http://www.infowars.com/video-syrian-rebels-try-to-shoot-down-commercial-airliner/
and....
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/27/good-terrorists-versus-bad-terrorists-in-syria/
By Ismail Salami
and...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/27/syrian-rebels-scramble-spoils-war
Video: Syrian Rebels Try to Shoot Down Commercial Airliner
Your tax dollars at work
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 28, 2012
Infowars.com
December 28, 2012
A shocking video shows Obama-backed Syrian rebels attempting to shoot down a civilian airliner over the Idlib province in another disturbing example of how taxpayer money is being used to support terrorists.
The footage shows members of the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) manning an anti-aircraft gun and debating whether or not they should target what is clearly a non-military plane.
“Keep following it, let it get closer,” says one of the men, giving orders to the militant in control of the weapon, adding, “Don’t shoot until I tell you.”
“This plane is for travel,” another remarks as it becomes clear the jet is a commercial airliner. “This plane is not military,” adds another.
After another rebel claims the plane could be military, another tells him, “No, it is civilian, look at how slow it is.”
The men then get orders via their walkie talkies from someone named ‘Sheikh Amhed’, who tells them, “Even if it is for travel (civilian), hit it!”
“Hit it,” yells another rebel, “Just aim straight and fire,” remarks another.
The men then start chanting “Allahu Akbar” and a shot is fired in the direction of the aircraft followed by another. Having missed, the men then rotate the anti-aircraft gun around to the right as the plane flies over Maasaran.
“Let’s hit the plane, Allah willing!,” comments one of the men.
It is not known whether the plane was actually hit, but the fact that rebels are targeting civilian airliners was already confirmed last week when a rebel commander told Reuters that, “Rebels fired warning shots at an airliner preparing to take off from Aleppo airport in the first direct attack on a civilian flight since the uprising in Syria began 21 months ago.”
The fact that US-backed rebels are targeting civilian airliners and endangering the lives of innocent people again illustrates how NATO powers are throwing their support behind terrorists who are openly committing war crimes and bragging about it.
Earlier this month, 29 different Syrian opposition groups pledged their allegiance to Al Nusra, an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group which, as the New York Times reported, “killed numerous American troops in Iraq.”
The Obama administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Syrian rebels, the majority of whomaren’t even Syrian, and has indicated that heavy weaponry and military support is on its way. On December 12,President Obama recognized the Syrian opposition as the “legitimate representative of the country’s people.”
The White House has supported the FSA militants in their bid to overthrow President Bashar Al-Assad despite the fact that Syrian rebels have been responsible for a plethora of atrocities, from terrorist attacks and massacres, to forcing people to become suicide bombers, to attacks on Christian churches and making children carry out grisly beheadings of unarmed prisoners.
A Syrian rebel recently quoted by McClatchy Newspapers was overheard to remark, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!” Other militants have appeared in You Tube videos speaking of their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House and impose Sharia law once the rebels are victorious across the region.
Rebels have also been caught on camera burning U.S. flags and chanting anti-American slogans.
A petition launched earlier this month asks the White House to cease all funding and support for Syrian rebels, noting that, “Funding terrorists is a crime under the National Defense Authorization Act.”
and....
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/12/27/good-terrorists-versus-bad-terrorists-in-syria/
Good Terrorists Versus Bad Terrorists in Syria
By Ismail Salami
Terrorism is terrorism and it cannot be defined otherwise unless the interests of one party tilt the scale in disfavor of another and the dichotomization of the terrorists in Syria into good and bad by the West casts doubt on its claim on democracy.
In a somber political tone, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out as “absolutely unacceptable” the West’s support for the terrorists in Syria in his exclusive interview with Russia Today.
Lavrov said the West has divided the terrorists into “bad” and “acceptable,” throwing its support behind the latter.
“It’s absolutely unacceptable, and if we follow this logic it might lead us to a very dangerous situation not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world, if our partners in the West would begin to qualify terrorists as bad terrorists and acceptable terrorists,” the Russian foreign minister said.
The dichotomization of such a grave issue by the West is almost nothing new. The delisting of MKO, a long-considered terrorists group, by Washington is in line with this process of redefining well-established concepts and terms by the West.
Paradoxically, the MKO has been supported by Washington even when it was on the terrorist list. They even received their training at the hands of the Bush administration.
In a enlightening article, Seymour Hersh showed that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained members of the Iranian Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MKO) at a secretive site in Nevada from 2005 to at least 2007. According to Hersh, MKO members “were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site up until President Obama took office.”
In a separate interview, a retired four-star general said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of MKO members in Nevada by an American involved in the program. He said that they got “the standard training in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months. They were kept in little pods.” He also was told, he said, that the men doing the training were from JSOC, which, by 2005, had become a major instrument in the Bush Administration’s global war on terror.
To the dismay and disappointment of many, US State Department decided in September to remove the MKO from the terror lists.
US State Department said its decision to delist the group was made because the group has not committed any terrorist acts for a decade and brashly whitewashed the fact that the group has been to all intents and purposes instrumental in carrying out nuclear assassinations in the last few years in Iran. Although the group has never officially assumed responsibility for the assassinations (which is quite natural), there is solid evidence suggesting that it has been complicit in these terrorist acts.
The terrorist group made unrelenting efforts for years to be removed from the terror list and enlisted a number of Republican and Democratic officials to lobby on its behalf. Instead of paying lobbying fees to them, “it offered honoraria ranging from $10,000-$50,000 per speech to excoriate the US government for its allegedly shabby treatment of the MEK. Among those who joined the group’s gravy train are former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, and former FBI director Louis Freeh. Many of them profess to have little interest in the money they have collected” (Richard Silverstein, The Guardian September 22, 20212).
MKO has
long been engaging in a series of sabotage and terrorist activities against the Islamic Republic in league with Israeli intelligence agencies.
long been engaging in a series of sabotage and terrorist activities against the Islamic Republic in league with Israeli intelligence agencies.
In January 2012, Benny Gantz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, told a parliamentary committee: “For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner.”
Just 24 hours after Israeli military chief warned of unnatural events for Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated in broad daylight. It soon transpired that it had been ajoint Mossad-MKO operation.
The MKO has reportedly assassinated over 12,000 Iranian citizens, seven American citizens, and tens of thousands of Iraqi nationals.
Anyhow, the dichotomization of ‘terrorists’ into good and bad is far uglier than any form of apartheid.
A comparatively similar story is being repeated in Syria. Washington has branded the Qatar-funded Al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organization. But why? They are fighting against the government of Bashar al-Assad together with other militants in Syria who are chiefly composed of foreign mercenaries. The former are considered terrorists simply because they to a large extent fly in the face of Washington’s policies in Syria. So, it is Washington or the US-led West which decides who is a terrorist and who is not.
Let us not forget that the notorious al Qaeda which is sowing seeds of blind extremism and religious sectarianism in the world was founded and financially supported in the seventies by Washington and CIA in an apparent bid to fight the Soviets. Robin Cook laments the creation of al Qaeda and says, “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia
This CIA-created Frankenstein’s monster has not changed but has grown up monstrously.
Truly known to be one of the most misinterpreted and misused words, terrorism is defined and refined by the West according to the context where it proves deleterious or beneficial to those who define the term.
and...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/27/syrian-rebels-scramble-spoils-war
Syrian rebels sidetracked by scramble for spoils of war
Looting, feuds and divided loyalties threaten to destroy unity of fighters as war enters new phase
Email
Syrians carry a desk out of a school in the Saif al-Dawla district of Aleppo. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
It wasn't the government that killed the Syrian rebel commander Abu Jameel. It was the fight for his loot. The motive for his murder lay in a great warehouse in Aleppo which his unit had captured a week before. The building had been full of rolled steel, which was seized by the fighters as spoils of war.
But squabbling developed over who would take the greater share of the loot and a feud developed between commanders. Threats and counter-threats ensued over the following days.
Abu Jameel survived one assassination attempt when his car was fired on. A few days later his enemies attacked again, and this time they were successful. His bullet-riddled body was found, handcuffed, in an alley in the town of al-Bab.
Captain Hussam, of the Aleppo military council, said: "If he had died fighting I would say it was fine, he was a rebel and a mujahid and this is what he had set out to do. But to be killed because of a feud over loot is a disaster for the revolution.
"It is extremely sad. There is not one government institution or warehouse left standing in Aleppo. Everything has been looted. Everything is gone."
Captured government vehicles and weapons have been crucial to the rebels since the start of the conflict, but according to Hussam and other commanders, and fighters interviewed by the Guardian over a fortnight in northern Syria, a new phase has been reached in the war. Looting has become a way of life.
"Spoils" have now become the main drive for many units as battalion commanders seek to increase their power.
The problem is particularly pronounced in Aleppo, according to Abu Ismael, a young lieutenant from a wealthy family, who ran a successful business before joining the fight against Bashar al-Assad.
Many of the battalions that entered the city in the summer of this year came from the countryside, he said. They were poor peasants who carried with them centuries-old grudges towards the wealthier Aleppans.
There was also a lingering feeling that the city – where businesses had been exploiting cheap peasant labour for several decades – had not risen up quickly enough against the Assads. "The rebels wanted to take revenge on the people of Aleppo because they felt that we had betrayed them, but they forgot that most of the people of Aleppo are merchants and traders and a merchant will pay money to get rid of his problem," Abu Ismael said. "Even as the rest of Syria was gripped by revolution, the Aleppans said, why should we destroy our business and waste our money?"
When the rebels entered the city and started looting the factories, a source of money dried up.
"In the first month and a half the rebels were really a united revolutionary group," Abu Ismael said. "But now they are different. There are those who are here only to loot and make money, and some still fight." Did Abu Ismael's unit loot? "Of course. How do you think we feed the men? Where do you think we get all our sugar, for example?"
In the chaotic economics of the war, everything has become a commodity. Abu Ismael's unit, for example, took a supply of diesel from a school compound, and every day his unit exchanges a few jerrycans of the precious liquid for bread.
Because Abu Ismael has a supply of food and fuel his battalion is more desirable than others in the sector. Commanders who are unable to feed their men tend to lose them; they desert and join other groups.
Bullets are equally important. When military installations and warehouses are looted the battalion that captures ammunition grows by cannibalising smaller, less well-equipped units that have no bullets to hand.
In a dark apartment in the Salahuddin neighbourhood of Aleppo we sat with a group of commanders who were discussing the formation of a new brigade that would bring their various battalions together. They soon turned to the topic of loot.
One of the commanders present had led an operation into the predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood of Ashrafiya in Aleppo, but according to several fighters who were there the action failed when the army counterattacked because the rebel support units that were supposed to reinforce the front instead turned their attention to looting.
"I want to know exactly what you took that day," the commander of a small unit told the leader of the assault. The commander opened a notebook to write, while another man held a flashlight above his head. "As long as one fights while the others are busy collecting loot we can't advance," he said. "The loot has to be divided equally."
The leader started to list the luxury cars and the weapons his units had found and taken, while the other commander wrote them down in the notebook. Some of the cars would be sold back to the owners – if they paid out a hefty ransom.
Outside sponsors
The war in Aleppo is not only funded by what can be appropriated by the various units, but also by the patronage that they can attract from sponsors outside Syria, a factor which has also contributed to the myriad forming and re-forming of units, all of which control individual fiefdoms in the city.
All of this has fuelled rivalries and ever-shifting allegiances, factors that have undermined the struggle to defeat the forces of the Syrian president.
Fighting units often exist only because of their sponsors. If a sponsor loses interest a battalion is dissolved and the men join another, better-funded battalion. Battalions are often named after historical Arab or Ottoman figures in order to help lure money from the Gulf kingdoms or from Turkey.
One Friday afternoon after prayers a group of the most senior commanders fighting in Aleppo, 32 in all, gathered in part of a sprawling former government compound, the building's once polished marble floors now covered with puddles of water, its walls blackened by soot. Sitting in low leather chairs around a large table, many of the men carried the scars of two years of fighting – missing eyes, lame arms, crippled legs.
The meeting was chaired by Abdulkader al-Saleh, a leader of the Tawheed brigade, one of the biggest and best equipped rebel battalions in Syria.
First on the agenda was the task of reintroducing the men to each other, as many had switched battalions since their last meeting in the endless game of musical chairs of the Syrian revolution.
A who's who of the revolution followed, each commander stating his name and his unit. Some battalions were huge, with hundreds of men, artillery pieces and tanks. Others consisted of fewer than 50 fighters.
"Haji, I thought you were with Halab al-Shaba'a brigade," Haji Marea said to one of the men. "No, we have reformed. We are a new battalion," the man said.
"Brothers, we have a grave situation ahead of us," interjected Abdul-Jabbar Akidi, a defected colonel who leads the military council of Aleppo. Formed to channel supplies to the rebels, the council was supposed to be the overarching command structure for the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo. Instead, it soon became one more faction among many competing for influence.
"The battle has stagnated here," he said. "There has been no real progress on the fronts and that has affected our sponsors, who haven't been sending us ammunition.
"Even the people are fed up with us. We were liberators, but now they denounce us and demonstrate against us. We have to unite and form an operations room for all the battalions."
Soon, however, the conversation took a familiar turn, moving on to complaints about units keeping equipment to themselves.
A short, clean-shaven commander in a leather jacket spoke up: "The problem is that some battalions have artillery and tanks and they are keeping them for themselves and not participating in the attack. Bring me the pieces that were captured from the base of the 46th brigade [a government unit] and I will take over the secret police buildings in Aleppo without having to send my men to die in front of government snipers."
The second item on the agenda concerned the formation of a revolutionary police force.
As the revolution in Aleppo stagnated and the rebel commanders settled in to rule their "liberated" neighbourhoods, each battalion had started forming its own revolutionary security service, or Amn al-Thawra, manning checkpoints and detaining people, which had led to a spike in kidnapping.
The commanders put forward proposals for how they could create a single disciplined security force.
One moustachioed former colonel in a brown suit began reading what sounded like a Ba'ath party manifesto: "I call for the formation of a secret bureau of revolutionary military security service," he said.
Many of the men in the room had been detained and tortured by Assad's security services and sank into their chairs as the former colonel spoke.
"We fought against the regime because of these secret security forces," said a man with a thick rural accent.
Another battalion commander with a soft voice and a neat blue turban began to speak. "I call for the formation of a small unit of our brothers, the religious students," he said. "Their job would be to advise the people before the need to use force."
He added: "They will be armed with their wisdom and religious teaching and it should be called the committee of ruling with virtue and the prevention of vice. It will be the first step in preparing the people for an Islamic society."
At this, a young fighter shouted from one end of the room: "The problem is not with the people. The problem is us! We have battalions sitting in liberated areas who man checkpoints and detain people. They say this person is a shabiha [a government militiaman] and take his car, or that man was a Ba'athist, take his house.
"They have become worse than the regime. Tell me why those men are in the city, in liberated areas, why are they not fighting at the frontline?"
As the room choked with the smoke of cigarettes, the commanders agreed to form one unified security force. Yet weeks later, there would be little evidence of that force.
Abandoned posts
There were many further stories of looting heard during the our time in Aleppo. A pharmacist who had volunteered as a medic in one of the rebel field hospitals explained why he was running short of penicillin.
The rebels had taken over the warehouse of a leading pharmaceutical company and then had resold the stock back to the owners, shipping all the drugs back into government-held territory, he claimed.
He added: "I went to the warehouse to tell them they had no right to the medicine and that it should be given to the people and not re-sold. They detained me and said they would break both my legs if I ever went back."
In Saif al-Dawla district a commander who was furnishing a new headquarters for his newly formed battalion walked into a school compound with a few of his men.
A group of civilians stood watching in the late afternoon as the men trawled through the school. Burned and torn pictures of Assad lay on the floor. Desks and chairs were upturned and broken, and plastic flowers and students' projects were strewn around.
The men ferried some of the tables, sofas and chairs outside the school and piled them up at the street corner. Computers and monitors followed.
A fighter registered the loot in a big notebook. "We are keeping it safe in a warehouse," he said.
Later in the week I saw the school's sofas and computers sitting comfortably in the commander's new apartment.
On the frontlines of the Ameriya neighbourhood, south of Aleppo, we met Abara and his men.
Abara is young and short, in his early 20s, with fair hair and few pimples scattered on his face. He had defected from the army a year earlier. We had first met three months earlier when he was leading his men through the alleyways of Salahuddin, and many of those fighters had been killed or maimed since then.
He was now sitting with the survivors on a cold concrete floor in an abandoned building a block away from government troops. Between the men was a jar of greasy-looking green olives, a bag of bread, a plate of olive oil and some thyme. "It's much worse now," Abara said of the war. "Now it's copper and wheat that commanders are after instead of liberating the city."
He added: "The problem when people stop fighting – I liberate an area, I need resources and ammunition, so I start looting government properties. When this has finished I turn to looting other properties and I become a thief."
The physical ground that, at the moment, lay between him and the government line consisted of a series of shattered buildings where snipers from both sides appeared to shoot at almost anything that moved.
"When the army attacked us last week the unit that was here abandoned their posts and withdrew," he said.
Now, he said, in order to regain the lost territory he would have to fight house to house. "Why should I, when the rest are looting?"
He added wearily: "One day when the war against Bashar is over, another war will start against the looters and thieves."
and....
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/12/2012122711238644206.html
UN envoy calls for interim Syria government | ||
Lakhdar Brahimi urges "real change" in Damascus and for transitional leaders with full power until elections are held.
Last Modified: 27 Dec 2012 14:03
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The UN envoy said that Syrians needed more than just a cosmetic change [Reuters]
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| International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has called for "real change" in war-torn Syria and the installation of a transitional government with full powers until elections can be held. The envoy unveiled his initiative in Damascus on Thursday as Russia, the most powerful ally of Syria's government, denied the existence of a joint peace plan with the United States, amid a flurry of year-end diplomatic activity on the crisis."Change should not be cosmetic; the Syrian people need and require real change, and everyone understands what that means," the UN-Arab League envoy said on the fifth day of his latest peace mission to Syria. "We need to form a government with all powers... which assumes power during a period of transition. That transition period will end with elections," Brahimi told reporters.
"The transition period should not lead to the collapse of the state and its institutions," Brahimi said, adding the initiative was incomplete. "We prefer... a project whose facilitation the parties have agreed upon, and, if they do not, the last solution is going to the (UN) Security Council which will make a binding resolution." Brahimi, who while in Damascus has held talks with Assad as well as with opposition groups tolerated by the regime, replaced former UN chief Kofi Annan after his dramatic resignation in August over what he said was the failure of major powers to back his own six-point peace plan. And a diplomat at the UN Security Council said on Wednesday the veteran Algerian troubleshooter had received no support from either side since arriving in Syria on Sunday. "Assad appears to have stonewalled Brahimi again, the UN Security Council is not even close to showing the envoy the kind of support he needs and the rebels will not now compromise," said the diplomat. Brahimi is to hold talks on Saturday with Moscow at the request of the envoy, Russia's foreign ministry said. Russia on Thursday hosted a Syrian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad, with its foreign ministry saying the results would be announced later in the day. 
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