US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's
accusation
against Russia
prompted a stern denial.
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
·
Syria
US backtracks on claims Russia is arming Syrian regime State department acknowledges Damascus already owned attack helicopters,
cited by Hillary Clinton as escalating violence
The
US state department has
acknowledged that Russian helicopters it claimed had been sent recently to the
Syrian regime were, in fact, refurbished ones already owned by Damascus.
Secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton,
claimed on Tuesday that "the latest information we have that there are
attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria".
The
state department admitted details had been omitted from Clinton's
speech in which she accused Russia
of escalating the violent situation in Syria. But spokeswoman Victoria
Nuland said: "Whether they are new or they are refurbished, the concern
remains that they will be used for the exact same purpose that the current
helicopters in Syria
are being used, and that is to kill civilians.
"These
are helicopters that have been out of the fight for some six months or longer.
They are freshly refurbished. The question is simply what one expects them to
be used for when one sees what the current fleet is doing. Every helicopter
that is flying and working is attacking a new civilian location so the concern
is when you add three more freshly refurbished helicopters to the fight, that
is three more that can be used to kill civilians."
Clinton's accusation prompted a stern Russian
denial and countercharges of hypocrisy against the US
for selling military equipment, including jet engines and patrol boats, to Bahrain despite
civil strife in the Arab state.
The
US fears Syria is sliding into a violent sectarian
conflict and is unhappy that Russia
has shown little willingness to help in the US-led efforts against President
Bashar al-Assad.
Presidents
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin meet next week for the first time since Putin's
return to the presidency last month. The Russian leader is likely to use the
session to set out complaints about US foreign policy in several areas.
Clinton's
charge over the helicopters could become an afterthought as the US, Russia and
other nations engage in tough diplomacy to bring peace to Syria after more than
a year of brutal government crackdowns on peaceful protesters and the emergence
of an increasingly fierce armed insurgency.
The
US had hoped to broaden
international efforts to include Russia
and China,
who have twice prevented the UN security council from adopting binding
sanctions against Assad's government.
The
Russians have refused to entertain any talk of a Libya-style military
intervention in Syria,
its closest ally in the Arab world and the host of its only naval base in the
Mediterranean aea. It has also put a far greater emphasis on criticising armed
Syrian rebels for their attacks, with language that has appeared to equate
their violence to that of the Assad regime.
______________________________________________
U.S. provides communications aid for Syria opponents
By Agence France-Presse
Thursday, June 14, 2012 21:48 EDT
Thursday, June 14, 2012 21:48 EDT
WASHINGTON — The United
States on Thursday acknowledged providing communications
equipment and other forms of assistance to members of the “peaceful opposition”
in Syria.
State
Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the aid is part of “non-lethal” assistance
to Syrians living under President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and part of a
global effort to support Internet freedom.
Nuland
declined to elaborate on the aid, but a source familiar with the effort said it
includes things such as anonymizing software, and satellite phones with GPS
capabilities “to document the location of atrocities.”
Nuland
said the Internet freedom initiatives are part of “programs that we do around
the world that we’ve been doing with Syrians and many, many other countries for
quite a long time.”
These
are programs “that help citizens in countries where the Internet is restricted
or unavailable to find ways to have access to the Internet so that they can
know their fundamental freedom to expression and access to information is
respected,” she told a press briefing.
The
United States
has spent $76 million since 2008 for these programs around the world and has
another $25 million that will be allocated this year.
Nuland
said that additional aid for Syria
“is largely in the communications area” and is “designed to help those who are
subjected to government intrusion, government interruption of their ability to
communicate with each other, to do so to help support unity among the peaceful
opposition.”
Time
magazine reported this week that the State Department has been providing
media-technology training and support to Syrian dissidents by way of small
nonprofits.
Asked
about the report, Nuland said it was “greatly over-revved.”
______________________________________________
BBC world news editor: Houla massacre coverage based on opposition propaganda
By Chris Marsden
15 June 2012
As
quietly as possible, BBC world news editor Jon Williams has admitted that the
coverage of last month’s Houla massacre in Syria by the world’s media and his
own employers was a compendium of lies.
Datelined
16:23, June 7, Williams chose a personal blog to make a series of fairly frank
statements explaining that there was no evidence whatsoever to identify either
the Syrian Army or Alawite militias as the perpetrators of the May 25 massacre
of 100 people.
By
implication, Williams also suggests strongly that such allegations are the
product of the propaganda department of the Sunni insurgents seeking to
overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
After
preparatory statements of self-justification noting the “complexity of the
situation on the ground in Syria,
and the need to try to separate fact from fiction,” and Syria’s long
“history of rumours passing for fact,” Williams writes:
“In
the aftermath of the massacre at Houla last month, initial reports said some of
the 49 children and 34 women killed had their throats cut. In Damascus, Western officials told me the
subsequent investigation revealed none of those found dead had been killed in
such a brutal manner. Moreover, while Syrian forces had shelled the area
shortly before the massacre, the details of exactly who carried out the
attacks, how and why were still unclear.”
For
this reason, he concludes somewhat belatedly, “In such circumstances, it’s more
important than ever that we report what we don’t know, not merely what we do.”
“In
Houla, and now in Qubair, the finger has been pointed at the Shabiha,
pro-government militia. But tragic death toll aside, the facts are few: it’s
not clear who ordered the killings—or why.”
No
trace of such a restrained approach can be found at the time on the BBC, or
most anywhere else.
Instead
the BBC offered itself as a sounding board for the statements of feigned
outrage emanating from London,
Washington and the United Nations
headquarters—all blaming the atrocity on either the Syrian Army or Shabiha
militias acting under their protection.
Typical
was the May 28 report, “Syria Houla massacre: Survivors recount horror”, in
which unidentified “Survivors of the massacre ... have told the BBC of their
shock and fear as regime forces entered their homes and killed their families.”
Nowhere was the question even posed that in such a conflict these alleged
witnesses could be politically aligned with the opposition and acting under its
instruction.
Only
now does Williams state: “Given
the difficulties of reporting inside Syria, video filed by the
opposition on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube may provide some insight into the
story on the ground. But stories are never black and white—often shades of
grey. Those opposed to President Assad have an agenda. One senior Western
official went as far as to describe their YouTube communications strategy as
‘brilliant’. But he also likened it to so-called ‘psy-ops’, brainwashing
techniques used by the US
and other military to convince people of things that may not necessarily be
true.”
Williams
is in a position to know of what he speaks.
On
May 27, the BBC ran a report on Houla under a photo purporting to show “the
bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial.”
In
reality this was an example of opposition propaganda that was anything but
“brilliant”. The photograph of dozens of shrouded corpses was actually taken by
Marco di Lauro in Iraq on
March 27, 2003 and was of white body bags containing skeletons found in a
desert south of Baghdad.
Di
Lauro commented, “What I am really astonished by is that a news organization
like the BBC doesn’t check the sources and it’s willing to publish any picture
sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever… Someone is using
someone else’s picture for propaganda on purpose.”
The
BBC again acted as a vehicle for such propaganda, despite knowing that the
photo had been supplied by an “activist” and that it could not be independently
verified.
Williams
concludes with the advice to his colleagues: “A healthy scepticism is one of
the essential qualities of any journalist—never more so than in reporting
conflict. The stakes are high—all may not always be as it seems.”
Given
its track record, the appeal to exercise a healthy skepticism should more
correctly be directed towards the BBC’s readers and viewers—and towards the
entire official media apparatus.
It
may well be the case that Williams’ mea culpa is motivated by a personal
concern at the role he and his colleagues are being asked to play as
mouthpieces for the campaign for regime change in Syria. But with his comments
buried away on his blog, elsewhere on the BBC everything proceeds according to
script.
The
BBC’s coverage of the alleged June 6 massacre in the village of Qubair
once again features uncritical coverage of allegations by the opposition that
it was the work of Shabiha militias that were being protected by Syrian troops.
BBC correspondent Paul Danahar, accompanying UN monitors, writes of buildings
gutted and burnt and states that it is “unclear” what happened to the bodies of
dozens of reported victims. He writes of a house “gutted by fire,” the “smell
of burnt flesh,” blood and pieces of flesh. He writes that “butchering the
people did not satisfy the blood lust of the attackers. They shot the livestock
too.”
This
is accompanied by a picture of a dead donkey, but aside from this there is
absolutely nothing of substance to indicate what happened in the village.
And
at one point, Danahar tweets: “A man called Ahmed has come up from the village
who says he witnessed the killings. He has says dozens were killed… He has a
badly bruised face but his story
is conflicted & the UN say they are not sure he’s honest as they think he
followed the convoy” (emphasis added).
This
does not stop Danahar from concluding, from tracks supposedly made by military
vehicles, that “attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated
& clear.”
So
much for healthy scepticism!
It
must also be pointed out that the BBC has not written a word regarding the June
7 report by the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung that the Free Syrian Army carried out the Houla massacre, according to
interviews with local residents by opposition forces opposed to the
Western-backed militia.
What
the hell do they
want?!
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