Mato's Blog

Though I have made clear my views about the Syrian conflict in earlier blogposts, I should inform the new blog subscribers about my position and explain it again, because many of the new followers will wonder how one can take the side of the Syrian government led by Dr. Bashar al-Assad, who is commonly called “butcher Assad,” while the government, named “the Assad regime,” usually is depicted as an oppressive and bloody dictatorship.

I started my working life as a journalist and based on that experience was always skeptical about news reports, analyses, and expert opinions. Despite that skepticism I initially thought that most reports were factual and most journalists were maybe biased but nevertheless fair and truthful. 

In the course of many years my trust in news media has been constantly eroded though as I found out that omissions, suppressions, tweaking of facts, the use of an emotionally charged vocabulary, and outright lies can create a picture, which is completely different from the reality on the ground.

I also found out that the mythical professional code of ethics and standards for journalists doesn’t exist, that there is no impartial, neutral, unbiased reporting, and that all journalists will interpret what they see and hear depending on more or less well founded basic assumptions. Journalists will judge every information according to their personal agendas, sentiments, convictions, values, and beliefs. They will overlook or dismiss information bits which they don’t like and select sources which confirm their biases.

Everyone is biased, and being biased and partisan myself, I don’t expect to convince anybody now with arguments or a truckload of facts, because witness reports or official statements can be pure fiction, pictures can be photoshopped, video clips can be sliced and combined creatively. Nobody is able to gather sound and solid forensic evidence in a war zone, and as it has been proven many times, forensic evidence can be distorted and falsified as well, leading to wrongful convictions or acquittals.

One shouldn’t underestimate the might of constantly repeated claims, allegations, assumptions, postulates across all media channels in a concerted propaganda campaign. 

This particular matter has been discussed in the following blog posts:

https://mato48.com/2011/08/29/mind-control/
https://mato48.com/2011/08/30/mind-control-epilogue/

I will publish a follow-up with details about Syria, but for today I close with an article which I didn’t write but which perfectly coheres with my views. 

Steven Sahiounie American Herald Tribune

The day before Deraa and Aleppo

The day before September 11, 2001 was like any normal day in New York City. September 10, 2001 was unaware of the earthshaking events which would happen the next day.

Similarly, one might think the day before the violence broke out in Deraa, Syria in March 2011 would have been an uneventful day, unaware of the uprising about to begin. 

But, that was not the case. Deraa was teaming with activity and foreign visitors to Syria well before the staged uprising began its opening act.

The Omari Mosque was the scene of backstage preparations, costume changes and rehearsals. The Libyan terrorists, fresh from the battlefield of the US-NATO  regime change attack on Libya, were in Deraa well ahead of the March 2011 uprising violence. The cleric of the Omari Mosque was Sheikh Ahmad al Sayasneh . He was an older man with a severe eye problem, which caused him to wear special dark glasses, and severely hampered his vision. He was not only visually impaired, but light sensitive as well, which caused him to be indoors as much as possible and often isolated. He was accustomed to judging the people he talked with by their accent and voice. The Deraa accent is distinctive. All of the men attending the Omari Mosque were local men, all with the common Deraa accent. However, the visitors from Libya did not make themselves known to the cleric, as that would blow their cover. Instead, they worked with local men; a few key players who they worked to make their partners and confidants. The participation of local Muslim Brotherhood followers, who would assist the foreign Libyan mercenaries/terrorists, was an essential part of the CIA plan, which was well scripted and directed from Jordan.

Enlisting the aid and cooperation of local followers of Salafism allowed the Libyans to move in Deraa without attracting any suspicion.  The local men were the ‘front’ for the operation.

The CIA agents running the Deraa operation from their office in Jordan had already provided the weapons and cash needed to fuel the flames of revolution in Syria.  With enough money and weapons, you can start a revolution anywhere in the world.

In reality, the uprising in Deraa in March 2011 was not fueled by graffiti written by teenagers, and there were no disgruntled parents demanding their children to be freed.  This was part of the Hollywood style script written by skilled CIA agents, who had been given a mission: to destroy Syria for the purpose of regime change. Deraa was only Act 1: Scene 1.

The fact that those so-called teenaged graffiti artists and their parents have never been found, never named, and never pictured is the first clue that their identity is cloaked in darkness.

In any uprising there needs to be grassroots support. Usually, there is a situation which arises, and protesters take to the streets. The security teams step in to keep the peace and clear the streets and if there is a “brutal crackdown” the otherwise “peaceful protesters” will react with indignation, and feeling oppressed and wronged, the numbers in the streets will swell.  This is the point where the street protests can take two directions: the protesters will back down and go home, or the protesters can react with violence, which then will be met with violence from the security teams, and this sets the stage for a full blown uprising.

The staged uprising in Deraa had some locals in the street who were unaware of their participation in a CIA-Hollywood production. They were the unpaid extras in the scene about to be shot. These unaware extras had grievances, perhaps lasting a generation or more, and perhaps rooted in Wahhabism, which is a political ideology exported globally by Saudi Arabia’s Royal family and their paid officials. 

The Libyans stockpiled weapons at the Omari Mosque well before any rumor spread about teenagers arrested for graffiti. The cleric, visually impaired and elderly, was unaware of the situation inside his Mosque, or of the foreign infiltrators in his midst.

The weapons came into Deraa from the CIA office in Jordan. The US government has close ties to the King of Jordan.  Jordan is 98 percent Palestinian, and yet has a long lasting peace treaty with Israel, despite the fact that 5 million of the Jordanian citizen’s relatives next door in Occupied Palestine are denied any form of human rights.  The King of Jordan has to do a daily high-wire balancing act between his citizens, the peace and safety in his country, and America’s interests and interventions in the Middle East.  King Abdullah is not only a tight-rope walker, but a juggler at the same time, and all of this pressure must be enormous for him and Queen Rania, who is herself Palestinian. These facts must be viewed in the forefront of the background painted scenery of the Syrian Arab Republic, which for the last 40 years had a cornerstone of domestic and foreign policy carved and set in the principle of Palestinian human rights and Palestinian freedom and justice. 

The US policy to attack Syria for the purpose of regime change was not just about the gas pipelines, the oil wells, the strategic location and the Russian base: it was also about crushing that cornerstone of Palestinian rights into dust. To get rid of President Bashar al Assad was to get rid of the only Arab leader who was an unwavering supporter of Palestinian rights. 

Deraa’s position directly on the Jordanian border is the sole reason it was picked for the location-shoot of the opening act of the Syrian uprising.  If you were to ask most Syrians, if they had ever been to Derra, or ever plan to go, they will answer, “No.” It is a small and insignificant agricultural town. It is a very unlikely place to begin a nationwide revolution. Deraa has a historical importance because of archeological ruins, but that is lost on anyone other than history professors or archeologists.  The access to the weapons from Jordan made Deraa the perfect place to stage the uprising which has turned into an international war. Any person with common sense would assume an uprising or revolution in Syria would begin in Damascus or Aleppo, the two biggest cities. Even after two and a half years of violence around the country, Aleppo’s population never participated in the uprising, or called for regime change.

The uprising in Aleppo

Aleppo, the large industrial powerhouse of Syria, wanted nothing to do with the CIA mission, and felt that by staying clear of any participation they could be spared and eventually the violence would die out, a natural death due to lack of participation of the civilians. However, this was not the CIA-script. Instead, the US supported FSA (Free Syrian Army), who were mainly from Idlib and the surrounding areas, invited in their foreign partners, and they came pouring into Aleppo from Turkey, where they had taken Turkish Airlines flights from Afghanistan, Europe, Australia, and North Africa landing in Istanbul, and then transported by buses owned by the Turkish government to the Turkish-Syrian border. The airline tickets, buses, paychecks, supplies, food, and medical needs were all provided in Turkey by an official from Saudi Arabia. The weapons were provided by the USA from their warehouse at the dock of Benghazi, Libya. The US-NATO regime change mission in Libya had ended successfully, with America having taken possession of all the weapons and stockpiles formerly the property of the Libyan government, including tons of gold bullions in the Central Bank of Libya.

Enter the Libyans stage right. Mehdi al Harati, the Libyan with an Irish passport, was put in charge of a Brigade of terrorists working under the pay and direction of the CIA in Libya. Once the fighting subsided there, he was moved to Northern Syria, in the Idlib area, which was the base of operation for the US backed FSA, who Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for in the US Congress and personally visited, illegally entering Syria without any passport or border controls. In Arizona, Senato McCain is in favor of deporting any illegal alien entering USA, but he himself broke international law by entering Syria as an illegal and undocumented alien. However, he was in the company of trusted friends and associates, the FSA-fighters, who had made themselves known to the Syrian people by beheading Christians, raping women and children of both sexes, selling girls as sex slaves in Turkey, and other unspeakable atrocities, which they proudly videoed and uploaded to Western internet sites.

Previously, Syria did not have any al-Qaeda terrorists and had passed through the war in neighboring Iraq relatively unharmed, except taking the burden of accommodating two million Iraqis as refugee guests. Shortly before the Deraa staged uprising began, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were in Damascus,  being driven around by the President Dr. Bashar al-Assad and First Lady Asma. Pitt and Jolie had come to visit and support the Iraqi war refugees in Damascus.

Brad Pitt was amazed that the Syrian President would drive him around personally without any body guards or security detail. Pitt and Jolie were used to their own heavy security team in the USA. President Assad explained that he and his wife were comfortable in Damascus, knowing that it was a safe place. Indeed, the association of French travel agents had deemed Syria as the safest tourist destination in the entire Mediterranean region, meaning even safer than France itself.

However, the US strategy was to create a “New Middle East”, which would end safety in Syria with a carefully orchestrated regime change tornado, aka “winds of change”, or “Arab Spring.”

Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and then Syria were the stepping stones in the garden of the “Arab Spring,” but, the players in the Syrian act did not stay on script.  It went over deadline and over budget. The final credits have yet to be rolled and the curtain has yet to fall on the stage.

The duty of Western media

We can’t under estimate the role that mainstream media had to play in the destruction of Syria. For example, Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin was in Deraa and personally interviewed the cleric Sayasneh at the Omari Mosque.  Al Jazeera is the state owned and operated media for the Prince of Qatar. The Prince of Qatar was one of the key funders of the terrorists attacking Syria. While the USA was sending weapons, supplies, and providing military satellite imagery, the cash to make payroll, to pay out bribes, and all other operations which needed cold cash in hand however was being paid out by the Prince of Qatar and the King of Saudi Arabia, who were playing their roles as closest Middle East allies of the USA.

This was a production team between USA, EU, NATO, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait. The CIA has no qualms about covert operations in foreign countries or even full scale attacks, but the funding needs to come from a foreign country, because American voters, though not worried about killing people in Syria, would never agree to pay for it. As long as the Arabs were paying for the project, it was okay for the average American, who probably was not able to find Syria on a map anyway.

Al Jazeera, the American CNN, the British BBC, the French France24 all started a deliberate political propaganda campaign against the Syrian government and the Syrian people who were suffering from the death and destruction brought on by the terrorists who were pretending to be native players in a local uprising.

The scripts were often so similar that one would have guessed they were all written in the same hotel room in Beirut. Onto the stage stepped the online media personalities of Robert Fisk, from his vantage point in Beirut and Joshua Landis from his perch in Oklahoma. These two men, sitting so far removed from the actual events, pretended to know everything going on in Syria.

British and American readers were swayed by their deliberate one-sided explanations, while the actual Syrians living inside Syria, who read the English online news reports, were baffled. Syrians were wondering how Western writers could take the side of the terrorists who were foreigners, following radical Islam and murdering unarmed civilians who tried to defend their homes and families. The media was portraying the terrorists as freedom fighters and heroes of democracy, while they were raping, looting, maiming, kidnapping for ransom, and murdering unarmed civilians who did not act according to the CIA-script and had not learned the lessons of the shootings in Deraa.

There was one global movie trailer, and it was a low budget cell phone video which went viral around the world, and it sold the viewers on the idea of Syria being in the beginning of a dramatic fight for freedom, justice, and turning the American way.  From the very beginning, Al Jazeera and all the rest of the media were paying $100.00 to any amateur video shot in Syria. A whole new cottage industry sprang up in Syria, with directors and actors all hungry for the spotlight and for fame. Authenticity was not questioned — the media just wanted content which supported their propaganda campaign in Syria. 

Deraa was the opening act of a tragic epic which has yet to conclude. The cleric who was a key character in the beginning scenes, Sheikh Sayasneh, was first put under house arrest, and then he was smuggled out to Amman, Jordan in January 2012. He now gives lectures in the USA near Washington, DC. Just like aspiring actors usually find their way to Hollywood, which is the Mecca of the film industry, Sheikh Sayasneh found his way to the Mecca of all regime change productions.