A Torrent of Disinformation : The NeoCon Propaganda Machine Pushing “Regime Change” in Syria [View all]

[stockholmer]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/06/the-neocon-propaganda-machine-pushing-%E2%80%9Cregime-change%E2%80%9D-in-syria/

“War with Iran is already here,” wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing “the combination of covert warfare and international pressure” being applied to Iran. Although not mentioned, the “strategic prize” of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. “Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself,” Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, “nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the “end of the [President Bashar al-] Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.” Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would “relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved”.

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.

The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?” - continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.


snip

---------------------------------------------------------------


Let's Start A War: Anti-Assad Syrian NGOs Working Directly With British Government


http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/12/syrian-ngos-working-directly-with.html

In May 2011's article "The Siege of Syria," http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/05/seige-of-syria.html it was reported: "The coverage by the corporate-owned Western media exclusively relies on "activists inside and outside the country," the London-based "Syrian Human Rights Monitoring Centre" which apparently has no web presence, the Damascus Center for Human Rights http://www.dchrs.org/english/news.php?aboutus which boasts memberships with the National Endowment for Democracy and Tides Foundation-funded http://www.fidh.org/-Financial-Statements- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=supporters funded by the European Union, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, and Humanity United.

Humanity United in turn boast http://www.humanityunited.org/all/partners partnerships with the BBC World Service Trust, NED/Open Society/US State Department-funded Benetech, http://www.benetech.org/about/strategic_partners.shtml the Open Society Institute, and the NED-funded http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/middle-east-and-northern-africa/mena-regional Solidarity Center http://www.humanityunited.org/all/partners/page:8 which mobilized Egypt's labor unions http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/02/who-are-egypts-protesters_09.html just as the US-stoked unrest began to falter. In other words, every organization involved interlocks with the vast corporate/foundation-funded imperial network masquerading as individual "human rights organizations" and benign NGOs. In reality this "civil society" network seeks to supplant national governments, and interface with global "institutions" like the IMF, World Bank, and the UN, all of which have been contrived by corporate-financier oligarchs. It is a modern day empire in the making."

The US National Endowment for Democracy's journal, Democracy Digest, would report in their August 2011 article titled, "Syrian military ‘strained’, http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/08/syrian-military-strained-as-clinton-meets-opposition-activists/ as Clinton meets opposition activists," (warning: link automatically plays very loud video clip) that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights made one of many joint statements with the above mentioned US-funded Damascus Center for Human Rights. Meanwhile, Reuters featured a photograph http://news.yahoo.com/photos/rami-abdelrahman-head-syrian-observatory-human-rights-leaves-photo-195213346.html of the Observatory's head, Rami Abdelrahman, leaving a meeting with the British Foreign Minister William Hague.

It is quite clear that the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" based in London and receiving the entirety of their reports via "phone" & YouTube videos from Syria, is working in coordination with both US-funded NGOs and the British Foreign Minister. Considering that Hague similarly coddled Libyan opposition leaders in London http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/05/libyan-rebels-inspired-by-globalization.html while playing a key role in promoting the NATO attack on Libya and the subsequent installation of a BP oilman as "prime minister," http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-libyan-pm-big-oil-goon.html Abdelrahman's consorting signifies a verbatim repeat of the now openly fraudulent and genocidal NATO campaign in Libya. Just as in Libya, where "human rights activists" have now admitted to fabricating the evidence http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/10/lies-behind-humanitarian-war-in-libya.html used by the International Criminal Court and the United Nations to rubber stamp Wall Street and London's designs for regime change, likewise the "evidence" from Syria has turned out to be a complete fraud, http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/un-report-on-syria-based-on-witness.html derived by opposition "witnesses" and compiled by a corporate D.C. think-tank director http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/syria-nato-genocide-approaches.html into a UN "human rights report."

snip

much more at top link
----------------------------------------------------------------

flashbacks to similar propaganda/psy-ops methods:

(Tom MacMaster, the fake 'Gay Girl in Damascus' blogger's wife is Britta Froelicher, an activist with the American Friends Service Committee, an organization linked to the US intelligence community since the Cold War)

'A Gay Girl in Damascus': how the hoax unfolded

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/8572884/A-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-how-the-hoax-unfolded.html

Here were examine how events unfolded which led to the diary being exposed as the work of the a married American man studying at the University of Edinburgh:


February 19, 2011: MacMaster posts the first item on the blog, pretending to be Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari. The first posts introduce the author as a lesbian of American and Syrian parents, born in the US and now living in Damascus.
February to April, 2011: MacMaster gives sporadic updates from his character, ranging from political analysis and hard news accounts of the brutal repression of the country’s pro-democracy movement to love poetry and Mills and Boon-esque homosexual memoirs.


May 7, 2011: Western media start to take notice of the blog. In Britain, The Guardian leads the coverage, reporting: “She is perhaps an unlikely hero of revolt in a conservative country. Female, gay and half-American, Amina Abdullah is capturing the imagination of the Syrian opposition with a blog that has shot to prominence as the protest movement struggles in the face of a brutal government crackdown. Her blog, A Gay Girl in Damascus, is brutally honest, poking at subjects long considered taboo in Arab culture.” The story is accompanied by a photograph purporting to be of Amina. In reality, the image is of Jelena Lecic, a Londoner, and has been lifted off Facebook.


May 2011: As the blog gathers pace and followers, The Guardian arranges a sit down interview with Amina at a café in Damascus but she fails to show up, later claiming that harassment from secret police prevented the meeting. CNN also publishes an email interview with Amina, in which the character was quoted as saying: "A whole lot of long time changes are coming suddenly bubbling to the surface and views towards women, gay people and minorities are rapidly changing,"

snip

------------------------------------------------

The Christian Science Monitor: The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0613/The-Gay-Girl-in-Damascus-hoax-mass-rape-in-Libya-and-press-credulity


The Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, 'mass rape' in Libya, and press credulity
Have our propaganda detectors been dulled?

If you don't follow NPR's Andy Carvin on Twitter, let me be the first to tell you that The Gay Girl in Damascus is actually a 40-year-old American guy with a beard.

Through the efforts of Mr. Carvin, Ali Abunimah, and a few others, Thomas MacMaster was unveiled as the hoaxster. Mr. MacMaster said today that his wife, Britta Froelicher – an American listed as an associate fellow at St. Andrew's Center for Syrian Studies – was involved as a consultant. One of the better roundups on how MacMaster was forced into admitting his lies is on Ali Abunimah's Electronic Intifada blog.

But while MacMaster appears to be a garden-variety Internet troll, the Amina persona was boosted by the willingness of the conventional press (The Guardian, CNN, New York Times) and bloggers with major followings, like Andrew Sullivan, to accept what they were being told at face value.

snip

---------------------------------------------------------------

The Atlantic Magazine: Yet another American military operative outed as fake (Paula Brooks, aka 58-year-old former Air Force pilot David Graber)


http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/06/more-revelations-straight-males-posing-lesbian-bloggers/38796/

Only days after we learned that the author behind A Gay Girl in Damascus was a straight man from Georgia, The Washington Post is reporting http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/paula-brooks-editor-of-lez-get-real-also-a-man/2011/06/13/AGld2ZTH_blog.html#pagebreak that the purported DC-based lesbian mother who edited the lesbian news site Lez Get Real ("A Gay Girl's View on the World", which re-published Gay Girl in Damascus posts and helped the blog get started, is actually a 58-year-old former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio named Bill Graber (pictured at right).

During interviews about the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax, "Paula Brooks" (Garber's wife's name), claiming she was deaf, initially spoke to Post reporters on the phone through her "father," who finally, after numerous conversations, admitted, "I am Paula Brooks." In perhaps the most surreal part of the story, the Post adds that Garber often flirted online with Gay Girl in Damascus author Tom MacMaster without either man realizing that the other was pretending to be a lesbian. Garber has turned over the site's management to Linda Carbonell, who writes under her maiden name but, we're pretty sure, is a woman. As of this writing, the site appears to be down.

snip