Christians are Suffering in the Holy Land this Christmas

The Christians who still live in the Holy Land face a Christmas that will be far from happy, merry or bright. They are a persecuted minority.

“O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…” This hymn, and dozens like it will be sung all over the world soon, as they are every Christmas. Cards depicting the scene of the holy birth will decorate millions of houses.  Nativities will be set up in homes, in shopping malls, in churches.  But as people prepare to celebrate the humanity of a man known as Jesus of Nazareth, his homeland is no longer a safe place to be for those who follow him.

There are 14 million Christians throughout the Holy Land but they are a rapidly dwindling minority. Many of them are so desperately vulnerable that they feel they have no choice now but to emigrate. In Iraq alone, since the fall of Saddam, a startling two-thirds have fled.  Since 2003 at least a million have left. Most of them went to Syria. Now they face a second wave of displacement as they are no longer protected there.  There have been reports of rape, murder and attacks directed at them and the Christian community lives in terror.  When they feel they have to run for their lives they head for Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. It is said that the ancient Syrian Armenian community has all but gone.

Egypt has seen churches being burnt and anti-Coptic rioting. In Gaza and on the West Bank, Christians are caught up in chaotic uncertainty. To be Christian in the Holy Land, the birthplace of Jesus, is to live in fear.  The Vatican has confirmed as credible the estimate that 100,000 Christians are killed every year for their beliefs.

Historian Tom Holland has noted how deeply ironic it is, that two devoutly Christian leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, brought about, inadvertently, the final demise of Christianity in the Middle East by invading Iraq. Now the Arab Spring has proven the final knell, as Christians are all too easy targets for extremists and are living in dire jeopardy.

The major Christian celebrations are still national holidays in Syria, and this is testament to the fact that Syria has long been a sanctuary for Middle Eastern Christians.  One of the oldest parts of Damascus is the Christian Quarter at Bab Touma.  Islamic and Christian communities used to live side by side in such ease, that sacred spaces were shared.  There was ethnic and religious tolerance, mutual respect and understanding.  Now, along with so much in Syria, that harmonious co-habitation has been ripped apart.

Speaking about his deep concerns for the beleaguered Christians of the Middle East, has been HRH Prince Charles. At an inter-faith reception he said he is very troubled by what he calls the “intimidation, false accusation and organized persecution” to the Christian faith communities.  It is a problem affecting Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Iraq as well as other Arab countries. The prince says it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the targeting of these Christians by “fundamentalist Islamic militants.”

The birthplace of Jesus and the founding site of Christianity now has less than 4 percent of Christians making up the entire population of the Middle East and North Africa;  a number that has dropped dramatically over the past 100 years.  Prince Charles sees this as a great threat to possible peace in these regions as Christians are renowned for their bridge-building capabilities.  He himself had been trying to build a bridge between Islam and Christianity for the last 20 years, but these efforts have been beset by those with “vested interests” in destroying them.

Read More: Liberty Voice

I guess Obama found Saddam's WMDs right where Bush said they were.

As Congress holds hearings to determine whether or not it will vote to authorize President Barack Obama to use military force in the Syrian civil war, it's hard not to think of the Bush administration's arguments for military intervention in Iraq 10 years ago.

The justification at that time was to disarm then-dictator Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist regime of alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) — namely chemical and biological weapons. Of course, long after military operations began and continued into the next decade, those weapons were never found.

However, even back then, there were accusations from several sources that Hussein had smuggled his WMDs over the border into Syria long before coalition forces began the Iraqi invasion. Today, there is now video evidence  of chemical and biological weapons having been used in Syria to kill countless victims. While the blame game rages on as to who actually used said weapons, Assad forces or rebel fighters, many seem to have forgotten to ask a very important question: Where did these chemical weapons come from?

Was the Bush administration right all along? Could these indeed be the very same WMDs that intelligence agencies from around the world claimed were in Hussein’s possession which he then transferred over to Syria?

The earliest account of Hussein having hidden his WMDs in Syria came in January of 2004. Nizar Nayouf, an award-winning Syrian journalist who was granted political asylum in France, said in a letter to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf not only that he knew Iraq’s WMDs were being hidden inside Syria, but that he could pinpoint precisely where they were being kept. According to Nayouf’s witness, described as a senior source inside Syrian military intelligence he had known for two years, Iraq’s WMDs were in tunnels dug under the town of al-Baida near the city of Hama in northern Syria, in the village of Tal Snan, north of the town of Salamija, and in the city of Sjinsjar on the Syrian border with the Lebanon, south of the city of Homs. Nayouf claimed that the transfer of Iraqi WMDs to Syria was organized by the commanders of Hussein’s Iraqi Republican Guard with the help of General Dhu al-Himma Shalish and Assef Shawkat, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin and brother-in-law, respectively.

We know for a fact that Shalish had a working relationship with Hussein long before the war in Iraq. The Syrian government awarded Shalish and his company, SES International Corporation, exclusive rights on contracts to supply the Iraqi market with goods from construction materials to detergent. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Shalish and SES helped the former Ba’athist regime access weapons systems by issuing false end-user certificates to foreign suppliers that listed Syria as the final country of destination. SES International then transshipped the goods to Iraq, and Shalish was subsequently sanctioned by the U.S. for procuring defense-related goods for Hussein in violation of sanctions against Iraq.

When two sources from the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) — a 1,400-member team organized by the Pentagon and CIA — spoke with the Washington Times in August 2004, they reported that Hussein periodically removed guards on the Syrian border and replaced them with his own intelligence agents who supervised the movement of banned materials between the two countries. The shift was followed by the movement of trucks in and out of Syria suspected of carrying materials banned by UN sanctions. Once the shipments were made, the agents would leave and the regular border guards would resume their posts.

A similar claim was made by Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon in December of 2005, a former Israeli military officer who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from July 2002 to June 2005. “(Hussein) transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria” six weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom started, according to Ya’alon. “No one went to Syria to find it.”

Just a month later in January 2006, the Iraqi general who served as the No. 2 official in Hussein’s air force, Georges Sada, claimed Iraq moved WMDs into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into two civilian aircrafts in which the passenger seats were removed, as well as in multiple ground convoys of trucks.

“There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands,” Sada stated. “I am confident they were taken over [to Syria].”

Read More: Policy Mic

Is Anderson Cooper Stupid or Just Another Left Wing Liar?

Anderson Cooper and CNN have been caught staging fake news about Syria to justify military intervention.

The primary “witness” that the mainstream media is using as a source in Syria has been caught staging fake news segments.  Recent video evidence proves that “Syria Danny”, the supposed activist who has been begging for military intervention on CNN, is really just a paid actor and a liar.

While Assad is definitely a tyrant like any head of state, a US invasion of the country is a worst case scenario for the people living there.
By pointing out that the mainstream media is orchestrating their entire coverage of this incident, we are not denying that there is a tremendous amount of death and violence in Syria right now.  However, we are showing that the mainstream media version of events is scripted and staged propaganda.

The following video shows him contradicting himself while off air, and even asking crew members to “get the gunfire sounds ready” for his video conference with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

 

“Syria Danny” has also appeared on many other news programs, and every single time his story on specific events has changed.

This is not the first time that mainstream media has been exposed as propaganda, it happens all the time, especially during times of war.
Some of the most hyped up news images of our time surrounding war were not actually real but were simply public relations stunts, designed as psychological warfare operations.

No one in America can forget the image of Saddam Hussein’s statue being toppled and covered with an American flag, yet few people realize that this was a hoax, a staged psychological operation coordinated between the military and the media.  In July of 2004 journalist Jon Elmer exposed an internal army study of the war showing that this whole statue scenario was indeed a set up.

Read More: Friends of Syria

Where did Syria get their hands on WMDs?

 

Many people have wondered where Bashar al-Assad of Syria got those chemical weapons that Defense Secretary Panetta discussed in a press conference today, December 6, 2012. According to NYTimes.com. Secretary Panetta stressed:

“The president of the United States has made very clear that there will be consequences, there will be consequences if the Assad regime makes a terrible mistake by using these chemical weapons on their own people.”

The question has popped up several times the past few weeks, "Are those the missing WMD's from the Iraq War?" The question actually has been discussed for several years, and some impressive voices have made the case that Saddam Hussein sent large shipments of weapons to Syria before the war.
According to an article in the Atlantic Wire July 27, 2012, President Obama’s Director of National Security, James Clapper, has been outspoken about the transfer of materials from Iraq.

“As director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Clapper said in 2003 that satellite images showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq to Syria "unquestionably" show that illicit weapons were moved out of Iraq.”

According to the Washington Times, Both the United States and Israel have photographs of materials leaving Iraq during this window of time being disputed, around 2004.

John A. Shaw, a senior Pentagon technology security official during the Bush administration, however, said he believed that some Iraqi weapons and materials were covertly shipped out of Iraqi factories with the help of the Russians. Satellite images released in 2004 by the Pentagon also showed Russian vehicles loading goods at Iraqi factories, but the nature of their cargo has not been determined.

The Atlantic Wire and other publications have referred to George Sada’s testimony regarding Saddam Hussein’s efforts to remove the WMD’s from Iraq. George Sada was one of Saddam’s top men in the air force, and he recalls how airplanes were stripped down to carry weapons to Syria.
Many others refuse to accept these credible arguments, and it could be because it would vindicate the Bush Administration for their actions in the Iraq War. It would be ironic if a Democratic administration discovered the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction.

This and More on: The Examiner

What happened to the 400 missiles stolen last year in Benghazi?

 

On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.'s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were "diverted to Libya" and ended up being stolen and falling into "the hands of some very ugly people."

DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he "does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles."

He claimed his information "comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in constant contact with people in the special ops and intelligence community." He said the biggest concern right now is finding those missiles before they can be put to use. "They are worried, specifically according to these sources, about an attempt to shoot down an airliner," he claimed.

On August 4, Breitbart News covered a report in The Telegraph that said 35 CIA operatives were working in Benghazi when the attack against the consulate took place. The Telegraph claimed these operatives were allegedly in an "annex near the consulate [working] on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armories to Syrian Rebels."

Read More: Breitbart