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=> Magnificent article from one of my friends, Joseph Wakim

Magnificent article from one of my friends, Joseph Wakim

Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Friday, September 30 2011, 1:24:08 (UTC)
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ARAB SPRING TURNS CHILLY FOR SOME
Brisbane Courier Mail, 29 September 2011

The bridge built by President Obama in Cairo in June 2009 was bull-dozed by his recent speech to the UN General Assembly. His hypocrisy insulted the intelligence of the assembly but also his own American people.

His championing of ‘universal rights’ apparently exempts Palestinians, and his sanctions to ‘those who trample on human rights’ exempts American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.

His double standards are most evident when he contrasts Syria with Bahrain. Both have used mass violence to control their respective uprisings. He calls on the UNSC to ‘sanction the Syrian regime’ yet calls on Bahrain to ‘pursue meaningful dialogue’ with the main opposition bloc – the Wifaq.

While the Sultanist Kingdom of Bahrain held its elections last weekend, amidst more violence and boycotts, Syria will hold its first multi-party elections next February, after fulfilling its promised constitutional reforms. While President Obama pledges to ‘serve as a voice for those who have been silenced’, this apparently exempts the mostly Shi’ite population who are oppressed by his ‘close friend’ King Khalifa in Bahrain.

President Obama propagates the cheap and nasty narrative that all the anti government protestors in Syria are ‘protesting peacefully, standing silently in the streets’. Yet he knows that so many of them are externally sponsored militia and mercenaries who are armed, trained, funded and imported. A recently released Wikileaks cable confirmed that the US State Department has funneled $6 million to finance anti-government parties and exiles, as well as an anti-government channel Barada TV.

In the absence of professional media on the ground in Syria, anonymous voices of these exiles and amateur images from mobile phones have had a field day with their ‘feeds’ – too often without checks, translations and context. We are shown crowds chanting pro-government slogans and carrying pro-government banners (in Arabic) but the voice over (in English) tells us that they are anti-government protests, which is inexcusable propaganda. Even Al Jazeera TV, operating from Bahrain’s neighbour Qatar, is notorious for its pro-Sunni bias.

On 16 May, even Media Watch on ABC TV exposed a completely falsified report of ‘Syrian troops beating detained protestors’ that was later proven to be in Lebanon three years ago. There have been CNN reports about 40 babies dying due to power cuts in Hama that was later proven to be in Egypt.

While last month’s UNSC resolution condemning Syria’s ‘widespread violations of human rights’ was amplified in western media, the clause that ‘urges all sides to act with utmost restraint, and to refrain from reprisals, including attacks against state institutions’ was muted.

Was this because it begs inconvenient questions such as - who are ‘all sides’? What ‘attacks against state institutions’?

We do not hear about the mutilation of Syrian soldiers or police, because it begs questions about those ‘protesting peacefully’. We do not hear about the Saudi-sponsored Salafists who are provoking a theocracy not a democracy, and seeking to replace a secular state with a sectarian one, because it begs questions about another ‘close friend’ in the Sunni Gulf region.

The Arab Spring gave rise to jasmines, but also to parasitic weeds and seeds that fall from foreign gardens and take root.

The first casualty of war may be the truth, but this is not a war and we have a right to know the truth. If we ask the right questions, we can know the truth that belies the black and white headlines.

In his attempt to isolate rogue regimes, President Obama has isolated his own.

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