THE  SYRIAN HASBARA NETWORK  IN TURKEY

Holding Civil Society Workshops While Syria Burns  Ammar Abdulhamid(ZIONIST)10th October 2012

The most overt form of assistance provided by the United States to the Syrian opposition is the State Department's Office of Syrian Opposition Support (OSOS), an organization established to aid opposition activists trying to bring down the Assad regime and located in the trendy Cihangir neighborhood on the European side of Istanbul.State Department strategic planner Maria Stephan, a prominent theorist of nonviolent resistance, was dispatched to oversee the training that OSOS provides to activists. Stephan, a State Department veteran whose foreign postings include Afghanistan and Libya, is the co-author of Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. She is also the former director of policy and research at the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
[ed notes:who is she really? "Dr. Stephan worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for European/NATO policy at the U.S. Department of Defense and with the international staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. 
Stephan had already been meeting with activists in Istanbul for months before the OSOS trainings began in August, according to multiple activists who met with her during this time. She organizes and observes the training on civil resistance, media production, promoting anti-sectarian thought, and avoiding communications monitoring, according to a Syria-based activist who traveled to Istanbul for the OSOS trainings. Activists from other Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, conduct the workshops.A British consultant also works with OSOS as an advisor, but he said he was not cleared by the State Department to speak about its activities. The State Department refused requests to interview Stephan.The United States is relying on OSOS as one of its central points of contact with the Syrian opposition.During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's August visit to Istanbul, she snubbed the Syrian National Council, which has failed to coalesce into a unified opposition body, and instead met with activists being trained by OSOS.
OSOS pays for activists' trip to Istanbul, as well as their stay in an upscale hotel if they can manage the perilous journey to Turkey. At the end of the training they are given a satellite phone and computer and are expected to return to Syria -- though not all do, according to activists familiar with OSOS.U.S. efforts to organize Syria's opposition also appear to be receiving help from the British. A Washington-based Syria analyst told Foreign Policy that OSOS was set up with funding from the State Department with the assistance of a Beirut-based consultancy firm called Pursue Ltd. 
[ED NOTES;PURSUE LTD,SOME BACKROUND..  https://www.pursueltd.com/clients.html  United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)Department for International Development (DFID) Ministry of Defence (MoD)  United States Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ITS REALLY FRONTS FOR THESE GOV's AND THEIR INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES CIA AND MI6
Alistair Harris, Pursue's director, is a former British diplomat known for his work canvassing extremist groups in Palestinian camps in Beirut, the analyst said. Harris has also written a policy paper on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.An article in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph initially described Harris as "a British political consultant overseeing the [nonlethal aid] programme." It was later edited to omit his name.Via email, Harris denied that Pursue is "undertaking any activities relating to the Syrian opposition on behalf of the U.S. or any other project partner." However, he admitted his personal involvement in the program, writing that he is "involved in US assistance programming, but not through Pursue."
[ed notes;harris bio ..  He is an Associate Fellow at RUSI http://www.rusi.org/news/experts/ref:B4B47670473A2A/ RUSI OF COURSE PROMOTES REGIME CHANGE IN SYRIA,NOT TO MENTION THAT IT IS A BRITTISH MILITARY THINK TANK WHOS PATRON IS QUEEN ELIZABETH AND WHOS SPONSORS ARE WHOS WHO IN BIG OIL,WEAPONS MANUFACTURING,BANKING AND FINANCES...SEE QUEEN (OF ZION)ELIZABETH, WE WILL WAGE - THENAKEDFACTS  BRITTISH IMPERIAL COMMANDER OF ... - THENAKEDFACTS The liberal way to run the world – “improve” - THENAKEDFACTS
A second office, run by a company called Access Research Knowledge (ARK), has been opened a short walk from OSOS. There, another British consultant oversees a number of employees of various Western and Arab nationalities. When Foreign Policy visited the ARK office, at least two employees knew Harris by name.At least one employee is involved with Pursue, and activists said it is acting as an advisor and intermediary for funding from "Friends of Syria" countries to the Syrian opposition. ARK also provides funds and consulting to a new opposition media outlet founded by a group of liberal-minded Syrian activists calledBasmaSyria.
A State Department spokesperson described ARK as "an implementing partner" of the U.S. nonlethal-aid program."ARK is currently undertaking activities to support the nonviolent Syrian opposition and Syrian civil society," the spokesperson said. "Project activities involving hundreds of beneficiaries have taken place in Syria and neighboring states since the onset of the Syrian crisis. It shares the inclusive vision of a future Syria for all Syrians where the rule of law is applied equally and the people of Syria are represented by a legitimate, responsive, and democratically elected government."The activists themselves see the projects as a way to get their message out to the world more effectively."They are just helping us. We didn't study media; we didn't study photography," said an activist who works for BasmaSyria, which has distributed videos via YouTube, Facebook, and the Saudi-owned news channel Al Arabiya since August. The videos -- which are shot, written, and produced by the activists -- mainly target a Syrian audience and promote the idea that the uprising in Syria is not sectarian in nature. ."We are like a mini-Syria," one BasmaSyria activist said. Each activist receives a modest salary, equipment, and media training. When a new group of activists comes to Istanbul for OSOS training, BasmaSyria activists are called in to give them a brief pep talk.Foreign Policy visited the BasmaSyria office in early October and was shown several of the group's videos. The activists say that their aim is to counter the Assad regime's narrative that the Syrian revolt is a sectarian conflict. "It's regime propaganda, a pretext to say this revolution is an Islamic revolution and Sunni will kill Alawi," one activist said. Another activist, a Christian woman from the city of Homs, furiously said that even prominent Western journalists have been paid "a lot" by the Syrian regime to promote a sectarian agenda in Syria.
The editing and narration of BasmaSyria's videos are more professional than most of the Syrian opposition videos uploaded to YouTube. .The activist met with Clinton during her August visit to Istanbul, but the encounter only heightened this person's impression of how far behind the United States is on Syria.
[ed notes;in other words the us state dept is running a network of people who produce videos in favour of regime change against syrian govt..it's a hasbarah operation ..
A State Department spokesperson in Washington did not respond to a request for further information about its Syria program. Discussions with activists, however, suggested that the resources available to OSOS remain limited."In truth, we are not talking about major expenditures here," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a prominent Syrian activist and fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, cautioning that OSOS was too new to assess its effectiveness.
[ed notes;ammar abdulhammid is a zionists with ties to israhelli thinks and neocon circles..hes also frontman for national salvation  in d.c. a syrian muslim brotherhood front for abdul khadam 
 In addition to OSOS and BasmaSyria, the United States has also funded a workshop for Syrian women held in the Turkish border city of Gaziantep. The project was about having a "vision for Syria in 2020," said the Syrian activist who organized the workshop. Funding was provided through the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.At the workshop, Syrian women developed ideas about what they want different aspects of their country -- the economy, health services, security, and civil society, for instance -- to look like in the future. "Syria didn't have institutions before," the activist said. "Any support for building institutions or building capacity is very welcome, and it is very effective.… The more the better."Asked what participants did during the workshops, she said, "Basically, it was about explaining personal stories, talking about the past and the present as well and planning for the future."An activist in Syria said that the State Department had also funded a project for Syrian lawyers and judges, but the organizers were not reachable for comment.The State Department has said the effect of the OSOS training will best be seen after the regime falls. However, the relationship between the armed opposition -- which believes it is taking the greatest risk in fighting the regime -- and civil society activists is tense."Some of [the armed opposition] think we are doing a useless job, and some of them think we are doing a good job," the organizer of the workshop for women said of the armed opposition. "At some point I think there will be some conflict."Asked about OSOS, she said,  that the training had valuable aspects, such as helping her shoot and edit powerful videos to promote her view of Syria's revolution and to document human rights violations in a way that the material could be submitted as evidence to the International Criminal Court.
[ed notes:when you have a (WESTERN)''network of  paid cells'' calling themselves activists based in turkey and within syria,being paid by the zionist ran us state dept,and these are also working with brittish agents with ties to intelligence agencies, running ''GOVT BACKED'' operations behinds the scene,orchestrating videos and formulating western friendly narratives of syrian conflict,does this qualify as a conspiracy?