USA/NATO: 3 Posts on Syria...

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's accusation 

against Russia prompted a stern denial. 

Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

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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.

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U.S. provides communications aid for Syria opponents

 

By Agence France-Presse
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.”

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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?!