Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Le Musée de l’Holocauste retire une étude sur l’inaction d’Obama en #Syrie | The Times of Israël
▻http://fr.timesofisrael.com/le-musee-de-lholocauste-retire-une-etude-sur-linaction-dobama-en-s

Le rapport [...] a déterminé qu’une intervention américaine après l’attaque chimique de 2013 contre Ghouta n’aurait pas réduit les atrocités dans le pays et aurait même pu y contribuer, selon Tablet.

Un message publié sur le site du musée indique que « la semaine dernière, le Centre Simon-Skjodt pour la prévention des génocides du Musée mémorial de l’Holocauste a publié une étude qui examinait plusieurs décisions prises pendant le conflit syrien. Depuis sa publication, plusieurs personnes avec qui nous avons étroitement travaillé sur la Syrie depuis l’éclatement du conflit ont fait part de leur inquiétude au sujet de cette étude. Le Musée a décidé de supprimer l’étude de son site internet le temps que nous examinions ces retours. »

Here Is the Syria Report the Holocaust Museum Unpublished
▻http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/here-is-the-holocaust-museum-syria-report.html

Biased Reporting on Syria in the Service of War » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
►http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/20/biased-reporting-on-syria-in-the-service-of-war

The HRW report relies heavily on testimony and video/photo evidence from a biased source known as “Syria Civil Defence”. This organization is not what one might assume. Syria Civil Defence was funded and created by UK and USA. Initial training was provided in Turkey by former British military officer and current contractor based in Dubai. In the past year Syria Civil Defence has been rebranded as “White Helmets” by “The Syria Campaign” which itself is the creation of corporate PR firm. Syrian Civil Defence (aka White Helmets) is heavily into social media and actively campaigning for a No Fly Zone. The HRW report does not include any of the preceding information on Syria Civil Defence, its origins and obvious bias. Shouldn’t “evidence” received from them be considered with a skeptical eye?

Via Angry Arab, tout l’article est très intéressant.

#syrie #manipulation #désinformation

Biased Reporting on Syria in the Service of War
►http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/20/biased-reporting-on-syria-in-the-service-of-war

8. The HRW report ignores the fact that Nusra rebels had control of the major chlorine gas producing factory and stockpile in northern Syria. As reported in a Time magazine article, the major chlorine gas producing factory in northern Syria was over-run and seized by Nusra rebels/terrorists in late 2012. The owner of the factory said “ if it turns out chlorine gas was used in the attack, then the first possibility is that it was mine. There is no other factory in Syria that can make this gas, and now it is under opposition control.” The factory owner reported there were about 400 steel cylinders of chlorine gas, one Ton each, captured by Nusra/Al Queda along with the factory.

The article included the following prescient comments, delivered when chlorine gas usage was first reported: “To Faris al-Shehabi, head of the Aleppo Chamber of Industry and a strong government supporter, it was obvious from Day One that the rebels had their eyes on the gas. “Why else would they capture a factory in the middle of nowhere? For the sniper positions?” he asks sarcastically while meeting TIME in Beirut, where he is traveling for business. “We warned back then that chemical components were in the hands of terrorists, but no one listened.”

Was HRW not aware of these important facts or did they think them not relevant?

American Exceptionalism in the New Gilded Age » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
▻http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/10/reflections-on-american-exceptionalism

The second meaning of “American exceptionalism” holds that the domestic United States “homeland” is a uniquely excellent and unmatched global role model of political and societal democracy, freedom, and opportunity. This is what US politicians mean when they customarily refer to the US as “the envy of the world” (a phrase Obama has used more than once), the “greatest nation on Earth,” the “leader of the free world,” and the like. It’s what Republican US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) meant when she called the US “the beacon to the world of the way life should be” – this during a speech given on the floor of the US Senate in support of Congress authorizing George W. Bush to invade Iraq if he wanted to.

So what if the current “New Gilded Age” United States is now the most savagely unequal society is the industrialized world, an ever more openly plutocratic nation where the top 1% owns more than 90% of the wealth and a probably comparable share of the nation’s “democratically elected” officials?

#exceptionnalisme #Etats-Unis #modèle #cupidité

America’s Safari to Nowhere » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
▻http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/07/americas-safari-to-nowhere

The diverse bits and pieces of policy represent the tactical thinking of the President and his senior advisers who cope without an overall conception of what they are doing. That void seems to have been filled by absorbing the essence of the Israeli and Saudi world views through a strange process of osmosis. To call the result a strategy would be an unjustified compliment. The United States today has no strategy. It has an orientation – one that is suffused by a nostalgia for what used to be. They are not the same thing. That leads to overall incoherence and misjudgments on specific issues.

Cold War 2.0 » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
▻http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/03/cold-war-2-0

Encore un échange incroyable entre le journaliste de l’Associated Press #Matt_lee et la porte-parole Psaki,

Lee: On this issue, did you get any more about this request to the Vietnamese on Cam Ranh Bay and not allowing the Russians to – and not wanting them to allow – you not wanting them to refuel Russian planes there?

Psaki: Well, just to be clear – and maybe I wasn’t as clear yesterday, so let me try to do this again – it’s – our concern is about activities they might conduct in the region, and the question is: Why are they in the region? It’s not about specifically refueling or telling the Vietnamese not to allow them to refuel. [emphasis added]

Lee: So there hasn’t been a request to stop refueling them, or there has?

Psaki: It’s more about concerns. It’s not as much about Vietnam as much as it – as it is about concerns about what activities they would be in the region for.

Lee: Okay. Well, you – I mean, there are U.S. planes flying over there all the time.

Psaki: Sure, there are.

Lee: So you don’t want Russian planes flying there, but it’s okay for U.S. planes to fly there? I mean, I just – it gets to the point where you – the suggestion is that everything the Russians are doing all the time everywhere is somehow nefarious and designed to provoke. But you can’t – but you don’t seem to be able to understand or accept that American planes flying all over the place, including in that area, is annoying to the Chinese, for one, but also for the Russians. But the suggestion is always that the American flights are good and beneficial and don’t cause tension, and that other people’s flights do cause tension. So can you explain what the basis is for your concern that the Russian flights there in the Southeast Asia area are – raise tensions?

Psaki: There just aren’t more details I can go into.