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The situation seems pretty much as I suspected when I commented below the article titled Pro-Assad march held in militant-held Syrian town a week ago, before the the story began to get disentangled:
http://off-guardian.org/2016/01/06/video-pro-assad-march-in-militant-held-syrian-town/
I also provided a link to the most probable original suspect source to the story, Orient News: http://orient-news.net/en/news_show/99063/0/People-of-Madaya-starved-to-death-by-Assad
mouthpiece.
What I said then, and what still hasn’t been picked up by the alternative media, so it’s worth repeating is: “Orient News is a Syrian media group based in Dubai owned by the Syrian opposition supporter Ghaasan Aboud. Aboud is a media mogul and an outspoken critic of the Assad regime. He also connected to the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation (SAMS).
Thank you. Incidentally, in American joirnalism it is improper to call a government a ‘regime’, which should be used to refer to a sociopolitical system. By this usage, one could say, ‘the military regime’ when talking about a state governed by a military dictatorship. However, before the now-common practice of misusing the term to denigrate governments targeted for overthrow, it was misused most often, I imagine, to characterize Communist governments. For example, ‘the Castro regime’.
The guideline is ignores so often now that I wonder if the AP Style Guide still has it.
I consulted AP and this it what it says. Note that it is still improper to say ‘Assad regime’, although using it in the past tense (after you have invaded the country and assassinated the president) is now acceptable.
Regime
The word “regime” is a synonym for “political system.” For example,
a democratic regime
an authoritarian regime
It may also mean the period in which a person or system was in power, often with a negative connotation. For example,
Saddam Hussein’s regime
the Nazi regime
I agree with you, but not for the reasons you give. In this particular case I was actually quoting from the source of information, which I copied and pasted that particular part of a sentence without changing it.
Nevertheless, there can be no argument that Assad was actually elected democratically, and his government is fairly authoritarian. Unfortunately, as a journalist I don’t always have the time to edit my comments, as I am often too busy researching and writing articles.
My own opinion is that in this particular case the U.S. has been exploiting the negative association of the term regime in order to justify the invasion of yet another nation it wants to exploit. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make that clear
Ah, I had misunderstood you then. I thought that the words were yours.
Personally I think that democracy is an ideal concept, like anarchism, that not only does not exist but cannot exist as a viable social system for large numbers of people in a complex society. The sooner people get over the illusion of rule by the people and opt instead to be ruled by leaders for their own social class, the better.
As for calling President Bashar Assad ‘authoritarian’, I challenge you to identify any political force capable of checking the power of the president of the United States. He only responds to the capitalist class, but since he identifies himself with it, there is no check. To the contrary, he is a near-ideal employee.
Challenge me? What on earth are you on about?
Not you personally, sorry. I challenge anyone. It’s a figure of speech. I should have said what I meant, which is tbat people should judge the greatest criminals, such as the US and British and French leaders, instead of solely focusing on their victims, who are doing the best they can to hold their states together in the face of overwhelming economic, military and 5th column aggression coming from the US, NATO states and the GCC. In this case, President Muammar Gaddafi and President Bashar Assad.
In other words, I would like people to say, whenever they mention Obama, Cameron, Blair or Sarkozy (among others): “Although he was democratically elected, he is an imperialist brute who has committed the supreme crime against humanity (starting a war against a sovereign state) and the world would be better off if there were a power capable of arresting him and bringing him to a Neuremberg-type of justice.”
In other words, stop judging the weak unless you judge the powerful by the exact same standards.
The ultimate source of the black propaganda coming from fake human rights organizations is the US State Dept/CIA, in league with private corporate foundations.
“What we are seeing here is a covert attempt by the US and its allies to cloak their ‘regime change’ and geopolitical hegemony goals and objects underneath a public relations veil of ‘humanitarianism’ through an intricate web of human rights and ‘progressive’ organisations. According to Sourcewatch: “The Responsibility to Protect-Engaging Civil Society (R2PCS) project is housed at the Institute for Global Policy (IGP) in New York. IGP is associated with the World Federalist Movement (WFM).” Funding for ICRtoP is delivered by a number of dubious soft power sources including the International Crisis Group, who in turn is financed by George Soros and the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/madaya-west-engineer-another-humanitarian-media-hoax-in-syria/5500862
BBC Caught Recycling Old Footage to Create More Humanitarian Mythology for Madaya, Syria
http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/01/12/bbc-caught-recycling-old-footage-to-create-more-humanitarian-mythology-for-madaya-syria/