To:

Zcom_simple
Home » Z Blogs » Chip Berlet's Blog » Syria, Conspiracy Theory, & Antisemitism

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

117

Chip Berlet's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/chipberlet
Bio: Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates in the Boston area. Berlet is co–author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort (Guilford, 2000) and editor of ... (More)

All Berlet Blogs

Recent Berlet Content

Znetarticle_icon ZNet Articles
Zmagarticle_icon ZMag Articles
Zvideo_icon ZVideos
Zblogpost_icon Blog Posts
Zvideo_icon ZStores

Syria, Conspiracy Theory, & Antisemitism

By Chip Berlet at Sep 07, 2012

PDF Version

Printer Friendly Version
Change Text Size a- | A+

An international network of conspiracy theorists is pressing their support of the brutal Syrian Assad regime in an alliance with neofascists and authoritarians, including some who peddle antisemitism.

Their attacks on United States foreign policies and criticism of Israeli government policies, fused with their conspiracist mindset, has led them to suggest that the anti-Assad forces are being manipulated as part of a plot to use the “the Syrian crisis to dismantle Hezbollah.”

This is the contention of Franklin P. Lamb, writing on Counterpunch on September 3, 2012 in an article titled “Is the Syrian Crisis Being Leveraged to Weaken Hezbollah?”
 
 
The gold standard of this fusionist conspiracy nexus is the “Voltaire Network” which describes itself as founded by “French intellectual Thierry Meyssan,” and consisting of a “web of non-aligned press groups dedicated to the analysis of international relations,” with points of view coming from “diversified political, social and cultural backgrounds.”

Franklin P. Lamb has written for the Voltaire Network, which describes him on an author page as "Lawyer and former Board member of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation ; Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace (Beirut-Washington D.C.) ; Former Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon."

Thierry Meyssan is a leading international figure among those that claim the 9/11 terror attacks were part of a vast insidious plot by elites, not the acts of a handful of terrorists.  The Voltaire Network includes two former LaRouchite authors, William Engdahl and Webster G. Tarpley; and U.S. anti-imperialist James Petras. Silvia Cattori is a frequent contributor to the Voltaire Network, with a special focus on interviews.

Voltaire Network participants also collaborate in several ways with a broader and more diffuse set of conspiracist networks, mostly visible online Participants in this broader network have held international meetings and attended conferences in the United States. The network, which has no formal name, fuses rightwing and leftwing ideological claims into a combined critic of elite power similar to that of pro-fascist ideologues prior to World War II.  At least one group in the network is alleged to have support from allies of the Syrian government.

The Voltaire Network sponsored a 2005 gathering in Belgium titled the “Axis for Peace,” which included a number of current leaders and supporters of the LaRouche network, including LaRouche’s wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who is the president of the Schiller Institute based in Germany. Christine Bierre, a panelist, is the editor in chief of the French LaRouchite publication New Solidarity, (Nouvelle Solidarité). Panelist Jacques Cheminade is the president of Solidarité et progrès (solidarity and progress), a political party advocating the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche, and candidate for the 2007 French presidential elections. Former LaRouche network staffer Webster G. Tarpley, a panelist, was a major architect and author of LaRouchite antisemitic investigative reports issued in the 1980s.

Christopher Bollyn, a panelist, is described as “an investigative journalist for American Free Press.” That the newspaper was created and run by notorious antisemite Willis Carto is not mentioned. The conference issued Final Declaration that ended up on the Centre for Research on Globalisation website.

See for background:

Voltaire Network

Voltaire Network: Main Authors Page

The Plan to Destabilize Syria, by Thierry Meyssan

The Lynching of Muammar Gaddafi

Axis for Peace, 2005, “It is Time to Unite and to Ensure Peace:
Final Declaration of Brussel's Peace Conference,” November 20,
available at Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1299

Voltaire Network, http://www.voltairenet.org/Axis-for-Peace-Final-Declaration.

Comment On This Blog Post  See All Comments (1)

117

It hates html code?

By Berlet, Chip at Sep 07, 2012 19:23 PM
Be nice if that was mentioned...

Reply this comment

Comment_reply
117

Re: It hates html code?

By Berlet, Chip at Sep 07, 2012 20:26 PM
Now it is happy...

Reply this comment

Loading_border