General Discussion

stockholmer

(3,751 posts) Thu Jul 26, 2012, 12:48 AM Jul 2012

Putin’s Geopolitical Chess Game w/ Washington in Syria & Eurasia + BBC Rides with Al Qaeda in Aleppo

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article35727.html

Since reassuming his post as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin has lost no minute in addressing the most urgent geopolitical threats to Russia internationally. Not surprisingly, at the center of his agenda is the explosive situation in the Middle East, above all Syria. Here Putin is engaging every imaginable means of preventing a further deterioration of the situation into what easily could become another “world war by miscalculation.” His activities in recent weeks involve active personal diplomacy with Syria’s government as well as the so-called opposition “Syrian National Council.” It involves intense diplomacy with Erdogan’s Turkey regime. It involves closed door diplomacy with Obama. It involves direct diplomacy with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Syria itself, contrary to what most western media portray, is a long-standing multi-ethnic and religiously tolerant secular state with an Alawite Muslim President Bashar Al-Assad, married to a Sunni wife. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam which doesn’t force their women to wear head scarves and are liberal by Sunni standards, especially in the fundamentalist places like Saudi Arabia where women are forbidden to even hold a driver’s license. The overall Syrian population is a diverse mix of Alawites, Druze and Kurds, Sunnis, and Armenian Orthodox Christians. Were the minority regime of Al-Assad to fall, experts estimate that, like in Egypt, the murky Sunni (as in Saudi Arabia) Muslim Brotherhood organization would emerge as the dominant organized political force, something certainly not welcome in Tel Aviv and certainly not in either Russia or China.1

According to an informed assessment by Gajendra Singh, retired Indian diplomat with decades of service in the Middle East and a deep familiarity with the ethnic mix inside Syria, were the minority Alawite regime of Al-Assad to fall, the country would rapidly descend into a bloodbath that would make estimates of 17,000 killed to date a mere prelude. Singh estimates, “A defeat of Assad led regime will lead to slaughter of Alawites, Shias, Christians, even Kurds and Druzes. In all, 20 % of a population of 20 Million.”2

That would be some 4 million Syrians. That ought to be food for thought for those in the West cheering on a murky dubious opposition “Syrian National Council” that is dominated by the ominous Muslim Brotherhood, and an armed opposition “Free Syrian Army” that has been reported even by the New York Times as rife with factional armed splits. Moreover the conflict were it to descend into a Libya-like internal bloodbath, would spill over across the Syrian border into Turkey. Syrian coastal area has a significant Alawite population and a large number of Alawites live in the adjoining Turkish provinces of Hatay and Antakya.

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BBC Rides with Al Qaeda in Aleppo, Syria: BBC Covers Up War Crimes - Misleads Over Syrian Security Operations.

Update: Indeed BBC did not see "MIGs" bombing Aleppo, though it appears they weren't even anti-tank SU-25's but rather training aircraft. Aero L-39 Albatros are also not even "Russian-made" as the BBC claimed. The article below has been amended to reflect this information. Read here for more.

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.se/2012/07/bbc-rides-with-al-qaeda-in-aleppo-syria.html

When big lies must be told, BBC is there. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and now Syria, BBC has paved the way for Western disinformation meant to mange public perception around a war the public would otherwise never support or tolerate. The BBC, caught on record producing entire "documentaries" on behalf of corporate-financier interests, has already been caught in immense lies regarding the NATO-fueled destabilization of Syria. This includes the disingenuous use of photos from Iraq, to depict a so-called "massacre" in the village of Houla, Syria. Now, as NATO's Al Qaeda mercenaries operating under the banner of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" flow over the Turkish-Syrian border in an attempt to overrun the city of Aleppo, BBC is there, attempting to manipulate the public's perception as the conflict unfolds.

BBC's Ian Pannell admits he rode with a convoy of milatnt fighters into Aleppo at night. He claims many are desperate for the FSA to succeed, "clamoring for freedom denied by their president," but concedes many others fear an "Islamic takeover" and sectarian "division and bloodshed." The latter of course, is self-evident, while the former is the repeated, unfounded mantra of the Western media used to cover up the latter. Pannell poses amongst staged settings, claiming a single burning tire equates to a barricade set up by the militants (see more on the use of burning tires as propaganda here and here). He concedes that militants are taking to the rooftops with sniper rifles in the districts they claim they control - begging one to wonder where else terrorist snipers have been, and how many "sniper" deaths have been mistakenly blamed on the government.

Covering Up FSA War Crimes

Pannell then attempts to cover up serious war crimes committed by the FSA militants he is traveling with, claiming that men the FSA arbitrarily rounded up while "seeking revenge" were "suspected Shabiha," harking back to Libya's NATO-backed terrorist death squads rounding up and killing Libya's black communities in orgies of sectarian genocide - which outlets like the BBC defended as simply rebels targeting "suspected African mercenaries." Pannell papers over what he just reported with the unqualified claim that there is "little justice" on either side. What became of the FSA's victims is not revealed.

Image: From BBC's Ian Pannell - young men "suspected" of being "Shabiha" are rounded up as the FSA "seeks revenge." BBC fails categorically to explain how NATO-backed terrorists can "liberate" a city that is admittedly pro-government - but it appears it will be done through terrorism, brutality, mass murder, and intimidation.

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http://news.daylife.com/photo/0cDu0hp62Ja9R?__site=daylife&q=Al-Qaeda

A man wearing a black shirt bearing an Al-Qaeda flag (L) speaks with a UN observer as monitors meet with rebels and civilians in the village of Azzara in the province of Homs on May 4, 2012. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the unrest in Syria has killed more than 11,000 people since an anti-regime uprising broke out in March last year.

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