http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/11/urgent-nato-preparing-psy-op-in-syria.html
URGENT: NATO Preparing Psy-Op in Syria
Internet connections & telecom reportedly failing across Syria, right as NATO has finished preparing their proxy "SNC" and readies for final push.
November 29, 2012 (LD) - In early summer, NATO had attempted to overwhelm Damascus and Aleppo with a torrent of psychological operations, communication disruptions, foreign terrorists crossing Syria's borders, and a devastating assassination of top Syrian officials in the heart of Damascus. The idea was to cause panic, division, mass defections and fold the Syrian state when in reality, it was more than able to fight on. Syria called the bluff and here it still stands.
With the Israel-Gaza charade concluded, it was reported that NATO would pivot back toward Syria - and it has. It has handpicked a new proxy-regime to act as the face of the terrorists battling Syrian civilians and soldiers alike within the country, while it has been conducting a concerted and refocused propaganda campaign to paint the Syrian government as once again, "imminently about to fall."
Reports are now trickling in that communications are failing across the country and another attempt at a Libyan-style "Mermaid Dawn" is being made by NATO and its terrorist proxies inside Syria. The hope is, that after several months more of terrorism, threats, sanctions, and pressure put on the border by both Israel on the Golan Heights, and Turkey along Syria's north, that this time the trick might work.
If operations are not already in progress, they will be soon, and one must recall historical instances when this tactic has been used before so as to recognize it when it is tried again. Reposted below, is Thierry Meyssan's June 2012 warning regarding NATO psychological operations - and the information is as relevant now as ever. Inside Syria, unity and resilience is more important now than ever.
November 29, 2012 (LD) - In early summer, NATO had attempted to overwhelm Damascus and Aleppo with a torrent of psychological operations, communication disruptions, foreign terrorists crossing Syria's borders, and a devastating assassination of top Syrian officials in the heart of Damascus. The idea was to cause panic, division, mass defections and fold the Syrian state when in reality, it was more than able to fight on. Syria called the bluff and here it still stands.
With the Israel-Gaza charade concluded, it was reported that NATO would pivot back toward Syria - and it has. It has handpicked a new proxy-regime to act as the face of the terrorists battling Syrian civilians and soldiers alike within the country, while it has been conducting a concerted and refocused propaganda campaign to paint the Syrian government as once again, "imminently about to fall."
Reports are now trickling in that communications are failing across the country and another attempt at a Libyan-style "Mermaid Dawn" is being made by NATO and its terrorist proxies inside Syria. The hope is, that after several months more of terrorism, threats, sanctions, and pressure put on the border by both Israel on the Golan Heights, and Turkey along Syria's north, that this time the trick might work.
If operations are not already in progress, they will be soon, and one must recall historical instances when this tactic has been used before so as to recognize it when it is tried again. Reposted below, is Thierry Meyssan's June 2012 warning regarding NATO psychological operations - and the information is as relevant now as ever. Inside Syria, unity and resilience is more important now than ever.
...
Thierry Meyssan
voltairenet.org
June 12, 2012
In a few days, perhaps as early as Friday, June 15, at noon, the Syrians wanting to watch their national TV stations will see them replaced on their screens by TV programs created by the CIA. Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian Government, people demonstrating, ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President Al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.
This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the US deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat. NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization.
The Arab League has officially asked the satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting Syrian media, either public or private (Syria TV, Al-Ekbariya, Ad-Dounia, Cham TV, etc.) A precedent already exists because the Arab League had managed to censure Libyan TV in order to keep the leaders of the Jamahiriya from communicating with their people. There is no Hertz network in Syria, where TV works exclusively with satellites. The cut, however, will not leave the screens black.
Actually, this public decision is only the tip of the iceberg. According to our information several international meetings were organized during the past week to coordinate the disinformation campaign. The first two were technical meetings, held in Doha (Qatar); the third was a political meeting and took place in Riyad (Saudi Arabia).
The first meeting assembled PSYOP officers, embedded in the satellite TV channels of Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Fox, France 24, Future TV and MTV. It is known that since 1998, the officers of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit (PSYOP) have been incorporated in CNN. Since then this practice has been extended by NATO to other strategic media as well.They fabricated false information in advance, on the basis of a “story-telling” script devised by Ben Rhodes’s team at the White House. A procedure of reciprocal validation was installed, with each media quoting the lies of the other media to render them plausible for TV spectators. The participants also decided not only to requisition the TV channels of the CIA for Syria and Lebanon (Barada, Future TV, MTV, Orient News, Syria Chaab, Syria Alghad) but also about 40 religious Wahhabi TV channels to call for confessional massacres to the cry of “Christians to Beyrouth, Alawites into the grave!.”
The second meeting was held for engineers and technicians to fabricate fictitious images, mixing one part in an outdoor studio, the other part with computer generated images. During the past weeks, studios in Saudi Arabia have been set up to build replicas of the two presidential palaces in Syria and the main squares of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Studios of this type already exist in Doha (Qatar), but they are not sufficient.
The third meeting was held by General James B. Smith, the US ambassador, a representative of the UK, prince Bandar Bin Sultan (whom former U.S. president George Bush named his adopted son so that the U.S. press called him “Bandar Bush”). In this meeting the media actions were coordinated with those of the Free "Syrian" Army, in which prince Bandar’s mercenaries play a decisive role.
The operation had been in the making for several months, but the U.S. National Security Council decided to accelerate the action after the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, notified the White House that he would oppose by all means, even by force, any illegal NATO military intervention in Syria.
The operation has a double intent: the first is to spread false information, the second aims at censuring all possible responses.
The hampering of TV satellites for military purposes is not new. Under pressure from Israel, the USA and the EU blocked Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian TV channels, one after the other. However, no satellite channels from other parts of the world were censured.
The broadcast of false news is also not new, but four significant steps have been taken in the art of propaganda during the last decade.
• In 1994, a pop music station named “Free Radio of the Thousand Hills” (RTML) gave the signal for genocide in Rwanda with the cry, “Kill the cockroaches!”
• In 2001, NATO used the media to impose an interpretation of the 9/11 attacks and to justify its own aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. At that time already, it was Ben Rhodes who had been commissioned by the Bush administration to concoct the Kean/Hamilton Commission report on the attacks. • In 2002, the CIA used five TV channels (Televen, Globovision, ValeTV and CMT) to make the public in Venezuela believe that phantom demonstrators had captured the elected president, Hugo Chávez, forcing him to resign. In reality he was the victim of a military coup d’etat.
• In 2011, France 24 served as information ministry for the Libyan CNT, according to a signed contract. During the battle of Tripoli, NATO produced fake studio films, then transmitted them via Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, showing phantom images of Libyan rebels on the central square of the capital city, while in reality they were still far away. As a consequence, the inhabitants of Tripoli were persuaded that the war was lost and gave up all resistance.
Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.
This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid “to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas” (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and “all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression”. By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.
Nowadays the media do not only support a war, they produce it themselves.
This procedure violates the principles of International Law, first of all Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the fact of receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Above all, the procedure violates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, adopted after the end of World War II, to prevent further wars. Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid “to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas” (like cutting off Syrian TV channels) and “all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression”. By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes, because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.
and...
http://freebeacon.com/susan-rices-enrichment-program/
Susan Rice’s Enrichment Program
U.N. ambassador has investments in companies doing business with Iran, disclosure forms show
BY:
The portfolio of embattled United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice includes investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in several energy companies known for doing business with Iran,according to financial disclosure forms.
Rice, a possible nominee to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she steps down, has come under criticism for promulgating erroneous information about the September 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans.
Rice has the highest net worth of executive branch members, with a fortune estimated between $24 to $44 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A Free Beacon analysis of Rice’s portfolio shows thousands of dollars invested in at least three separate companies cited by lawmakers on Capitol Hill for doing business in Iran’s oil and gas sector.
The revelation of these investments could pose a problem for Rice if she is tapped by President Barack Obama to replace Clinton. Among the responsibilities of the next secretary of state will be a showdown with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program.
“That Susan Rice invested in companies doing business in Iran shows either the Obama administration’s lack of seriousness regarding Iran or Rice’s own immorality,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq. “Either way, her actions undercut her ability to demand our allies unity on Iran.”
The companies in question appear to have conducted business with Tehran well after Western governments began to urge divestment from the rogue nation, which has continued to enrich uranium near levels needed to build a nuclear bomb.
Financial disclosures reveal that Rice has had $50,001-$100,000 in Royal Dutch Shell, a longtime purchaser of Iranian crude oil.
Royal Dutch Shell currently owes Iran nearly $1 billion in back payments for crude oil that it purchased before Western economic sanctions crippled Tehran’s ability to process oil payments, Reuters reported.
“A debt of that size would equate to roughly four large tanker loads of Iranian crude or about 8 million barrels,” according to the report.
Rice has additional investments in Norsk Hydro ASA, a Norwegian aluminum firm, and BHP Billiton PLC, an Australian-based natural resources company, financial disclosure show.
Norway’s Norsk Hydro was awarded in 2006 a $107 million exploration and development contract for Iran’s Khorramabad oil block, according to the Wall Street Journal. Rice’s portfolio includes an investment of up to $15,000 in the company.
Norsk acknowledged at the time that it was working in Iran against the wishes of the U.S. government.
America is “not happy that we’re there,” Norsk Hydro spokeswoman Kama Holte Strand told the Journal at the time. Holte admitted that the company was working with Tehran because it is “profitable.”
Rice has up to $50,000 invested with another Iranian partner, BHP Billiton, which was probed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2010 for its dealings with Cuba and Iran, according to reports.
The company, which had leased office space in Tehran, admitted to making more than $360 million from the Iranians, according to The Australian.
BHP Billiton sought to build a natural gas pipeline between 2002 and 2005 in conjunction with the National Iranian Oil Company, according the report. The company’s subsidiaries additionally “sold alumina, coking coal, manganese, and copper to state-owned Iranian companies.”
The House of Representatives passed a bill in 2007 that took aim at these companies and other that had done business with Iran. The bill enabled state and local governments to divest from these companies due to their dealings with Iran.
Then-senator Obama proposed and supported a similar bill at the time.
It is unclear how White House press secretary Jay Carney will respond to the latest revelations about Rice. Previous questions from the media about Rice’s investment in the company building the controversial Keystone XL pipeline were dismissed by Carney as information from “Republican opposition researchers.”
and.....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/29/syria-blocks-internet
Syria shuts off internet access across the country
Shutting down of communications seen as bid to stymie rebel moves as militias attempt assault on the regime's power base
Middle East live blog: all the latest developments
Middle East live blog: all the latest developments
Syrian officials shut down nationwide internet access on Thursday and closed Damascus airport as rebels mounted offensives nearby and tried to advance on the capital from four directions. Phone networks were also crippled in much of the country, causing fear and confusion on both sides and fuelling claims that a new rebel push was gaining momentum.
Syria's information minister blamed "terrorists" for the outage, but the communications shutdown was seen as an attempt to stymie rebel moves as militias try to co-ordinate an assault on Damascus. It was also thought to be aimed at thwarting any plans for advances in other towns and cities.
Opposition groups have also been advancing in northern Syria, particularly near the second city, Aleppo, where the downing of two regime aircraft with surface to air missiles this week has given impetus to a rebel campaign that had become a series of attritional battles.
While officials have frequently shut down internet and mobile phone access to opposition-held areas since the uprising began in March 2011, sometimes for weeks at a time, they have never before cut web and voice communications nationwide.
Soon after noon on Thursday, all 84 of Syria's ISP address blocks were unreachable, web specialists Renesys said. Five ISP addresses did continue to function. Renesys analysts said they were used to deliver malware to anti-regime activists earlier this year, a fact that would appear to link the addresses to the government.
Landline phones began to slowly come back on line later in the day.
Throughout 20 months of insurrection, Damascus has remained a regime stronghold, with loyalist army divisions able to rout a rebel offensive in July and mount large-scale reprisals in rebel areas nearby.
Rebels have long regarded the capital as the most difficult cog in the formidable state machine they have been trying to dismantle as the early days of street protests morphed into the uncompromising civil war now ravaging the country. As night fell on Thursday, regime rocket fire reverberated from the city centre and there were sustained heavy clashes near the international airport. Two airlines, Egypt Air and the Dubai-based Emirates, said they had suspended inbound flights. Two more airlines said they were likely to follow suit. The ground radar at the airport had been turned off by early evening.
Rebel groups said fighting near the airport was the most intensive since the uprising began.
The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella group of militias that has mostly led the fight against regime forces, confirmed it had launched a big push in Damascus. Regime forces were also heavily deployed and appeared to be digging in for a fierce defence of the city.
While apparently besieged, the city does not appear to be at risk of falling soon – and spelling the end of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and the regime he inherited from his father, Hafez al-Assad, who laid the foundations of the ruthless police state close to 40 years ago.
Syrian officials have persistently labelled the opposition as foreign-backed terrorists. Bashar al-Assad has denied the groups now fighting him are Syrian and insists rebel groups want to replace his secular regime with an Islamic state that will widely persecute minority communities.
Rebel groups continue to rail against the regime's claims, insisting their campaign is nationalistic and aimed solely at removing a vengeful regime.
In Syria's north, the opposition is being led by the rural poor – a group almost exclusively drawn from the country's Sunni majority, which is estimated to account for at least 65% of the population.
However, since the summer, the battle in northern and eastern Syria has steadily been joined by jihadist groups, who are now playing prominent roles in most clashes with regime forces, from Aleppo to Idlib and Deir el-Zour near the eastern desert.
Chief among the groups is Jabhat al-Nusra, a mainly Syrian network of militants, many of whom have fought in Iraq. Foreign fighters are also joining the fray.
While much smaller in number than regular Free Syria Army units, which are comprised of defectors and citizens, the influence of the jihadists is being increasingly felt even in Damascus, where car bombs and suicide attacks have hit many regime targets.
US Considers Directly Arming Syrian Rebels
Post-Election, Obama More Willing to Intervene
by Jason Ditz, November 28, 2012
In July, Syrian rebel lobbyists reported that the Obama Administration had told themthey would not be able to intervene in a serious way until after the November election. The vote’s over and now the meddling can begin in earnest.
That’s the message from US officials tonight, who say the president is now considering several options for deeper intervention into the ever worsening civil war, including the possibility of directly arming certain rebel factions.
Up until now the US has just been playing the role of facilitator, with the CIA smuggling other nations’ arms into Syria for them throughvarious intermediaries. Officials say no decision has been made yet on whether or not to move directly into arms supplying.
If the decision is made, it will make the question of which factions to arm all the more difficult, as the US at present maintains at least a level of deniability in its current smuggling. With various groups vying to be the Western-friendly “umbrella,” and myriad secular and Islamist factions on the ground, it will be an uphill battle for the US to convince the world it isn’t arming terrorists.
and Libya is basically the Wild West without a nominal sheriff ..... just any number of gunslingers..... http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/world/africa/benghazi-violence-beyond-control-of-militias.html
BENGHAZI, Libya — The killing was not a shock here, in the city where Libyans started their quest to shake off dictatorship and now struggle, nearly two years later, to douse the simmering violence that is a legacy of the revolt.
One evening last week, a car screeched down a residential street. Three men stepped out and with startling ease gunned down Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi, the man whose job it was to ensure this city’s security.
Mr. Drissi, who had been on the job since October, was among roughly three dozen public servants killed over the last year and a half, including army officers, security agents, officials from the deposed government and the United States ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. In all the cases, no one has been convicted, and in many, no one has even been questioned. That is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed more than a year ago, Benghazi has in many ways regained its balance, as residents build long-delayed additions to their homes and policemen direct traffic on some streets. But Mr. Drissi’s killing made it hard to ignore a darker rhythm — one that revolves around killing with impunity. The government is still weaker than the country’s militias, and neither is willing, or able to act.
“It is impossible for members of a brigade to arrest another,” said Wanis al-Sharif, the top Interior Ministry official in eastern Libya. “And it would be impossible that I give the order to arrest someone in a militia. Impossible.”
The violence was thrown into sharp relief after the September attack on the United States intelligence and diplomatic villas. Libyan and American officials accused militants associated with Libya’s ubiquitous militias, and specifically, members of Ansar al-Shariah.
“The killing of the ambassador brought back the true reality of this insecure state,” said Ali Tarhouni, a former Libyan finance minister who leads a new political party. “It was a major setback, to this city and its psyche.”
Justice itself is a dangerous notion here and throughout Libya, where a feeble government lacks the power to protect citizens or to confront criminal suspects. It barely has the means to arm its police force, let alone rein in or integrate the militias or confront former rebel fighters suspected of killings.
“Some had to do with personal grudges,” said Judge Jamal Bennor, who serves as Benghazi’s justice coordinator. But most were like the killing of Mr. Drissi. “This was a political assassination,” he said.
Adding to the feeling of lawlessness are the revelations that foreign intelligence services, like the C.I.A., are active around the country without answering to anyone, people here said. Every day, an American drone circles Benghazi, unsettling and annoying residents. Police officers share Kalashnikovs. The courts are toothless. Libyan and American investigators, faced with Benghazi’s insecurity, are forced to interview witnesses hundreds of miles away, in the capital, Tripoli.
And so the government is forced to reckon with the militias, who by virtue of their abundant weapons hold the city’s real power. Men like Wissam bin Hamid, 35, who before the revolution owned an automobile workshop, is now the leader of an umbrella group of former rebel fighters. Some groups, like Mr. Hamid’s, operate with the government’s blessing, while others are called rogue. The distinctions often seem arbitrary, but either way, the militias are effectively a law unto themselves.
* * *
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http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/11/military-afghanistan-troops-immunity-dunford-112812w/
Immunity at issue for troops in Afghanistan
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Nov 28, 2012 14:54:12 EST
Posted : Wednesday Nov 28, 2012 14:54:12 EST
The issue of legal immunity for deployed U.S. troops in Iraq was the ultimate deal breaker that ended talks last year about a continued U.S. troop presence there.
Now the same issue is cropping up in Afghanistan.
As U.S. officials begin negotiations with the Afghan government about what a post-2014 mission for U.S. troops might look like, a key question will be whether the Afghan government will grant broad legal protections for U.S. troops and agree not to arrest them for alleged crimes and try them in the fledgling Afghan judicial system.
Another key question is whether the U.S will maintain the same hard line as it did with Iraq — no immunity, no deal, no troops. A Pentagon spokesman declined to say Tuesday whether that will be a deal-breaker in the current talks with the Afghan government as it was in 2011 when the U.S. was trying to negotiate a status of forces agreement with Iraq.
“I think there’s likelihood that protections for U.S. personnel are obviously part of any [Status of Forces Agreement] discussion, so I would expect that to be on the agenda,” Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters. “But we’re not to the point yet where any decisions have been reached by either side on specific legal provisions in an agreement,”
In Iraq, many military and civilian U.S. officials wanted to keep a small contingent of American troops there beyond the stated withdrawal date of December 2011. But those talks broke down after it became clear that the Iraqi parliament was refusing to grant the same legal immunities that U.S. troops have in virtually every other country around the world.
The U.S relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been rocky over the past several years and the political environment in Kabul is volatile, making it unclear how the issue will play out over the next two years. U.S. officials say the current combat mission will conclude at the end of 2014.
Without legal protections, the Afghans could arrest and detain U.S. troops for alleged crimes. And in a politically charged environment, troops conducting routine operations and exercising the right of self-protection might be accused as violating Afghan laws.
Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the Marine officer who will assume command of the Afghanistan war next year, told Congress that he hopes to complete the negotiations by May 2013, more than a year before the current combat mission is due to end.
and....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/28/an-ending-in-afghanistan-u-s-closes-forward-operating-base-tillman/
Just a few short miles from the Pakistani border, on a plateau above the Afghan village of Lawara, sits a small U.S. fire base named after army ranger Pat Tillman. Now, the United States is shutting down the base, according to a report in The Hill.
The former NFL superstar’s life and death have, in a way, followed the twists and turns of America’s war in Afghanistan. Tillman’s decision to leave his NFL career in 2002 to enlist and fight in Afghanistan made him a symbol of America’s sense of duty and national purpose after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His shocking 2004 death in a firefight that wasonly later revealed to be friendly fire, a fact possibly covered up by senior military figures, symbolized for many Americans, at a time when the war in Iraq was rapidly disintegrating, the tragedy and perhaps the folly of those wars. In 2006, the army named Forward Operating Base Tillman in his memory.
Now, once more, Tillman’s fate seems to mirror that of the war in which he served and died, as the U.S. army quietly, and to little fanfare or attention, withdraws from Forward Operating Base Tillman, part of the larger drawdown from a war that seems to get far less public attention in the United States than it once did.
The Hill’s Carlo Munoz reports from Afghanistan:
The closure marks the beginning of the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which was set in motion by President Obama.Army units based out of Forward Operating Base Orgun-E, near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, razed the firebase that bore Tillman’s name over Thanksgiving, according to service officials.“It’s a soccer field … kids are already playing on it,” according to one Army officer, referring to the location where the base stood.
This 2006 Sports Illustrated profile of Pat Tillman and his family captures everything that made his story so captivating for Americans in 2002 when he enlisted and so tragic when he died. It’s worth re-reading to recall the emotional highs and lows that the war in Afghanistan evoked in the United States, and as a contrast to the relative shrug it seems to elicit today.
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