David Cameron's Claim of "70,000 Moderates Fighting in Syria" - Looking for a Pretext to Force Russia Out of Syria - New Orwellian Term: "Moderates" - Brookings Doha Center Think Tank Wonk - Russia Doesn't Distinguish Between "Moderates" and I$I$ - Foreign Countries Pay Think Tanks to Develop Strategies - Syria Did Not Create Jihadis, They Were Smugggled Into Syria Through Turkey - Brookings Doha Center Chair: Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani - Qatar's New Status: Prime Sponsor of Terrorism - Qatar, How Are Preparations Going for the 2022 World Cup?

When Is a Head Chopping Rebel a 'Moderate'? Brookings Doha Has the Answer!

Simple! When they're not ISIS and it's useful for a western government for them to be moderate

This news appeared 
at Russian Insider

Charles Lister, a propagandist at Brookings Doha which is financed by the Wahhabi regime of Qatar, has been tasked to sell Islamist radical head choppers in Syria as "moderate" rebels. He isn't good at it but the "western" media love him as a talkative "expert" from a formerly reputable think tank.

The mask comes off when Lister has to find the 70,000 "moderates" the British Premier Cameron promised to support by waging war on Syria. He finds those by ignoring a word's literal meaning. Here is Lister's new Orwellian definition of "moderate":

As diplomatic efforts for Syria gain pace and as Saudi Arabia prepares to host a major conference bringing together 60-80 representatives of a broad spectrum opposition, the definition of "moderate" has been shifting. The most effective definition now must be based upon a combined assessment of (a) what groups are acknowledged as being opposed to ISIL and (b) what groups our governments want, or need to be involved in a political process.

He says that a group is "moderate" when:

It dislikes ISIS for whatever reason Some government wants or needs the group to be categorized as "moderate"

The first fits for everyone who claims to be not ISIS including al-Qaeda. The second part is just dependent on who the sponsor of a specific groups is. If Saudi Arabia sponsors al-Qaeda and wants it “moderate", al-Qaeda is "moderate". If Turkey sponsors the Turkistan Islamic Party its head-choppers are "moderate". The Lister definition is completely independent of the observable actions of these groups and of the believes or plans such groups openly or secretly hold. It is bollocks.

Lister goes on to lists two handful of groups, some existing, some mere fantasy, and adds imaginary numbers of how many fighter belong to each of the various groups. Add them up and there you have the 70,000 Cameron was trolling about.

Lister lists, for example, Asala wa-al-Tanmiya with 5,000 fighters as "moderate". It is an Islamist gang sponsored by Saudi Arabia. Its main allies on the battlefield, according to its Wiki entry, are the Islamic Front and the al-Nusra Front. But they do fight the Islamic State and have a government backing them. Thus these al-Qaeda allies are now "moderate".

Lister's original "moderate" table tweeted by him here (backup) even includes Jaish al-Islam with allegedly 12,500 fighters and Ahrar al-Sham with 15,000 fighters. Both of these groups follow the same ideology as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda and commit (incl. video) similar atrocities:

The largest Islamist rebel group "Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham" has posted a video on their multiple social media accounts that show their fighters mutilating the head of a wounded militant from the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) in the northern Aleppo countryside.

Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham has attempted to promote themselves as a "moderate" rebel group after their Op-Ed in the Washington Post; however, their behavior and their numerous crimes in northern Syria have made them appear closer to ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra in ideology, rather than a "moderate" Islamist group that is simply fighting for the interests of the Syrian people.

These literal head choppers are "moderates" on Lister's list.

Support for al-Qaeda and similar groups is illegal under several UN resolutions. U.S. law is even more stringent. Al-Qaeda allies like the groups Lister lists as "moderate" would surely be guilty under 18 U.S. Code § 2339A - Providing material support to terrorists. The "material" as defined by that law includes "intangible, or service" and "expert advice or assistance". How far from those categories are Lister's propaganda pieces and actions?

Lister ones worked as analyst at IHS Janes, a well known military journal, and did a decent job. He then followed the smell of Qatari money to Brookings Doha and threw away his reputation. It can only go downwards from there.
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This appeared 
at The Truth Serum

Saturday, October 03, 2015

CHARLES LISTER IS A LYING PIECE OF SHIT

Charles Lister is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Washington DC. The Chair of Brookings Doha Center is none other than Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, the former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar.

And yes, that is the same Qatar which along with Saudi Arabia, has supported the cutthroat Jihadis in Libya and then Syria. So Lister is not going to accuse his boss of anything naughty, is he?

And along with al-Thani, the Brookings Doha Center is advised by such humanitarians as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine K. Albright.

Lister recently wrote an article which was published by the BBC, in which he stated:

From the very first days of the revolution, Assad and his intelligence apparatus have consistently facilitated the rise of jihadists. This policy of aiding and abetting jihadist militants and manipulating them for Damascus' policy interests is a well-established Assad family practice, dating back at least to the 1990s.

By releasing dozens of al-Qaeda prisoners in mid-2011, Assad helped give birth to a thriving Islamist insurgency, including an al-Qaeda affiliate. By then adopting a deliberate policy of not targeting IS, Assad directly facilitated that group's recovery and explosion into the transnational "Caliphate" movement it claims to be today.

[source : Viewpoint: West 'walking into abyss' on Syria, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34371501, 28th September 2015]

But in 2007, Seymour Hersh reported that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia had agreed that the latter would unleash the worst Jihadis on the planet onto Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

An interesting fact is that the Brookings Doha Center was established in 2008, which was about the same time that the U.S. State Department began to engineer the Arab Spring. [The Arab Spring originated in Tunisia and at the outbreak of this international criminal conspiracy against Syria in March, 2011 a majority of the Jihadis fighting in Syria were coming out of Tunisia.]

In 2009, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas was asked by British security officials to help them to smuggle Jihadis into Syria.

In 2011, the Jihadis in Libya, who were basically Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, were given air support by NATO and ground support from British Special Forces to abuse UN SCR 1973 and murder Colonel Gaddafi.

And after Gaddafi these Jihadis went to Syria.

And to provide more Jihadis for the Jihad against Assad, NATO intelligence services encouraged and allowed Jihadis to go to Syria. There has been a Covenant of Security between MI5 and the Jihadis, and Michael Adebalajo was allowed to preach Jihad against Assad before he tried to saw Lee Rigby's head off!

This explains the rise of Jihadis in Syria. Assad did not create them. They were smuggled into Syria, possibly along British rat lines, and have been supplied by NATO air drops and convoys through Turkey.

And as for Islamic State, the US DIA proposed such an entity in 2012, which I believe was created by NATO. The Kurds told NATO intelligence in February 2014 about Islamic State but NATO did nothing to stop Islamic State grow. On the contrary, NATO has encouraged Jihadis to go to Syria, allowed them to enter through NATO member Turkey, and provided aid through air drops and convoys of loaded trucks.

And how about this on Qatar's meddling in Syria?

The remarkable truth is that few in the Middle East would be shocked. From Hamas in the Gaza Strip to radical armed movements in Syria, Qatar's status as a prime sponsor of violent Islamists, including groups linked to al-Qaeda, is clear to diplomats and experts.

Qatar's promotion of extremism has so infuriated its neighbours that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all chose to withdraw their ambassadors from the country in March.

Take Syria, where Qatar has been sponsoring the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad's regime. In itself, that policy places Qatar alongside the leading Western powers and much of the Arab world.

But Qatar has deliberately channeled guns and cash towards Islamist rebels, notably a group styling itself Ahrar al-Sham, or "Free Men of Syria". Only last week, Khalid al-Attiyah, the Qatari foreign minister, praised this movement as "purely" Syrian.

He added that its fighters had suffered heavy losses while combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the group behind the murder of David Haines, the British aid worker, and which is holding John Cantlie and Alan Henning hostage.

Far from being a force for moderation, Ahrar al-Sham played a key role in transforming the anti-Assad revolt into an Islamist uprising. Its men fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, during the battle for Aleppo and they were accused of at least one sectarian massacre.

Instead of fighting Isil, Ahrar al-Sham helped the jihadists to run Raqqa, the town in eastern Syria that is now the capital of the self-proclaimed "Caliphate". This cooperation with Isil happened for some months until the two groups fell out last year.

[source : How Qatar is funding the rise of Islamist extremists, Daily Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/qatar/11110931/How-Qatar-is-funding-the-rise-of-Islamist-extremists.html, 20th September 2014]

Oh, dear.

Deary, deary me.

So, in short, Charles Lister is a lying piece of shit.

But I guess he lives a nice life off his nice salary he gets from his boss, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, the former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar....
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In the following published article, David Cameron says there are "70,00 moderate rebels operating in Syria" which nobody believes at all.  David Cameron used the "70,000 moderates fighting in Syria" lie which Charles Lister from the Brookings Doha Center also used but then Lister goes on to explain why he thinks David Cameron is correct in the following article. In an article titled "Yes, there are 70,000 moderate opposition fighters in Syria. Here's what we know about them," Charles Lister is suggesting "moderates" actually are in Syria fighting but the idea of "moderates" lacks any substantial evidence to support this claim as the article above suggests. 

Anyone carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle fighting in Syria is an enemy combatant and the Syrian Arab Army and Russia make no distinctions. The idea of "moderates" fighting in Syria against the government of Syria is to have a pretext in place for an attack on Syria using British and American military forces in which John McCain and Lindsey Graham are calling for 20,000 U.S. military personal to fight in Syria against I$I$. David Cameron has been talking more and more of "bombing Syria" even though there is growing backlash to this idea.

Charles Lister is British and he works at the Brookings Doha Center which means his salary is cut by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani that the article above mentions. Qatar cannot afford to have Syria undercutting its prices on natural gas which Syria has threatened to do with Russia by Syria building a pipeline that would make natural gas reaching Europe far cheaper than Qatar's natural gas production. Charles Lister is a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and a Senior Consultant at The Shaikh Group. He was formerly the head of MENA at IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre in London, UK, where he managed the assessment of sub-state security threats in the Middle East. The Shaikh Group (TSG) is a marketing and communications company incorporated in Dubai (a Gulf Cooperation Country as part of United Arab Emirates along with Qatar). 

Charles Lister is selling the idea of "moderates" in Syria as a marketing and communications wonk for Qatar and the City of London to sell the idea on moderates fighting in Syria to continue the international criminal conspiracy against Syria in which Qatar has been financing I$I$ even allowing them to train in Qatar. The idea behind calling terrorists, or anyone in Syria for that matter who picks up a Kalashnikov, a "moderate, is to give them international "respectability" and to make it seem they are a "rebel" force fighting in legitimate opposition to the Syrian government.

Charles Lister has constantly referred to the international criminal conspiracy against Syria gpoing on five years now as a "revolution" when nothing could be further from the truth. Almost the entire opposition was financed and given support by the GCC nations and the Anglo-Americans along with NATO to destroy Syria then balkanize the country. Figures are hard to come by but it is estimated roughly 9 million Syrians have been internally displaced and a million more as external refugees leaving Syria for Jordan and Turkey among other countries in the region. Most of the Syrian refugees would prefer to return to Syria. As with most wonks out of Brookings, Lister also sees Iran as an "existential threat" and that Russia's continuing destruction of I$I$ as having only "complicated the circumstances in Syria." 

The fact is, Russia has practically ended the Anglo-American involvement in Iraq and Syria and think tank wonks like Lister can't deal with this fact. At this point the Anglo-Americans (NATO-Israel) will probably say anything to not lose face in world opinion and their position in Syria including starting a war possibly with Russia. The imperative here seems to be the City of London and certain factions within the U.S. want Syria first destroyed then balkanized and they probably will not stop until that is accomplished. It would be also interesting to discover any links between Charles Lister and British intelligence including the British Foreign Office. Here is Lister describing what he sees as the circumstances in Syria:

Qatar mouthpiece Charles Lister: Militant Islamists have to be part of Syria solution 

Cameron Overreaches With "70,000" Claim Nobody Believes

From craigmurray.co.uk

November 26, 2015

Cameron is in serious trouble at Westminster after overreaching himself by the claim that there are 70,000 "moderate rebels" willing to take up the ground war with Isis. Quite literally not one single MP believes him. There are those who believe the lie is justified. But even they know it is a lie.

There is a very interesting parallel here with the claims over Iraqi WMD. The 70,000 figure has again been approved by the Joint Intelligence Committee, with a strong push from MI6. But exactly as with Iraqi WMD, there were strong objections from the less "political" Defence Intelligence, and caveats inserted. As the Head of Defence Intelligence, Major-General Michael Laurie, told the Chilcot Inquiry:

"...we could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was clear to me that pressure was being applied to the Joint Intelligence Committee and its drafters. Every fact was managed to make the dossier as strong as possible. The final statements in the dossier reached beyond the conclusions intelligence assessments would normally draw from such facts."

The truth is the military tends to be much more honest about these matters than the spooks. Rather than make the same mistake again, parliamentarians should be calling Laurie's successor, Air Marshal Philip Osborn, to ask him the truth about the nature, composition and availability of the 70,000. I happen to know that signals of dissent from Osborn's staff – quite probably with his blessing – are reaching not just me, but many Tory MPs.

Meantime we can ourselves deconstruct the 70,000 figure and work out the various civil service sleights of hand that produced it. We have Cameron's written response to the Foreign Affairs Committee in which he sets out his case for war. This document is of course extremely carefully written.

The 70,000 figure is at page 18. It does then give the breakdown of who these 70,000 are.

The very first group listed are the Kurds, and they are indeed the best organised and most numerous group. But there is a trick here – the paper includes them in the 70,000, despite going on to accept that they are not available to fight in Isil territory because it is Arab not Kurdish land. So that already knocks the largest and best contingent out of the 70,000.

Why were the Kurds included in the total when the paper itself acknowledges they are not available?

After that, Cameron is really struggling and the paper becomes vague. The paper talks (p.19) of rebel forces who defended the Syrian-Turkish border near Aleppo from ISIL attack.

This is perfectly true, but their leading fighting component is Jabhat-al-Nusra, an open al-Qaida affiliate. They cannot conceivably be described as moderate, and are armed and equipped by Saudi Arabia. Their principle martial activity is looting and raping in Shia villages. There are in fact about two dozen rebel groups around Aleppo – here is a good snapshot – who often fight each other and for the last few months have been losing ground to Assad forces. They are also a primary target of the Russians. It is simply nonsense that they could march on ISIS in Raqqa.

Cameron's paper then goes on to reference the southern front of the Free Syrian Army, and paints a rather rose-coloured picture of its military prowess. The Free Syrian army can legitimately be painted as less extremist than other groups, with some important reservations, but nobody has ever assessed the strength of its southern branch at over 10,000 fighters. It is completely pre-occupied with fighting Assad and Hezbollah.

After that, the paper is seriously stuck, and goes on to enumerate policemen, "white helmet" humanitarian workers and even local authority engineering workforces as part of the evidence of the existence of moderate forces. Whether any of these groups is included in that amazing 70,000 total is unclear.

What is clear is that the 70,000 figure does not stand up to thirty seconds scrutiny, and there is no coherent plan whatsoever for ground forces to follow up air attack.

The absence of ground forces was an obvious flaw in Cameron's bombing plan. For him to try to allay concerns by such a huge and blatant lie may prove to be a very poor tactic. Indeed this is so shockingly bad that not only are many Tories privately saying it is difficult to vote for bombing, even some of the still more right wing Blairites are concerned too.
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David Cameron preparing to bomb I$I$

David Cameron should Resign Now!!! "terrorist sympathisers"???

 

Further reading: 

David Cameron accuses Jeremy Corbyn of being 'terrorist sympathiser'

US Involvement in Turkey's Shoot Down of the Russian Jet
  
The spread of Wahhabism, and the West's responsibility to the world

Building Air Defense for ISIS: A Qatar – Ukraine Link

Syrian Rebels Describe U.S.-Backed Training in Qatar