You did not mention Genie Energy operations in the zionist illegally occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
It’s strategic advisory board – among others – includes Rupert Murdoch, Dick Cheney and Jacob Rothschild.
See https://genieoilgas.com/about-us/strategic-advisory-board/ for further details.
As ever, the menacing spectre of the Yinon Plan also always lies behind all these sorts of developments.
See http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-israel-the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east/5324815 for details.

“Not controversial”? It’s EXTREMELY controversial. Perhaps you mean that to Western media and the foreign offices of Western states it’s not controversial. Actually, let’s drop the pretense and say it clearly: there’s s no “maybe” about it, because that is EXACTLY what you mean. For you to so airily and casually wave away any possibility that your “7 times” claim is open to dispute when you know full well that claims like it emanate from highly partisan sources firmly embedded within the “responsibility to protect” paradigm, and that they form the backbone for a push for further regime change in the region, is both venal and lazy. It’s a classic Proyection of social chauvinism against the Third World. At this point, I’m thinking that you shouldn’t keep wearing your past revolutionary credentials on your sleeve as though they somehow attest to your current supposed revolutionary zeal or that the positions you currently take are revolutionary. You should do the more honest thing and just disown these credentials, because at least then you would be talking out of only one side of your mouth.
Louis, what assurances can you give us that this “7 times” “uncontroversial” “truth” you proclaim won’t turn out to be another instance of “Qaddafi issuing viagra to his soldiers so that they can more effectively rape women” or “Assad using chemical weapons against his own people” or “Iraqi soldiers ripping babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on the floor of a Kuwaiti hospital”? If the Syrian state falls, the country turned into a jihadi hell-hole and your fantasy of Assad being hung upside with the snot beaten out of him ever materializes, will you own up to moral responsibility if the claims you now push turn out to be more instances of the aforementioned? Can you assure us that you’ll at least desist thereon from cheering on the next “humanitarian” regime-change operation? If not: WHY not?

Proyect: Vocativ.com
Founded by Mati Kochavi with offices in New York City and Tel Aviv, Vocativ employs editors, writers, producers, data analysts, software engineers, designers, and developers.
NYC and Tel Aviv? You have got to be kidding. Why is it so many of the links you give lead back to the US and Israeli Capitals, no less? No chance they could be a tad “coloured” in their representation of facts then.

I have already fact checked the veracity of the claims, since those claims have been in evidence for a very long time. Were you inclined towards an open minded and unbiased analysis of the facts in evidence in many articles over the past year across an extremely wide spectrum of truth seekers, you would not now be asking me a rather stupid question. Your ignorance on these issues is not my problem but it does concern all those who want to fend off the propaganda offensive mounted by the MSM “real” news blackout.
Why did you give a link to an article written by a known anti – Assad activist in the employ of the US?
When are you going to back up your “7 times” claim as Sav has requested?

Proyect: The link you offered is to a well known Fullbright scholarship US embedded ant Assad agitator. His name is Majid Rafizadeh and he is better known as a spoiler for the Neocon US agenda and spin doctor. He is so embedded with Washington that he might as well be their script writer and despite his extensive esteemed qualifications, all paid for by the US, he is denounced by quite a few, equally well qualified minds who tend to view politics and economics with an unbiased approach. Majid’s father was believed by many Syrians, to be a fanatical troublemaker.
Whatever honest and unbiased criticisms he might have offered are off set by his hounding of those enemies of the US state, namely Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. He is a favourite source for CNN, Fox and the BBC which pretty much tells you which side of the fence he sits. It might help his cause just a little if he were not so fond of quoting unsourced anecdotal claims as his basis for his views.

Hadn’t you better to tell the rural poor that which you claim, since they have a different view of your baseless, evidence and fact free version?
You seem to think that Syrian live in mud huts with no electric and the sewer system is a hole in the ground like something out of the dark ages.
In fact the opposite is true, Assad spent much of that supposed cronyism trousered wealth investing it in the infrastructure and many of the “peasants” have flat screen TV’s with the latest and greatest all singing, all dancing iPods. mobiles and with good satellite and wiFi internet.
It’s so much easier portraying them as voiceless victims of drudgery if you can place their standard of living in the 18th century and their education somewhat short of literate, unfortunately for you it is often they who managed to hide their appliances from the thieving ISIS and sent us images of the US jets flying over the 4 abreast columns a mile long of black clad, flag bearing neanderthals in dusty brand new Toyotas heading for re supply past their villages and towns. It is these uneducated country bumkins who sent ‘phone pictures of the helicopters from the captured air base returning after their barrel bombing runs over Aleppo each night.
Assad did well in ensuring all children had access to education, that all families had grant funds available for home building, that all villages and towns could be serviced by the mains supplies of so many different utilities, just like here in the UK. Isn’t that just amazing, they even got to vote for representatives on the local authourities, just like here in the UK. I vote for one representative in my home town, but the corrupt opposition keeps getting in and can’t be budged, not in 15 years, so I know all too well how democracy works.
Your arguments can all be pulled apart because they hold no water, or reality!

An article by Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, that quotes exactly “one” source, eh, Louis, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, apparently another UK-based non-governmental organization.
At the SNHR website you can look under the tab titled, “About SNHR” (top right), and click on the “International Agencies” link to download a .pdf document titled: “International Agencies which rely on documentation of the Syrian Network for Human Rights.”
In that document, you learn that among others, the “United States Department of States * Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor” and “The United States statement in the Human Rights Council on Syria” and “The United States Embassy in Damascus” – all are “institutional clients” of SNHR.
So now we know for whom and to what purpose SNHR does its research. It’s not as if, of course, that the United States Department of States has an agenda slightly slanted against the Assad “regime,’ nor, of course, would the U.S. Embassy in Damascus.
While trawling for information on SNHR, I came upon this comment, posted by a certain vallar 57, but written by someone I cannot trace, but it is nevertheless worth quoting to Louis since it stands well enough on its own:
Quote begins:
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (not to be confused with SOHR) is one of the most cited and prominient organizations documenting SCW casualties and human rights violations. Sadly, “cited and prominient” doesn’t mean “credible”.
SNHR has published their methodology on how they document deaths. This methodology is, in my opinion, deeply flawed and here I will explain why.
Methodology
Well, here is their methodology. It consists of three steps. At the first step, they gather reports from activists on the ground. At the second, their documentation team checks that reports are not repeated and match related news. If I understood them correctly, they try to get at least two reports for each death. The third step is just filing into database. There is a fourth step, but it’s just a part of the third.
I’m sure you all see the main problem with this methodology: there is no verification. They get a report or two saying that “this civilian man died to a barrel bomb”, and they file him as a civilian victim of government. Even if he was a victim of Ahrar vs YPG clash and died to grenade misfire while trying to blast some Kurds, for example.
Another obvious problem is an activist distribution. Some areas have higher reporting activity, some lower. As their actvists are mainly in rebel-held areas (well, most likely. SNHR gives no info on activists distribution al all, a sin to the sacred art of statistics), the bias follows.
SNHR flat out refuses to accept any information from government or state media. While not entirely unjustified, this is still cherry picking as they have no reason to not file someone just because he was reported by SANA instead of their activists, if SANA presents name and photos just as their activists do (well, they present a reason not to, but it was just one mistake and one mistake is not a good reason to exclude the whole group of sources entirely).
Strange numbers
<a href=”http://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/Who_Are_Killing_Civilians_in_Syria_en.pdf>03.11 – 10.15:

Civilians killed by regime: 180879, children killed by regime: 18851
SNHR expicitly states that women and children casualty rate indicates deliberate targeting civilians. But here we see that ~10% of civilians casualties are children. They don’t state women rate, but going by their other reports, it’s even lower. So it’s 20% women and children at max.
According to Iraq Body Count, women and children accounted for almost 20% of all civilian deaths in 2003-2005. This report doesn’t say what was women and children casualty rate of US forces strikes, but it does say that “children were disproportionately affected by all explosive devices but most severely by air strikes and unexploded ordnance (including cluster bomblets)”, so I assume that it was about the same. So, by using SNHR methodology, US forces “deliberately targeted civilians”, which is, most likely, not true. Also, in pre-war Syria, women and children contributed to about 65% of population – just another fact to think about.

“Death under torture by: ISIS – 22, Rebels – 15, Nusra – 12”

Really? They are Daesh, al-Quaeda and a bunch of groups including JaI and AaS.
November 2015:

RuAF: 259 civilians, 7 gunmen
Coalition AF: 13 civilians, 0 gunmen
Kurdish Self Management Forces (YPG?): 17 civilians, 0 gunmen.

SNHR isn’t even trying, is it?
Presentation
SNHR often presents percentages of people killed by different groups. While impressive, that’s the only thing good about these percentages: statistically, they are meaningless. The side that fights more and for a longer period of time kills more on the average, so to measure “ruthlessness” one have to weight numbers before arranging figures. I can think of a few ways to weight them. One, for example, is to measure civilians killed per fighter killed (interestingly, by using this method, the government forces are the most “good”. It doesn’t mean anything, of course, as the SNHR numbers themselves are too flawed).
Miscellaneous notes
Notable that United Nations had adopted on SNHR as primary source in all the statistics of analyzing Syrian conflict’s victims.
Actually, according to this article, UN stopped using them as a source at all, as UN has stopped updating the death toll from Syrian civil war. It says it can no longer verify the sources of information.

“SNHR isn’t involved with any political activity”

And yet in every report they have a “Recommendations to Security Council” part, and they write this part on their own accord. If that’s not political activity, I don’t know what is.
As English is my second language, I probably made a lot of grammar mistakes and, more importantly, used incorrect terms. Please feel free to correct me, both on those and if you see a real mistake. This post is subject to updates.
Quote ends.
And then, for the time being, there is this:
Below is one excellent and extremely accurate report filed by RT, which clearly exposes the fraudulent narrative being plied by mainstream outlets like CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera and others, deriving some of their fabricated images and heavily-spun ‘reports’ from organisations like the Syrian Network For Human Rights (SN4HR), and other western ‘activist’ front groups.

To quote a bit more from that article:
Quote begins:
On its website, SN4HR, posts a twisted version of events, claiming that the Syrian government is responsible for ‘mass-starvation’. This is another example of made-to-order propaganda, designed to bolster US State Department and British Foreign Office calls for ‘regime change’ in Damascus:
“Syrian government forces (army, security forces, local and foreign militias) use hunger as a weapon of war for years in regions under the control of armed opposition. This systemized weapon of human destruction had its impact on the Syrian society, whereas the latest victim of siege and hunger has been Madaya town in Damascus suburbs. Madaya town is located in Damascus suburbs and has been under siege since the end of 2013.”
The clear spin shown here by SN4HR collapses when confronted with actual reports on the ground which clearly show that “rebel” and terrorist fighting groups have not only seized international food deliveries, but have also been selling items at inflated prices to trapped residents. RT also documented on camera in the interview segment (above), how al Nusra “rebels” terrorists threatened to shoot them if residents tried to flee the town of Madaya.
Quote ends.
Yup, Louis, you are right: I was outside my comfort zone. One source, a dodgy one at that, that can’t be verified for it’s funding, but that clearly works as a propaganda front for the State Department, does have that effect on me.

What irks Washington is that Assad has stood in the way of GOING FURTHER than they would like. In other words, he has retained important elements of the socialism and nationalism espoused by his father – certainly not enough to qualify him as a genuine socialist or even a consistent nationalist, but more than enough to qualify him as one in the eyes of the imperialists to whom you’re providing succor (by directing your invective against their target) and that you’re somehow trusting in yet another regime change push despite the odious record. Your refusal to condemn this assault is weird given that the forces vying to take power away from the secular state are imbued with even fewer elements of socialism and nationalism (and none whatsoever of religious pluralism) than the current government does, and would only INTENSIFY these dynamics of inequality. Your spiel seems to be, “To further socialism, let’s get rid of the forces that have some elements of socialism with those that have none at all. The workers in the West, the workers in Syria, the neo-liberal imperialists: we all have to be in this together!”
Yes, Assad has instituted some neo-liberal policies, as did Qaddafi. The costs of not doing so in a world ruled by neo-liberal hegemonic powers (with powerful means of economic warfare, exclusion and covert assistance to violent internal forces) is prohibitively expensive for a small country. But the point about being attacked by neo-liberal imperialists is that the latter didn’t feel that the government was sufficiently enthusiastic and far-reaching about such policies. Qaddafi was deposed because the imperialists were fed up with the limits on foreign penetration that he did impose, despite his opening up to them. And now Libya is ruled by forces that have zero commitment to ANY form of socialism, which is exactly what will happen in Syria if your Clinton-esque dream of the public lynching of Assad takes place. When or if that happens, will you celebrate it by standing shoulder to shoulder with the chieftains of the US state and sagely intone, “We came, we saw, he died”? Most of what you’ve written leads me to think so.
As for whether the neo-liberal policies of the Syrian state under Assad Jnr were or are the impetus for the violent uprising: it seems silly to think so, given that most of the Syrian opposition is against armed attacks on the state and prefers a process of dialogue and reform. Whatever secular and democratic element exists within the armed opposition has been completely overshadowed by the Islamist, foreign-infiltrated contingent, which is itself telling.