Creating news (false?)

An another shocking incident, an attempt to manipulate media and create news; from the blog of Alex Thompson, a journalist of channel 4(UK).



Standing outside the Safir Hotel in Homs as the white UN Nissan landcruisers stood waiting, the Irish officer in charge, Mark Reynolds, came over: “Usual rules Alex OK? We’re not responsible for you guys. If you get into trouble we’ll leave you, yes? You’re on your own.”



“Yup – no problem Mark. Understood.”

I always say that, sort of assuming it will never come to that in any case.

Just two UN plus the local police white patrol car marked “Protocol” as escort, moving south through the peaceful areas of Homs, unmarked by war.

Barely ten minutes south from the city and it’s goodbye protocol. The last Syrian Army checkpoint is right on the main highway south to Damascus.

We’re headed west – just follow the direction the tank barrel is pointing next to the parked protocol car and you get the idea.

There’s always that slight tightening of the stomach across deserted no-mans-land, but this is open country, no sign of fighting.

Presently, the first motorbike picks us up and we are across and into the first Free Syrian Army checkpoint.

After a long and dusty half-hour of tracks across olive groves, we arrive at al Qusayr, to the predictable crowd scene.

The UN settles down for a long meeting with the civilian and military leaders here. It looks much like an Afghan “shura” to me. Everyone is cross legged on the cushions around the room, except it is Turkish coffee passed round rather than chai.

We settle down to filming outside. The women and boys bring us oranges and chairs in the heat. Shell fragments are produced to be filmed. They explain how the shelling will begin again as soon as we leave – a claim which, by its nature, must remain untested, though there is certainly extensive shell damage in some parts of town here.

So we while away the time, waiting for the UN to move – they’re the only way across the lines with any degree of safety of course.

But time drags. Our deadline begins to loom. And there’s this really irritating guy who claims to be from “rebel intelligence” and won’t quite accept that we have a visa from the government.

In his book foreign journos are people smuggled in from Lebanon illegally and that’s that. We don’t fit his profile.

He and his mates are making things difficult for our driver and translator too – their Damascus IDs and our Damascus van reg are not helping.

This is new. Different. Hostile. This is not like Homs or Houla and still the UN meeting drags on in the hot afternoon…

We decide to ask for an escort out the safe way we came in. Both sides, both checkpoints will remember our vehicle.



Set up to be shot?

Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind.

We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s-land.

At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover.

Another dead-end.

There was no option but to drive back out onto the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on.

Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we re-appeared.

I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.

That conviction only strengthened half an hour later when our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side-street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead.

The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town.

Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus.

Please, do not for one me moment believe that my experience with the rebels in al Qusair was a one-off.

This morning I received the following tweet:

“@alextomo I read your piece “set up to be shot in no mans land”, I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour.”

That was from Nawaf al Thani, who is a human rights lawyer and a member of the Arab League Observer mission to Syria earlier this year.

It has to make you wonder who else has had this experience when attempting to find out what is going on in rebel-held Syria.

In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone?

It was nothing personal.

Follow @alextomo on Twitter.

link to original post http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/hostile-territory/1863

Truth is never told

The truth is never told, I try to collect from different new sources, which reflects that the situation in Syria is not a real fight for freedom, but an artificial crisis developed by some of the world's ugliest power for few benefits 

1. To Destroy the economy of middle east and keep survive their financial hegemony 
2. To keep running their weapon factories 
3. A desperate attempt to place a puppet in Syria 
4. Aggressive is the best defense. If the Arabs are busy fighting their brothers in their city, they will forget the Palestinian cause and Israel can continue occupying Arab lands

Syria is a small and poor Arab country with few friends around the world. But in the strategic and geopolitical context, small and poor is irrelevant. It is “location, location” as the real estate agents would tell you. Still in doubt? Then think of it “as the rock of Gibraltar!” It’s a miniature piece of Spain’s land. But he British still occupy it because it is the gate to the Mediterranean sea. Syria is in the cross-roads of the most contested real estate on the Earth, which is also the birthplace of 3 major religions that are on the throats of each other, and where most of the world’s black gold is buried! Worse yet, after WWII, the winning superpowers cultivated friendly regimes or monarchs, armed and trained their armies, and overthrew unfriendly or hostile ones whenever possible. The superpowers still drain the oil, enrich and protect militarily their autocrats, while the inhabitants are left to survive on a medieval lifestyle of camels caravans, goats and sheep, and scrape a living on bazaar trades. Fast forward to 2011, when an anti-despotic uprising in Tunisia against its brutish president Ben Ali became a brushfire that spread to other Arab states, the so-called “Arab Spring.” Ali fled to Saudi Arabia; Egypt’s Mubarak was arrested and has been on trial; Muammar Gadhafi was killed, Morroco’s king Mohammad and king Abdullah of Jordan made various concessions to maintain their rule, and Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh was ousted. The Bahrainian “Arab Spring” against its King Khalifa, however, was badly bloodied by his security forces, and Saudi Arabia invaded Bahrain to save King Khalifa, its ally. Bahrainian security forces shot and killed demonstrators, beat savagely others, and sentenced doctors who treated them in hospitals to 15 years in prison! All of that happened with the tacit approval of the U.S. which has its naval base in the Persian Gulf in Bahrain, and which in return guarantee to king Khalifa his maintenance in power – no matter what the people of Bahrain want. Now the Arab Spring has spread to Syria, and Bashar Assad chops his opponents brutally as king Khalifa did in Bahrain! But this time the U.S. doesn’t look the other way as it did in Bahrain, and the Saudis won’t send their army in Syria to save Assad. Assad is not a U.S. and Saudi ally, as king Khalifa is. He is a Russian and Iranian ally, the nemesis of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia! And with the Syrian opposition seemingly floundering, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia see only a Nicaraguan “Contras” model of warfare that ousted the Leftits Sandinistas in the mid-1980’s as the only hope to oust Assad! This is definitely a U.S.-Saudi desperate effort because Russia and China have erected a diplomatic “Berlin Wall” around Assad at the U.N. Security Council. But this mission is not about giving Syrians a stake at democracy. The U.S. has historically fought hard to overthrow the S.O.B’s of Russia’s and China’s and install its own whenever possible in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Now its chance arrived to install its own SOB in Syria, someone like Tunisia’s Ben Ali, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or Yemen’s Abdullah Saleh, who, in return, will serve the U.S., Israeli, and Saudi interests in Middle East. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia, therefore, are just arming their Syrian opposition cowboys to help them stampede the rest of Syrians like cattle into their own in corral, and then become their shepherds! The Cold War is not over as many people have come to believe. It still continues, but now it is fought under the pretext of building democracy only in their brutish foes backyard, not on their brutish allies domain. The undiplomatic motto is: “Your S.O.B. ally is a bloody dictator and must go; My S.O.B. bloody allies are just breaking skulls and kill protesters to maintain law and order. There is nothing wrong with that!” Wars are about interests, and who gets what and how. And outsiders come in only to exploit, not to bring in democracy! Nikos Retsos, retired professor 

an article from Telegraph

An interview with an ex-Aljazeera (Beirut Studio) journalist covering stories from Syria