Yeah,I watched that show,and thought it was the worst show Amy ever did.I like DN,and watch it everyday.They do mostly have really good shows,but I think Amy is just not a hard hitting interviewer.She should have been prepared to ask some tough questions of her guest,but failed totally.Check it out for yourself:
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
BBC world news editor: Houla massacre coverage based on opposition propaganda
By Chris Marsden
15 June 2012
As quietly as possible, BBC world news editor Jon Williams has admitted that the coverage of last month's Houla massacre in Syria by the world's media and his own employers was a compendium of lies. Datelined 16:23, June 7, Williams chose a personal blog to make a series of fairly frank statements explaining that there was no evidence whatsoever to identify either the Syrian Army or Alawite militias as the perpetrators of the May 25 massacre of 100 people. By implication, Williams also suggests strongly that such allegations are the product of the propaganda department of the Sunni insurgents seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After preparatory statements of self-justification noting the "complexity of the situation on the ground in Syria, and the need to try to separate fact from fiction," and Syria's long "history of rumours passing for fact," Williams writes: "In the aftermath of the massacre at Houla last month, initial reports said some of the 49 children and 34 women killed had their throats cut. In Damascus, Western officials told me the subsequent investigation revealed none of those found dead had been killed in such a brutal manner. Moreover, while Syrian forces had shelled the area shortly before the massacre, the details of exactly who carried out the attacks, how and why were still unclear." For this reason, he concludes somewhat belatedly, "In such circumstances, it's more important than ever that we report what we don't know, not merely what we do." "In Houla, and now in Qubair, the finger has been pointed at the Shabiha, pro-government militia. But tragic death toll aside, the facts are few: it's not clear who ordered the killingsor why." No trace of such a restrained approach could be found at the time on the BBC, or most anywhere else. Instead the BBC offered itself as a sounding board for the statements of feigned outrage emanating from London, Washington and the United Nations headquartersall blaming the atrocity on either the Syrian Army or Shabiha militias acting under its protection. Typical was the May 28 report, "Syria Houla massacre: Survivors recount horror", in which unidentified "Survivors of the massacre ... have told the BBC of their shock and fear as regime forces entered their homes and killed their families." Nowhere was the question even posed that in such a conflict these alleged witnesses could be politically aligned with the opposition and acting under its instruction. Only now does Williams state: "Given the difficulties of reporting inside Syria, video filed by the opposition on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube may provide some insight into the story on the ground. But stories are never black and whiteoften shades of grey. Those opposed to President Assad have an agenda. One senior Western official went as far as to describe their YouTube communications strategy as brilliant'. But he also likened it to so-called psy-ops', brainwashing techniques used by the US and other military to convince people of things that may not necessarily be true." Williams is in a position to know wherof he speaks. On May 27, the BBC ran a report on Houla under a photo purporting to show "the bodies of children in Houla awaiting burial." In reality, this was an example of opposition propaganda that was anything but "brilliant". The photograph of dozens of shrouded corpses was actually taken by Marco di Lauro in Iraq on March 27, 2003 and was of white body bags containing skeletons found in a desert south of Baghdad. Di Lauro commented, "What I am really astonished by is that a news organization like the BBC doesn't check the sources and it's willing to publish any picture sent it by anyone: activist, citizen journalist or whatever… Someone is using someone else's picture for propaganda on purpose." The BBC again acted as a vehicle for such propaganda, despite knowing that the photo had been supplied by an "activist" and that it could not be independently verified. Williams concludes with the advice to his colleagues: "A healthy scepticism is one of the essential qualities of any journalistnever more so than in reporting conflict. The stakes are highall may not always be as it seems." Given its track record, the appeal to exercise a healthy skepticism should more correctly be directed towards the BBC's readers and viewersin relation to the entire official media apparatus. It may well be the case that Williams' mea culpa is motivated by a personal concern at the role he and his colleagues are being asked to play as mouthpieces for the campaign for regime change in Syria. But with his comments buried away on his blog, elsewhere on the BBC everything proceeds according to script. The BBC's coverage of the alleged June 6 massacre in the village of Qubair once again features uncritical reporting of allegations by the opposition that it was the work of Shabiha militias that were being protected by Syrian troops. BBC correspondent Paul Danahar, accompanying UN monitors, writes of buildings gutted and burnt and states that it is "unclear" what happened to the bodies of dozens of reported victims. He writes of a house "gutted by fire," the "smell of burnt flesh," blood and pieces of flesh. He writes that "butchering the people did not satisfy the blood lust of the attackers. They shot the livestock too." This is accompanied by a picture of a dead donkey, but aside from this there is absolutely nothing of substance to indicate what happened in the village. And at one point, Danahar tweets: "A man called Ahmed has come up from the village who says he witnessed the killings. He has says dozens were killed… He has a badly bruised face but his story is conflicted & the UN say they are not sure he's honest as they think he followed the convoy" (emphasis added). This does not stop Danahar from concluding, from tracks supposedly made by military vehicles, that "attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated & clear." So much for healthy scepticism! It must also be pointed out that the BBC has not written a word regarding the June 7 report by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the Free Syrian Army carried out theHoula massacre, according to interviews with local residents by opposition forces opposed to the Western-backed militia. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun201...-j15.shtml
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
There seems to be slight turn in the western media coverage of Syria. Here in Germany the press has now more reports showing the "rebels" as what they really are: traveling jihadists and foreign paid rabble. Commentators on the news websites are now mostly highly critical about the usual propaganda pieces and the German government policy of supporting the SNC. There also seems to be a slight shift in international media.
Alex Thomson is in Syria for the British Channel 4. He put up a Q&A at his blog. Some excerpts:
What will happen in Aleppo? Probably what happened in Damascus the rebels will lose.
... But the rebels look to be doing well on TV?
That's because they are winning the propaganda war better than the real war.
... But why is the Syrian army shelling its own people?
You could just as easily ask why are the rebels using the Syrian people as human shields? It's a dirty civil war and the rebels sometimes choose to fight in residential areas.
... So what do Syrians want?
Hard to tell. But for sure this is not Egypt there are no Tahrir Squares or vast protests against the regime.
There is no discernible sign in any of the big cities Homs, Aleppo and Damascus for example,that the people even wish to rise up against the regime.
On Twitter Thomson also said that there he observed no food shortage and that last weeks queues in front of gasoline stations in Damascus are now gone. For now the center certainly holds.
The Irish Times finds two Libyan born naturalized Irish guys fighting in Syria. There aim is an Islamic state:
According to Harati, who first came to Syria some 10 months ago for what he says was initially humanitarian work, the brigade emerged after Syrians approached him due to his experience as commander of the Tripoli Brigade in Libya last year. The Tripoli Brigade was one of the first rebel units into the Libyan capital last August. Liwa al-Umma is made up of more than 6,000 men, 90 per cent of whom are Syrian. The rest are mostly Libyans and other Arabs, including several who live in Ireland.
What will those "several who live in Ireland" and are now fighting Syria do once they come back home to Ireland?
The Guardian, which has since the very beginning been one of the worst propaganda outlets on Syria, is having second thoughts. Today's editorial is calling not for more war but for negotiations:
But what if Assad continues to hold on? For weeks, for months, even longer? That is why the second option, a return to diplomacy and, in particular, a new start by America and Russia in dealing with this terrible problem, cries out for consideration.
This may be a sign for a turning point in western coverage and media attitude towards the situation in Syria.
Posted by b on July 28, 2012 at 01:50 PM | Permalink
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
Mohamad Salim Qabbani, a former collaborator with Mass Media means of lies and fabrications against Syria, narrated last night to Syrian Satellite TV Channel his personal involvement in fabricating news about the ongoing in Syria.
Qabbani disclosed the presence of scores of specialized so-called news rooms to invent, edit and fabricate news items and stories to be aired by scores of media outlets like B.B.C., al-Jazeera, France 24, al-Arabyia and others.
Qabbani pointed out that he made calls to and contacts with scores of media outlets to tell them different invented stories about the city of Homs when he was in Lebanon in Irsal town.
Qabbani added that armed terrorist used to shoot at the demonstrators in different regions as to accuse the Syrian Army and Security of doing so.
"The demonstrators felt bored if they weren't to provoke security forces; so the demonstrators used to hurl Molotov or stones at the security forces which could not but defend themselves,'' said Qabbani.
He spoke about ways and means of taken photos montage and editing in collaboration with scores of professional photographers hired by different media outlets.
Qabbani disclosed some information about the secret life of some figures who worked on the shedding of Syrian blood at the orders of foreign sides and countries, asserting that they were drug-addicted and hired killers.
Qabbani, who said that he was threatened by the armed terrorist groups to collaborate with them, underscored that he had no alternative out of fear for his family and life from the terrorists but to collaborate with them in filming and fabricating lies and out-of-place and oftime hypothetical stories and events.
"All of the satellite channels which contacted me for live reports about events in and from Homs did know that I wasn't talking to them from Homs but from Lebanon,'' disclosed Qabbani.
Qabbani also told the interviewer about the real identity and behavior of scores of some persons involved in fabricating and inventing events and stories like Khalid Abu Salah, who once appeared on TV grasping a killed child accusing the army of killing it, while this child was killed in an explosion of explosive devices under preparation by the armed groups.
Qabbani added that the much talked about al-Khaldiyeh massacre was caused too by an explosion of the then under-preparation explosive devices by the terrorists in a building in the city of Homs.
Media outlets of lies and fabrications used this explosion as a pretext to accuse the Syrian Army of killing civilians and to steer public opinion against countries which support the truth in Syria.
''I surrendered myself to the Syrian authorities because all what we have done is wrong. I didn't want the Syrian blood to be shed. Weapons bring destruction and killing and I don't want to destroy Syria which should never be destroyed,'' added Qabbani.
Qabbani urged every person who can benefit the authorities with a piece of information to surrender himself and everyone who carries weapons to surrender himself and weapons and would be released as it was the case with him.
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"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
By ROBERT MACKEYAs my colleague Christine Haughney reports on Media Decoder, Reuters temporarily suspended the operation of its blogging platform on Friday after the news agency said its Web site was hacked and false reports of setbacks for Syrian rebels were posted online.
In a statement, Reuters said, "Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists." The company said it had no idea who was behind the hacking, but archived copies of two items posted on the news site suggest that they were not written by native English speakers.
One of the fake reports, posted on a blog written by Jeffrey Goldfarb, a commentator on investment banking, appeared under the headline "Riad Al-Asaad: Syrian Free Army Pulls Back Tactically From Aleppo." According to a copy of the post found in Google's cache by The Atlantic Wire, the report claimed that the commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army had "confirmed on a phone call to Reuters that the regular army killed 1000 soldiers of Free Syrian Army and arrest around 1500."
Continuing in similarly fractured English, the phony Mr. Goldfarb added:
In his first unlikely "unusual" statement, Al-Asaad said that the Syrian Free Army will withdraw from all Syrian cities due to the huge losses caused upon the soldiers, as well, the betrays made by Free Army soldiers, due to the within inside clashes appeared among them, for money and positions.
Riad Al-Asaad accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of betraying him; dealing secretly with the Syrian regime.
He revealed that Riyadh and Doha has made a secret deal with Damascus to eliminate the Syrian Free Army for investments and privileges in Syria.
The editor of the blog Moon of Alabama, who writes as Bernhard and wasinitially taken in by the false posts, managed to capture a screenshot of what seemed to be a later, slightly more polished version of that report before it was removed from the Reuters site. That version of the post, which contained linguistic and factual errors of its own like calling the Gregorian calendar the "Georgian calendar," also reported as if it were a matter of fact that the Syrian rebels "are expected to re-coordinate in Turkish territory where they have set up secret bases under the close supervision with the Turkish government and the Israeli intelligence service."
Moon of Alabama's editor also saved an image of a second fake post, "Rebel Resistance Collapses in Key Suburbs," which appeared under the byline of Frederick Kempe, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now leads the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institution.
That fake blog post, which was also written in the form of a wire service news report, not an analytical commentary, began with similar news of catastrophe for the rebels in Aleppo, and similar errors of grammar and syntax.
The Syrian rebels fighting the forces of Assad have fallen in key districts of their stronghold Salah Al Deen in Aleppo. This comes hours after the army has announced that it has destroyed the communication network provided by Turkey. Earlier the rebel forces have complained that they are running low on ammunition as the city has been completely surrounded by government forces, coupled with lack of communications, has left the rebels in disarray. Several trucks with mounted heavy machine guns have been destroyed, leading to the deaths of 20 rebels.
Mr. Kempe's impostor also embedded a YouTube video said to show Syrian government tanks on the move, set to martial music, and made note of a report from a "journalist on the ground, Hussein Mortada." Mr. Mortada, who is not usually cited by Western news organizations as a credible source of information, is a Lebanese supporter of the Syrian government who runs the Damascus bureau of Iran's state television channels. He was in the news in April, when a trove of hacked e-mails obtained by The Guardian included what appeared to be a message from Mr. Mortada to a Syrian government media adviser, suggesting a change in strategy.
At the time, Mr. Mortada denied that he had advised President Bashar al-Assad's government and defended his work for Iranian television in an interview with the Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
As the Moon of Alabama blogger noted, another journalist working for Iranian state television in Syria, Maya Naser, drew attention to the post mentioning Mr. Mortada on Twitter.
[B][B][B][B]That reporter's recent dispatches from Aleppo for Press TV, an English-language satellite channel owned by Iran's government, have suggested that life in the city remains calm for most residents. In a report posted online on Friday, Mr. Naser passed on Syrian military claims that they were fighting foreigners, not Syrians, in Aleppo.[/B][/B]
[B][B][B][B]A recent video report from the Syrian city of Aleppo on Press TV, an Iranian state channel. [/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]<span style="font-family: georgia"><strong><strong><strong><strong>[B][B][B]
[B][B][B][B][B]Late Friday, Press TV claimed that Syrian opposition figures had made death threats against both Mr. Mortada and Mr. Naser "over their factual coverage of ongoing clashes in the restive northwestern city of Aleppo."[/B][/B]
[/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/COLOR]
Syria: Screen shots of the stories Reuters took down
Thanks you to Syriangirl Partisan for making those screen shots!The fact that REUTERS decided to remove those articles, prove how biased and propagandistic western mainstream media is. Indeed, their first reports containing a glimpse of truth since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, were removed just a few hours after being posted. In another attempt to hide the truth and mislead public opinion.
[URL="http://counterpsy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/capture-d_c3a9cran-2012-08-04-c3a0-13-05-27.png"]
[/URL]Rebels preparing to smuggle Ghaddafi's chemical weapons into Syria via Turkey
04-08-2012, 06:48 PM (This post was last modified: 04-08-2012, 07:16 PM by Peter Lemkin.)
Quote:So what do Syrians want?
Hard to tell.
To me this is the real and only important issue - and one clouded in the fog of war and propaganda. I believe some to most of the peaceful protests a year ago and more were honest disaffection with the Syrian Govt. [but which government against Assad doesn't also deserve demonstrations?!].....but no one is even trying to make an attempt to judge what the average or different factions of Syria want. I guess in a chess game one doesn't care what the pieces and board are 'thinking'/'feeling'/dying for.
I see lies and evil on both sides. Propaganda on both sides. The guy [above] admitting he fed false stories for the benefit of the 'Rebels' doesn't seem [to me] believable...but I'm sure others are/were doing some of that. Why would he then stop [and not be imprisoned or worse]? Then we have the cheery video of the FSA shooting 4 unarmed men and explaining that they were 'agents' for Assad. Agents or not, they were unarmed and already beaten and bloodly. War is always wrong and we need a Syrian Gandhi there...fast. Not a chance. The writing is already on the wall and it is written in blood...sadly. I expect only bad things to come out of all this. I don't like Assad, but think even worse may come in the next years. What a mess. This is obviously being exploited by BIG players to clear the way to Tehran. To hell with the Syrian People......there are geopolitical interests and money to be made! Empires/nations to be built and others to be destroyed.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Media coverage of Syrian violence partial and untrue, says nun
A NUN who has been superior at a Syrian monastery for the past 18 years has warned that media coverage of ongoing violence in that country has been "partial and untrue". It is "a fake", Mother Agnes Mariam said, which "hides atrocities committed in the name of liberty and democracy".PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent Superior of the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery of St James the Mutilated in Qara, in Syria's diocese of Homs, which is in full communion with Rome, she left Ireland yesterday after a three-day visit during which she met representatives of the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference in Maynooth. She told The Irish Times she was in Ireland "not to advocate for the (Assad) regime but for the facts". Most news reports from Syria were "forged, with only one side emphasised", she said. This also applied to the UN, whose reports were "one-sided and not worthy of that organisation". UN observers in Syria had been "moderate with the rebels and covered for them in taking back positions after the withdrawal of heavy equipment, as seen so tragically in Homs", she said. When it was put to her this suggested the whole world was out of step except for Syria, Russia and China, she protested: "No, no, there are 20 countries, including some in Latin America" of the same view. The reason the media was being denied easy access to Syria currently was because in the Libyan conflict journalists placed electronic devices for Nato in rooms used at press conferences in that country, she said. "So Syria didn't want journalists," she said. Christians make up about 10 per cent of Syria's population, dispersed throughout the country, she said. The Assad regime "does not favour Christians", she said. "It is a secular regime based on equality for all, even though in the constitution it says the Koran is the source of legislation." But "Christians are less put aside [in Syria] than in other Islamic countries, for example Saudi Arabia," she said. "The social fabric of Syria is very diverse, so Christians live in peace." The "Arab insurrection" under way in that country included "sectarian factions which promote fundamentalist Islam, which is not genuine Islam", she said. The majority of Muslims in Syria are moderate and open to other cultural and interfaith elements, she said. "Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) is not open," she added. Christians in Syria were "doubtful about the future if the project to topple the regime succeeded". The alternative was "a religious sectarian state where all minorities would feel threatened and discriminated against", she said. There was "a need to end the violence", she said. "The West and Gulf states must not give finance to armed insurrectionists who are sectarian terrorists, most of whom are from al-Qaeda, according to a report presented to the German parliament," she said. "We don't want to be invaded, as in Aleppo, by mercenaries, some of whom think they are fighting Israel. They bring terror, destruction, fear and nobody protects the civilians," she said. There were "very few Syrians among the rebels", she said. "Mercenaries should go home," she said. What she and others sought in Syria was "reform, no violence, no foreign intervention." She hoped for "a new, third way, a new social pact where the right to autodetermination without outside interference" would be respected. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/worl...99930.html
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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