Micheal Weiss, well done.. Very interesting story & could get you the Pulitzer award, only if it was true.
Where to start? Let's see.. How about your sources?
A short while after events started in Syria, the government there took a wise decision to expel foreign media from the country for a simple reason: Unbiased Reporting from Inside, and it all started with Reuters reporter Oweis a Jordanian enthusiast who wanted to become famous on the account of professionalism & fact reporting and concentrated instead on hottest titles and twisted facts that catch eyes of readers & attention of viewers, so he was caught red handed in a video he sent his agency putting words in a wounded soldier’s mouth in a hospital, the soldier was serving in Dara’a, south of Syria, at the borders with Jordan, where the soldier was telling a group of news agencies that he was shot by an armed gang & Reuters guy replied to him: Why did the security shoot at you? The wounded soldier, pressing on his pain: “No, it wasn’t security, we were shot at by armed gangs hiding within protesters” & Reuters guy again: So you say the security shot you because you refused to shoot at unarmed protesters?!! The video distributed ends here with the voice of the soldier weakened by added noise, unlucky for the Reuters reporter all the others had that on their tapes including the state media guy who showed the film to officials & they aired it on State TV & it was widely viewed by Syrians on YouTube in full with the soldiers words, so the Reuters guy was interrogated then expelled, others of different international news agencies were looking for blood news, not facts, so they also were expelled.
Giving the story above I ask again Mr. Weiss: What’s your source? If there’s no foreign media reporting from inside, and the state media is reporting a totally different story than yours.. We are left with ‘Human Rights Activists’. Out of a sudden we hear about tens of HR Organizations specialized in Syria but none of them have presence in Syria itself, most if not all of them are one man show kiosks in foreign countries & all linked together through a well organized network, Ausama Monajed gave an interesting interview explaining how he was involved in smuggling high tech communication devices & other stuff into Syria through a network of agents (other stuff included US made automatic machine guns, grenades, RPGs, even few 4x4 cars loaded with anti-airplanes machine guns like the ones used now in Libya and which the Syrian army already confiscated over a 100 of them).
Before, media professionals would tell you that you need to cross examine your news by 3 different reliable sources before broadcasting to preserve your network’s reputation, that’s still in place, except for so called Arab Spring Revolt & it appeared clearly in the Syrian case, where clips of videos uploaded to Youtube by anonymous people are being the reliable source of information. Numbers of protesters in each city reach on Fridays double the population of the city itself including its residents from 0 to 100 years old..! Including of course people who support the regime and even people who do not support any part & not into politics, the majority usually..!
Your entire article can be labeled fairy & valued at par with BS depending on your source & style. Wake up.
The fact that you missed, was even declared by US Secretary of State, many others, even Reuters itself today that the Syrian army is fighting well organized & fully armed gangs, the government of Syria estimates their numbers of tens of thousands who used to serve in Lebanon, Afghanistan & Iraq and were called hastily to contribute in overthrowing the regime in Syria.
Why Syria? Syria is the only country left in the Levant, Middle East, The Crossroad Region, you name it, that is still out of the US Hegemony Sphere; Syria is the only country that is opposing & succeeding in preventing the settlement of over a million Palestinian Refugees in the countries they live in now in exodus, out of which over 450,000 live in Syria itself, depriving them one of the basic rights of humans, the right to return to their homeland stolen from them by Zionist israel and given to settlers brought from all over the planet just because they are Jews. Syria is the country that is not letting the US invasion army in Iraq enjoy stealing the oil peacefully. Syria does not recognize israel as a state because it is based on a race, stole others’ lands, besieging over 1.5 Million Palestinians in Gaza Strip, detaining over 11,000 Palestinians for political reasons & committing daily crimes against residents of occupied Palestine.
The link to the blog & our comment on it: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100099188/assad-sends-in-his-death-squads-students-of-lebanon-and-rwanda-take-note/
Update 01 August 2011, 8:00am CET:
Someone apparently not from planet Earth commented on our above comment so we had to reply explaining how life is on this planet, here's the excerpt:
I don't know on which planet you live, but here on planet Earth we know facts:
You said Syrians who don't admit military rule failure are the ones whose pockets are filled with cash - as Dollars of course. I tell you: Majority of Syrians don't have their pockets filled with Dollar cash, try to get some statistics.. Military rule fails in general that's why the transition already started.
You said: I forgot to mention that a country with Syria's resources is one of the least developed in the region!! In what precisely? Internet speed in Syria is 3 times the one in Lebanon for instance; Syria's doctors are the most wanted in the doctors’ jobs market, Syria's engineers are making extra-ordinary achievements by themselves in developing most prosperity needed tools due to a siege Syria is facing by the USA & partners over decades now. In Syria: school is free & compulsory up to the 9th grade (15 y/o), and it’s free till college graduation for its people & whomever enrolls in Syria’s education system, asks hundred of Arabs & others who studied in Syria. In Syria: Health Care is free from emergency till complicated operations including medicines & high tech scanning. In Syria: though the income is little compared by other nations but the expenses are peanuts compared with those nations: if you don’t need to pay for education & health that’s half of your expenses saved add to it: In Syria: oil is subsidized by more than half & smugglers are caught continuously trying to smuggle diesel to Lebanon. Bread is subsidized, you can buy bread enough for a day for a family of 4 people for 15 Syrian Liras = $0.30 (30 cents) try asking people who did visit Syria about the cost of living.
You said: Why a nation famous for its merchants is incapable of selling even pistachio nuts on the world market, when there’s a siege imposed on a country by the USA & partners it doesn’t sell its goods on the world market, it sells it through bilateral agreements, maybe you need to take a look at the map and see beside NATO State members how many countries are there on planet Earth?
You asked: Why so few tourists are there in Syria, I tell you this is temporary, in Syria in last January there were no places to accommodate tourists even during the winter times, but warnings by governments like USA, UK & friends and the war Syrian Army is fighting terrorists will definitely affect tourism.
If you want to really know who the Syrians are fighting, I’ll ask you to check this very graphic youtube video of the ‘Peaceful Protesters’ throwing bodies of few security men they killed in a river from a high bridge, I have plenty of other videos showing horrific acts by ‘Peaceful Protesters’ against army & security personnel all over Syria if you want, and all have one thumb impression: Al Qaeda. Forgot to tell you that some ‘Peaceful Protesters’ facebook pages are calling to throw acid water on ‘ANY’ person who do not support their ‘Peaceful Protests’ to topple the regime, exactly like what Taliban fighters do with girls going to school, from free & compulsory education to children up to 9th grade to throwing acid water on them. The graphic video link: http://t.co/SXkR8QN (GRAPHIC)
You said: the game is up, I reply: Yes, the game is almost over & all those promoting Anarchy in Syria will be brought to justice.
