serving Russian navy ships on missions to the Mediterranean and hosting an unspecified number of military personnel.
Syria Crisis: Russia Reportedly To Send Marines To Syria[/url]
Syria Crisis: Russia Reportedly To Send Marines To Syria[/url]
My expectation is that putin is simply sending troops to protect the russian advisors already there as they leave. If he plans on using them for actual combat to intervene on behalf of ass-ad against the FSA/rebels, he is a bigger psychopath than even I'd thought.
SAN JOSÉ DEL CABO, Mexico President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said Tuesday that the fate of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria should be left to the hands of the Syrians, saying that no one country has the right to tell another people whom their leader should be.
Appearing at a freewheeling news conference here at the close of the Group of 20 summit meeting of world leaders, Mr. Putin expounded on a range of issues. He discussed the London Olympics (he plans to attend and said he was excited about watching the judo matches) as well as the agenda next year when Russia hosts the Group of 20 economic conference in St. Petersburg (he said he was worried about the strength of the United States dollar and Americas debt).
His handlers seemed to try to end the news conference several times, but a smirking Mr. Putin would extend it for one more question.
With a grin, he said, Lets not look like we are so professionally organized. He appeared to enjoy the give-and-take with the reporters, some of whom cheered for him at the news conferences close.
He was asked if he had made the case to President Obama during their meeting the day before that Congress should hurry up and grant trade benefits to Russia now that Moscow has acceded to the World Trade Organization. I didnt make any case, he replied. What case do I need to make? If the Congress decides to adopt this new law, thats up to them.
(BEIRUT) A Syrian fighter pilot flew his plane to Jordan on Thursday and asked for political asylum, the first defection of an air force pilot with his plane during the 15-month uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Jordanian Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah confirmed that the pilot had defected.
Initially, three Jordanian officials said the Russian-made MiG-21 made an emergency landing at the northern King Hussein Air Base in Mafraq, 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of the Jordanian capital and near the Syrian border.
The confusion underlined Jordanian concern about upsetting the Assad regime and being dragged into the Syrian conflict. The defection could have serious repercussions on relations between the two neighbors, who so far have maintained their business ties despite political tensions between them.
Jordan has taken in 125,000 Syrian refugees, including hundreds of army and police defectors, which Syria has desperately sought their extradition.
Syria is one of Jordans largest Arab trade partners, with bilateral trade estimated at $470 million last year. Also, 60 percent of Jordanian exports of mainly fruits and vegetables are routed through Syria for onward shipping to Turkey overland or to Europe via Syrias Mediterranean coast.
Maaytah, the information minister, said the plane landed in Jordan at 1045 local time (0745 GMT).
The official Petra news agency quoted an unnamed security official as saying the Syrian plane belonged to the countrys air force.
A spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, Ahmad Kassem, also confirmed that the plane had defected to Jordan and that its pilot was seeking political asylum. He said the group had encouraged the pilot to defect and monitored his activity until the jet landed safely in Jordan.
He said the pilot was based in Syrias southern region and identified him as Col. Hassan Merei Hammadeh.
BEIRUT A video emerged Friday showing more than a dozen bloodied corpses in Syria, some of them piled on top of each other and in military uniforms, in what the government said was a "massacre" by rebels in the northern province of Aleppo.
The circumstances of the killings were not immediately clear. But in the video which The Associated Press could not independently verify the narrator said the dead were members of the "shabiha," or pro-regime gunmen.
Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, said terrorist groups had killed and mutilated at least 25 people in Daret Azzeh, a rebel-held area in the Aleppo countryside.
The government refers to rebels as terrorists.
"The terrorist groups in Daret Azzeh committed a brutal massacre against the citizens, whom they had kidnapped earlier in the day," SANA said.
The report said at least 25 people were killed, but others were missing.
Although the city of Aleppo, Syria's largest, has been relatively quiet since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began in March last year, towns and villages around it have witnessed intense clashes between troops and opposition fighters. Activists say more than 14,000 people have been killed since the uprising began.
Daret Azzeh has endured intense government shelling over the past two weeks as Assad's forces try to regain areas taken by rebels.
Also Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four senior army officers have defected from the regime. The group provided a video purporting to show two brigadier generals and two colonels who declared they were joining the opposition.
CONFIRMED: US CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria
As West berates Syria for "killing civilians" Western weapons flow into terrorist hands from NATO.
The New York Times in their article, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," confirms what many have already long known - that the West, led by the US and its Gulf State proxies, have been arming terrorists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, while berating the Syrian government for "violating" a UN mandated ceasefire and for "failing to protect" its population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The Muslim Brotherhood has been combated by nations across the Arab World to stem the tide of their sectarian extremism, violence, and their targeted erosion of secular nation-states. Ironically, the US which has claimed to have been fighting the forces of sectarian extremism and "terrorism" for over a decade now, have been revealed as the primary enabler of the most violent and extreme terrorist organizations in the world. These include, in addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya, Baluch terrorists in Pakistan, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) currently based in Iraq and being used as proxies against Iran.
Land Destroyer: West Point Terror Center Confirms Al Qaeda in Libya
Land Destroyer: It Begins: US Starting the Baluchi Insurrection
CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military
Land Destroyer: CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military
The New York Times claims that, "the C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said," a unsubstantiated claim that was similarly made in Libya before Al Qaeda flags were run up poles in Benghazi by rebels flush with NATO cash and arms used to collapse the government of Muammar Qaddafi. In fact, it is confirmed that Libyan LIFG rebels, led by Al Qaeda commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, have now made their way by the hundreds to Syria.
Benghazi declares autonomy, raises Al-Qaeda flag. McCain seeks to spread terrorist empire to Syria.
Land Destroyer: John McCain: Founding Father of the Terrorist Emirate of Benghazi
Libyas new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels
Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels - Telegraph
Source link:CONFIRMED: US CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria
CONFIRMED: US CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria
As West berates Syria for "killing civilians" Western weapons flow into terrorist hands from NATO.
The New York Times in their article, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," confirms what many have already long known - that the West, led by the US and its Gulf State proxies, have been arming terrorists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, while berating the Syrian government for "violating" a UN mandated ceasefire and for "failing to protect" its population.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/middleeast/cia-said-to-aid-in-steering-arms-to-syrian-rebels.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
The Muslim Brotherhood has been combated by nations across the Arab World to stem the tide of their sectarian extremism, violence, and their targeted erosion of secular nation-states. Ironically, the US which has claimed to have been fighting the forces of sectarian extremism and "terrorism" for over a decade now, have been revealed as the primary enabler of the most violent and extreme terrorist organizations in the world. These include, in addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya, Baluch terrorists in Pakistan, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) currently based in Iraq and being used as proxies against Iran.
Land Destroyer: West Point Terror Center Confirms Al Qaeda in Libya
Land Destroyer: It Begins: US Starting the Baluchi Insurrection
CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military
Land Destroyer: CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military
The New York Times claims that, "the C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said," a unsubstantiated claim that was similarly made in Libya before Al Qaeda flags were run up poles in Benghazi by rebels flush with NATO cash and arms used to collapse the government of Muammar Qaddafi. In fact, it is confirmed that Libyan LIFG rebels, led by Al Qaeda commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, have now made their way by the hundreds to Syria.
Benghazi declares autonomy, raises Al-Qaeda flag. McCain seeks to spread terrorist empire to Syria.
Land Destroyer: John McCain: Founding Father of the Terrorist Emirate of Benghazi
Libyas new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels
Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels - Telegraph
Source link:CONFIRMED: US CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria
So? Russia, China and Iran are arming Assads goons and rapists, but I don't hear a peep from you about that.
And I've never seen you acknowledge the U.S.'s, NATO's, the Saudi's or the other GCC countries involvement in financing and arming terrorist agent provocateurs who were provoking the Syrian government into action with violate attacks on civilians that were blamed on the Syrian government back in March 2011 to begin with!
