Global Research News Hour, October 28, 2017
Independent investigative reporter Mark Taliano, author of the book ‘Voices from Syria’ challenges many of the prevailing mainstream narratives about the war crimes of Syrian President Assad based on his own research, and notably, a visit to Syria in September of 2016.
Transcript by Rawan R. Mahmasa
Well, we are joined through Skype by Mark Taliano and we’re gonna be speaking about Syria and in particular his book Voices from Syria which has just come out this year…..
Mark Taliano is a former high school teacher and author and an independent investigator, reporter and as well as a Research Associate with the Center for Research on Globalization.. in September of 2016, Mark travelled to Syria and there, where he was able to corroborate some of his own research into the Syrian conflict and the distortions of reality presented in mainstream and some alternative media discourse …
So, Mark Taliano is joining us from Hamilton… so, welcome, Mark Taliano….
Hi, Michael, nice to be with you as I’ve seen so many of your shows, I really enjoy them!
Ok, great, I appreciate it. Now, um, just to start, when you started to question the official account of Syria and what’s been going on there…. Can I ask, you know, maybe where you started to have doubts about the official story, your sources of information were?.
Well, I read a lot of Michel Chossudovsky, well, but a lot of his books and he explained it quite clearly that this, this campaign is this strategy of using proxies, so-called Islamic militants. There’s nothing new about it, but they’re not… and I’m, I don’t want to get into these sectarian labels because I don’t see these terrorists as representative at all of Islam….. they are, in fact, it’s the Wahhabi strain, but they’re mercenaries. They’re mercenary terrorists. Anyways, I read a fair bit and we all know that Bush and his entourage told about nine hundred some odd lies about Iraq. We know that, the weapons of mass destruction was a fake pretext for the war…it just wasn’t true…and, we are I know and a lot of us know that in Libya, we were basically the Air force for al-Qaeda troops. And we also know that prior to the invasion of Iraq, for example, al-Qaeda did not have a presence in Iraq. It wasn’t there, and we know that Gadhafi, who raised the Human Development Index of Libya to the highest in Africa. We know that he was combatting al-Qaeda type troops on the ground and we know now that those were proxies for the US Empire and we know that in Afghanistan, the forces assembled by the Empire were the same type of proxy foot soldiers. They’re mercenary terrorists, are paid well to do what they do and in fact, countries prey countries, if you will, Empire targets countries with total and complete destruction and unthinkable, unimaginable crimes. And I have seen this, and then there’s this expression about people sticking their head down the rabbit hole., Ok, Ok, we’ve seen that so many times. Certainly people should have remembered all the lies as fake pretext to the war on Iraq. And so it seemed quite clear that the same thing was going on in Syria, and I think that people would see it as clearly as that if they would turn off the television and not read the newspapers, which is asking a lot!
Mark, could I ask you to maybe share a particular anecdote? I mean, you were there in September, yeah…. And I was wondering if there’s something that could really impress on our listeners just the extent of the ordeal that they endured.
Every story that’s in the book is really horrible. Lilly Martin is away…and the other thing here is, I mean, Lilly Martin, for example, who’s in my book, and I use some of her testimonies and I always corroborate all the testimonies. She’s a permanent resident in Syria, but she’s also an American citizen, and so the US empire has citizens living in Syria who have to withstand this, and so this comes from Lilly Martin, Syria, who happens to also be an American citizen and this is what she is and this is what happened. She wrote, she writes about why she could not vote for Hillary Clinton.
And she, this is what she said! She personally oversaw, she, meaning Hillary Clinton, she personally oversaw the transfer of weapons from Libya to Turkey to be used specifically by the American-backed terrorists who destroyed my own home on March 21st, 2014, and beheaded my Christian neighbors and raped the old ladies whom they kidnapped, and Turkey, Turkey killed others and destroyed the whole village of Kessab, Syria. This is not a rumour, this is a fact. Lilly writes, this is well documented in her time as a Secretary of State, so what Lilly, I mean, is disgusting, but every single story that I heard is disgusting
That’s the story, I mean that’s just one of many many stories, these people have to, life, these people have to endure, thanks to us, thanks to the West, thanks to the NATO terrorists and what Lilly is referring to there, is the weapons ratline from Libya, early in the war, the weapons ratline came from Libya’s looted armories all the way to Syria, and some people that’s just a part of the reason Libya was destroyed, and it probably was, was one of many reasons why and every reason was a bad reason…
Is there any thing that comes out of I know that Aleppo had been occupied for some time but, the Al Nusra and ISIS forces and a lot of people were forced basically, kidnapped, and not allowed to escape, did you hear any reports from out of there?
Well, sure, I mean, first of all, in Aleppo, Aleppo was liberated , and the all started to have this came a whole, That confirmed what we all, documentation has confirmed, that all terrorists, they’re all al Qaida affiliates, they’re all linked to al Qaida, including ISIS and for example we have the FSA, you had Daesh, you had ,all sorts of different groups coming together in a part of Aleppo that they occupied and they worked together and they hoarded medicine you know, given to them from our governments and they hoarded food, and they launched ordnance filled with explosives and nails and poison gas regularly all the time into parts of Aleppo that were not occupied and when people tried to leave through corridors which the terrorists mined, they were shot, so people couldn’t leave, they were totally captive and all sorts of coercive methods were used to have these people trained basically as slaves, do what we say or we kill you, literally, and the terrorists as policy, they used hospitals, they occupied hospitals, typically because they’re very solid buildings, but also they’re protected, and we’ve seen all the public relations about that, they occupy hospitals, they get their masses there, and they create jail cells, in the hospital building and they put victims in the jail cells and they torture them there and they execute people and they have snipers perches on the top of the hospitals often,, so these hospitals are used as command posts as torture centers, Sharia law courts, that’s why they hoard food and medicine that’s often the base from which these terrorists occupy and the rest of the part of the Aleppo population is captive! Like they occupied parts of Aleppo, let’s say, East of Aleppo, they occupied the east of Aleppo, where the terrorists, they didn’t occupy all of Aleppo, and they weren’t able to do so, but the parts they did occupy, the people didn’t want them there, and they were captive! And we don’t hear these stories and all of these stories are corroborated by numerous sources.
But Mark, I was wondering if you could, because, I mean, because a lot of the entities that are promoting these ideas, they talk about the violence of the air force and the Russian in Aleppo and in elsewhere, they’re being disseminated by groups that are highly esteemed, Amnesty International, Medecins sans Frontier, Avaaz, have been very on top of that Anti-Assad campaign. I was wondering if you could maybe try to account for people who hold those entities in such high esteem how do you explain to them that these accounts are inaccurate and how do you make sense of that?
Yeah, well, this is the new way that Empire works, they corrupt agencies, now none of these so -called non-governmental agencies are non governmental, they’re all governmental, they’re funded by the government and foundations and also there’s a revolving door, often, between the directors and the State Department, for example Susan Nossel, was with US government and then she transferred over to Amnesty International … So all these groups they are an appendage of Empire, because they are embedded with the terrorists, and that includes the White Helmets, the White Helmets are actually al Qaeda, yeah, that’s hard for a lot of people to accept.. That’s the White Helmets won an Oscar, Vanessa Beeley has done wonderful work for this, and the bottom line is for example, Bana Abed, her parents are al Qaeda, and Vanessa Beeley went to where, Bana Abed’s parents were tweeting, because all these terrorist groups have their own media centers, it’s a real super information corruption type of process, so Vanessa Beeley went there and where this young girl was, where her parents were, where she was, is very close to a center where they repaired these Hell Canons, they repaired weapons for the terrorists and her father, the girl’s father, was a Sharia court judge and at one time al Qaeda type of groups there and then ISIS which basically are affiliated anyways. So, what we have here is this whole complex of non-governmental agencies, Amnesty International, Avaaz, they’re all governmental, they’re all embedded with the terrorists and they’re all supported by foundation money as well, and they are the sources for mainstream media stories …
Yeah, Mark, I’m, as a result of these mechanisms like the foundation- funded NGOs and the, those media centers you mentioned, you seen, this propaganda matrix and I’m really astonished by the extent to which the Left and the anti-war movement has been corrupted, I mean, I know, that, astonishingly enough like the, at the outset you talked about Iraq, and my sense was that, there was broad opposition to that, the Iraq was, and this is only two years, or less than two years, after 9/11. And now, there’s hardly any anti-war campaign against Syria, it’s really quite remarkable, is there anything more you can say about this, the extent to which the, the success of the, this interference this confusion within Syria solidarity circles, the usual suspect…
Yes, it’s very, it’s astonishing, it’s really a , because as you said, Iraq, there was a huge protest, um, basically the, if you want tp call them, Lefters, they are not progressive, if they support the terrorists invading Syria, if they support imperialism, and a lot of themdo, and a lot of them, are confused probably, and a lot of them probably believe the mainstream messaging, but after seven years of war, I don’t think it’s a valid excuse anymore and I think that, well, for example, in the book I demonstrate that the war on terrorism is a complete fraud because the terrorists are proxies and I think really that there’s too many taboo topics that are necessarily not being addressed and I think 9/11 is a big one …. And I think that we have to address the 9/11 false flag to understand how our populations have been deceived, how the progressives are not progressives at all. if you can identify the root problem is not refugees, the root problem is what creates the refugees which are these illegal wars and people need to understand that these wars are not humanitarian. There’s nothing humanitarian about it and people are having hard times maybe accepting the fact that what their government tells them about these wars is basically the opposite to what is really happening. and people I mean, the amount of lies about the war on Syria, I think is basically unprecedented, Prof. Tim Anderson would agree, he wrote a book on it as well… taboo topics including 9/11 because after 9/11 the war on terror which is a war for terror literally, all these invasions, are all related, Afghanistan didn’t attack us, and Afghanistan was attacked, I mean, none of these countries attacked us, so, I mean now the truth is coming out but well, it’s been coming out for seven years, now the liberated areas are, you know, now the devastation is there and some of us on the ground, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Tim Anderson, Janice Kortkamp, I was there, I hope to go back, we’re taking pictures there’s people on the ground right now, Janice is there, Tim is there, and they see these huge arsenals of weaponry, all NATO weaponry that ISIS and other terrorists left behind in a rush to leave, so the evidence primary source evidence is overwhelming…
Mark, I wanted to just, I mean, bring to your attention I mean there’s a couple of familiar talking points that’s adding to the confusion on the anti-imperialist left for one thing, as you recall Maher Arar was sent to Syria where he was tortured so that’s one thing that a lot of activists mindful of there’s also this idea of the Arab Spring and the Daraa where in Daraa where there’s this major uprising and apparently supposedly , Syrian armed forces attacked peaceful protesters so I’m wondering just before we, kinda, put me on close this discussion, you’d like to address those too..
Yeah, well, It was an intelligence operation from the beginning, it’s similar to these… Ok, what happened in Daraa is as I mentioned earlier the weapons were already there, they have weapons, it’s an intelligence operation and people were protesting in Syria as they do in other countries peacefully, there were calls from both sides and they didn’t want violence. The people didn’t want violence, but as for the case of the Ukraine, as wells as the case with other so called uprisings, militants were inserted into it, they would provoke violence and they would shoot at police and the police, people won’t believe this, but the police were ordered to not carry arms, and the police were being slaughtered, and this is all documented in the book, so we have outsiders coming in and instigating violence, to create a fake revolution….
Could you, address the point about Maher Arar and how that clouds people’s thinking about Assad?
Well, ok, so, the Empire tortures people all over the world, but they like to work CIA , like to work beneath the mantle of plausible would deniability, so they, outsource the torture, so this ties in with the Arar story where the torture is outsourced, bear in mind that the Empire can be very very coercive, if the country such a Syria stands up to the Empire and says No we don’t want this, No we resist your overtures, we do not want ISIS or al Qaeda to govern us, the Empire can be very coercive, they have these mercenaries and they destroy countries that stand up to Empire, they destroyed Libya, Iraq, Ukraine and so on and so forth. So if the Empire demands I want you to torture so and so, it can be pretty cooercive.
Will, Mark, I think we gotta leave it there, but I just wanna remind folks again that the book is Voices from Syria and just published earlier this year, and you can purchase it from the Center for Research on Globalization at globalresearch.ca but thank you again for agreeing to this interview….
Thank you very much, pleased to be speaking with you.
So we’ve been speaking with his name is Mark Taliano, and he’s an author and independent investigative reporter and as well as a Research Associate with the Center for Research on Globalization and he joined us from Hamilton, Ontario.