"SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention"
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, May 3, 2011
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 focused 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.
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Since the Soviet-Afghan war, Western intelligence agencies as well as Israel's Mossad have consistently used various Islamic terrorist organizations as "intelligence assets". Both Washington and its indefectible British ally have provided covert support to "Islamic terrorists" in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, etc. as a means to triggering ethnic strife, sectarian violence and political instability.
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Related: Saudis Sent Syrians Into Streets
AmeriKan media basically confirms it in their own inimical way.
"Hundreds arrested in Syria, group says" May 03, 2011|By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT — Syrian troops went door to door in cities and towns across the nation yesterday, arresting scores of people in a campaign of intimidation aimed at crushing an uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime, activists said....
And when Amerikan special forces do it in Afghanistan it is called liberation.
Daraa, a drought-plagued city, has been under siege for a week since the regime sent in troops backed by tanks and snipers to crush protests. Electricity, power, and fuel have been cut, and the military has largely sealed off the area....
And Gaza has been for years.
The satellite television service Al-Jazeera said one of its journalists, Dorothy Parvaz, 39, has not been heard from since arriving Friday in Damascus. Parvaz, who had US, Iranian, and Canadian citizenship, is a former reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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"Facing international condemnation for its bloody crackdown on protesters, the Syrian regime is expanding an intimidation campaign to keep people off the streets, human rights activists say.
They report a sharp escalation in arbitrary arrests and unexplained disappearances — including people getting plucked from their homes and offices in the middle of the day.
Did they render them back to the U.S. for torture, 'er, interrogation and return the earlier favor?
One prominent activist in an upscale Damascus neighborhood was reportedly bundled into a car after being beaten by security officers....
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Yeah, when Bahrain does it -- with foreign occupiers, no less -- it's okay.
"Across the country, security forces made sweeping arrests to blunt the protest movement’s momentum."
This after we were told they were losing momentum.
"Syrian Army continues crackdown amid claims of withdrawal; Militant brothers believed killed by strike in Yemen" May 06, 2011|Associated Press
BEIRUT — The Syrian Army said yesterday that it has begun withdrawing from a city at the heart of the country’s uprising, but the regime expanded its crackdown elsewhere by deploying soldiers and arresting hundreds ahead of a new wave of antigovernment protests.
The siege on Daraa — the southern city where Syria’s six-week-old uprising began — lasted 11 days with President Bashar Assad unleashing tanks and snipers to crush dissent there. Syria’s state-run media said the military had “carried out its mission in detaining terrorists’’ and restored calm in Daraa.
Still, an activist who has been giving the Associated Press updates from Daraa cast doubt on the army’s claim. The activist, who left Daraa early yesterday, said residents were reporting that tanks and troops were still in the city. The accounts could not be independently confirmed, and telephone calls to Daraa were not going through.
United Nations deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said a humanitarian team will be going to Daraa in the coming days following a phone appeal to Assad by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
They sure are selective in where they go, huh?
Even as the army said it was pulling out of Daraa, military units were deploying elsewhere....
Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
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"Syrian security forces kill 26, stifle protests; Crowds smaller than those of previous weeks" May 07, 2011|By Anthony Shadid, New York Times
BEIRUT — Security forces fired on demonstrators in six Syrian towns and cities in a day of protests that activists declared a “Friday of Defiance.’’ Twenty-six people died, and a withering crackdown subdued the most restive town and prevented many protesters from gathering in larger demonstrations, activists and human rights groups said....
Both sides in the seven-week struggle claimed victories of sorts yesterday. Thousands of demonstrators gathered again in dozens of towns and cities, despite the government’s deployment of security and military forces from the Mediterranean coast to the steppe in southern Syria. But the crackdown seemed to have slowed the force of the protests, and some of the government’s opponents acknowledged that crowds might have been smaller than on past Fridays.
But they have been gaining momentum, blah, blah, blah.
Is it JUST ME or are the CONTRADICTIONS never-ending?
President Bashar Assad, who inherited power from his father, Hafez, in 2000, initially claimed that Syria was immune to the tumult sweeping the Arab world.
When the uprising erupted in Daraa, a poor town near the Jordanian border, he initially responded with a mix of crackdown and concessions that proved largely rhetorical.
Just like a U.S. ally.
Isn't Jordan a U.S. ally? And that is where the trouble started?
For the past two weeks, the government has relied almost entirely on force to crush dissent, and there appears to be a sense in official circles that the government has gained the upper hand.
Officials say the ire of France and, in particular, Turkey, which had emerged as one of Syria’s closest allies, has worried the Syrian leadership. So has the threat of international action....
Also see: Turkey should wield its power in Syria
Related: Turkey’s arrest of 8 journalists spurs protests, worries allies
Turkish leader talks trade with Iraq
Turkey unveils ‘crazy and magnificent’ new waterway project
Looks like Turkey is being a bit of a thorn in their side, too.
The UN said it is sending a team to Syria to investigate what is happening there.
So when are they sending a team to Bahrain or Yemen?
“The government has been saying this will be over in two to three weeks,’’ an administration official said in Washington. “They seem to think they have control over the situation, that it’s dying down, but we don’t really understand why they think that.’’
The same could be said of the government he works for because everything they touch these days turns to scite.
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The government has stepped up a campaign to portray the protests as a plot fashioned abroad and carried out by militant Islamists and criminals inside Syria who are bent on dividing a country that could face anarchy and strife.
Diplomats say that at least some of the protesters have carried arms and fired on security forces.
Oh, really?
How come that is ONLY AN AFTERTHOUGHT of a sentence while we are browbeat about how bad is the Syrian government?
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Back to the browbeating:
"Syria expands its crackdown; Assad’s troops move into oil port" May 08, 2011|By Zeina Karam, Associated Press
BEIRUT — Troops in tanks and armored vehicles entered a key oil-industry city on Syria’s Mediterranean coast yesterday, taking up position in a hilltop Crusader castle and cutting off power and phone lines. An activist said three women protesting the crackdown were shot dead.
The move against Banias, which had become a bastion of antiregime protests in recent days, signals an expanding campaign by President Bashar Assad aimed at crushing the country’s seven-week nationwide uprising.
Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights said the women were protesting the siege and the cutting of power when they were shot by plainclothes security forces or pro-government gunmen....
The events in Banias, a day after security forces killed 30 people in nationwide protests, came on the heels of a large-scale military operation in Daraa. The 11-day siege, in which about 50 residents were killed, triggered international condemnation.
The United States has already targeted three top Syrian officials as well as Syria’s intelligence agency and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard with sanctions over the crackdown. The European Union is expected to place sanctions on Syrian officials next week, and the United Nations said it will investigate.
An operation in Banias similar to the one in Daraa risks further isolating Assad’s regime, which has used brutal military force to crush the revolt....
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Related(?): Threat of regime collapse in Syria creates uncertainty in region
What's with the soccer link?
"Threat of regime collapse in Syria creates uncertainty in region" May 08, 2011|By Liz Sly, Washington Post
BEIRUT — The toppling of the presidents in Tunisia and Egypt precipitated a tumult of revolutionary fervor that promises to transform the Middle East, but the potential collapse of the Syrian regime could wreak havoc of a very different kind.
In Syria, the fall of President Bashar Assad would unleash a cataclysm of chaos, sectarian strife, and extremism that spreads far beyond its borders, threatening not only the entrenched rulers already battling to hold at bay a clamor for democratic change but also the entire balance of power in the volatile region, analysts say.
With Syria’s minority Shi’ite Alawite government overseeing a majority Sunni population, its strategic location and its web of alliances including the radical Hamas and Hezbollah movements, regime change could look a lot more like it did in Iraq than in Egypt — and the ramifications could prove even more profound.
Is there any doubt about the agenda?
“If the regime collapses you will have civil war and it will spread throughout the region,’’ engulfing Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and beyond, said Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. “A collapse of the Syrian regime is a doomsday scenario for the entire Middle East.’’
Many believe that is why the international community, including the United States, has offered such a tempered response to the bloodshed in Syria. NATO warplanes are bombing Libya to protect civilians there, but there have been no calls even for Assad to step aside, despite an increasingly violent crackdown by the Syrian military.
Analyst Rami Khouri describes Syria as the Middle East equivalent of a bank that’s too big to be allowed to fail. “The spillover effect would be too horrible to contemplate,’’ he wrote in Beirut’s Daily Star.
Part of the problem is that so little is known about what would come next should Assad be ousted. Egypt and Tunisia took great leaps into uncertainty when their regimes fell, but in each case the army, a known quantity, asserted its independence and seized power to oversee the transition.
In Syria, the army is so tightly bound to Assad’s Alawite clan that the fall of the regime would almost certainly lead to its disintegration, setting the stage for an Iraq-style implosion in which the state collapses, a majority seeks to exact revenge on a minority, and regional powers pile in to assert their own interests, said Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma, who writes the blog Syria Comment....
Gee, the agenda-pushing media can find blogs when they want.
Iraq is by no means the only country in the region looking askance at the upheaval. Israel has expressed misgivings about the tumult threatening its chief foe, which has not attempted to recover by force the occupied Golan Heights for nearly four decades — something that could change.
Neighboring Lebanon has its own Sunni-Shi’ite divide. They have fought each other in the recent past, and it is inconceivable that Syria’s troubles would not spill over the border into Lebanon, Khashan said.
Yes, screwing around in Lebanon has put a strain on Syrian-Saudi relations in the past.
Related: Time to Bomb Lebanon?
Yeah, Israel is just looking for an excuse, too.
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"Boy, 12, dies in Syria crackdown, activists report; Another child arrested in effort to punish parents" May 09, 2011|Associated Press
CAIRO — Gunfire and shelling rattled a city in central Syria yesterday and killed a 12-year-old boy as President Bashar Assad’s autocratic regime expanded its military crackdown on a seven-week uprising by sending tanks and reinforcements to key areas, activists said.
Activists said authorities also arrested a 10-year-old boy, apparently to punish his parents, and filed charges against a leading opposition figure who has cancer....
Those monsters (if you believe the claims of the agenda-pushing paper and its "activists."
Did they torture the kids in front of their parents like the U.S.?
The continued crackdown suggests that Assad’s regime is determined to end the uprising by force and intimidation, despite rapidly escalating international outrage and a death toll that has topped 580 civilians since the unrest began in mid-March, according to rights groups....
Didn't the article from the day before say no one wanted to see them fall, etc, etc?
Yesterday, the state-run news agency SANA said hundreds of Syrians held a demonstration yesterday in front of the US Embassy in Damascus to protest “US intervention in the country’s internal affairs.’’
Oh, the SYRIANS KNOW!!!
The military and security forces carried out arrest sweeps and posted snipers on rooftops in flashpoints across the country yesterday....
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"Syria arrests hundreds more in crackdown on dissidents; Gunfire heard during raids near capital; EU imposes arms embargo" May 10, 2011|By Liz Sly, Washington Post
BEIRUT — Syrian troops detained hundreds more people in towns across the country yesterday as they pursued their relentless crackdown against the stubbornly persistent protest movement that has swelled in recent weeks to challenge the government.
What are we to make of the contradictions, dear readers?
Yeah, pass me that salt shaker.
Troops backed by tanks sealed off the Damascus suburb of Maadamiyeh in the early hours of the morning, and residents heard gunfire as soldiers conducted house-to-house raids looking for people who had joined in recent antigovernment demonstrations.
Witnesses said they saw nine busloads of prisoners being taken away, said Wissam Tarif of the human rights group Insan....
In Banias, about 400 men are still being held at the town’s football stadium after soldiers went house to house over the weekend detaining every man between the ages of 18 and 45, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which maintains contact with a network of activists in the country.
You know, the KIND OF THING BOTH ISRAEL and the UNITED STATES DO in lands they are OCCUPYING!
Many houses in Banias are empty because their occupants have fled, and the soldiers looted belongings and smashed furniture in those homes, he said. Banias is home to one of Syria’s two oil refineries....
According to Tarif, the latest arrests bring to more than 10,000 the number of people who have been taken into custody since the antigovernment demonstrations first erupted in March, with more than 700 people reported killed, most of them shot while protesting.
Wow, 120 people were killed yesterday and it didn't lead the report?
Responding to the increasing repression, the European Union imposed an arms embargo on Syria, the Associated Press reported. The EU sanctions ban the shipment of “arms and equipment that could be used for internal repression.’’
Unless they are going to Israel.
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After failing to set an example to the rest of the country with its massive military assault late last month against the southern town of Daraa, the government now appears to be focusing its efforts on rounding up as many people as it can in places where protests have occurred.
The assault on Daraa, which was besieged and bombarded by tank fire for days, has succeeded in quashing the protests there simply because people are unable to leave their homes without being arrested or shot at, activists say.
I thought the protests were swell... sigh.
But the experience of Daraa failed to deter protesters in most other parts of the country, who have turned out in large numbers on each of the subsequent Fridays since the Daraa assault began. Scattered protests have also continued on other days of the week.
People in Homs, Banias, Maadamiyeh, and several other besieged Damascus suburbs are now also unable to leave their homes because of the heavy presence of the security forces, the activists say. With telephone and cellphone lines to those areas also suspended, people are unable to coordinate rallies, and it is hard to obtain information about what is going on, they say.
Yet even as the crackdown spreads and intensifies, citizens in other parts of the country are continuing to go out onto the streets to hold demonstrations, usually in the evenings....
Syrian officials and state-run media have tried to portray Banias as a hotbed of Islamic extremists to justify the crackdown there....
We do it to justify invasions.
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Also see: Syrian leader may not be able to salvage reformist image
Well, not now.
"10,000 protesters detained as Syrian crackdown widens; Backed by tanks, troops move into more cities, towns" by New York Times / May 11, 2011
BEIRUT — At least 10,000 Syrian protesters have been detained in the past several days in a mass arrest campaign aimed at quelling a seven-week uprising in Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, activists said yesterday, as security forces sent more reinforcements to restive cities and towns across the country.
The Syrian government widened its crackdown yesterday to include more cities and towns. Activists in Syria said army troops, backed by tanks, entered Hama, in central Syria, and several southern villages near Daraa, the impoverished and besieged town in a region known as the Houran that has become a symbol of the uprising.
“The big question now is what’s next,’’ said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “They are about to announce victory, but what will happen when they pull the troops out?’’
At least seven people were killed in demonstrations Monday night — three in Maadamiyah, a Damascus suburb, and four in Deir al Zour, a town in northeastern Syria, he said.
“The people are very angry, and they swear they will be protesting again,’’ a resident who lives near Othman bin Affan mosque in Deir al Zour said by phone. The protesters were killed in front of the mosque, which security forces closed two weeks ago to worshippers to prevent them from organizing demonstrations.
Heavy gunfire was also heard yesterday in several southern villages, including Inkhil, Dael, Jassem, Sanamein, and Nawa. Activists reported casualties, though the numbers were difficult to ascertain, given the difficulties in communication and the Syrian government’s suppression of independent news gathering. Phones have been cut in most besieged towns and cities.
The military operations came as activists called for daily protests across the country on the Facebook page of Syrian Revolution 2011, an Internet-based opposition group.
“The Tuesday of solidarity with prisoners of conscience in the jails of the Syrian criminal regime,’’ the page said. “The demonstration will continue every day.’’
In the capital, Damascus, security forces reinforced their presence, setting up more checkpoints and sending out more patrols, residents there reported. The measures came after 250 people, including university students and professionals, staged a small demonstration Monday night in Arnoua Square in the heart of the city. The protesters, holding banners that read “stop the siege on our cities’’ and “a national dialogue is the solution,’’ were quickly dispersed by plainclothes police officers. Thirty-two protesters were detained.
Protesters in Homs said they are planning a demonstration, even as the city reels under heavy security measures.
“We are changing strategies,’’ Abu Haydar, a resident in Homs, said by phone. “We don’t want to reveal the location of our gathering. We want to surprise the security forces.’’
The army was also conducting operations in cities along the Mediterranean coast, including Banias and Jabla, both under siege for several days. In Banias, 63 people have been arrested since Monday night, bringing the total number arrested since Saturday to 419, Tarif said.
In Damascus this week, a confidant and powerful cousin of the president warned in an interview that Syria’s ruling elite will fight to the end in a struggle that could cast the Middle East into turmoil and even war.
Translation: It is being set up and coming. Looks like Israel will have to invade both Lebanon, Syria, and the Sinai.
In an interview Monday with New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid, Rami Makhlouf, a business tycoon who has emerged in the two-month uprising as a lighting rod for anger at the privilege that power brings, offered an exceedingly rare insight into the thinking of an opaque government, the prism through which it sees Syria, and the way it reaches decisions.
He suggested that the ruling family, beset by the greatest threat to its four decades of rule, has conflated its survival with the existence of the minority sect that views the protests not as legitimate demands for change but rather as the seeds of civil war.
“If there is no stability here, there’s no way there will be stability in Israel,’’ Makhlouf said. “No way, and nobody can guarantee what will happen after, God forbid, anything happens to this regime.’’
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"Syrian military intensifies its crackdown on dissidents; Third-largest city is shelled; troops arrest hundreds" by Anthony Shadid, New York Times / May 12, 2011
BEIRUT — The Syrian military intensified a methodical, ferocious march across the country’s most restive locales yesterday, using tanks to shell the country’s third-largest city, forcing hundreds to flee and detaining hundreds more in what has emerged as one of the most brutal waves of repression since the Arab Spring began....
One administration official said that some national security officials were hoping that even if Assad stayed in power, he would move away from the alliance with Iran because so many of the Sunni protesters wanted to see an end to that relationship....
Yes, dear readers, this REALLY IS A STAGED UPRISING!!
But he said the administration remained divided about whether Assad would actually make a break from Iran....
Once again, it is ALL ABOUT the AGENDA when you get to the BOTTOM!
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"Syrian troops take up fortified positions ahead of protests; Clinton asserts crackdown shows Assad weakness" May 13, 2011|By Bassem Mroue and Elizabeth A. Kennedy, Associated Press
BEIRUT — Syrian soldiers rolled into flash point cities in tanks and set up sand barriers topped with machine guns yesterday, as President Bashar al-Assad’s deadly crackdown on dissent pulled the country deeper into international isolation.
On the eve of another round of large protests, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton slammed the government’s assault on demonstrators and said the violence showed Assad is weak, though she stopped short of saying he must quit.
Then what is the Empire's excuse?
“Treating one’s own people in this way is in fact a sign of remarkable weakness,’’ Clinton said during a trip to Greenland....
Like the leaders in the allied states of Yemen and Bahrain?
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"Security forces and snipers opened fire on thousands of protesters in Syria yesterday, killing at least six people as mass arrests and heavy security kept crowds below previous levels seen during the two-month uprising against President Bashar Assad, activists said.
A leading human rights activist said three people were killed in Homs, two in Damascus, and one in a village outside Daraa, the southern city where the revolt began two months ago. Human-rights groups say more than 775 people have been killed since the start of the protest movement in Syria in mid-March.
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"Refugees flee from Syria to Lebanon; Gunmen attack two soldiers in south Yemen" by Bassem Mroue, Associated Press / May 16, 2011
BEIRUT — Gunfire and explosions echoed through a Syrian border town yesterday, as hundreds of frightened civilians poured into neighboring Lebanon to escape a harsh crackdown against antigovernment protests, witnesses and authorities said.
Among those fleeing were two boys, ages 5 and 6, who were wounded during protests, Lebanese security officials said.
They were among more than 5,000 Syrians who have fled to Lebanon in recent weeks as President Bashar Assad’s security forces try to crush the protests with gunfire, sieges, and even shelling.
Human rights groups say more than 800 people have been killed since mid-March.
Over 25 more since yesterday?
“I want to die in Syria,’’ one man said yesterday after he dropped his family off in Lebanon and then headed back.
Several ambulances were parked on the Lebanese side of the border to take wounded Syrians to hospitals.
Gunfire and explosions were heard through the day from Talkalakh, just inside Syria, witnesses said by telephone from the area.
A military official said gunfire that came from the Syrian side of the border wounded a Lebanese soldier.
Foreign reporters have been banned from Syria, making it impossible to confirm witness accounts independently. Witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety.
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