SovietFriends posted:

Crow posted:

Lol i cannot believe we momentarily saw some cracks in the ideological edifice, a malfunction in the hierarchical media organs that never produce war propaganda directed at Middle Eastern nations. LOl why would private security contractors with deep ties to imperial military forces and semi-feudal gulf monarchies attempt to continue the development of the terrorist-mercenary model of insurgency in accordance with profit and foreign policy objectives? LoL how does the world work? How do i get out of my house

its just pretty weird phil and dave would send each other emails about it

From: Aaron Colvin
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 6:44 AM
To: scott stewart; Fred Burton
Subject: Insight- Sharif Mobley



Heard from a very reliable source close to the folks who debriefed Mobely
that the dude's a] bat shit crazy; and b] he's going to die here. USG is
convinced that they're going to kill him. Also, he was not part of AQAP.
Security simply picked him up on suspicions and his shady affiliations.
Apparently, when they debriefed him he was singing Lionel Richie and
cracking odd jokes the whole time, either aware or simply unaware that
they're either going to throw him off a roof or
they'll put him face down with an AK round to the back of the head.

Running to another meeting. Call me if you need anything.

Uh huh!! Like i'm gonna believe "Aaron" would email "Fred". Those aren't even elite names!! Lol They mentioned Lionel Richie. I'm smart

SovietFriends posted:

also they could probably just invade syria and nobody would care like

they have loads of completely legitimate reasons within ideological hegemony already

lol, wow, I wonder why didn't they just invade Libya instead! Maybe phil didnt send the email. Well, this is pretty good analysis, I'll check back in later after going through some good 9gag.s

SovietFriends posted:

like literally that's the path to lonely anarchist freakouts up stairs labelled: boring, useless, hangaround

But what if it is these shadowy events, triggered or decided by a small group of people, which does actually change the course of things in a country.

It kinda leaves the sober, broad analytic people with their thumb up their ass a bit.

SovietFriends posted:

dont be a sausage of course your aware that reading most mainstream news will give you a view of events even if their steeped in ideological twists and turns

their is nothing wrong with saying that if you can find someone more local you will find something better but if you try to say their are magically better consistent sources then well resourced news organisations whos role in capitalism is to both provide information as well as present it in a particular way do not play a role which first and foremost is configured but justifying events that actually happened then your analysis will turn into spirals of confused excitement as the secret constellations of the stars refuse to show themselves for the rest of your life

well, thanks, but I'm not sure you understand the editorial process at American newspapers. the reporters cover what the editor wants them to cover, and will print what the American public will buy in the context of a particular narrative which careerists propagate and media campaigns shape. psyop propaganda has a long and illustrious role in the American media establishment. and the ideological connections aren't just affinitive in the sense of the same worldview or what have you (if you know anyone in the newspaper business, you know how they recruit from the same alumni circles, for example), but also in the sense of material interests and concerns. a reporter with expertise in the region is more often than not going to avoid running afoul of potential employers when their own position is precarious (not to mention the future career options in the print industry are in grave doubt). many editors have long-standing relations with institutions of the security apparatus, not to mention the board of directors is frequently an incestuous mix of military contractors, investors in large scale petroleum operations abroad, and bureaucratic mercenaries stuck in a constantly revolving door between government agencies and 'private consultancy' and murky enterprises.

There was a good article by Mark Ames about the Ossetian war debacle called 'How to Screw Up a War Story: The New York Times at Work':

I first started to notice something wrong with the Western coverage shortly after I arrived in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, in Russia proper. The few Western correspondents in Ossetia were gathered around a table at the Vladikavkaz Hotel, gorging on food and beer after a long, miserable tour into South Ossetia’s ruins. The A-list Western correspondents were reporting from the Georgian side of the conflict. They all stayed in Georgia’s capital, Tblisi, in one of that city’s two Marriotts or in the Sheraton Hotel, with its fantastic amenities, food and wine–leaving the squalid, Russian/Ossetian side of the war zone to be covered by the second-stringers or just plain stringers.

That’s when our Kremlin minder, Sasha, appeared looking harassed and depressed. He asked us if he could join us for a few minutes. The correspondents grudgingly agreed.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, so I have to ask you guys honestly and openly,” Sasha said. “Look, I arranged to take everyone down to Tskhinvali. I showed you all of the destruction that the Georgian forces caused to the city. I didn’t try to tell you what to think, because first it would be counterproductive, and secondly, why would I need to? It’s so obvious what happened. And yet I get back here and now I’m seeing the stories you’re filing. It’s all about the poor Georgian victims, or that imperialist Russia is invading poor Georgia. You saw it yourselves! You saw what the Georgians did.” He slouched forward over the table. “You’re going to write what you’re going to write no matter what I show you. So what’s the point? Maybe I should give up.”

Under normal circumstances, this would be a classic Russian guilt trip. But it was clear even to us, even though we weren’t positively disposed to a Russian handler, that Sasha’s frustration was real. It was as if the Kremlin was so excited that for once in Putin’s term, the Russians lucked into being on the good guys’ side of a major news story, and it made no sense that the “free Western media” (which the Kremlin takes much more seriously than its own cowed media) wouldn’t see the truth, that they’d do the Russian thing and twist reality into propaganda. What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?

That’s when Matt Siegel, a young Moscow expat who was hired a week earlier by the New York Times to serve as its stringer-correspondent covering the Russian/Ossetian side of the war, spoke up. Siegel complained to Sasha that the real problem was the way Sasha was trying to manage the Western reporters. Siegel charged that Sasha didn’t give us greater access to ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia; his Times editor wanted a story on crimes committed against ethnic Georgians, which seemed to be what all Western editors wanted. (Georgian grievances were in big demand from the Western media’s home offices. My first day in North Ossetia, I joined Tom Parfitt of the Guardian and Andrew Osborn of the Wall Street Journal, driving around ethnic Georgian villages on the Russian side of the border, chasing false rumors that we’d heard from another Western correspondent that the Georgian inhabitants there had been attacked and cleansed. All we managed to do by going into those villages was to frighten the poor villagers. Later that day, Osborn and I went to makeshift Ossetian refugee centers to check out their claims of tens of thousands of refugees; their claims checked out.)

“We don’t want to be shown the same Tskhinvali ruins again and again,” Siegel complained. “We’ve already seen them, you know? You’re not giving us anything new.”

A Brit correspondent from ITN–who, like all the TV correspondents, wore a bulletproof vest long after even their own cameramen stopped wearing them–suddenly perked up from his beer: “It’s a cover-up!” he shouted. “You’re trying to cover it up!”

The real problem was this: the editors at their desks in the home countries weren’t interested in Ossetian suffering; they wanted to exaggerate the Georgian suffering and vilify the Russians. To the second-stringers at that table, being shown the awful truth of Georgian culpability was equivalent to being handed a bunch of losing lottery tickets–because Georgian culpability and Ossetian grievances simply weren’t in demand back in New York and Washington. There was a real sense of professional anger and desperation at the table, and Sasha sensed it.

the "newspaper of record," the New York Times, not only bungled the story badly, but basically wrote a half-assed retraction three months after the fact, when the dust of war had settled and their position was stomped into the concrete. this is your 'reputability,' and it's quite amazing to hear of Marxists so fond of material analysis reject things like Infowars out of hand, without any sort of actual reasoning beyond "Well, they're obviously crazy because they believe in conspiracies." To me, well that doesn't hash out: either Infowars is some sort of COINTELPRO outfit deliberately pumping out misinformation, or there are some serious people on staff that sometimes get it partially right. What gets lost here, is any sort of theory of conspiracies, of the proliferation of their theories, of the account of *real* conspiracy. your solution is to cling desperately to the same sort of fantasy of social currency, as if that determines journalistic integrity.

so what happens, then, is you automatically damn sources of which you are ignorant, without any sort of analysis or investigation. which is fine, but here's the problem: you either have to shit or get off the pot. Post something about the situation in Syria. Contradict the ambiguous evidence presented here (which I tried to flesh out for further discussion, but which instead kicked off some half-assed memes and histrionics about paranoia disease plaguing us all). but, please, save the reputability for the Funny Pages

Edited by Crow (Jan. 30, 2013 22:03:06)

SovietFriends posted:

its not a simple question at all its something that requires careful thought and careful work based on the empirical situation of what you are working with to create the most coherent picture possible based on the best possible information

also i am appealing to a sense that understanding the workings of imperialism is far more complex then thinking you have clinched it by finding a maybe leak from a maybe organisation who are maybe involved

even if the piece gets proven correct its one tiny part of a far larger puzzle which actually explains how imperialism works in that all its revealing is the bureaucratic mechanisms of how legitimization of imperialist conflicts is actioned with the actual contexts for action coming out of the context surrounding it which is built from a look at the systemic goals of imperialism which are best seen in the way they construct ideology as well as an understanding of the contradictions they are currently under

its literally all a discussion on knowledge production i am making ?

where is the idea that i have said knowledge is an ideal? because i tried to give a materialist basis to the idea that capitalist media has a role in producing coherent narratives when is undoubtly does because shockingly it does preserve a role in the system of capitalism which is not based on lies just based on narrative construction and therefore does actually need to look at events?

furthermore this position is not lazy its something built on working the movement for a fair bit of time and realizing that constant appeals to things like wikileaks or claptrap like infowars produce one upmanship style leftists where no matter the theory its assumed that the world works thorough shadowy cables which no matter what theory is built around it often leads to comrades who fail to be open to constructing systemic narratives outside of theory because they have no trust in seeing ideological constructs as reflections of anything

yes believing that infowars has all the answers is a conspiracy theory and dumb. but no one's doing that? what were questioning is your idea of "legitimate" sources. you're definition of legitimate is approaching truth, i.e. being mainstream and having accountability, access to peer review, being generally understood as "legitimate".

we're disputing that truth is a neutral ground, and that under capitalism legitimacy means nothing more than serviceable to capitalism. the only truth to be found is understand what function different information sources play and how this fits into a general understanding of the function of world capitalism. therefore, i would say infowars is just as legitimate (maybe more legitimate) than CNN or the NYTimes on an issue like Syria.

you also have a common left attitude of dismissal towards wikileaks and the internet age of information, like "oh yeah we already knew that" or "it doesnt have a systematic critique". to that i say we have already seen the effect wikileaks has had on reshaping the world and how far the US has gone to shut it down. information is an extremely powerful tool, especially for those who do not have access to a systematic understanding of society in the absence of a choerent communist party that can explain it.

babyhueypnewton posted:

i do that too, sometimes i just gotta leave my computer and end the discussion. do what you please, we've already started something here which is far better than what the op created. it was a dialectical thread growth.

i am in UK so its late here etc plus i just dont like being on computer for more then an hour if its quick or i end up just starting at computer and then its bed its awful

in that light will deffo try to catch up tomorrow though i hate the internets cut and run atmosphere and wont join in with all that

The head of Syria's main foreign-based opposition coalition, Mouaz Al-Khatib, said on Wednesday he was ready to hold talks with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad outside Syria if authorities released tens of thousands of detainees.

Syrian officials said this week that political opposition figures could return to Damascus for "national dialogue" and that any charges against them would be dropped.

The Syrian National Council, which was the most internationally recognized external opposition group prior to the formation of the coalition, slammed the remarks.

“The Syrian National Council confirms that statements do not reflect the Syrian National Coalition's stance, and contradicts the coalition's basic structure and the Doha agreement that created the coalition,” a statement released by the group on Facebook said.

The Syrian National Council is a major member of the external coalition.

That followed a speech Assad gave three weeks ago in which he called for reconciliation talks, but said there would be no dialogue with opponents he called "terrorists".

Assad has been trying to crush a 22-month-old uprising which began in March 2011 with mainly peaceful political protests but has escalated into a civil war in which 60,000 people have died.

"I am prepared to sit down directly with representatives of the Syrian regime in Cairo, Tunis or Istanbul," Alkhatib said in a statement on his Facebook page.

He set out two conditions of his own: the release of what he said was 160,000 detainees held in Syrian prisons and intelligence facilities, and instructions to Syrian embassies to issue new passports to Syrians whose documents had expired.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/assad-we-regained-upper-hand

Assad asserts that “what the Syrian army achieved in the last few weeks will come to light soon.” He shares some details, which can be taken as an indicator of “a real change of the situation on the ground. For example, there are 15,000 citizens who returned voluntarily to Homs. The Syrian people are fed up already with all these deviants that destroyed their streets, homes, and commercial shops.”

Assad sees that “closing the Syrian borders to the weapons and smugglers could resolve the issue in two weeks, since the sources of money and arms will be destroyed.”

He told his visitors that “the externally-funded armed groups received strong blows recently. This development intersects with an international move, most prominently the inclusion of al-Nusra Front on the terrorism list, which will be followed by further measures that will lead to wiping out this al-Qaeda branch altogether.”

Assad believes that the US is not ready for a solution in the time being. He believes Russia will continue to support him. “It is protecting itself, not the Syrian regime,” he explained, stressing that “we will not budge on the articles of the Geneva agreement.”

He stressed that Syria will continue to cooperate with the Arab-International envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, although “the latter seemed in his latest visit to Damascus to be somehow influenced by the media campaign against Syria.”

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/01/syrian-regime-regains-upper-hand.html

In the past few weeks, Assad’s optimism in front of his visitors was corroborated by several international and regional factors, notably:

• There is genuine U.S. concern about Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadists, which harms the “Western-approved” opposition. In addition, there is awareness that the Syrian army, which has suffered few defections in two years, is no longer likely to disintegrate. The same applies to the Syrian diplomatic corps, which has surprised Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Damascus. He tried very hard to make a breakthrough in the Syrian political and security establishment. Starting in the second month of the Syrian crisis, he tried to persuade Alawite officers and political figures to defect. A few days ago, he bitterly said to one of his guests, “I do not know how Assad would leave. He may never leave. He does not want to leave.” The same thing is being said in Western circles, including at the French Foreign Ministry.
  
  The jihadist movements are no joke. “The magic has turned on the magician,” said a senior Syrian official. The Americans, and some Europeans, have been surprised by the effect of allowing European jihadists to enter Syria. From the Sinai to Iraq, Syria, Jordan and northern Lebanon, jihadism and al-Qaeda are growing in the Levant. As a result, the West is turning a blind eye to Syrian army operations against jihadists. The more jihadists the Syrian army kills, the lower the burden on the West.
  
  
• The French involvement in Mali, the kidnapping of Westerners in Algeria and the failure to free the French hostage in Somalia have awakened the Western countries from their slumber. There has been extensive contacts in the past few days between Paris, Washington, London and some Arab states in the hopes of speeding up measures against the jihadist tide. The French say that some Arab countries are responsible for promoting al-Qaeda-style jihadism. There have been accusations against those who armed al-Qaeda in Libya. In the next few days, an important book will be published in Paris exposing the Qatari role in a number of Arab countries and discussing Qatari influence on France and other countries. The book is being signed by Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, two prominent journalists and experts on the region. After France’s diplomatic and security blunder in West Africa, it is unlikely that France will get directly involved in the Syrian crisis for at least several months.
  
  
• The Arab position has changed. Jordan’s King Abdullah II explicitly said to at least two people — Abdel Bari Atwan of pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi and Nahed Hattar, the Jordanian writer expected to soon have a leftist political role in his country — that Assad will stay in place and that the balance of power is changing. Jordanian intelligence said something similar to Lebanese and Syrian intelligence. Behind-the-scenes contacts between Syria and Saudi Arabia have changed the relationship between them. Nothing major has come of these efforts, but they are a good start. The talks are not with the official Saudi authorities, but many inside the Saudi government hold a different opinion about interfering in Syria. Damascus is mostly resentful of Qatar, although Moallem often talks about Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Algerian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Egyptian officials have relayed genuine Syrian frustration about Qatar’s insistence on arming the opposition.
  
  
• An American-Russian understanding on many points regarding the Syrian crisis has caused a fundamental shift in the policy of the Obama administration. This understanding is primarily based on the Geneva Accord. There has to be a settlement between the Syrian regime and the opposition. Damascus is ready to reactivate Lakhdar Brahimi’s mission, but on its own terms. Moscow will never accept that Assad be pressured into leaving power. In recent weeks, Lavrov explicitly said to his European counterparts that Assad is still very popular in Syria and that that makes him eligible to run, and possibly succeed, in the upcoming elections. The Iranians have candidly told the Russians that forcing Assad to leave power is out of the question. Ali Akbar Velayati, who is very close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that “Assad is a red line.” Those who visit Tehran hear a lot of resentful language against Qatar and its role, and there is a lot of blame on Turkey, too.
  
  
• The Turkish role is declining despite Turkey's continued statements against Assad. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan realizes the magnitude of the impasse. In Paris, there are rumors that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu may be relieved of his post. It seems that the Syrian regime has greatly improved its relationship with the Kurds. Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters are now standing against any Turkish move. Syrian security officials are very satisfied with the PKK. There is even talk of surprises at the border soon. A NATO official confirms that the Patriot missile batteries deployed in Turkey are not offensive but defensive. Ankara is now worried about its own security after Erdogan was the key advocate for Assad's removal. Was the assassination of three Kurdish activists in Paris a coincidence?
  
  
• Those visiting Syria have heard about possible changes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Some say that Saudi Arabia, which, along with the UAE and Kuwait, has waged a relentless media war on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia, is now preparing for the post-King Abdullah era. Washington is overseeing the process of replacing the older generation of Saudi leaders with the younger generation. The Washington Post had an extensive story on the subject. The king’s health hasn't helped either. There are rumors that Doha is also preparing for the next stage amid talk that the emir is in poor health.

http://www.arabist.net/blog/2013/1/16/in-translation-atwan-on-the-gulf-and-the-brothers.html

• Governments in the Gulf have realized that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “global” movement governed by an international organization. This means that the loyalty of the organization is to the Supreme Guide in Egypt, and not to local authorities, not even to the head of the group in these countries.
  
  
• The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood has taken control of the process of forming the next generations by setting local curricula. This has led it to dominate the armies and security services, which has left it more prepared than ever to overthrow the ruling regimes and seize power. This is the main fear of the Gulf regimes.
  
  
• With the liberal and leftist currents in Gulf countries weakened by decades of repression and persecution, the organized Islamist currents have become the leading candidates to launch Arab Spring revolutions for change in the countries of the Gulf.
  
  
• Religious and Brotherhood currents in particular enjoy a financial independence that sets them apart from the other currents, due to their intricate organizational networks and the fact that their backers possess considerable financial resources due to their control of large companies and financial institutions in Gulf countries especially. This has allowed them to combine political and economic power.
  
  
• Islamist movements enjoy significant support in popular milieus because their ideology centers on the Islamic faith. Their control over mosques — whether directly or indirectly — translates into five miniature daily meetings and one large weekly meeting every Friday.
  
  
• Non-jihadist Islamist movements – and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular – practice self-control and avoid any collision with the state. This explains the Brotherhood’s silence in Egypt concerning the attacks in which it has been targeted. It has kept calm and sent delegations to the Emirates to solve the arrests crisis through diplomatic means. It was no surprise that Saudi writers accused the Muslim Brotherhood of employing the "principle of taqiyya” among its organizational practices.

Gulf countries – to put it briefly – are worried about the MB’s control of Egypt, Tunisia and Sudan, and its attempts to gain power in Jordan, Yemen and Syria. This would leave the countries of the Gulf surrounded on all sides, and at risk of falling into the new orbit of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a sort of political “domino” effect. For the ruling regimes in the Arabian Peninsula, there are positives and negatives in this fierce campaign in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf against the MB movement. The positives lie in the attempt to shore up the internal front and reduce the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, in our view, this awakening seems to have come too late, as there is no alternative partner to rely on in the absence of leftists and liberals, who do not have strong roots in the conservative societies of the Gulf. Moreover, any new attempt to strengthen the liberal current still has only a limited impact, such as the decree issued yesterday by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to include 30 women in the Consultative Assembly. This is a step that will create more problems than solutions, in particular with the Wahhabi establishment that backs the regime, which is opposed to equal roles for women in society.

On the other hand, the danger of this campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood is that it could lead to a clash with the religious establishment and a large number of influential preachers, such as the sheikhs Salman al-Awda, Muhammad al-Arifi, Safar al-Hawali, Mohsen al-Awaji, and Ayed al-Qarni. Some of these figures count more than one million followers on Twitter, a number that is steadily increasing.

The prominent Saudi preacher Salman al-Awda recently joined a campaign calling for the Consultative Assembly to be elected, while others have called for strict accountability for how public funds have been spent, as well as for oversight of the country’s new budget, which has reached its largest yet at 223 billion dollars. There is also a strong drive to prosecute princes who illegally seized control of millions of hectares of land.

Senior officials in the Gulf believe that there is an alliance between Egypt, Turkey and Qatar behind this expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood that aims to dominate the entire region and which must be resisted. This is what explains the growing rift between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the bitter war that the Emirates is waging against the Brotherhood regime of Mohamed Morsi in Egypt through its support for the opposition National Salvation Front.

In this brief sketch, we cannot forget Iran’s new pilgrimages to Islamic Cairo, with the Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s visit, the hospitality that he received, and the invitation that he extended to President Mohamed Morsi to schedule a visit to Iran. Iran has a good nose for the developments that are taking place in the region and is adjusting its calculus to exploit them in the service of its own interests.

The coming weeks and months will be full of surprises. There is nothing we can do but wait, watch and study closely the new interactions, alliances and rapid changes we expect will occur, changes that will radically reshape the region.

http://syrian-es.org/article.php?id=872&lang=en

In the current war that takes place in Syria, there are big spaces for the electronic war.

One of the activist groups that work in this field named itself by “Syrian Electronic Army” has enabled to hack into many important official sites in each of Qatar, Saudi Arab kingdom and Turkey and to download thousands of secret documents, where Breaking News Network got these documents through mediator after proving the truthness of the reviewed part.

An agreement has been done to publish these documents with the Lebanese Newspaper ‘Akhbar’, which got them from the same mediator at the same time.

Starting today, Breaking News Network publishes these documents completely, taking into consideration not to rephrase the contexts.

In the episode of today, 5 documents of the Qatari foreign ministry’s massages will be revealed, one of them is a meeting between the Qatari Prime minister Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani and the Egyptian president Muhammad Mursi , which was hold in September 2012, talking about the situation of Syria.

Hamad calls Russia to convince it to abandon of President Assad and offered contracting of Free Army militia to protect its navy based on the Syrian coast

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/qatar-leaks-business-foreign-affairs

Mursi: If the Iranians get involved in solving the issue in Syria, they will win and become closer to Turkey and the Gulf.

Hamad: They are starting to think of names. In the past, they had good relations with us and we have common oil wells. But on the Syrian issue, unfortunately it’s the Russians. If they say the word, the Syrian regime will be finished. But Russia is still insisting on the issue. I spoke to Putin on the phone for 40 minutes. It was a bad conversation, although my relationship with him used to excellent, but the call was a failure. Now, they are starting to lose balance and want a solution.

Mursi: Why do they want it?

Hamad: They have a marine base in Syria. We told them we will work on an agreement between you and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but they did not accept.

Mursi: They are part of the problem and he will leave.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/saudi-prince-calls-further-arming-syrian-insurgency

A senior member of Saudi Arabia's monarchy called on Friday for Syrian rebels to be given anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to "level the playing field" in their battle against President Bashar al-Assad.

"What is needed are sophisticated, high-level weapons that can bring down planes, can take out tanks at a distance. This is not getting through," said Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former intelligence chief and brother of the Saudi foreign minister.

Insurgents in Syria have seized territory in the north of the country and control suburbs to the east and south of the capital, but Assad's air power and continued army strength have limited their advances 22 months into the conflict.

"I'm not in government so I don't have to be diplomatic. I assume we're sending weapons and if we were not sending weapons it would be terrible mistake on our part," the Saudi prince said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"You have to level the playing field. Most of the weapons the rebels have come from captured Syrian stocks and defectors bringing their weapons," he said.

According to United Nations estimates, more than 60,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the conflict nearly two years ago, as mainly peaceful protests mushroomed into a civil war that has driven half a million people from the country and displaced many more.

King Abdullah of Jordan, which has taken in some 300,000 Syrian refugees, 20,000 of them in the last week, told the Davos meeting that anyone who thought Assad was going to fall within weeks did not understand the complex situation and the balance of forces.

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-D4E8219D-434B686D/natolive/news_94291.htm

NATO now has command and control of two Dutch and two German Patriot batteries located in Adana and Kahramanmaras in the south of Turkey. These four Patriot anti-missile systems are now actively defending these locations from missile threats.

Allies have committed to a total of six Patriot batteries to augment Turkey's air defences.The remaining two US Patriot batteries, which are expected to come under NATO command in the coming days, will be located in Gaziantep.

With full operational capability, the NATO Patriots will be capable of defending 3.5 million people in Turkey against missile attacks.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iJfEzXc1-OIA6-u3nxVxvSFmHexg

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel's air force launched a rare airstrike on a military site inside Syria, the Syrian government and U.S. and regional security officials said Wednesday, adding a potentially flammable new element to regional tensions already heightened by Syria's civil war.
Regional security officials said the jets targeted a site near the Lebanese border, and a Syrian army statement said it destroyed a military research center northwest of the capital Damascus. They appeared to be discussing the same incident.

The strike, which occurred overnight Tuesday, appeared to be the latest salvo in Israel's long-running effort to disrupt the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah's quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel's air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state from just over its northern border.

The regional security officials said Israel had been planning in recent days to hit a Syrian shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah, which is neighboring Lebanon's most powerful military force and committed to Israel's destruction. They said the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles whose acquisition by Hezbollah would be "game-changing" by allowing it to blunt Israel's air power.

The strike may have halted that transfer.

http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/post/41862406190/israels-attack-on-the-syria-lebanon-border-and-the

See guys, Third Wayers and oppositionists were right. Israel wants Assad to remain in power. Threats of intervention and attacks on Syrian targets are just decoys, duh. And Third Wayers were so on point about Assad’s uselessness to the anti-Zionist struggle in the region. Fears of Hizbullah procuring more advanced conventional weapons from the Syrian Arab Republic are just a red herring thrown in by Israel which secretly hearts Assad and needs him to maintain peace with Israel. Hizbullah actually gets its weapons from the US-Zionist friendly Syrian opposition. But by all means, Palestine solidarity activists like Angry Arab and Ali Abu Nimah should simply dismiss this latest Israeli attack and latest round of threats and continue calling for Assad’s overthrow. Because lets face it, nothing but Intifada chic will free the region from the Zionist cancer planted in our midst. Now be sure to wear those kuffiehs the next time Israel strikes.

http://english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=22210&cid=274

"Iran believes that the cause of the Syrian crisis is the sending of arms to terrorist groups into Syria by some countries," Amir Hussein Abdullahian, the Iranian foreign ministry's undersecretary for Arab and African affairs, told a press conference in Kuwait.

Abdullahian, who is heading Tehran's delegation to an international donors conference for Syria being held Wednesday in Kuwait City, reiterated that "those who send arms into Syria are responsible for the killings."

In parallel, the Iranian official confirmed that "the Islamic republic fully supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his latest peace proposal and believes that a political solution through national dialogue is the only way to resolve the Syrian crisis."

He further added that Tehran "has always asked the Syrian government not to commit any acts of violence against the people."

Meanwhile, Abdullahian revealed that Iran has donated $200 million in humanitarian aid to the Syrian people and also logistical assistance to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
He further said that Iran would provide the "necessary assistance in the form of a pledge at the Kuwait conference."

http://english.moqawama.org/essaydetailsf.php?eid=22182&fid=15

In a pair of interviews, Obama responded to critics who say the United States has not been involved enough in Syria.

"In a situation like Syria, I have to ask: can we make a difference in that situation?" Obama said in an interview with The New Republic published on the magazine's website.

In parallel, Obama said he has to weigh the benefit of a military intervention with the ability of the Pentagon to support troops still in Afghanistan, where the United States is withdrawing combat forces after a dozen years of war.
"Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-al-Assad regime? And how do I weigh tens of thousands who've been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?" he wondered.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/russia-evacuate-citizens-syria-amid-un-aid-controversy

Russia is sending two planes to Lebanon on Tuesday to evacuate more than 100 of its citizens from Syria, the Emergencies Ministry said, as the 22-month-long crisis shows no signs of abating.

The announcement comes as millions in Syria spent the day without electricity following an attack on a key power line, amid renewed controversy over the allocation of a $520 million UN aid program for internally displaced people.

The Russian planes will be equipped with medical crews and psychologists, the ministry announced Monday, adding that about 150 Russian citizens have already arrived in Beirut to be transferred home.

Media originally speculated that Russia was sending navy ships to the Syrian coast to transfer its citizens, who number several thousand, but the foreign ministry said the vessels were sent to conduct military drills.

"On orders from the leadership of the Russian Federation, the Emergencies Ministry is sending two airplanes to Beirut so that all Russians who want can leave Syria," ministry spokeswoman Irina Rossius said.

It was unclear whether the flights were the beginning of a larger evacuation operation.