Syria nerve gas claims undermined by eyewitness accounts

• Peter Beaumont
  
  
• The Observer, Saturday 27 April 2013 23.01 BST
  

Quote:

US, Israel plotting to oust Assad by June, Iranian official claims

Legislator in Tehran warns that American intervention would result in blowback against Jewish state

By Ilan Ben Zion April 28, 2013, 12:51 pm 3




US President Barack Obama answers a question regarding the ongoing situation in Syria during his meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Friday. A senior Iranian official on Sunday claimed that the United States and Israel were conspiring to depose the Syrian government in advance of Iran's presidential elections in June.

Lt. Gen. Yahya Safawi, a senior adviser to the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, was also quoted by IRIB news, an Iranian state broadcasting station, warning Iranians of "hostile tactics" that may be used to damage the unity of the Iranian people and disrupt the elections.



Iranians head to the polls in mid-June to elect a new president as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second term comes to a close.
US President Barack Obama has indicated that Syrian President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons against his own people constituted a crossing of a red line, but as yet no steps have been taken toward military intervention.
"For the Syrian government to utilize chemical weapons on its people crosses a line that will change my calculus and how the United States approaches these issues," Obama said on Friday.
Israel has largely refrained from involvement in the two-year-old civil war, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday instructed his ministers to stop giving interviews on the situation in Syria, and specifically on the Assad regime's reported use of chemical weapons.
Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz (Hatnua) ignored Netanyahu's request and told reporters that the international community needed to intervene in Syria a long time ago considering the hundreds killed in the civil war each day.
"We expect whoever defines red lines will also do what is needed, first and foremost the US and of course the entire international community," he said.

Peretz, a former defense minister, said that Israel would be forced to intervene in Syria if chemical weapons fall into the hands of "irresponsible organizations" like Hezbollah.
Amid increased discussion of international intervention in Syria, the head of Iran's senior foreign policy and national security committee warned that any international military action against Damascus would result in a backlash against Israel.
The committee's chairman, MP Alaeddin Boroujerdi, told IRIB that "Syria has turned into the scene of failures of the US and its regional allies." He emphasized that conditions were not suitable for an American intervention in the civil war, and that "any offensive against Syria would be tantamount to spread of war to the Zionist regime."


Upwards of 70,000 people have died in the two-year conflict in Syria and over a million have fled the violence to neighboring Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.

Quote:Pro-Assad Syrian hackers launching cyber-attacks on western media

Syrian Electronic Army claims responsibility for attack on Guardian and other organisations

Nick Hopkins and Luke Harding
The Guardian, Monday 29 April 2013 19.18 BST

Syrian Electronic Army logo
The logo of the Syrian Electronic Army, which has targeted a number of western media organisations, including the Guardian, the BBC and al-Jazeera

The Guardian has come under a cyber-attack from Syrian hackers who have targeted a series of western media organisations in an apparent effort to cause disruption and spread support for President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) claimed responsibility for the weekend Twitter attack on the Guardian, having previously targeted the BBC, France 24 TV, and National Public Radio in the United States.

Other recent victims have included the broadcaster al-Jazeera, the government of Qatar, and Sepp Blatter, the president of football's governing body Fifa, whose Twitter account was hacked.

Last week the SEA successfully attacked the Associated Press news agency, whose Twitter account was temporarily breached, allowing the group to send bogus messages which wreaked havoc on stock exchanges. The hackers tweeted that President Obama had been injured in a bomb attack at the White House, causing a temporary 143-point drop on the Dow Jones industrial average.

Cybersecurity experts say the SEA attacks are designed to disrupt and embarrass, and the group will likely target any site that might give it an opportunity to spread propaganda for Assad.

Analysts and western intelligence agencies are increasingly sure the SEA, which emerged two years ago, is essentially a proxy for an administration that has been widely condemned over its brutal efforts to quell an internal uprising.

Though many of the SEA's victims appear to have been chosen randomly, the group appears to have prioritised western media organisations in recent weeks.

"The aim of the SEA is to generate publicity," said one analyst. Last month the SEA hacked into the Twitter accounts associated with BBC weather, BBC Arabic Online and BBC Radio Ulster accounts.

Nine bogus tweets were broadcast in an hour, including some with anti-Israeli sentiments, and others saying "Long Live Syria", and the "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here".

Guardian journalists have reported from inside Syria over the last two years, highlighting the terrible toll the civil war has had on the country's people, and atrocities blamed on the regime as it attempts to quell a rebellion. It also published a number of leaked emails from the Assads and their inner circle.

Hours after the cyber-attack began, the SEA said it has targeted the Guardian for spreading "lies and slander about Syria" and said it was in a "state of war with the security team of Twitter".

The Guardian first recognised it was being targeted over the weekend when spoof emails were sent to staff encouraging them to click on links that could compromise some of the company's email and social media accounts. Later, several of the Guardian's Twitter feeds including GuardianBooks, GuardianTravel and guardianfilm were broken into.

The technique is regarded as a classic, if crude, "phishing" attack where individuals are tricked into giving away details that might allow hackers to gain access to sensitive information or allow them to control systems such as Twitter feeds.

The attack was quickly identified and is in the process of being dealt with. The Guardian has since discovered the attack originated from Internet Protocol (IP) addresses within Syria.

Syrian opposition activists say Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf bankrolls the SEA, which recently moved from Syria to a secret office in Dubai.

Makhlouf pays the pro-regime hackers for their activities, and they typically earn $500-$1,000 for a successful attack. They also get free accommodation and food. Sometimes Syrian government officials tell the SEA which western sites to hack; on other occasions the SEA selects its own targets.

A Guardian News & Media spokesperson said on Monday: "We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this."

The decision of the European Union to lift the embargo on Syrian government's energy exports by importing oil from the armed opposition' is another flagrant violation of international law. It violates the UN General Assembly declaration of 1962 on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources and is yet another violation of the 1981 UN declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States. But it is much more than a technical violation of the law. It marks the decent of civilization into barbarism.
London and Paris, have more than Washington, been at the forefront of aggression against Syria. In spite of the fact that it has now been confirmed by most media sources that the Syrian opposition' is Al-Qaeda, London and Paris persist in their insane drive to arm the terrorists, using the spurious argument that if they don't arm the moderates' the extremists' will take over the country. However, in the words of the New York Times, nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of'. [1] The fact that the Syrian rebels' are in fact Al- Qaeda has even been admitted by the war-mongering French daily Le Monde.[2]
So, Paris and London are pushing for further arming of Al-Qaeda and the legalization of oil trading with the jihadi terrorists. In plain language this means that the loose, terrorist network known to the world as Al-Qaeda will soon become one of the EU's partners in the oil business. A new absurd chapter in the Era of Terror is about to be enacted.
International law and its violators.
The 1962 UN Resolution 1803 on the Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources states:
Violation of the rights of peoples and nations to sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources is contrary to the spirit and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and hinders the development of international co-operation and the maintenance of peace'[3]
Japhat Al-Nusra and other Al-Qaeda affiliated groups do not in any way represent the Syrian people, nor do they constitute a sovereign state according to the categories of international law. The armed opposition' IS Al-Qaeda. Therefore, the European Union's decision to officially buy oil from terrorist gangs currently occupying territories in the Syrian Arab Republic constitutes a heinous crime and makes a further mockery of the basic principles governing the relations between states.
The 1981 UN document explicitly condemns:
the increasing threat to international peace and security owing to frequent recourse to the threat or use of force, aggression ,intimidation, military intervention and occupation, escalation of military presence and all other forms of intervention or interference, direct or indirect, overt or covert, threatening the sovereignty and political independence of other States, with the aim of overthrowing their Governments',
The declaration goes on to categorically condemn the deployment of armed bands' and mercenaries' by states for the use of overthrowing the governments of other sovereign states:
Conscious of the fact that such policies endanger the political independence of States, freedom of peoples and permanent sovereignty over their natural resources, adversely affecting thereby the maintenance of international peace and security,
Conscious also of the imperative need for any threat of aggression, any recruitment, any use of armed bands, in particular mercenaries, against sovereign States to be completely ended, so as to enable the peoples of all States to determine their own political, economic and social systems without external interference or control' [4]
Western governments, who for many years have been openly and shamelessly violating all known and agreed principles of international law, arming terrorist gangs who murder and maim civilians, funding common criminals who traffic drugs and recruit child-soldiers, have now descended to a new low by purchasing oil and gas from these same terrorist gangs, natural resources which are legally the property of the Syrian Arab Republic and its citizens.
EU governments colluding with terrorists
Europe's descent into absolute moral turpitude and lawlessness is further reflected in the fact that EU authorities are doing nothing to prevent brainwashed Muslim youths from traveling to Syria in order to fight NATO's war. Yet, the officials of EU states readily admit that hundreds if not thousands of jihadis from Britain, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and other states are now joining the ranks of the so-called Syrian rebels'. But they also admit that their only concern is that these terrorists might be a threat to European security if they ever return. The fact that these terrorists are putting bombs in busy market squares; cars; universities; schools; hospitals and mosques throughout Syria, and that US State Department's own reports confirm this, doesn't seem to bother the EU's governments. Their only concern is that they might eventually bite the hand that feeds. [5] The EU anti-terror' chief Gilles de Kerchove tells the BBC:
"Not all of them are radical when they leave, but most likely many of them will be radicalized there, will be trained
"And as we've seen this might lead to a serious threat when they get back."[6]
We know from Israeli intelligence sources that most of the terrorists are being trained in US/NATO military bases in Turkey and Jordon.[7]
So, why doesn't the EU's anti-terror' chief seem to know about this? This is the man responsible for protecting Europe from terrorism? As I reported before, France's anti-terror' magistrate actually admitted on French state radio in January 11[SUP]th[/SUP] that the French government was on the same side as Al-Qaeda in Syria:
"There are many young jihadists who have gone to the Turkish border in order to enter Syria to fight Bachar's regime, but the only difference is that there France is not the enemy. Therefore we don't look on that in the same way. To see young men who are at the moment fighting Bachar Al-Assad, they will be perhaps dangerous in the future but for the moment they are fighting Bachar Al-Assad and France is on their side; they will not attack us''.[8]
The cynical double standard which states that all territories outside the EU are barbaric and therefore outside the realm of international law has now become a policy that goes unnoticed by Europe's brainwashed masses. Euro-Atlantic powers are not only behaving like criminals but are now openly displaying their criminality. One should also note that the French government has now decided to call the Syrian president by his first name. Calling a state official by his first name is a sign of deep disrespect in French etiquette. Since the Sarkozy regime, French diplomacy has been dragged through the mud, with France's diplomatic corps now behaving like a cross between spoilt brats and fascist thugs.
Syria's Oil Geopolitics
The quest for sources of cheap energy is one of the geopolitical contexts driving the war in Syria. Christof Lehmann has written that the discovery of the Iranian Pars gas field in 2007 and Teheran's plan to pipe the gas to the Eastern Mediterranean by constructing a pipeline through Iraq and Syria holds the potential of turning Iran into a global economic power, giving Teheran enormous leverage over the EU's Middle East policy. This development would pose a threat to the Zionist entity. It would pose an existential threat to the despotic emirates of the Gulf, who depend on the power of the petro-dollar for their survival.[9]
That is one of the reasons why NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council are using Al-Qaeda terrorists to break the Shite-led alliance of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah. As Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci has reported, contrary to received opinion, Syria actually has massive energy reserves.
Dinucci writes:
The U.S. / NATO strategy focuses on helping rebels to seize the oil fields with a twofold purpose: to deprive the Syrian state of revenue from exports, already strongly decreased as a result of the EU embargo, and to ensure that the largest deposits pass in the future, through the "rebels" under the control of the big Western oil companies. [10]
The first implementation of the humanitarian intervention' ideology was during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Since then, the truncated entity called Kosovo has become Europe's number one criminal state, run by a convicted organ and drug trafficking mass murderer called Hacim Al Thaci, a protégé of Brussels and Washington. This is the kind of narco-mafia anti-state NATO has installed in Libya since the Blitzkrieg against that country in 2011 and it is the type of criminal regime that will rule over Syrians if NATO succeeds in bombing that country.
One can read hundreds of articles in the mainstream press about the criminality of the Kosovar regime and articles describing the chaos in post-Gaddafi Libya have not been rare. But the same media outlets will systematically ignore the fact that they were the ones cheering on the CIA's Kossovo Liberation Army during the destruction of Yugoslavia. The same prestitutes are now pushing for more arming of the terrorists in Syria and for military intervention by NATO.
The closing of the European mind
The pontificators of European integration and Europe's role in the world like to pepper their speeches with pompous references to the rule of law' and the universality of European values'.
This specious rhetoric is unceasingly drummed into European students throughout our universities and institutions of higher learning and it is repeated ad nauseum by the mass media. The people now using Al-Qaeda terrorism to further their interests in the Middle East teach courses in prestigious European universities on international relations'.
It is no wonder ordinary people are incapable of seeing and understanding what is happening before their very eyes. The sheer scale and complexity of the global institutional networks built upon an empire of lies, self-righteousness and deceit is simply too overwhelming for the unschooled intellect to comprehend. Something in our order-seeking minds rejects reality when its horror surpasses our horizons of tolerance and intelligibility. As a result, the mind recoils, filters out the real, preferring instead to see in our masters the expression of complex, contradictory and arcane policies, whose moral content is consigned to the studies of experts' and specialists', who are themselves the products and propagandists of the same corrupt institutions.
There are now so many academic institutions, conferences; foundations; think tanks; policy institutes and university courses proclaiming the virtues of humanitarian intervention' that it has acquired the status of a dogma. The repetition and reproduction of this dogma by the scholastics of neo-liberal academia has turned that which critical reason would normally scoff at into an apriori principle of global governance'.
In chapter 22 of his seminal work on international law De Juri Belli ac Pacis, (On the Law of War and Peace), the great 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius wrote:
Some wars were founded upon real motives and others only upon colorful pretexts. This distinction was first noticed by Polybius, who calls the pretexts, profaseis and the real causes, aitias. Thus Alexander made war upon Darius, under the pretense of avenging the former wrongs done by the Persians to the Greeks. But the real motive of that bold and enterprising hero was the easy acquisition of wealth and dominion, which the expeditions of Xenophon and Agesilaus had opened to his view.' [13]
Little has changed since the days of Alexander the Great. Wars are still fought for pillage and plunder and the furtherance of empire. Polybius's vocabulary of profaseis' and aitias' will be useful here. Since the start of the Syrian nightmare in 2011, the profaseis' propagated by corporate media agencies calling for military intervention in Syria has been the desire to protect civilians' from a brutal regime'. Only the naïve and ignorant could now defend such nonsense as the same media agencies have finally admitted that the opposition' is in fact Al-Qaeda, a fact the alternative media have been pointing out since the beginning of the violence in Deraa in March 2011.
NATO's aitias' in this conflict is clear: break up and destroy an independent sovereign state; rob and pillage all of its resources; rape and terrorize its citizens into submission by unleashing drugged and brain-washed death squads on the population; constantly blame all of this on the regime', then finish the country off with an intensive aerial bombing campaign before installing a crime syndicate to run the country. Finally, call that holocaust freedom. Call that holocaust democracy. It's a tried and trusted formula which is now being deployed all over the world in NATO's megalomaniacal drive for global supremacy.
Grotius again:
Others make -use of pretexts, which though plausible at first sight, will not bear the examination and test of moral rectitude, and, when stripped of their disguise, such pretexts will be found fraught with injustice. In such hostilities, says Livy, it is not a trial of right, but some object of secret and unruly ambition, which acts as the chief spring. Most powers, it is said by Plutarch, employ the relative situations of peace and war, as a current specie, for the purchase of whatever they deem expedient.'
In the war-ravaged 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century Europe of Hugo Grotius, to establish the distinction between profaseis and aitias or the pretexts and real reasons for war was not considered heretical in the domain of rigorous juridical discourse. Today, those who make such distinctions are dismissed as paranoid conspiracy theorists'. In an interview entitled LA PENSÉE CRITIQUE COMME DISSOLVANT DE LA DOXA,(Critical Thought as a solvent of Doxa)French sociologist Loic Wacquant argues that never before have false thought and false science been so prolix and ubiquitous.'[14]
In this age of technological lawlessness, the basic precepts of international and domestic law have been dismantled. With the promulgation of the Patriot Act and now the National Defense Authorization Act, the United States has regressed to the kind of juridical tyranny that preceded the drafting of the Petition of Right in the England of 1628, a document denouncing imprisonment without trial, torture and martial law and providing the legal and moral groundwork for the English Revolution of 1640.
Conclusion
It behooves us all to reflect upon the current war in the Levant. What we are witnessing is the destruction of the Westphalian state system and a return to the kind of chaos of the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] century's Thirty Years War, except this time it is festering on the borders of Europe where the principle of bellum se ipsum alet, war will feed itself, is being acted out by private military corporations, drug gangs, terrorist networks and international crime syndicates linked directly and indirectly to the ideological state apparatuses of the Atlantic powers.
And so, the KLA have been training the Syrian Free Army', while Libya's Islamic Fighting Group has also joined the holy war' in Syria. Like the Thirty Years War, the armed gangs and mercenaries are funding themselves by pillaging the local economies and selling their booty as contraband. Whole factories in Syria have been dismantled and stolen by mercenaries in the service of Turkey and Qatar, while the drug trade is now booming like never before. When one country is destroyed and reduced to despotic fiefdoms and emirates, Western corporations move in with their private military companies and proceed to pillage the country's resources, unhindered by the rules and regulations of the Sovereign State. The terrorist hordes then move on to the next country on NATO's hit list. This is NATO's strategy of chaos, a form of liquid warfare that is spreading rapidly throughout the Southern Hemisphere.
Given the criminality of Western oil companies in the past, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that they would now, in the form of the EU, be openly buying oil from terrorist organizations. What is surprising, however, is the morbid insouciance of Europe's populations. How could there be so many respectable' people in our media and academic institutions prepared to collaborate with these mobsters? Why have there been few if any significant demonstrations against NATO? How is it possible that the powers that be should be allowed to get away with such unmitigated criminality?
The Roman poet Horace wrote- neglecta solent incendia sumere vires -a neglected fire always gathers in strength. Since the destruction of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan by the Western-backed Mujahedeen terrorists in the 1979, sovereign states have fallen prey to mercenaries and terrorist gangs backed by Western imperialism, while civil liberties have been curtailed in America and Europe in the name of the War on Terrorism'.
The fire has since spread to the former Yugoslavia; Rwanda; Côte d'Ivoire; Sudan; Somalia; Iraq; DRC; Chechnya,Libya and now Syria. If people don't wake up and mobilize against the criminals planning these wars, the flames of destruction will eventually come home in the form of martial law, and a fascist, panopticon police state which will be deemed necessary during the prosecution of a Third World War against Iran, Russia and China. If this fire of terrorism is not put out in Syria, it will continue into the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Russian Federation and Eastern China until all possible resistance to NATO's drive for full spectrum dominance' is eliminated and a tyrannical, corporate hyper-state rules over the planet.
World wars have happened in the past and given the scelerate Will-to-Power of our current rulers, there is no reason to believe that a world war will not happen again. Many in the West, inured to televised violence and indifferent to distant wars, have a tendency to believe that politics is a domain that does not affect them. But in the words of the French politician Charles de Montalambert Vous avez beau ne pas vous occuper de politique, la politique s'occupe de vous tout de même.'[It is easy for you not to be concerned about politics, but politics, however, is concerned about you] In the light of current events the statement merits reflection.
Notes
[1]http://www.globalresearch.ca/time-to-end-western-support-for-terrorists-in-syria-opposition-is-entirely-run-by-al-qaeda/5333204
[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/frances-media-admits-that-the-syrian-opposition-is-al-qaida-then-justifies-french-government-support-to-the-terrorists/5331289
[3] http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/9D85892AC6D7287E8525636800596092
[4] http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/NaturalResources.aspx
[5]http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/36/a36r103.htm
[6] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/12/201759.htm
[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22275456
[8] http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-nato-s-next-humanitarian-war/?print=1
[9] http://nsnbc.me/2012/12/28/the-dynamics-of-the-crisis-in-syria-conflict-versus-conflict-resolution-part-5/
[10]http://www.globalresearch.ca/oil-and-pipeline-geopolitics-the-us-nato-race-for-syrias-black-gold/5330216
[11] http://www.franceinter.fr/emission-le-79-marc-trevidic-et-jean-pierre-filiu
[12] http://nsnbc.me/2012/12/28/the-dynamics-of-the-crisis-in-syria-conflict-versus-conflict-resolution-part-5/
[13] http://www.constitution.org/gro/djbp_222.htm
[14][http://www.homme-moderne.org/societe/socio/wacquant/pensecri.html

Quote:United States believes Israel conducted airstrike in Syria, CNN reports

Israel Air Force jets targeted a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to reports.

By Reuters and Haaretz

The United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, CNN reported on Friday, citing two unnamed U.S. officials.

CNN quoted the officials as saying Israel most likely conducted the strike "in the Thursday-Friday time frame" and that Israel's warplanes did not enter Syrian air space.

It said the officials did not believe Israel had targeted a chemical weapons facility.

According to NBC News, which said it has confirmed the report with its own sources, it is believed the primary target was a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon. A senior U.S. official told NBC the airstrike was believed to be related to delivery systems for chemical weapons.

A White House spokeswoman referred questions on the reports to the Israeli government.

The Israel Defense Forces had no comment on the officials' remarks, but a source in the Israeli defense establishment told CNN: "We will do whatever is necessary to stop the transfer of weapons from Syria to terrorist organizations. We have done it in the past and we will do it if necessary the future."

The CNN report said that during the time frame of the attack, the United States had collected information showing Israel Air Force planes overflying Lebanon.

Earlier Friday, sources in Lebanon reported that IAF jets conducted several sorties into Lebanese air space. Lebanese President Michel Suleiman called on the United Nations and the international community to press Israel to stop breaching Lebanon's sovereignty, saying that such flyovers are a " continuation of Israel's policy of aggression."

Israel has made clear in the past that it might intervene to prevent Syrian advanced weapons falling into the hands of militant groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

In January this year, Israel reportedly bombed a convoy in Syria, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hezbollah, according to diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources in the region.

Magda Hassan Wrote:[B]Israeli launch airstrikes into Syria

Quote:Syria's Oil Geopolitics
The quest for sources of cheap energy is one of the geopolitical contexts driving the war in Syria. Christof Lehmann has written that the discovery of the Iranian Pars gas field in 2007 and Teheran's plan to pipe the gas to the Eastern Mediterranean by constructing a pipeline through Iraq and Syria holds the potential of turning Iran into a global economic power, giving Teheran enormous leverage over the EU's Middle East policy. This development would pose a threat to the Zionist entity. It would pose an existential threat to the despotic emirates of the Gulf, who depend on the power of the petro-dollar for their survival.[9]
That is one of the reasons why NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council are using Al-Qaeda terrorists to break the Shite-led alliance of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon's Hezbollah. As Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci has reported, contrary to received opinion, Syria actually has massive energy reserves.
Dinucci writes:
The U.S. / NATO strategy focuses on helping rebels to seize the oil fields with a twofold purpose: to deprive the Syrian state of revenue from exports, already strongly decreased as a result of the EU embargo, and to ensure that the largest deposits pass in the future, through the "rebels" under the control of the big Western oil companies.

Magda Hassan Wrote:The Daily Star

BEIRUT: An Israeli warplane was shot down by Syrian air-defense units during a raid near Damascus early Sunday, Hezbollah's Manar television station reported, citing security sources in the Syrian capital.

There was no independent confirmation of the claim and Israel did not comment on the raid reports.