Prof. Gilbert Achcar destroys one of the rudest RT anchors, Oksana Boyko.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3P2i7_w-90
From 11:45, "The difference between you and me is that you are a state television, you reflect the point of view of your government, I am a completely independent person". Until last summer, ISIS had very few clashes with Assad. There is no comparison between support given to Assad regime and the support any opposition group has received. Opposition has no air forces and no anti-aircraft weapons, and Assad has been dropping barrel bombs from helicopters without any fear of reprisal.
"Your government has destroyed part of its own country, Chechnya. What happened to Chechnya is very actually, indeed quite similar to how the way Bashar al Assad is dealing with a huge part of his own country, and that's why there is affinity between Bashar and Putin.
She refers to a Brookings fellow, William McCants, article that al-Baghdadi tried to infiltrate Syrian protests since 2011. Prof. Gilbert refers to Syrian vice president, Farooq al-Sharra's interview to Hezbollah's newspaper Al-Akhbar that protests were peaceful for a long time and there was disagreement in the regime about how to deal with those protests.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/thebeliever?rssid=syria
"Military setbacks had forced the group underground in 2008 and subsequent attacks like the one on Abu Umar and Masri had decimated its command structure. Baghdadi and Hajji Bakr were determined to bring the fight out in the open again and seize the territory necessary for establishing a caliphate. The growing unrest in Syria in 2011 played directly into their hands. Presented with an opportunity to inject violence into what had been a peaceful revolt, Baghdadi sent one of his Syrian operatives to set up a secret branch of the Islamic State in the country that year. The branch, later known as the Nusra Front, initially followed the Islamic State’s playbook by attacking civilians as part of a clandestine terror campaign to sow chaos. The hope was that the Islamic State would be able to capitalize on that chaos in order to make its first land grab.
Syrian President Assad lumped these attacks on civilians with the actions of those who had been protesting his regime to claim that the peaceful protestors were really nothing but terrorists. But as Nusra evolved into an insurgent organization, it became more careful about killing Sunni civilians and more dedicated to working with other Sunni rebel factions to oust Assad. This shift also reflected the guidance Nusra received from al-Qaida’s new emir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had replaced bin Laden after he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011. Zawahiri believed it was wiser to cultivate popular support before trying to establish an Islamic state, so he called on Nusra to collaborate with the other rebels.
Baghdadi disagreed with Zawahiri, to whom he had pledged a private oath of allegiance. As he saw things, there was already an Islamic State; it just needed to be made real by territorial conquest in Syria. Nusra’s cooperation with the other Sunni rebels was thwarting that plan."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3P2i7_w-90
From 11:45, "The difference between you and me is that you are a state television, you reflect the point of view of your government, I am a completely independent person". Until last summer, ISIS had very few clashes with Assad. There is no comparison between support given to Assad regime and the support any opposition group has received. Opposition has no air forces and no anti-aircraft weapons, and Assad has been dropping barrel bombs from helicopters without any fear of reprisal.
"Your government has destroyed part of its own country, Chechnya. What happened to Chechnya is very actually, indeed quite similar to how the way Bashar al Assad is dealing with a huge part of his own country, and that's why there is affinity between Bashar and Putin.
She refers to a Brookings fellow, William McCants, article that al-Baghdadi tried to infiltrate Syrian protests since 2011. Prof. Gilbert refers to Syrian vice president, Farooq al-Sharra's interview to Hezbollah's newspaper Al-Akhbar that protests were peaceful for a long time and there was disagreement in the regime about how to deal with those protests.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/essays/2015/thebeliever?rssid=syria
"Military setbacks had forced the group underground in 2008 and subsequent attacks like the one on Abu Umar and Masri had decimated its command structure. Baghdadi and Hajji Bakr were determined to bring the fight out in the open again and seize the territory necessary for establishing a caliphate. The growing unrest in Syria in 2011 played directly into their hands. Presented with an opportunity to inject violence into what had been a peaceful revolt, Baghdadi sent one of his Syrian operatives to set up a secret branch of the Islamic State in the country that year. The branch, later known as the Nusra Front, initially followed the Islamic State’s playbook by attacking civilians as part of a clandestine terror campaign to sow chaos. The hope was that the Islamic State would be able to capitalize on that chaos in order to make its first land grab.
Syrian President Assad lumped these attacks on civilians with the actions of those who had been protesting his regime to claim that the peaceful protestors were really nothing but terrorists. But as Nusra evolved into an insurgent organization, it became more careful about killing Sunni civilians and more dedicated to working with other Sunni rebel factions to oust Assad. This shift also reflected the guidance Nusra received from al-Qaida’s new emir, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had replaced bin Laden after he was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011. Zawahiri believed it was wiser to cultivate popular support before trying to establish an Islamic state, so he called on Nusra to collaborate with the other rebels.
Baghdadi disagreed with Zawahiri, to whom he had pledged a private oath of allegiance. As he saw things, there was already an Islamic State; it just needed to be made real by territorial conquest in Syria. Nusra’s cooperation with the other Sunni rebels was thwarting that plan."
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