It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

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Former Egyptian President Is 'Clinically Dead'

10:43pm UK, Tuesday June 19, 2012
Egypt's ousted ex-president Hosni Mubarak is "clinically dead", according to reports.

The 84-year-old is said to have died after he was transferred to hospital from prison.

The official MENA news agency reported that Mubarak was "clinically dead" after "his heart had stopped beating and did not respond to defibrillation".

Mubarak was first admitted to hospital earlier this month when he was jailed for life after a court convicted him for complicity in the murder of protesters during the uprising that forced him from power.

The ex-dictator, said to be too sick by his doctors for a jail cell, had been held in a luxury medical suite at a military hospital throughout the court proceedings.

Reports of his death came as thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square against the military's move to grant itself sweeping powers.

More to follow...
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The shooting down of a Turkish fighter aircraft by Syria on Friday has become a classic case of coercive diplomacy.

A Turkish F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft disappeared from radar screens shortly after taking off from the Erhach airbase in Malatya province in southeastern Turkey and entered Syrian airspace. According to Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), air-defense forces shot down the plane 1 kilometer off the coast from the Syrian port city of Latakia. A Turkish search-and-rescue aircraft rushed to the area of the crash but came under Syrian fire and had to pull out.

The Russian naval base at Tartus is only 90 kilometers by road from Latakia. The incident took place on a day that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem was on a visit to Russia.
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One major reason for this hardening of the Russian stance was Britain's publicity stunt on June 18. Moscow hit back by deciding that the ship carrying Russian helicopters to Syria, which was turned back after its insurance was cut, will resume its journey under escort from the Russian port of Murmansk after changing its flag to the Russian Standard.

The ship is apparently carrying up to 15 Mil Mi-25 helicopters that were repaired in Kaliningrad. The helicopters were originally bought by Assad's late father and predecessor Hafez al-Assad at the end of the 1980s. What made Moscow furious was that both Hague and his US counterpart, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, tried to propagate stories that the ship carried fresh arms supplies to Syria.
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In reality, Damascus has put a double whammy on Turkey. It not only lost a Phantom and its two pilots but is now under compulsion to take the loss calmly, exercising self-restraint.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one of the top defenders of the dangerous “rebel” coalition operating in Syria at American taxpayer expense, immediately claimed there was "indisputable evidence that the regime deliberately murdered innocent civilians" — “over 200 men, women and children,” in fact. She did not present or cite any of the alleged evidence, but vowed to punish those responsible amid more calls for immediate regime change. Other Western leaders and financiers of the violence in Syria issued similar condemnations and more threats.

Despite hysterical reporting and wild statements by political leaders, however, even “opposition activists” were conceding early on that most of the dead were actually armed combatants who had staged attacks on the regime’s military forces. More recent reports, even those based on anonymous “opposition activists,” also suggest that closer to 100 people had died. Almost all of the dead were military-aged men, too — a far cry from Clinton’s “over 200 men, women and children.”

"At this stage, though we do not yet have the final count, the number of civilians killed by shelling is not more than seven," an anti-Assad “activist” known as “Jaafar” with the Sham News Network (SNN) told the AFP press agency. "The rest were members of the [Western-backed] Free Syrian Army.” How could Clinton and the establishment press have messed up the story so badly, again?

One problem, according to analysts, is that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is consistently discussed using deceptive terminology. “From the U.S. State Department and outward through its tentacles across the corporate media, the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ is continuously referred to interchangeably as ‘civilians’ and ‘activists,’” noted analyst Tony Cartalucci, who has followed the conflict closely. “In reality they are heavily armed, foreign-backed, and include amongst their ranks a sizable proportion of foreign fighters — betraying the very name Free ‘Syrian’ Army.”

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After U.S. Uproar, Another Syrian “Civilian Massacre” Story Falls Apart -> http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-new ... alls-apart

They have gone for the jugular now. The brother-in-law of the President, the Defence Minister, a massive bomb close to – or in – the headquarters of the military apparatus run by the President's own brother. Assassinations take time to plan, but this was on an epic scale, to match the bloodbath across Syria.

Bashar al-Assad's own sister, Bushra, one of the pillars of the Baath party, loses her husband in a massive explosion in the very centre of Damascus. No wonder the Russians talk about the "decisive battle".

It won't be a replay of Stalingrad, but the tentacles of the rebellion have now moved towards the heart. And, of course, there are massacres to come. Why else would thousands of Syria's citizens flee to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp yesterday, to seek protection from the most betrayed citizens of the Arab world?

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So some Israeli filmaker went and made a 'blasphemous' film about the prophet Mohammed. The film was shown in the US. This has led to some protests across the Arab world including in Cario and Benghazi, the latter was an attack on the US consulate resulting in the death of the US ambassador.
Al Jazeera - US envoy dies in Benghazi consulate attack

What happens now?

This suggests not only that professionals launched this attack with advance warning and serious weaponry (this is part of the reasons Libyans initially blamed it on Qaddafi dead-enders), but that they did it with either inside knowledge or incredibly good intelligence.

The Islamophobic plot in California

The second strand of coverage has puzzled through who was responsible for the film itself.

The film was made by a “Sam Bacile,” who claimed to the WSJ and AP to be Israeli. Then a “consultant” on the film, the militant Christian Steve Klein, refuted that claim, while claiming to know little of the film-maker’s real story.

Klein told me that Bacile, the producer of the film, is not Israeli, and most likely not Jewish, as has been reported, and that the name is, in fact, a pseudonym. He said he did not know “Bacile”‘s real name. He said Bacile contacted him because he leads anti-Islam protests outside of mosques and schools, and because, he said, he is a Vietnam veteran and an expert on uncovering al Qaeda cells in California.

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When I asked him to describe Bacile, he said: “I don’t know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He’s not Israeli, no. I can tell you this for sure, the State of Israel is not involved, Terry Jones (the radical Christian Quran-burning pastor) is not involved. His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he’s Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign.”

Then the AP figured out “Sam Bacile” is actually a Coptic Christian with 2010 check kiting conviction named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula who lied to them about his identity.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he was manager for the company that produced “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may have caused inflamed mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy production group behind the film.

In his perspicacious article titled Terry Jones, asymmetrical warrior (Asia Times Online, September 13, 2010) my colleague David Goldman explained how "a madman carrying a match and a copy of the Koran can do more damage to the Muslim world than a busload of suicide bombers." The "madman" can clearly do similar damage to those who seek to ally themselves with the Arab street.

However, caution is once again due. Subsequent reports suggest that Sam Bacile, the said Israeli Jew-cum-California real estate entrepreneur, is at best a pseudonym and at worst a fiction. This could easily be a kind of a false-flag operation, intended to embarrass the Israeli government as well.

Which brings us to a final point: perhaps the single greatest beneficiary of the affair was the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

What better illustration of Assad's argument that he is fighting "terrorists" than this dramatic reverse in Libya, which many foreigners analysts had seen as a success story to be repeated in his country? While no evidence currently links the Syrian government to either the movie or the embassy attack, the motive is certainly in place. The argument for an international intervention against Assad just suffered a body blow.