A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Magda Hassan]

Exposed: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is EU-Funded Fraud

NYT admits fraudulent Syrian human rights group is UK-based "one-man band" funded by EU and one other "European country."

By By Tony Cartalucci

April 12, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"LD" - In reality, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has long ago been exposed as an absurd propaganda front operated by Rami Abdul Rahman out of his house in England's countryside. According to a December 2011 Reuters article titled, "Coventry - an unlikely home to prominent Syria activist," Abdul Rahman admits he is a member of the so-called "Syrian opposition" and seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad:

After three short spells in prison in Syria for pro-democracy activism, Abdulrahman came to Britain in 2000 fearing a longer, fourth jail term.

"I came to Britain the day Hafez al-Assad died, and I'll return when Bashar al-Assad goes," Abdulrahman said, referring to Bashar's father and predecessor Hafez, also an autocrat.

One could not fathom a more unreliable, compromised, biased source of information, yet for the past two years, his "Observatory" has served as the sole source of information for the endless torrent of propaganda emanating from the Western media. Perhaps worst of all, is that the United Nations uses this compromised, absurdly overt source of propaganda as the basis for its various reports - at least, that is what the New York Times now claims in their recent article, "A Very Busy Man Behind the Syrian Civil War's Casualty Count."

The NYT piece admits:

Military analysts in Washington follow its body counts of Syrian and rebel soldiers to gauge the course of the war. The United Nations and human rights organizations scour its descriptions of civilian killings for evidence in possible war crimes trials. Major news organizations, including this one, cite its casualty figures.

Yet, despite its central role in the savage civil war, the grandly named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is virtually a one-man band. Its founder, Rami Abdul Rahman, 42, who fled Syria 13 years ago, operates out of a semidetached red-brick house on an ordinary residential street in this drab industrial city [Coventry, England].

The New York Times also for the first time reveals that Abdul Rahman's operation is indeed funded by the European Union and a "European country" he refuses to identify:

Money from two dress shops covers his minimal needs for reporting on the conflict, along with small subsidies from the European Union and one European country that he declines to identify.

Photo: From Reuters: "Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, leaves the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after meeting Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in central London November 21, 2011. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor" Abdelrahman is not the "head" of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, he is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, run out of his UK-based house as a one-man operation.

And while Abdul Rahman refuses to identify that "European country," it is beyond doubt that it is the United Kingdom itself - as Abdul Rahman has direct access to the Foreign Secretary William Hague, who he has been documented meeting in person on multiple occasions at the Foreign and Commonwealth Officein London. The NYT in fact reveals that it was the British government that first relocated Abdul Rahman to Coventry, England after he fled Syria over a decade ago because of his anti-government activities:

When two associates were arrested in 2000, he fled the country, paying a human trafficker to smuggle him into England. The government resettled him in Coventry, where he decided he liked the slow pace.

Abdul Rahman is not a "human rights activist." He is a paid propagandist. He is no different than the troupe of unsavory, willful liars and traitors provided refuge in Washington and London during the Iraq war and the West's more recent debauchery in Libya, for the sole purpose of supplying Western governments with a constant din of propaganda and intentionally falsified intelligence reports designed specifically to justify the West's hegemonic designs.

Abdul Rahman's contemporaries include the notorious Iraqi defector Rafid al-Janabi, codename "Curveball," who now gloats publicly that he invented accusations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the West's casus belli for a 10 year war that ultimately cost over a million lives, including thousands of Western troops, and has left Iraq still to this day in shambles. There's also the lesser known Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir of Libya, who formed the foundation of the pro-West human rights racket in Benghazi and now openly brags in retrospect that tales of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's atrocities against the Libyan people were likewise invented to give NATO its sought-after impetus to intervene militarily.

Unlike in Iraq and Libya, the West has failed categorically to sell military intervention in Syria, and even its covert war has begun to unravel as the public becomes increasingly aware that the so-called "pro-democracy rebels" the West has been arming for years are in fact sectarian extremists fighting under the banner of Al Qaeda. The charade that is the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" is also unraveling. It is unlikely that the New York Times' limited hangout will convince readers that Rami Abdul Rahman is anything other than another "Curveball" helping the corporate-financier elite of Wall Street and London sell another unnecessary war to the public.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...dium=email

A Very Busy Man Behind the Syrian Civil War's Casualty Count

Andrew Testa for The New York Times
"I am a simple citizen from a simple family who has managed to accomplish something huge using simple means," said Rami Abdul Rahman, founder of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: April 9, 2013

COVENTRY, England Military analysts in Washington follow its body counts of Syrian and rebel soldiers to gauge the course of the war. The United Nations and human rights organizations scour its descriptions of civilian killings for evidence in possible war crimes trials. Major news organizations, including this one, cite its casualty figures.




Yet, despite its central role in the savage civil war, the grandly named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is virtually a one-man band. Its founder, Rami Abdul Rahman, 42, who fled Syria 13 years ago, operates out of a semidetached red-brick house on an ordinary residential street in this drab industrial city.
Using the simplest, cheapest Internet technology available, Mr. Abdul Rahman spends virtually every waking minute tracking the war in Syria, disseminating bursts of information about the fighting and the death toll. What began as sporadic, rudimentary e-mails about protests early in the uprising has swelled into a torrent of statistics and details.
All sides in the conflict accuse him of bias, and even he acknowledges that the truth can be elusive on Syria's tangled and bitter battlefields. That, he says, is what prompts him to keep a tight leash on his operation.
"I need to control everything myself," said Mr. Abdul Rahman, a bald, bearish, affable man. "I am a simple citizen from a simple family who has managed to accomplish something huge using simple means all because I really believe in what I am doing."
He does not work alone. Four men inside Syria help to report and collate information from more than 230 activists on the ground, a network rooted in Mr. Abdul Rahman's youth, when he organized clandestine political protests. But he signs off on every important update. A fifth man translates the Arabic updates into English for the organization's Facebook page.
Mr. Abdul Rahman rarely sleeps. He gets up around 5:30 a.m., calling Syria to awaken his team. First, they tally the previous day's casualty reports and release a bulletin. Then he alternates between taking news media calls 10 on a slow day, 15 an hour for breaking news and contacting activists.
He transmits his last e-mail around 9 p.m. and continues monitoring news reports and YouTube videos until at least 1 a.m. But urgent news developments frequently disrupt that schedule.
Recently, for example, rumors of the assassination of Col. Riad al-As'aad, a founder of the rebel Free Syrian Army, erupted about 11 p.m. Mr. Abdul Rahman stayed up contacting activists near the eastern city of Deir al-Zour until 5 a.m. before confirming that the colonel was very much alive, but had lost a leg in a car bombing.
In March, when rebel forces near the Golan Heights kidnapped 21 United Nations peacekeepers from the Philippines, his phones rang incessantly. "I wanted to shatter my mobile," said Mr. Abdul Rahman, who often has a cellphone on each ear.
He said his ultimate goal was to hold accountable those responsible for Syria's destruction. Focusing on human rights will eventually bring the country a better, democratic future, he said.
"We have to document what is going on in Syria," he said, because each side is trying to "brainwash" the people to accept its version of events. "The country is headed toward destruction and division," he added. "We have to try to preserve what hasn't been destroyed."
Mr. Abdul Rahman, who founded the observatory in 2006 to highlight the plight of activists arrested inside Syria, faces constant scrutiny over his numbers.
He has been called a tool of the Qatari government, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Central Intelligence Agency and Rifaat al-Assad, the exiled uncle of Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, among others. The Syrian government and even some rebels have accused him of treachery.
"Rami's objectivity is killing us," said Manhal Bareesh, an activist from Saraqib who knew him before the war. But he and other activists in Syria credit him with working hard to document all the cases, and not hesitating to document potential war crimes.
Alexander Lukashevich, the spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, once described him to the state-owned RIA-Novosti news agency as a man with "no training in journalism nor law, nor even a complete secondary education."
(In fact, he graduated from high school and studied marketing at a technical school.)
Mr. Abdul Rahman's toll for the Syrian conflict just passed 62,550, somewhat below the United Nations' figure of more than 70,000. March was the deadliest month yet, with 6,005 deaths, he said, more than the combined total of the uprising's first nine months.
"I think our numbers are close to reality, but nobody knows the entire reality," he said. "I make sure nothing is published before crosschecking with reliable sources to ensure that it is confirmed."
The ultimate toll, he said, may be twice what has been documented, given Syria's size, the number of skirmishes and communications problems.
Activists in every province belong to a Skype contact group that Mr. Abdul Rahman and his aides tap into in an effort to confirm independently the details of significant events. He depends on local doctors and tries to get witnesses. On the telephone, for instance, speaking in his rapid-fire style, he asked one activist to visit a field hospital to count the dead from an attack.
With government soldiers, he consults contacts in small villages, using connections from his youth on the coast among Alawites, the minority sect of Mr. Assad, which constitutes the backbone of the army.
Mr. Abdul Rahman has been faulted for not opening his list up for public access online, but the world of nongovernmental organizations gives him mostly high marks. "Generally, the information on the killings of civilians is very good, definitely one of the best, including the details on the conditions in which people were supposedly killed," said Neil Sammonds, a Mideast researcher for Amnesty International.
The intense workload has taxed Mr. Abdul Rahman's family life. His only child, Amani, 6, springs from bed without so much as a "good morning," said his wife, Etab Rekhamea. "She asks: What is the news from Syria? What is the news about the Nusra Front?' "
Mr. Abdul Rahman spends so much time locked upstairs in his tiny study that Amani figured out how to Skype him from the living room. Once when he agreed to a picnic, he showed up carrying his two cellphones and his laptop. "He has taken a second wife," his wife said with a groan.
Mr. Abdul Rahman grew up in Baniyas, on the Syrian coast, but would not speak for the record about his family still there, lest that bring further unwanted government attention.
His exposure to politics started at age 7, he said, after his family's landlord hit his sisters for sitting on the building's roof. Neighbors who saw the altercation refused to testify because the landlord was an Alawite with a brother in military security.
Mr. Abdul Rahman owned a clothing store but secretly wrote pamphlets denouncing unfair privileges granted to a few while most Syrians had to line up for basic goods. Born Osama Suleiman, he adopted a pseudonym during those years of activism and has used it publicly ever since.
When two associates were arrested in 2000, he fled the country, paying a human trafficker to smuggle him into England. The government resettled him in Coventry, where he decided he liked the slow pace. He says his main regret is having to drive 30 minutes to Birmingham for a decent Arab restaurant.
Money from two dress shops covers his minimal needs for reporting on the conflict, along with small subsidies from the European Union and one European country that he declines to identify.
The war has dragged on far longer and has been far more destructive than he ever anticipated, and for the moment, he said, his statistics are as much a tactic as a resource.
"The truth will make people aware," Mr. Abdul Rahman said. "Hearing the number of people killed every day will make them ask the government, Where are you taking us?' "

Hala Droubi contributed reporting.

West's Syrian Narrative Based on "Guy in British Apartment"

Opposition propagandist in England apartment is, and has been, the sole source cited by the Western press.
by Tony Cartalucci

June 4, 2012 - The "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" has been cited by the Western media for over a year in nearly every report, regardless of which news agency, be it AFP, AP, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, BBC, or any of the largest Western newspapers. One would believe this to be a giant sprawling organization with hundreds of members working hard on the ground, documenting evidence in Syria with photographs and video, while coordinating with foreign press to transparently and objectively "observe" the "human rights" conditions in Syria, as well as demonstrate their methodologies. Surely that is the impression the Western media attempts to relay to its readers.

However, astoundingly, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is none of these things. Instead, it is merely a single man, sitting behind a computer in a British apartment, who alleges he receives "phone calls" with information always incriminating the Syrian government, and ever glorifying the "Free Syrian Army." In fact, Reuters even admitted this in their article, "Coventry - an unlikely home to prominent Syria activist," and even concedes that this man, "Rami Abdulrahman," is openly part of the Syrian opposition who seeks the end of the Syrian government. Abdulrahman admits that he had left Syria over 10 years ago, has lived in Britain ever since, and will not return until "al-Assad goes."

Of course, beyond this single article, Reuters and its fellow news agencies are sure to never again remind readers of these facts.

The opportunity for impropriety seems almost inevitable for a man who openly reviles a government long targeted for "regime change" by the very country he currently resides in, and who's method of reportage involves dubious phone-calls impossible for anyone to verify. When Abdulrahman isn't receiving mystery phone calls from fellow opposition members in Syria (like "Syrian Danny") or passing on his less-than-reputable information to the Western press, he is slinking in and out of the British Foreign Office to meet directly with Foreign Secretary William Hague - who also openly seeks the removal of Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.



Photo: From Reuters: "Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, leaves the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after meeting Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in central London November 21, 2011. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor" Abdelrahman is not the "head" of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, he is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, run out of his British apartment as a one-man operation.

....

Clearly for real journalists, Abdulrahman is a useless, utterly compromised source of information who has every reason to twist reality to suit his admittedly politically-motivated agenda of overthrowing the Syrian government. However, for a propagandist, he is a goldmine. That is why despite the overt conflict of interests, the lack of credibility, the obvious disadvantage of being nearly 3,000 miles away from the alleged subject of his "observations," or the fact that a single man is ludicrously calling himself a "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" in the first place, the Western media still eagerly laps up his constant torrent of disinformation.


And when the Western press cites such a dubious, compromised character, it means that the actual evidence inevitably trickling out of Syria contradicts entirely the West's desired narrative, so profoundly in fact, that they must contrive the summation of their "evidence" from whole cloth with "tailors" like Abdelrahman. And while the general public should indeed be angry over being deceived on such a vast scale, they should be utterly outraged that the establishment thinks they are so stupid - they'd believe any evidence coming from an opposition activist, disingenuously masquerading as a reputable organization, telling us all what is happening in Syria via "phone-calls" received in his plush apartment in England. http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com.au/201...uy-in.html