Tag Archives: Syria

Eva Bartlett/The Richie Allen Show: I’m Back From Syria, The Media Are Lying To You

Re-posting this video (link below) with thanks, from The Tap Blog. Thanks also to Jean of Co-Creating Our Future on Planet Earth for posting this link.

Terrific, must-listen witness testimony from an independent freelance journalist, Eva Bartlett, post long sojourns in Syria (her first visit was in April 2014), traveling, and speaking to people in various cities and areas devastated by bombing and terrorism. Her intention, she notes, was to listen to what the people in Syria had to say, as opposed to the corporate narrative promulgated by corporate Western media. “As you know the corporate narrative totally ignores the will of the Syrian people, and they take representatives from exile or Saudi-backed representatives as word of the Syrian people.”

“The people in Syria understand that what is happening in Syria is a foreign war (a NATO-alliance war) on Syria designed to topple their government and serve certain agendas, and the agendas of certain neighboring countries such as so-called Israel, and they adamantly support their government, their President, and their Syrian Arab Army.” She goes on to describe the devastation she has witnessed from the terrorism of car-bombings and rocket-launchings in civilian areas in Damascus, Aleppo, and other places, where she says residents are being “punished for not taking the corporate side of this foreign war on Syria.”

“My main intention is to bear witness and to transmit what Syrians tell me, what they want the world outside to know of what is actually happening here.” Later she notes that the Government of Syria is not starving civilian populations in various cities,  as reported in mainstream news, it is the terrorists who are doing so,  the Government is in fact making food and power supplies available to the people. She is aware that corporate media are spinning a completely different narrative, and reports what she has seen on the ground that contradicts this corporate media narrative. The Government is also not gunning down unarmed protesters, as has been reported in mainstream media, she says; she recommends news analysis by Professor Tim Anderson on this subject, which documents and refutes these reports as lies. 

In answering listeners’ queries, she also notes that human rights groups in the UK are being used as front groups to quite possibly send more arms to the terrorists who are waging war on the Syrian civilian population, and who are obtaining funds from deceived UK residents. She notes the manipulated death of Serena Shims, possibly by Turkish Intelligence; Serena Shims was  the young television journalist who was documenting the flow of weapons via Turkey into Syria–other reports since then, she says, have noted this flow of weapons into Syria, also across the large Iraq border. Additionally Western planes have, more than five times, “accidentally” dropped supplies into terrorist faction camps, who range beyond Daesh to many groups, she notes.

This is an absolutely eye-opening interview with information unavailable in current mainstream media news that makes its way to the US. You can find updates and information on Eva Bartlett’s blog, including links to more news resources at her post on this interview.

Much gratitude to Eva Bartlett for her unflinching reportage, her delivery of the truth of what she has witnessed, and her courage in letting the truth about Syrian reality stand against deceiving corporate Western narratives that seek to, as she notes,  reinforce and promote imperialist and Zionist, war-mongering agendas.  Her voice and conviction are inspiring, and will, I can only hope, ignite more of us to stand up and speak out in courage within our own fields of experience and influence, for what is right, for peace, and for justice.

For Ongoing Updates Labeled Paris Attacks, Please Visit Stillness in the Storm

Stillness in the Storm is maintaining a steadily updated page of further/ongoing posts from many sources commenting on and analyzing the Paris attacks, please click over there to read: List of posts with label Paris Attacks

In addition, you can check in at the sites listed in earlier posts here:

Paris Attacks: Please Keep Yourself Informed About False Flag Terror….

Paris Mayhem on Friday the 13th…

 

Press TV–Pam Bailey, Euro-Med Monitor of Human Rights: Israeli Violence Overshadowed By Paris Attacks

Excerpted from Press TV, please click over there for the full interview:

pamBailey

Press TV video image

Press TV has interviewed Pam Bailey, with the Euro-Med Monitor of Human Rights from Washington, to ask for her take on the ongoing Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Looking at the situation, as we have just said, 90 Palestinians have been killed since October; however, we are not seeing that much of an outrage when it comes to Israeli human rights violations be it through arresting minor Palestinians aged 12 to 14 or be it through the demolition of homes and of course these killings.

Bailey: Well, especially now. You know, now you have got everybody focusing on Paris and bombing Syria and it is sort of working out to Israel’s favor. So no one is paying attention which gives Israel a blank check to do whatever it wants. So Israel is really exploiting the opportunity at this point.

Press TV: Many have pointed out; you know not to diminish anything from the tragedy that took place in Paris, but the reality is that the Palestinians have to live through that horror day in and day out at the hands of the Israeli settlers and forces.

Bailey: Yes absolutely, again not to belittle what you said what happened in Paris is terrible, but you have the Palestinians who have been living through daily direct violence or structural violence for nearly decades now, but at least in Gaza 7 or 8 years. So it has become a daily reality for them and yet the world stage, you know the government leaders, the media and the public seem to swing from crisis to crisis as soon as it gets a little bit less urgent or as soon as another emergency happens…and then you have these used-long crises that were allowed just keep festering.

Also:

(Bailey:) No one seems to want to deal with the underlying cause and the underlying cause is the occupation and the blockade and I think the world is sort of throwing up their hands. They say it cannot be solved, they say it is because the two sides cannot come on an agreement, no partners for peace, no strong leaders, but the reality is the international community does not have the backbone.

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(Full article at Press TV)

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/11/17/438064/Pam-Bailey-Israel-Palestine-Paris-

 

 

David Swanson/Washington’s Blog: Non-French War Deaths Matter

We are all France. Apparently. Though we are never all Lebanon or Syria or Iraq for some reason. Or a long, long list of additional places.

We are led to believe that U.S. wars are not tolerated and cheered because of the color or culture of the people being bombed and occupied. But let a relatively tiny number of people be murdered in a white, Christian, Western-European land, with a pro-war government, and suddenly sympathy is the order of the day.

“This is not just an attack on the French people, it is an attack on human decency and all things that we hold dear,” says U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. I’m not sure I hold ALL the same things dear as the senator, but for the most part I think he’s exactly right and that sympathy damn well ought to be the order of the day following a horrific mass killing in France.

I just think the same should apply to everywhere else on earth as well. The majority of deaths in all recent wars are civilian. The majority of civilians are not hard to sympathize with once superficial barriers are overcome. Yet, the U.S. media never seems to declare deaths in Yemen or Pakistan or Palestine to be attacks on our common humanity.

I included “pro-war government” as a qualification above, because I can recall a time, way back in 2003, when I was the one shouting “We are all France,” and pro-war advocates in the United States were demonizing France for its refusal to support a looming and guaranteed to be catastrophic and counterproductive U.S. war. France sympathized with U.S. deaths on 911, but counseled sanity, decency, and honesty in response. The U.S. told France to go to hell and renamed french fries in Congressional office buildings.

Now, 14 years into a global war on terror that reliably produces more terror, France is an enthusiastic invader, plunderer, bomber, and propagator of hateful bigotry. France also sells billions of dollars of weaponry to lovely little bastions of equality and liberty like Saudi Arabia, carefully ignoring Saudis’ funding of anti-Western terrorist groups.

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Please visit Washington’s Blog for the rest of this post.

Raise Your Voice Against War in Syria and Iraq/NIH Funded Torture/US Navy Sonar Testing/Censorship of Journalists

Still vital for the rest of us with conscience to speak out against a new war in Syria, and a return to war in Iraq–at the cost of billions of dollars, and unimaginable cost to human life and peace everywhere. Also vital to keep speaking out against surveillance and censorship of journalists, activists, writers, and everyday working citizens. And PETA tells us new horrors are being unveiled in recent NIH-funded use of baby macaques ($30 million spent in the last 7 years to traumatize newborns) building on 30 years of needless psychological and physical torture. NRDC tells us the Navy is knowingly going ahead with 5-year mid-frequency sonar testing expected to strand, maim, and kill thousands of whales and other sea creatures.

Just Foreign Policy is running a campaign to get Congress to debate bombing Syria. The Committee to Protect Journalists is running a campaign to speak out for journalists. PETA is running a campaign to stop the torture of baby monkeys. NRDC is running a petition to the Secretary of Defense to stop the sonar testing. There is another petition as well on The Petition Site to stop the sonar.

Please drop in to the Peace/Not War page, the  Privacy/Censorship page, the Living Beings page for these petition-links.

News and opinion on Iraq and Syria:

Terrific video from Ken O’Keefe, Military veteran, on the insanity of returning to war.

“The staggering costs of all this—$25 billion to train the Iraqi Army, $60 billion for the reconstruction-that-wasn’t, $2 trillion for the overall war, almost 4,500 Americans dead and more than 32,000 wounded, and an Iraqi death toll of more than 190,000 (though some estimates go as high as a million)—can now be measured against the results. The nine-year attempt to create an American client state in Iraq failed, tragically and completely. The proof of that is on today’s front pages.” Read Peter van Buren’s op-ed at Nation of Change on the madness of returning to war in Iraq and bombing Syria.

“Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warned that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and absorb individuals into a public that can be shaped and manipulated by those in power.” Read Chris Hedges’ op-ed on continuous war, the madness of a new war, and what the US is trending toward, via Simone Weil’s ruminations on war, 1984, and the distant memory of the Roman Empire.

More from Truthdig on Syria.

News and Video from PETA on the tragic abuse of baby monkeys:

NIH Child Abuse: Experiments on Baby Monkeys Exposed

News on US Naval plans to kill Whales while Testing & Operating Sonar:

This article is from Collective Evolution, a fabulous site for news and taking action, they also list petitions. This article also has links to 2 petitions and the email address for the Secretary of Defense so you can send him a note: US Navy Killing Thousands of Whales and Dolphins with Sonar and Weapons Testing