Middle East: Discussion

[Guest]

[url="http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/03/20/354558/pictures-allies-detail-early-action-against-libya.html"]PICTURES: Allies detail early action against Libya[/url]

[Guest]

[url="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368410/Libya-crisis-Gaddafi-uses-civilians-human-shields-prevent-military-targets.html"]Colonel Gaddafi's son 'killed in kamikaze pilot attack on Tripoli barracks' [/url]

[HareKrishna]

good

[HareKrishna]

great

[Guest]

[quote name='HareKrishna' date='22 March 2011 - 09:14 PM' timestamp='1300808182' post='111217']

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...oubts.html

Arab league backing up.

[/quote]

They never had spine, they are scared of their own streets. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Guest]

Allies Expand Libya Military Campaign, Debate Command...

Russia calls for immediate ceasefire...

China, too...

Emerging powers join in opposition...

US fighter crash lands...

Crew members eject safely...

Stalemate Feared...

[Guest]

[url="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368693/Libya-war-Germans-pull-forces-NATO-Libyan-coalition-falls-apart.html"]Who's in charge? Germans pull forces out of NATO as Libyan coalition falls apart [/url]

Deep divisions between allied forces currently bombing Libya worsened today as the German military announced it was pulling forces out of NATO over continued disagreement on who will lead the campaign.



A German military spokesman said it was recalling two frigates and AWACS surveillance plane crews from the Mediterranean, after fears they would be drawn into the conflict if NATO takes over control from the U.S.



The infighting comes as a heated meeting of NATO ambassadors yesterday failed to resolve whether the 28-nation alliance should run the operation to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone, diplomats said.



Yesterday a war of words erupted between the U.S. and Britain after the U.K. government claimed Muammar Gaddafi is a legitimate target for assassination.

War is on now. <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Guest]

Allies in disarray...

DER SPIEGEL: Coalition of the Unwilling...

OBAMA: No ground troops, no matter what happens...

Redefines 'exit strategy'...

French PM: 'We are not at war'...

Costs, mission unclear...

Also backing the rebels -- al Qaeda...

[Guest]

[url="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4046460,00.html"]Egypt Air removes Israel from map[/url]

Jordan stretches to sea in online map by Egypt's largest airline, though it continues to fly to Israel

[Guest]

Liberals or Democrats are not calling Libya action as war but.....



DON'T CALL IT WAR!

IT'S 'KINETIC MILITARY ACTION'

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[url="http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2011/03/white-house-libya-fight-not-war-its-kinetic-military-action"]White House: Libya fight is not war, it's 'kinetic military action' [/url]

[Guest]

[url="http://www.dailypioneer.com/326746/100-killed-in-civil-unrest-in-Syrian-city.html"]100 killed in civil unrest in Syrian city[/url]

March 25, 2011 7:01:04 AM

Agencies | Nicosia/ Daraa

More than 100 persons were killed in police gunfire in Syria’s southern city of Daraa, human rights activists and witnesses said on Thursday.



“There are definitely more than 100 dead and the city will need a week to bury its martyrs,” said human rights activist Ayman al-Asswad in Daraa.



Asswad said security forces had “used real bullets” when firing against demonstrators on Wednesday in Daraa, 120 km south of Damascus, and a second activist put the figure as high as “more than 150” killed.



“It was a very difficult, bloody day,” said a resident of Daraa. “There is a state of undeclared curfew in Daraa, whenever troops see four or five more people gathered they open fire,” he said.

NATO should bomb them also.

[HareKrishna]

[quote name='Mudy' date='25 March 2011 - 07:05 AM' timestamp='1301016447' post='111237']

NATO should bomb them also.

[/quote]

Unlikely.After repeated failures in Asia,Africa is more at hand.

[HareKrishna]

In april will start ground attack in Libya.



http://weapons.technology.youngester.com...il-in.html

[Guest]

[url="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/israels-iron-dome-rocket-defense-system-deploys-today/"]ISRAEL‘S ’IRON DOME’ ROCKET DEFENSE SYSTEM DEPLOYS [/url]

Israeli defense officials’ earlier failures to deploy the $200 million Iron Dome anti-rocket system against the Palestinian attacks had raised many questions in Israel about its effectiveness. Home Front Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio on Sunday that even once it was deployed, the Iron Dome would still not provide full protection to residents of Israel’s south.



The Iron Dome will begin operating Sunday in the area of Beersheba, southern Israel’s largest city, the military said. A second missile battery will be deployed soon in another large southern city, Ashdod, the military added, without specifying an exact date.

[Guest]

Fierce Fight Erupts for Gadhafi's Hometown...

France, UK urge supporters to drop him now...

RUSSIA: No UN mandate to attack forces...

Energized Muslim Brotherhood eyes prize...

Unrest in Syria, Jordan Poses New Test...

Clinton: USA won't intervene [for now]...

[Guest]

OBAMA DEFENDS...

'World Conscience'...

U.S. says rebels may sell oil?

Brits fear becoming another Iraq...

Gadhafi tells West to halt 'barbaric genocide'...

Camp Lejeune Marines sent to Libya...

Clinton, Hague meet senior 'rebel' figure...

[Guest]

Libya rebel have taken Tripoli - End of QADDAFI Regime



AFTER QADDAFI: Oil Prices Will Tank, Stock Prices Will Soar

[shamu]

Next regime in line is Assad of Syria.

[Husky]

^



I read that the "Criminal Tribunal" in the Netherlands is already sharpening its knives with an eye on Gaddafi and son. Except that Gaddafi is not yet in custody, but the son is. Cue war crimes trial/circus.

Alien christo/western "benevolent intervention" and "civilian casualties" vs "evil deposed war criminals guilty of war crimes (native tyrants though they be)". They do say History is written by the winners, after all.







Anyway, I thought the following news rather relevant for this thread. I don't know that it's been discussed already.



1. 40 year old American uni PhD student in Scotland - married with wife - pretended he's a Middle-Eastern *lesbian* in Syria, in a blog that apparently became popular internationally (intentionally) including in Syria where it was intended to become popular.



He created his persona thoroughly, invented drama, stirred up sentiments to a great extent and then - to create the climax (and no doubt to deliberately cause a commotion) - he made his lesbian persona suddenly get "disappeared by the Syrian secret police". Apparently, his Syrian lesbian alter-ego's 'mysterious' disappearance caused serious concern among the Syrian Gay community who were expressly being manipulated into joining a revolution. I mean, who were deliberately being misled into ... serious concern, max.



Note again that the "Edinburgh uni grad student" is a 40 year old American. Not some fresh kid just past his teenage years. Note his excuses of "innocent mistake" in the articles below to conceal the actual purpose of what he was doing.



2. Note also how an American lesbian owning another international lesbian site - and who introduced and helped popularise the above fraud to a wider circle, since the 2nd lesbian's blog was apparently even more famous - turned out to be a man also. Oh, and he turned out to be a 58 year old retired US Air force man (but there's no such thing as retiring from the US forces/intelligence anyway). He copped out of his discovery with "He said he had set up the Lezgetreal.com site to advance the gay and lesbian cause and felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man." Yeah, no one takes compulsive liars seriously: a man who had no scruples in pretending to be of a different gender and sexual orientation wants people to believe he gets pangs of conscience when he wants to advance gay rights but feared "he won't be taken seriously as a straight man". However, I don't think he's actually *compulsively* lying. I think his website is some intelligence portal to introduce gay personas to the masses, who will then be used to leverage "gay communities" to stir up trouble elsewhere. Cue the media.





3. In the ME, LGBT communities are regularly organised for use by the west as extra foot soldiers in manufactured activism/mass-hysteria anyway. They are frequently herded into mobilisation for causes the christowest manipulates them for.

I recall a timely 20/20 or 60 minutes (type) program on oppression in Iraq (and hence the - unstated - need for liberation/intervention). It focussed quite significantly on the country's oppressed gay community: all the gay interviewees who were screeching persecution, rather prominently (and predictably and *deliberately*) displayed one or more crosses dangling from their necks. Was surprised those Iraqi men were so ignorant that they didn't know that fellow cross/stake-lovers in the US include extreme Christian Right cults that insist on stoning all gay people. Also surprised these Iraqi gay men had never heard of the famous site "god-hates-<nasty-slur-for-homosexuals-(excised)>.com" by some (in)famous born-again christian with a following.

Of course the interview with the christist gay Iraqis was used to further justify (to secular western viewers) the invasion and subsequent "intervention" of the US in Iraq.





4. Note also how "realistic" (and intricate) the personas are that these individual western intelligence personnel create for manipulating larger groups of people: they "apparently" even "fool" western journalists into referring to them as sources of representative information (the western media play-acts "As Surprised As You Are" on cue). Of course, eventually, the growing lie gives way to a slight trip-up and the western social-engineer appointed to leverage some target-community in the 3rd world gets exposed. Then come the excuses of "Acting Alone Out Of Individual Interest" to cover up for how creating online personas to influence people is part of a larger, organised operation. Deniability is after all the first rule of intelligence/special ops: "they're out of control mercenaries acting on their own, not our official special forces" or, as in here, "it's just individuals touched by concern and so trying to stand up for gay rights. All the way in the Middle East. How humane is that." Except that such excuses are expressly meant to make people overlook what is really motivating these people: not "individual" action at all, but intelligence assignment.



Since most people these days who have read a bit more are onto how media is used as a tool for manufacturing consent (e.g. everyone I work with is quite aware), the christowest returned to that age-old routine - what Dhu once discussed - false flag operations. And the Internet means that anonymous personas - when well-developed - can be puppeted by anyone (and then used to manipulate masses of people). So lesbian 25 year olds can easily be played by 40 and 58 year old straight men <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> (More fool those who think all this is some innocent mistake.)







www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10732263

Shame on you: Syrians attack internet fake

By Jerome Taylor

5:30 AM Wednesday Jun 15, 2011



Syria's already embattled gay community has reacted with dismay that a popular blog supposedly written by a lesbian from Damascus was, in fact, dreamed up by a United States-born academic living in Scotland.

Tom MacMaster, 40, a PhD student from Edinburgh, has apologised for Gay Girl in Damascus, which purported to describe life in the Syrian capital for Amina Abdallah, an openly lesbian 25-year-old.



He said that although the account of Amina Arraf was fictionalised, it described accurately the atmosphere inside Syria for the gay community and pro-democracy activists.

(Said the American in Scotland.

Reminds one of that other recent social engineer - Slummovie's catholic director from the British Isles - who'd never been to India until his Slummovie, and then pretended that was a realistic depiction of how islam got treated by Hindus. Of course, it was crowned with awards - deliberately given to promote the movie's anti-Hindu propaganda.)



But genuine gay bloggers inside the country said the webpage had damaged Syria's nascent gay rights community and even put activists' lives in danger.

Sami Hamwi, editor of the Syria page of Gay Middle East, said he and friends had taken personal risks to discover the fate of Amina Abdallah, after MacMaster uploaded a post claiming that the blog's author had been seized by the country's feared security forces.

"I have myself started to investigate Amina's arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure. Shame on you."

Daniel Nassar, a gay man living in Damascus, told the Independent his friends had been affected by the publicity the fake blog received in a country where homosexuality remains controversial. "We were absolutely outraged when it emerged that the blog was made up.

(Why these people are not enraged with their having been played, I don't know. They were meant to protest alongside other "pro-democracy" people in Syria. Guess MacMaster failed in his assignment multiply.)

"It has brought so much unwanted negative focus on Syria's LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] community. Every day I see my lesbian and gay friends struggling to lead a double life, this is the last thing they needed. Now we have had Syrian national television picking up on the story and running with it all day."

LGBT bloggers already face severe repression from Syria's Baathist regime.

Gay Middle East editor Dan Littauer said: "They have to deal with open homophobia, honour killings, the threat of losing their job, being ostracised by family and pressure to get married."

MacMaster said he wanted to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change.

(Translation: "My job was to help induce Syria's LGBT community into the revolution as well.")



As the deceit unspooled, a second blogger known as Paula Brooks, who posted some of the fraudulent Arraf's comments on a lesbian news site, admitted to being a man.

The Washington Post reported that "Brooks" was Bill Graber, 58, a retired US Air Force member. Graber said he set up the Lezgetreal.com site to advance the gay and lesbian cause and felt he would not be taken seriously as a straight man.

The Washington Post said Amina often "flirted" with Brooks with neither man apparently realising that the other was also a man pretending to be a lesbian.

(Oh please. Media can cut the pretence at "surprise". Here's another and far more likely explanation, rather too probable considering both of them turned out to be suspicious old Amrikkkan men, and one was obviously tasked with introducing the other's persona to a wider audience to create a greater circle of sympathy for the climax:

Both of them *knew* each other - knew the other was a man - and were probably assigned contacts, and were practically winking at each other in the mentioned online "flirting" routines, in full knowledge that they were playing the onlooking fools while said onlooking con-victims imagined these two were actually lesbians flirting light-heartedly/in earnest/whatever.)

- Independent, AP

By Jerome Taylor

www.usatoday.com/news/world/2011-06-13-Syria-blogger-hoax_n.htm

Associated Press:

Syrian blog hoaxer apologizes amid backlash

Updated 6/13/2011 5:30 PM



LONDON (AP) — A 40-year-old American man living in Scotland said Monday he's sorry for posing as a Syrian lesbian blogger who offered vivid accounts of life amid revolt and repression in Damascus, a hoax that has exposed the difficulty of sifting truth from fiction online.



Tom MacMaster said he created the fictional persona of Amina Arraf and the "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog to draw attention to conditions in a Middle East convulsed by change.



"I never meant to hurt anyone," the Edinburgh University grad student wrote Monday in a long apology on the blog. The university said it had suspended MacMaster's computer privileges while it investigated whether he had breached its rules.





Gay rights activists and bloggers say MacMaster has endangered real people who are trying to tell their stories in authoritarian societies.



"He completely stole the limelight of real LGBT bloggers and activists in the Middle East and diverted it in a negative way," said Dan Littauer of the website Gay Middle East.

(Google: Littauer is a German surname meaning Lithuanian person. Exactly how can a Lithuanian-German be a voice for the Gay Middle-East...)





Daniel Nassar, the pseudonym of a Syrian man affiliated with Gay Middle East, said MacMaster had put all gay Syrians in danger.



"If I was living in a country where I could sue this person because he has damaged me and damaged my cause … then I would," he said.



The blogs about life as a Syrian-American lesbian grabbed international attention soon after they began in February. Alongside video clips and erotic poems, the writer wrote about a childhood in Virginia, daily life as a gay woman in Damascus, the growing protest movement and hopes for a future Syria freed from "dictators and rule by strong men."



For readers hungry for news of the uprisings sweeping the Arab world, it was gold dust — a gripping, firsthand account of a country from which most foreign journalists are excluded.

("a country from which most foreign journalists are excluded" <--> so there's ample opportunity to *manufacture* some news, said the puppeteers.)





A reporter for The Associated Press, who maintained a monthlong email correspondence with someone claiming to be Arraf, found the persona persuasive. The writer spoke about friends in Damascus, and outlined worries about her father and hopes for the future of her country, and seemed very much like a woman in the midst of the violent change gripping Syria.

(OR: the AP media was deliberately sent to create additional hysteria/media hype for the character. I.e. to lend it added realism by throwing media weight/support in there.)



In the emails, the person acknowledged fudging some details to protect herself and her family, and painted a harrowing picture of fleeing her home.



An email sent to the blogger's address Monday was not immediately returned.



On June 6, a post on the Arraf site, ostensibly by a cousin, said she'd been abducted by armed men in a Damascus street. The Internet erupted with alarm. A "Free Amina Arraf" Facebook page drew 14,000 supporters. The U.S. State Department said it was making inquiries to establish her identity. (Of course it was.)



But other bloggers began to go public with their growing doubts about Arraf's authenticity.



Some thought an April 26 post describing how two plainclothes security agents came to her home to detain her and were persuaded to leaving by her father sounded extremely implausible. Syria's hardline security services are not known as being easily dissuaded.

(The climax and drama was pre-planned. Else why would MacMaster write such a climax into his persona's story?)



Reporters in Virginia, where Arraf claimed to have grown up, could find no trace of her or her family.



Journalists could find no one who had ever met her — not even Sandra Bagaria, a Montreal woman who was having an online relationship with her and had exchanged hundreds of emails with "Amina."



Online sleuths — including Andy Carvin of National Public Radio and blogger Liz Henry — found that an IP address used by Arraf was based at Edinburgh University and uncovered links between the blogger and an address in Stone Mountain, Georgia, owned by MacMaster, a married American man currently studying for a master's degree at the University of Edinburgh.

(The truly independently-acting "online sleuths" are the ones whom the US govt can blame for exposing the fraud, after which all the paid actors had to come clean - well, clean to a certain extent: apologies/excuses/deniability.)





Then a woman in Britain, Jelena Lecic, came forward to say the photos of "Amina" on the blogger's Facebook page were actually of her. She had been unaware of the theft until she saw her own picture illustrating a British newspaper article about the blogger.



Faced with the mounting evidence, MacMaster first denied it, then confessed, posting an "apology to readers" Sunday on Amina's blog.

(Apology is the last of the christist tactics to make the discovery "go away" so that the public stop their digging and do not discover the more crucial facts.)





(Note how hereafter follow the careful excuses from mum and wife in the form of "it was completely *innocent*, *well-meant*, he acted as an *individual* (but without mum and wife's consent)" etc. I.e. keeping the entire scenario domestic, wife and mum brought in to make intelligence man into a mere average Joe family man. Lest any suspect it was all done for social engineering purposes.

Note also the mother saying: "He made some errors in judgment, but they weren't criminal or sinful". The mother just told you what her religion - and that of her son - is. If she wasn't a believer she'd never have used that phrase, and would instead have left it at "criminal" or maybe thrown in "unethical". But lying for gawd isn't sinful, as mummy opines. Many missionaries are documented as working for the CIA.)



MacMaster's wife, Britta Froelicher, said she understood that people felt hurt and angry about what her husband had done. She said he was apologetic for a situation that "backfired" and became uncontrollable.



"He created kind of an avatar," she said. "When he became this other person, his opinions were being heard and it took on a life of its own."



"It was really an attempt to circumvent traditional news media and try to talk about things" from a fresh perspective, she said.



Froelicher, a doctoral student at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, spoke by telephone to the AP while on vacation with her husband in Istanbul.



She said she had known that her husband was writing a blog, but had no idea that he had created a false character.



"He's my husband, he's not my child," she said. "Obviously, we are going to have some conversations in private about these things."



MacMaster insists he did not mean to hurt anyone — but his fake persona has left a trail of angry people.



Bagaria, Amina's Canadian online girlfriend, tweeted that she felt "deeply hurt."



Paula Brooks of lesbian [b]news website Lezgetreal.com, which encouraged Amina and republished her blog entries, said she feels like a "patsy."[/b]

(And shortly after, Paula Brooks got revealed to be that retired US Air Force man. In the above line she - or rather, he - still pretended to have been as "misled as everyone else" with MacMaster's identity "revelation".)



Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa division at Human Rights Watch, said the whole episode should serve as a warning to media and rights groups trying to cover the region's uprisings.



"It underscores the age-old principle that you have to know your sources," he said. "You have to know who is feeding you this information."



Eve MacMaster, the blogger's mother, said she hasn't spoken to her son since he admitted fabricating the posts but is certain her son's writings came from a genuine concern for people the Middle East.



"He's not out to make money or hurt anybody," she said. "I'm proud of him for caring about others and I'm proud of him for coming forward and saying 'I'm sorry. I was stupid and I was vain.'"



She said that when she and her husband first read the blog, after their son had admitted to writing it, they easily noticed his style and personality.



"Once we started reading the blog, we said, 'This is Tom,'" according to Eve, a Mennonite minister who lives in Gainesville, Florida. "It's very consistent with him."

(Mennonite: http://freetruth.50webs.org/D4a.htm#Miss...uthAmerica

"NTM and Mennonite missions in South America" <-> hardcore christomissionaries. Work for jeebus and IIRC the US government.)



She said her son has written volumes of unpublished poems and novels, inspired in his youth by fantasy authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien and his "Lord of the Rings" series.



"He made some errors in judgment, but they weren't criminal or sinful," she said. "They were just poor judgment."

("poor judgement" <-> "mistake of an individual acting individually" <-> don't dare suspect he was a social engineer.

Isn't deniability the greatest invention ever?)



- AP

[HareKrishna]

[quote name='Mudy' date='22 August 2011 - 07:35 AM' timestamp='1313978258' post='112550']

[b]Libya rebel have taken Tripoli - End of QADDAFI Regime



[/quote]

Thats good news.I wish to terrorist Qadaffi the same fate as Saddam had.