Like Bradley Wiggins in full flow in a Tour de France time trial, the media war on Syria is in high gear. The purpose of the war is to demoralise Syria, to persuade Syria that the rebs are on the verge of victory so resistance is futile. In this media war control of the media is obviously crucial. NATO media are doing their bit, with manipulations of statements such as those yesterday of Alexandre Orlov, Russia’s ambassador to France, blatant disinformation such as the reports of Assad fleeing Damascus to Lattakia and his wife fleeing to Moscow, and delayed reporting of certain facts such as the cleansing of Midan in Damascus of the al Qaeda rebs. I have also noticed a very frequent disruption of the access to the SANA website in the last week.
Webster Tarpley has written in Press TV about this media war and I repost the article in its entirety.
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From http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/21/251968/nato-kill-teams-attempt-assault-on-syria/
NATO kill teams attempt assault on Syria
Sat Jul 21, 2012 4:20AM GMT
By Webster G. Tarpley
Hostile intelligence agencies have stepped up their operations directed against Syria. The Washington Post now admits that the CIA is also providing command, control, and communications for the death squad coalition."
For more than a month, NATO watchers have been aware that the aggressive imperialists of the Atlantic alliance have been preparing an attack on Syria which, they hope, would serve to destroy not just the Ba’ath party government of President Bashar Assad, but also the structures of the Syrian state.
The manager for this campaign is widely reputed to be Ben Rhodes, a former political operative for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City and adviser to Congressman Lee Hamilton of 9/11 cover-up fame, who is now the “deputy national security adviser for strategic communication” in the Obama White House. Rhodes directed the group of speech writers (or “wordsmiths”) who in 2007-8 successfully brainwashed the American people into believing that Obama would govern as an agent of “hope and change.”
Now, Rhodes’ task is to convince the proud Syrian people that they are already defeated, that any resistance will be useless, and that it is time to accept a neo-colonial occupation government controlled by NATO and the Israelis.
The outlines of the Ben Rhodes plan were first revealed in an article by French anti-imperialist Thierry Meyssan of the Voltaire Network on June 11. Here we learned that Rhodes and his cohorts had already held a series of meetings in Qatar and Saudi Arabia involving psychological warfare officers, MK Ultra operatives, propaganda technicians, and assorted mindbenders from the NATO countries and the reactionary Gulf monarchies.
The first step of the plan involves forcing Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting the genuine programs of Syrian State Television, Al-Adounia, Cham TV, and any other channels not committed to supporting the NATO death squads. Lebanese stations friendly to Assad would also be silenced. The resulting void would be quickly filled by fake versions of these stations concocted by NATO intelligence, which would spread Big Lie propaganda about the conquest of Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus by the death squads, accompanied by the fake footage of Assad and his top officials fleeing the country or being wiped out by the death squads. Some 40 Wahabite broadcasters from Saudi Arabia would also be mobilized to falsify reality on the ground.
As of this writing, there are reports of sporadic interruptions in the programs of Syrian State Television and al-Adounia, while Syrian anti-imperialist websites like “The Syrian Electronic Army” are reporting that a fake version of Al-Adounia is in an advanced stage of preparation by the NATO forces.
Some of the scenes would be filmed on special outdoor sets or sound stages specially constructed in Qatar and in Saudi Arabia. At the same time, NATO’s totally fictitious account of events in Syria would be beamed out to the rest of the world by stations like France 24, BBC, CNN, al Jazeera, Fox, and MTV. The goal is to transport world public opinion into a never-never land of virtual reality, leaving the Syrian people defenseless against the imperialists.
This operation uses capabilities created last August, when a Potemkin village version of Tripoli’s Green Square actually located in Doha was used by Al Jazeera to create the illusion that NATO-backed fighters had conquered the center of the Libyan capital, something they had not accomplished up to that time. These images convinced many Libyans that the fight was already over, when in reality it had just begun.
Hillary Clinton’s raving speech of July 8, using rhetoric worthy of a Ribbentrop, threatened Damascus with a “catastrophic assault” that would destroy the Syrian state. This was clearly a sign that the Ben Rhodes plan was about to become operational. On July 12, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who reflects the views of the State Department, stressed that Saudi Arabia had canceled summer leave for its military and security personnel. Ignatius voiced the hope that the Saudi mobilization would not lead to the same results as the mobilizations of the major European powers in July 1914. In short, Ignatius voiced fear that the Guns of August, 2012 might turn into a general war.
On Sunday, July 15, Syrian death squads calling themselves the “Free Syrian Army” announced the beginning of a battle in Damascus. At this point, the main US and international television news networks crossed the line from their usual regimen of lies and distortions into a fantastic nightmare world of NATO propaganda hallucinations. On July 18, this media hysteria reached fever pitch with the reported assassination of Syrian Defense Minister Rajha (the top Christian in the government), crisis management chief Turkmani, and Deputy Defense Minister Shawkat; intelligence chief Bekhtyar later succumbed to wounds. There are also unconfirmed reports from non-NATO channels that Russian consultants also died in this attack
The NATO news media showed their true nature with celebration and gloating over this attack. The media apparatus coordinated by Ben Rhodes went into high gear, attempting to spread panic, hysteria, and reports of the immediate collapse of the Syrian state. In doing so, they left no doubt that NATO’s goal is nothing less than the destruction of the modern Syrian nation, followed by chaos, partition, subdivision, warlords, Balkanization, and a failed state.
It must also be added that the nature of this attack remains unclear, and it would be very unwise to draw conclusions about an infiltrated suicide bomber or other hypotheses emanating from the NATO brainwash apparatus. In the abstract, the capabilities shown in this attack could range anywhere from a cruise missile or drone to the capabilities deployed in the assassination of Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon.
The Washington Post now admits that the CIA is also providing command, control, and communications for the death squad coalition. This paper also reports that “scores of Israeli intelligence officers are also operating along Syria’s border.” Steve Heydemann of the US Institute of Peace revealed that his organization, a branch of the State Department, had been meeting with a stable of 50 Syrian opposition types to plan the post-Assad.
To the acute disappointment of the NATO mindbenders, the Syrian state did not collapse starting on July 18, and has continued to demonstrate robust capabilities for self-defense. This now makes it necessary for NATO to regain momentum through a steady stream of news reports which are supposed to convince the naive viewer that the Ba’ath party regime is quickly coming to an end and that the old regime in Syria is collapsing.
This continuing intelligence barrage will mix real but exaggerated events, defections, etc., with total fabrications and Big Lies. NATO diplomats have been helping by furnishing wildly manic reports to the controlled media, generally alleging that Russia has decided to terminate its support for President Assad. It is standard practice for the most fantastic rumors to be reported as solid fact. Intelligent people who do not want to be duped must raise their threshold of skepticism accordingly.
A favorite theme of the NATO coverage has become the ability of the NATO-backed forces to temporarily seize border crossings. This led to embarrassment when Iraq immediately closed their side of these border crossings, obviously because of concern about the large quotient of al-Qaeda fighters among the Syrian death squads. King Abdullah of Jordan has also warned about the heavy presence of al-Qaeda fighters in Syria; most of them have been delivered by NATO.
Finally, the NATO media have become obsessed with the alleged Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, since they suppose that efforts to secure these weapons offer an obvious pretext for invasion. Some commentators have cited the role of the CIA last year in Libya in seizing control of weapons stockpiles while Qaddafi was still in power.
At the United Nations, Russia and China have once again vetoed NATO’s thinly veiled call for bombing, invasion, and war at the expense of the Syrian people. Abstentions from Pakistan and South Africa, despite heavy duty arm-twisting by the United States, show that Syria is in no way isolated. As long as the NATO bloc cannot use the Security Council for its purposes, it will be difficult to organize an Iraq-style coalition of the willing to carry out this aggression.
Therefore, at least for the next several weeks, we may see continued attempts to destroy the Syrian state below the threshold of conventional war, without calling in NATO bombers and infantry brigades. In these efforts, information warfare, media manipulation, video fakery, and similar techniques are destined to play a central role along with terrorism, assassinations, and high-profile military stunts. But by understanding how NATO wages psychological warfare, it is possible to defeat the aggressors.
WGT/HJL
Born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1946, Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley is a philosopher of history who seeks to provide the programs and strategies needed to overcome the current world crisis. As an activist historian he first became widely known for his book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992), a masterpiece of research which is still a must read. AB Princeton 1966, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa; Fulbright Scholar at University of Turin, Italy; MA in humanities from Skidmore College; and Ph.D. in early modern history from the Catholic University of America with emphasis on the role of Venice in the origins of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). During 2008, he warned of the dangers of an Obama presidency controlled by Wall Street with Obama: The Postmodern Coup, The Making of a Manchurian Candidate and Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography. His interest in economics is reflected in Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History Against Oligarchy. His books have appeared in Japanese, German, Italian, French, and Spanish. More articles by Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley
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