Documentary Watch [Voltaire Network]

Voltaire Network

Documentary Watch

Selection of studies and documents published by research centres and national or international institutions

286 articles

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Israeli bombardment of Syria, January 21, 2019

by Bashar Ja’afari

New York (USA) | 24 January 2019
On instructions from my Government, I draw your attention to the following:
At dawn on Monday, 21 January 2019, at 0110 hours, the Israeli occupation authorities once again attacked the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, in flagrant violation of Security Council resolution 350 (1974) on the Disengagement of Forces Agreement, launching successive waves of rockets from over Lebanese and occupied Palestinian territory and from over Lake Tiberias in the occupied Syrian Golan.
Since the (...)

Mike Pompeo Remarks at the German Marshall Fund

by Mike Pompeo

Brussels (Belgium) | 4 December 2018
Thank you, Ian, for the kind introduction. Good morning to all of you; thank you for joining me here today. It’s wonderful to be in this beautiful place, to get a chance to make a set of remarks about the very work that you do, the issues that confront the Marshall Fund and confront our region as well.
Before I start today with my formal remarks, it would be – I would be enormously remiss if I did not pay a well-deserved tribute to America’s 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush. He was (...)

The F-35, the Scam of the Century

16 August 2014
The F-35 is the largest weapons program in history. This multi-role aircraft is built by Lockheed Martin with Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems as major partners.
It should equip the armies of Australia, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey for the next 40 years and replace the F-16, F-18 and F-22.
However, its production started while essential aeronautical software has not yet been invented. The defense (...)

The White Book on Violations of Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Ukraine

5 May 2014
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation a White Paper on violations of human rights and the rule of law in Ukraine that have occurred since November 2013.
The book is divided into six chapters:
Violations of Human rights;
Interference by the European Union and the United States;
Weapons and violent methods used by the protesters;
Restrictions on basic freedoms and crackdown on dissidents;
Discrimination based on ethnic background;
Religious persecution. (...)

Do Indonesian Shia need protection?

12 March 2014
The propaganda of Indonesian groups hostile to the Syrian government highlights the supposed Shia character of the Assad regime. The point is to legitimize "jihad" by painting Shi’ism not only as a heresy, but also as a threat to pure Islam. This rhetoric has notably prompted Abu Bakar Ba’asyir to brand the "Shiite regime in Syria" as being "worse than infidels and Jews."
For Navhat Nuraniyah of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, this propaganda has already yielded evil (...)

Difficult succession ahead in the House of Saud

12 March 2014
Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre NOREF) published a brief study on the succession of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
According to author Stig Stenslie, a recognized expert on the subject, the Succession Act, promulgated in 2006 by King Abdullah does not apply to himself. In theory, therefore, it is one of the brothers of the present monarch who should first succeed him. The king appointed Prince Salman as heir and Prince Murkin as Deputy Prime Minister, putting him second in the line (...)

Flawed US intelligence on Ghouta massacre

18 January 2014
Richard Lloyd, a former UN weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published a report which challenges the ballistic data used by U.S. intelligence services in connection with the 21 August 2013 massacre in Ghouta, a Damascus suburb.
The authors show that the sarin-laden rockets could not have been fired from a distance of more than 2 kilometers from their point of impact. Based on the intelligence maps published by the (...)

War crimes in Syria

17 January 2014
Two Turkish groups have released a report on the war crimes perpetrated against the Syrian people. According to them, the events started in Deraa on the “Day of Wrath” against the neoliberal policies of the Assad administration. However, the revolt lost its meaning after the constitutional referendum of February 2012, which granted to citizens more rights than they had originally claimed.
The report then scrutinizes the involvement of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel and (...)

What purpose could mass surveillance in the EU possibly serve?

16 January 2014
The European Parliament commissioned a report on the mass surveillance programs implemented in the European Union. The document lays down the data available regarding five member States (France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Sweden) and ponders about their impact on the economic system.
In the first place, the report ascertains that only four of the above run that type of program (not the Netherlands), but that the United Kingdom allocates a huge budget to it, on an altogether (...)

Towards a partition of Syria?

16 January 2014
As the countries militarily engaged in the war on Syria are pulling out one by one leaving the United States and Russia facing each other, several publications are puzzling over the plans to partition the country.
In The Impossible partition of Syria, Mustafa Khalifa - writing for the Arab Reform Initiative - expounds the ethno-religious divisions besetting the country and the impossibility, due to the mix of populations, of transplanting them geographically. Furthermore, he points out (...)

The strategy of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood

16 January 2014
The German government is currently funding research studies on the transformation of elites in the Arab world. One of them focuses on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria.
The document highlights the difficulty of assessing their actual presence within the NATO-designated opposition, showing to extent to which they move in the shadows. Thus, if there are only 20 MB affiliates listed among the 320 members of the Syrian National Coalition, there are in fact 78 hiding behind the (...)

The manipulated videos of the Ghouta ’’massacre’’

16 September 2013
The Institute, presided by Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, has listed the first videos of the massacre of Ghouta, and was able to ascertain the encoded hours of the videos as well as the time of posting on internet. The closer study of this material enables us to point out incoherences and manipulations :
Ghouta is has been depopulated or some time now. The only people that are left are those who support the ’’rebels’’ and some elderly people who weren’t able to flee. The supporters of the (...)

For the CRS, the regional consequences of a war against Syria are difficult to foresee

9 September 2013
While the US congress is asked to come to a decision regarding a possible war on Syria, the Congress Research Service is publishing a study on this option.
As well as answering many questions about chemical weapon procedures, war powers, the eventual cost of a war etc, it evaluates the regionalization possibilities : actions of Iran and Hezbollah against Israel. The document concludes that Israel is capable of intercepting part of enemy missiles so that the US could thus extend their (...)

The bombing of Syria should extend to a ground invasion

9 September 2013
While the US government is considering changing the Syrian regime by force, with the excuse of punishment following the chemical attack that the Obama administration holds the el-Assad government responsible for, the Rand Corporation is studying the consequences of the options available.
Destroying or pining to the ground the Syrian aviation wouldn’t radically change the balance of power and wouldn’t enable the opposition to win.
Destroying the Syrian anti-missiles is possible, by only (...)

Syria: the CNAS prefers the status quo

25 September 2012
«This Fox has a longing for grapes:
He jumps, but the bunch still escapes.
So he goes away sour;
And, ’tis said, to this hour
Declares that he’s no taste for grapes»
Jean de la Fontaine, The Fox and the Grapes
The Center for A New American Security (CNAS) published a study on the possible changes in Syria and how to defend U.S. and Israeli interests according to different scenarios. Given the considerable influence that the CNAS exerts on the Obama administration, in general, and on the (...)

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