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Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Germany’s leading newspaper reports that the Houla massacre was carried out by anti-Assad rebels.




But you won’t find too much about this story in the US/UK media…..

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. 
Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. 

You can read the rest of this article by Doug Macatonis of Information Clearing House over at the Stop The War website.
As I argued on RT here, the Houla massacre has been used by the neo-cons and ‘liberal interventionists’ to try to get the military action against Syria which they have long desired.  They want to forcibly replace the current Syrian government with one which would be anti-Iranian and more pro-Israel.

The propaganda against Syria (and Russia too)  in the US and UK has been fierce and unrelenting, but thankfully more and more people are seeing through all the lies. After all, we've seen the same sort of 'pro-intervention' propaganda pumped out before the military action against Yugoslavia in 1999, against Iraq in 2003 (WMD anyone?) and Libya in 2011.
 Stop the War is organising an Urgent ‘No Intervention in Syria’ Protest Picket in Downing Street this Thursday (14th June) from 5.30pm to 7pm. If you live in London do try and get down there to join the protest. Full details here:

5 comments:

Douglas said...

While I did not see this story in American media, one of my Minnesota Facebook friends linked to this story.

I consider Al-Jazeera, RT and Press TV to be "combatant media," and thus entirely unreliable, except as a mechanism for determining what the combatants want their viewers to think and feel.

American media has sided with the various rebel groups.

American pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that as of June 7, only 20% of US likely voters surveyed believe the US should get more involved in the Syrian crisis.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/june_2012/voter_support_for_u_s_involvement_in_syria_remains_low

In a comment to an earlier post, I said that if President Obama intended to get America involved in Syria, he would have done so by now. His actions in Libya demonstrated that he doesn't take Congressional restraint very seriously. But there seems to be the same kind of rhetoric that there was in the run-up to the Libyan intervention.

Will America get more involved in Syria? I don't know. All I know is that between now and November, if President Obama believes that getting more involved in Syria will improve his chances of getting re-elected, then America will get more involved in Syria.

Neil Clark said...

Hi Douglas. I'm pleased to hear than in spite of all the 'pro-intervention' propaganda in the US, only 20% of voters believe that the US should get more involved in Syria. John McCain and co are out on a limb on this one again.

brian said...

Press TV was unreliable on Libya....but is more so on Syria...you can tell by comparing with other sources
Please dont compate RT or Press TV with aljazeera whos journalists have quit not over its combatant status but its lies about syria:
Aljazeera as an alternative media is over

brian said...

FYI
Syrian Armenians support President Bashar Al-Assad
from march 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8qxWbgUyos&feature=related

mother Agnes on Syria massacres of christians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUQPfHILhV0&feature=share
the interviewer says he was with FSA an they claimed not to be behind HOMS massacre....but what does such a denial mean? would they say to the jounro: yes we killed christians? or is there a third force in syria with their own agenda?
Journo brazenly asserts: there will be people seeing this who say you are lying....Well whats to say you and your FSA men arent lying?

Neil Clark said...

Hi Brian,

Thanks for those links. It's terrible what's happening to the Christian minorities in Syria, but
it's no surprise to find the west's neocon political elite once again on the side of radical Islamic extremists- as they were in Afghanistan in the 80s, in the Balkans in the 90s and Libya last year.