[Obama turning Bush on his head.
In this astute analysis, Mr. Farah gets to the root of the goings on in Syria and the greater Mideast region. In his analysis, Saudi Arabia is doing the groundwork that will enable the US and Israel to carry-out their plans to eliminate Hezbollah and perhaps Iran. By destabilizing the Assad regime, it is presumed that the Shiite resistance forces can be cut-off from their benefactors and presumed protectors, and their resupply capabilities, increasing Imperial odds of controlling the outcome of total war upon Hezbollah--giving Lebanon the "Libyan treatment."
Is it possible that Obama will coerce or force the Zionist state to sign a peace treaty that enforces the 1967 borders, enforced by the UN military arm, NATO? Considering the recent report that the reconciled Palestinian government expressed support for international policing forces to guard the Rafah crossing with Egypt, seeing UN forces ringing the new/old West Bank border is no longer seen as a stretch of the imagination. I understand that this reversal for Israel would put an end to its dreams of "Greater Israel," thereby putting to rest conspiracy theories claiming that "Jews control the world."
I could be dead wrong here, but judging from the actions of Obama's team elsewhere, double-crossing old allies on the gamble of controlling the new outcomes in the synthetic "Arab spring" revolutions, and the predicted double-cross of Pakistan (dumping Pakistan for India), I am seeing a pattern, a modus operandi, which suggests that it is time for the real Empire to jettison all unnecessary baggage--and that includes the "shitty little Zionist experiment" in the Middle East. I think this is a case of the Rothschild conspiracy selling-out their Jewish kinfolk for the ultimate pay-off, total control of all power and wealth.] -- Saudis blamed for Syrian violence
Also see: Slip Slidin' Away in Syria
"Protester supplies running low in Syrian city" April 28, 2011|By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press
Also yesterday, 16 lower-ranking members of the ruling Baath Party from Banias and nearby villages resigned to protest the crackdown — a small move of defiance but one that would have been unthinkable even a month ago in Syria....
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Related: Syria cuts off key protest city in bid to crush revolt
"Syrian army units turn on each other amid crackdown; Possible sign that support for Assad slowly crumbling" April 29, 2011|By Elizabeth A. Kennedy and Diaa Hadid, Associated Press]
BEIRUT — Syrian army units have clashed with each other over following President Bashar Assad’s orders to crack down on protesters in Daraa, a besieged city at the heart of the uprising, witnesses and human rights groups said yesterday.
More than 450 people have been killed across Syria — about 100 in Daraa alone — and hundreds have been detained since the popular revolt against Assad began in mid-March, according to human rights groups.
While the troops’ infighting in Daraa does not indicate any decisive splits in the military, it is significant because Assad’s army has always been the regime’s fiercest defender.
It is the latest sign that cracks — however small — are developing in Assad’s base of support that would have been unimaginable just weeks ago. About 200 mostly low-level members of Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party have resigned over Assad’s brutal crackdown.
Related:
"the scale of the protests, so far, seemed to fall short of the popular upheaval of revolutions"
The psy-op media really needs to get their stories straight.
Ausama Monajed, a spokesman for a group of opposition figures in Syria and abroad, citing witnesses on the ground in Daraa, a city of 75,000 near the Jordanian border, said: “There are some battalions that refused to open fire on the people. Battalions of the Fifth Division were protecting people, and returned fire when they were subjected to attacks by the Fourth Division.’’
The Fourth Division is run by the president’s brother, Maher.
The reports were corroborated by three witnesses in Daraa and an activist contacted by the AP. All four asked that their names not be used for fear of reprisals.
One of the witnesses said soldiers fired at each other yesterday around the Omari mosque in central Daraa.
He said the soldiers from the Fifth division, mostly conscripts known to be sympathetic to residents, were battling soldiers of the Fourth Division.
“They are defending the people against the forces of Maher Assad,’’ said the resident, who said he lived next to the mosque and witnessed the battles.
“Assad’s forces have it in their heads that we are terrorists and extremist Muslims and they are out to get us,’’ he said. “But the Fifth Division are made up of people like us. We are speaking to them.’’
Oh, their media is just like ours!
Another witness in Daraa said that he saw soldiers from different army units clashing Monday in front of the Bilal mosque when Syrian forces rolled into town....
On the diplomatic front, Turkey held out the prospect of closer economic ties if Assad meets demands for reform, even as Western powers warned of sanctions if the crackdown does not end.
Don't read much about Turkey in my newspaper.
Assad met a delegation led by the chief of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency and the head of the agency that oversees infrastructure projects, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported.
That seems like it's about more than economics.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has talked to Assad at least three times since protests began in Syria, said Turkey does not want to see an “an authoritarian, totalitarian, imposing structure’’ there. But he has not called for Assad’s ouster....
In other words, Turkey wants to stop the attempted U.S. coup.
Also yesterday, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said for the first time that a target destroyed by Israeli warplanes in the Syrian desert in 2007 was the covert site of a future nuclear reactor, countering assertions by Syria that it had no atomic secrets.
Any thinking person has come to realize that the IAEA is simply a tool of Israel.
Related: Israel Planted Soil Samples Against Syria
Oh, ANOTHER STAGED SET-UP, 'eh?
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Related: Vigil shows support for Syrian uprising
Sanctions on!
"US sanctions target Syrian intelligence service, officials; Dozens more reported killed; protests spread to Damascus" April 30, 2011|By Joby Warrick and Liz Sly, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration slapped sanctions on three Syrian officials and Syria’s intelligence service yesterday in what was described as a warning shot against President Bashar al-Assad’s government after weeks of steadily worsening violence against protesters.
The measures targeting key members of Assad’s security apparatus came amid reports of dozens more deaths across the country as Syrians rallied in several cities — including, for the first time, in large numbers in Damascus, the capital — for a national “Day of Rage’’ denouncing government brutality.
Obviously Syria is not a U.S. ally.
Tens of thousands of Syrians poured out of mosques and into the streets after Friday prayers for what appeared to be the biggest demonstrations yet in the country. The large turnout, after days of deadly clashes, suggests that the will of the protesters remains unbroken despite the government’s stepped-up efforts to crush the uprising.
This agenda-pushing coverage and journalistic style is starting to remind me of the way the Iran protests were covered.
Human rights groups said that at least 48 people were killed nationwide when troops opened fire on demonstrators yesterday. Fifteen of them were killed outside the southern town of Daraa, the epicenter of the protests and a rallying point for the rebellion after civilians there were besieged by army tanks on Monday.
The Obama administration, facing pressure at home and abroad to act against the Assad regime, announced that it was freezing the assets of Syria’s intelligence service and its director....
From who? Certainly not the American people.
The White House has been frustrated by a lack of diplomatic options in dealing with Syria, a country that is barred from most trade with the United States and is labeled a terrorist-sponsoring nation by the State Department. Washington continues to maintain formal diplomatic ties with Damascus, and the administration has not called on Assad to step down, as it did in the case of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy and now-deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Several key congressional leaders this week pressed the administration to break publicly with Assad, saying the Syrian leader has lost legitimacy. On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council added to the pressure with a resolution condemning the killing of protesters and appointing a delegation to travel to Damascus to investigate the crackdown.
Are they going to Yemen or Bahrain to investigate?
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And look who was played a fool:
"Kerry’s softer stance on Syria scrutinized" April 28, 2011|By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON — Senator John Kerry’s comments have been far more muted about a dictator he has worked with the past two years: Syria’s Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry, a leading proponent of the Obama administration’s controversial attempt to improve relations with Syria, has publicly warned Assad not to kill his own people. But Kerry has not called for him to step down, as he did with embattled leaders in Egypt and Libya.
As recently as last month, the Massachusetts Democrat said he remained optimistic that Assad would usher in an era of warmer relations and reform.
“I personally am very, very encouraged,’’ Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think tank. His remarks were made March 16, the day after protests broke out in Syria....
Now, as the Obama administration condemns Assad for the brutal attacks on his citizens and prepares sanctions against his regime, its diplomatic overtures and Kerry’s role are coming under increasing scrutiny.
“While he went there to have dinner with Assad, people were being tortured,’’ said Elliott Abrams, who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush....
Isn't it great that the Globe turns to a former Bush neo-con and Iran-Contra criminal for expert analysis?
Of course, they were TORTURING someone whom the U.S. RENDERED to Syria, right?
Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-born specialist on Middle East affairs at the National Defense University, said Israel’s unwillingness to give up the Golan Heights, a fertile area captured in 1967, undercut Kerry as he tried to deal with Syria.
“Syria wanted an iron-clad guarantee that if it was going to leave its alliance [with Iran], it would get the Golan Heights,’’ said Jouejati, who advised Syrian negotiators during peace talks with Israel in 1999 under Assad’s father. “If, in the end, Syria did not go along with Senator Kerry, it is not because Kerry is a fool. It is because Israel was not cooperative.’’
That's the story of U.S. foreign policy.
And who benefits if they are spun away from Iran?
***************
Whatever the case, efforts to persuade Syria to change appear to have failed....
And you know what comes next, readers: WAR!!
Yeah, WHATEVER the case, Israeli-excusing newspaper!
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more--" Related: Kerry urges harsher line against Syria’s president
I guess the Globe's page one story on him had an effect.
"Syrian troops storm mosque, kill four; Security forces prevent march on Parliament" by Bassem Mroue, Associated Press / May 1, 2011
BEIRUT — Syrian troops killed four people yesterday while storming a mosque that became a focal point for protesters in the besieged southern city of Daraa, and security forces in Damascus kept dozens of women from marching on parliament to urge President Bashar Assad to end his crackdown on a six-week-old uprising.
They hiding weapons in that mosque like insurgents the U.S. is fighting?
More members of Assad’s ruling Ba’ath Party resigned in protest as human rights activists said the death toll soared to 535 from government forces firing on demonstrators to try to suppress the popular revolt — action that has drawn international condemnation and US financial penalties on top figures in his regime.
It's not like we were big traders with them to begin with.
The military raid on the Omari mosque in Daraa came a day after 65 people were killed — most of them in the town on Syria’s border with Jordan. Friday was the second deadliest day since the uprising began in mid-March in Daraa.
Heaping further punishment on relatives of those killed Friday, they were told to hold small funerals with only family members invited, an activist said, in an apparent attempt to keep the services from turning into anti-Assad protests. Similar orders were given last week, but most people did not follow them, said the activist, Ammar Qurabi, who heads the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
Families also were being forced to sign documents saying their loved ones were killed by “armed groups,’’ he added. Syrian state media have blamed the unrest on “armed terrorists’’ and extremists.
The unrest in Syria — one of the most repressive and tightly controlled countries in the Middle East — has repercussions far beyond its borders because of its alliances with militant groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and with Shi’ite powerhouse Iran.
The Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook page, which is run by activists, billed the coming week as “the week to end the siege.’’ The page was referring to the siege on Daraa and the Damascus suburb of Douma that has been closed for days.
Early yesterday, military reinforcements poured into Daraa, including 20 armored personnel carriers, four tanks and a military ambulance, a resident said.
The assault on the mosque in the city’s Roman-era old town lasted 90 minutes, during which troops fired tank shells and heavy machine guns, said resident Abdullah Abazeid. Three helicopters participated in the operation, dropping paratroopers on top of the mosque itself, he said.
Among the dead was Osama Ahmad, the son of the mosque’s imam, Sheik Ahmad Sayasna, according to Abazeid. A woman and her two daughters also were killed when a tank shell hit their home near the mosque, he said.
You know, the kind of thing Israelis are doing to Palestinians all the time.
Earlier this week, security forces shot and killed a man as he walked out of the mosque and used a bullhorn to shout at them: “Enough! Enough! Enough! Stop killing your brothers!’’
The mosque had been occupied by residents of Daraa this week after the government first sent in tanks and snipers Monday to crush the demonstrations. The military cut off electricity and telephone service, snipers fired at residents who tried to venture out to pull the dead off the streets, and forces even shot holes in rooftop tanks to drain them of residents’ vital supply of water in the bone-dry region.
Sounds more like Mossad than Syrians.
Sporadic gunfire was heard yesterday, mainly from the central area, another Daraa witness said, adding that for the past week, troops have allowed women to go out to buy bread but stopped them yesterday.
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I thought the army was splitting away.
"The Syrian military intensified its vigorous assault on Daraa, the besieged city at the center of the country’s uprising, yesterday as defiant residents who have been pinned down in their homes for nearly a week struggled to find food, pass along information, and bury their dead.
President Bashar Assad is determined to crush the six-week-old revolt, which began in the southern city but quickly spread across the nation of some 23 million people.
Now, the once-unthinkable protests are posing the most serious challenge to four decades of rule by the Assad family in one of the most repressive and tightly controlled countries in the Middle East.
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