Showing posts with label Bashar Al-Assad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bashar Al-Assad. Show all posts

Friday, January 23, 2015

West's Islamic State Focus Neglects Human Tragedy In Syria



Western states are focusing too much on tackling Islamic State and are forgetting the daily suffering of ordinary Syrians in areas of the country where the medical situation has become catastrophic.
Some 200,000 people have died and nearly half the Syrian population has been displaced by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in 2011 and spiraled into full-scale civil war.
The situation has been exacerbated since a U.S-led coalition began bombing areas of Syria controlled by Islamic State.
"Between 30 to 60 people are dying each day since the bombings started. There is only talk of extremism and Islamic State, but not the women and children who are killed, the bodies torn apart, the stomachs blown open, which is what doctors are dealing with each day."
Said Tawfik Shamaa, spokesman for the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM), a non-governmental association that brings together 14 groups.

The group has about 300 medical posts and 12 dispensaries across Syria, but said its efforts are limited given the lack of medicines, equipment and staff.
"The situation is unbearable, catastrophic," said Obaida al-Moufti, a Franco-Syrian doctor.
One doctor in Aleppo, who gave his name as Abdelaziz, said there were just five functioning hospitals to cater to 360,000 people encircled by government troops.
"There are only 30 doctors of all specialities," he said adding that people were dying of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, scabies and tuberculosis because there were no treatments or vaccines available.
The U.S.- led coalition has backed anti-government rebels to counter Islamic State, but it has not targeted government forces. 
Source: Reuters

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Addition Of Assad's Atrocities To The US Holocaust Museum



No gallery for the 500,000+ Iraqi babies who died due to Western sanctions? Or the 1 million+ Iraqi citizens who've died since 2003? 

No gallery for the Palestinians who've died or been dispossessed since 1947? 

Of course not because these are "our" crimes rather than those committed by people on the official enemies list. 

Posted by Gutenberg

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Clear As Mud

Null

Are you confused by what's going on in the Middle East? 

Let me explain:

We support the Iraqi government in the fight against the Islamic State. We don't like IS, but IS is supported by Saudi Arabia, whom we do like.

We don't like President Assad in Syria. We support the fight against him, but not IS, which is also fighting against him. 

We don't like Iran, but Iran supports the Iraqi government against IS. 

So, some of our friends support our enemies and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies, whom we want to lose, but we don't want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win. 

If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. 

And all this was started by us invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren't actually there until we went to drive them out. 

Do you understand now?

By Aubrey Bailey,
Fleet, Hants.

Transcribed by: CZ

Thursday, March 13, 2014

What If London Was Syria?



London-based Save The Children just released this powerful PSA to raise awareness about the millions of children affected by the crisis in Syria. The PSA follows a young girl one second a day for one year, and imagines what the crisis in Syria would look like if it were to happen in the UK.

Find out more at http://bit.ly/3yearson

Monday, December 16, 2013

Syria: Shia Are Killing Us



Witness the brutality and cruelty that the Alawites of Syria, with aid from Iran's Shia, have subjected the Sunni's of Syria to.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Hezbollah Executes Wounded Syrian Rebels



The video shows armed men in fatigues, at least one wearing the yellow arm band sported by the Lebanese Shiite movement, dragging several bloodied men out of a van and shooting them dead.
The men speak in the Lebanese dialect of Arabic, and at the end of the video one man calls them over, saying: "One moment, one moment. We are doing our duty, not avenging ourselves."
The others call out: "For the sake of God, for the sake of God."
Hezbollah declined to comment on it.
Al-Arabiya television said it may have been filmed during the battle for Qusayr, a strategic Syrian town near the Lebanese border that Syrian troops recaptured from rebels with the help of Hezbollah earlier this year.
Hassan Nasrallah and his Hezbollah have lambasted Syria's "Sunni takfiri fighter's" for the atrocities they committed against pow's, wounded soldiers and civilians, and that they supposedly held the moral high ground in that area, but this video proves that they are no better.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

الديك



Poem by نزار قباني

في حارتنا ديك سادي سفاح
ينتف ريش دجاج الحارة كل صباح
ينقرهن, يطاردهن, يضاجعهن
ولا يتذكرأسماء الصيصان

في حارتنا ديك يصرخ عند الفجر
كشمشون الجبار
يطاق لحيته الحمراءويقمعنا ليل نهار
يخطب فينا, ينشد فينايسدي فينا
فهو الخالد وهو القادر الجبار

في حارتنا ثمة ديك
عدواني فاشستي نازي الأفكار
سرق السلطة بالدبابة

ألقى القبض على الحرية والأحرار
الغى وطنا ألغى شعبا
الغى لغة الغى أحداث التاريخ
الغى ميلاد الأطفال
والغى اسماء الأزهار

في حارتنا ديك يلبس في العيد القومي لباس الجنرالات
يأكل جنسا يشرب جنسا يسكر جنسا
يركب سفنا من أجساد 
يهزم جيشا من حلمات 

في حارتنا ديك من أصل عربي
فتح الكون بآلاف الزوجات

في حارتنا ثمة ديك أمي
يرأس احدى الميليشيات
لم يتعلم الا الغزو والا الفتك 
والا زرع حشيش الكيف وتزوير العملات
كان يبيع ثياب أبيه
ويرهن خاتمه الزوجي 
ويسرق حتى أسنان الأموات

في حارتنا ديك كل مواهبه
أن يطلق النار من مسدسه الحربي على الكلمات

في حارتنا ديك عصبي مجنون
يخطب يوما كالحجاج
ويمشي زهوا كالمأمون
يصرخ من مأذنة الجامع
يا سبحاني يا سبحاني
فأنا الدولة والقانون

كيف سيأتي الغيث الينا
كيف سينمو القمح 
وكيف يفيض علينا الخير
وتغمرنا البركة
هذا وطن لا يحكمه الله 
وانما تحكمه الديكة

في بلدتنا يذهب ديك يأتي ديك
و الطغيان هو الطغيان
يسقط حكم لينيني 
يهجم حكم أمريكي
والمسحوق هو الانسان

حين يمر الديك بسوق القرية
مزهوا منفوش الريش
وعلى كتفيه تضيء نياشين التحرير
يصرخ كل دجاج القرية في اعجاب
يا سيدنا الديك, يا مولانا الديك
يا جنرال الجنس ويا فحل الميدان
أنت حبيب ملايين النسوان
هل تحتاج الى جارية؟
هل تحتاج الى خادمة؟
هل تحتاج الى تدليك؟

حين الحاكم سمع القصة
أصدر أمرا للسياف
بذبح الديك
قال بصوت غاضب:
كيف تجرّأ ديك من أولاد الحارة
أن ينتزع السلطة مني
كيف تجرأ هذا الديك
وأنا الواحد دون شريك

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Chemical Weapons Launched From Regime-Held Military Base

Map of the projected flight bearings and suspected launch site of the 140mm and 330mm rocket systems
The poison gas attacks in Damascus were launched from a military base controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s forces, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said, as more evidence emerged to implicate the regime.


When United Nations investigators published their report on the incident on Monday, they were forbidden from naming the perpetrator. But they did reveal the trajectories flown by two of the missiles.
Human Rights Watch used that data to pinpoint the locations from which the weapons were launched. “When mapping these trajectories, the presumed flight paths of the rockets converge on a well-known military base of the Republican Guard 104th Brigade,” said HRW.
The base is located in an area of northern Damascus held by the regime, close to the presidential palace. The “key details” revealed in the UN report “strongly suggest the government is to blame,” added HRW.
The weapons which appear to have been fired from the Republican Guard base landed in the Damascus suburbs of Moadamiya and Ein Tarma.
HRW cautioned that the data was not “conclusive”, but described it as “highly suggestive and another piece of the puzzle”.
The UN team also identified the weapons used in the attack. They were two types of artillery-launched rocket: the M14 and the 330mm. Both of these Russian-made projectiles are known to be in the arsenal of the regime’s armed forces, which also possess the biggest stockpile of poison gas in the Middle East.

Al-Bayda: Anatomy Of A War Crime



Courtesy Of: Channel 4 News

At least 169 people, including women and children, were killed in a massacre in the Syrian town of al-Bayda earlier this year. Warning: this exclusive video contains extremely distressing footage.
Warning: the video below contains extremely distressing footage from the beginning
At seven in the morning of 2 May this year, Syrian government forces entered the village of al-Bayda, an opposition enclave nestled in the hills by the Mediterranean coast in the western governorate of Tartus, writes James Brabazon.
Al-Bayda was a sleepy place. Not much happened there, and until this spring was unremarkable except for one defining fact: it was a predominantly Sunni village, entirely surrounded by pro-regime Alawite and Christian territory.
The Syrian government didn't consider al-Bayda to be a threat. In May 2011 they rounded up all the men in the village square and beat many of them up to remind them President Assad was in charge - and then more or less left it alone.
There was no permanent Syrian army force there, no big checkpoint and no fighting. Regime forces came and went as they pleased. No-one attacked them.

Shootout

The only function that al-Bayda played for the opposition was to help smuggle out individual deserting government soldiers who'd run away from their bases on the coast and were trying to reach rebel-held territory.
So when the Syrian army arrived in May - to arrest a group of three Syrian army deserters who were being hidden in the outskirts village by supporters of the opposition to President Assad - no-one could have guessed what would happen.
First, there was a shootout. The deserters and a group of around a dozen opposition fighters who went to their assistance - local men with light weapons - opened fire on the army. Residents said that later they saw the bodies of at least a dozen dead Syrian Army soldiers, their corpses trapped in the burned-out remains of their ambushed vehicle.
Taking no chances, the regime forces called in reinforcements. By 1pm the firefight was over. The deserters were either killed, or fled along with the opposition fighters up into the caves far outside the village.

Massacre

Now government fighters massed around al-Bayda: regular Syrian Arab army units; uniformed national defence force paramilitaries (the so-called shabiha); and Syrian army special forces operators.
From the outskirts where the skirmish had taken place, the army and paramilitaries moved in. From three axes, in coordinated deployments, they swept through al-Bayda, moving from house to house.
The world should pay attention about what is happening in al-Bayda. Why is everyone asleep? Why don't they do something?'Sara'
At 1.30pm the killing began. Men and women were separated in the houses. The "men" - which included teenage boys - were either executed immediately, or marched to the village square to be killed en masse. Most were shot. Some were hacked to death with long knives or cleavers. At least one young boy, Luqman al-Hiris, was beheaded - in front of his mother.
In the house of Mustafa Biyasi, 30 women and children were herded into one room and then executed - shot at point blank. Saffa Biyasi cuddled her baby boy, Hamza Biyasi. They lay dead next to each other, serene despite their injuries. Afnan Biyasi and another small child spooned each other on the bed they were shot on, perhaps holding each other for comfort in the last moments before the bullets ripped through their tiny bodies.
By 5pm the massacre was over. The Syrian army had killed at least 169 civilians in four hours. The verified final death toll is likely to reach beyond 250.

Burned

Bodies were stacked up in the local cellphone shop and burned, making them hard to identify. Um Mohammed, an eye witness to the massacre, was able to identify the charred remains of her son only by the chipped fingernail he'd broken earlier.
The next day government forces returned and burned al-Bayda. The sleepy village which once had a population of around 5,000 people was empty. Refugees fled to rebel-held areas of Syria and then on to Turkey and Lebanon.
It used to be called al-Bayda – the white village. Now they call it al-Sawda - the black village.'Sara'
If the government's strategy has been to cleanse al-Bayda of its Sunni Muslim residents then they were successful: with the exception of a few elderly people too old to leave, only the Christian quarter remains inhabited.
Thirteen members of Fattou family, who did try to return were wiped out in their home by Syrian security forces on 21 July.

'The Black Village'

While the investigation into the regime's alleged use of nerve gas continues, the 2 May massacre in al-Bayda remains the single, most extensive verified act of the killing of civilians carried out by government forces since the war began.
But what perhaps is as shocking as the eyewitness accounts of murder by uniformed government troops is that the massacre at al-Bayda was almost entirely unreported in the mainstream media: a few short news pieces, a lot of web traffic and a report and brief overview at the time in the western press is really all the attention that al-Bayda received.
"Sara" - a 12-year-old girl who survived the massacre and who was interviewed for this programme, found the body of her tortured and murdered father. When asked if there was anything she'd like to say to the people abroad who might see this film she replied:
"The world should pay attention about what is happening in al-Bayda. Why is everyone asleep? Why don't they do something?
"We had one nursing baby who died in his mother's lap. What has he done? Did he overthrow the president? People should stand up to them, to our enemies.
"You cannot just keep quiet. This is not right. They have slaughtered all of us. They have emptied al-Bayda. There is no-one there any more. It used to be called al-Bayda – the white village. Now they call it al-Sawda – the black village."

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Iranians Fighting In Syria



Courtesy Of: Al-Jazeera

A Syrian rebel group has released video it says it found after a battle with Iranian fighters in Aleppo. It is said to show an Iranian-run camp, which is also home to Syrian troops. 

Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal reports.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Birds Of A Feather, Flock Together



Egypt's Dictator and Usurper: Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, Is Supplying Syria's Dictator : Bashar Al-Assad With Weapons

Egyptian blood wasn't enough to quench Sisi's thirst, so he turns his attention to Syrian blood

1. One of the causes that made Sisi overthrow President Morsi, was Morsi's readiness  to permit Egyptian's to go to Syria and aid the resistance, and that's unacceptable.

But it's totally acceptable for Sisi to aid Bashar.

2. The usurpers accused Turkey of sending a ship filled with weapons to the Muslim Brotherhood, and that's unacceptable.

But it's totally acceptable for Egypt to send weapons to Bashar

3. The usurpers were furious when Erdogan refused to recognize their illegitimate government and accused Turkey (Mauritius, South Africa, Ecuador and others) of meddling in Egypt's internal affairs, and that's unacceptable.

But it's quite acceptable for the usurpers to meddle in Syria's internal affairs.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Bashar Al-Assad's Thugs Bury Activist Alive



WARNING: Video contains graphic material. Viewer discretion is advised. Must be 18 years old and above, to view this.

This video was published on April 25th, 2012, but this is the first time I'm seeing it.

Although it's a bit old, there is no doubt that Bashar Al-Assad's crimes against humanity have gotten much worse (FTM)

---

BLOOD-BOILING!! 

ENOUGH APATHY. WHERE IS THE ACTION!!

FRIENDS OF MINE IF YOU ARE READING THIS PLEASE SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY PEOPLE, MY COUNTRY. PLEASE BREAK YOUR SILENCE, HAVE NO FEAR, NO DOUBT. THE PEOPLE OF SYRIA NEED YOU! PLEASE HELP US!!

A shocking & distressing video of assad thugs burying a man alive & telling him to say 'there is no God but bashar'


The Syrian regime has surpassed all the red lines & yet they continue to commit unspeakable crimes with no serious action or condemnation from the international world!


Please share! |Translated By Syrian-Ography|



Saturday, August 03, 2013

عذرًا سوريا



يارب عجّل بنصركَ لهم
واكتب لهم نصرًا قبلَ يومِ العيد
وأنتم أيضًا لا تنسوهم من الدعاء

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The War On Syria Planned 2 Years Before “The Arab Spring”




By Gearóid Ó Colmáin

In an interview with the French TV station LCP, former French minister for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas said:
‘’ I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria.
This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.
Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me.’’
Dumas went on give the audience a quick lesson on the real reason for the war that has now claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people.
‘’This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… in the region it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance.
Consequently, everything that moves in the region- and I have this from the former Israeli prime minister who told me ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours but those who don’t agree with us will be destroyed.
It’s a type of politics, a view of history, why not after all. But one should know about it.’’
Dumas is a retired French foreign minister who is obliged to use discretion when revealing secrets which could affect French foreign policy. That is why he made the statement ‘I am French, that doesn’t interest me’.  He could not reveal France’s role in the British plan as he would be exposing himself to prosecution for revealing state secrets.
There have been many disinformation agents in the British and French press, many of them well known ‘leftist’ war correspondents and commentators, who have tried to pretend that Israel secretly supports Assad.  Those who make such arguments are either stupid, ignorant or deliberate disinformation agents of NATO and Israel.
Israel’s support for Al Qaeda militants in Syria has even been admitted by the mainstream press. For example, Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published a report on June 12th on Israel’s medical treatment of the Al Qaeda fighters.
Israel planned this war of annihilation years ago in accordance with the Yinon Plan, which advocates balkanization of all states that pose a threat to Israel. The Zionist entity is using Britain and France to goad the reluctant Obama administration into sending more American troops to their death in Syria on behalf of Tel Aviv.
Of all the aggressor states against Syria, Israel has been the quietest from the start. That is because Laurent Fabius, Francois Holland, William Hague and David Cameron are doing their bidding by attempting to drag Israel’s American Leviathan into another ruinous war so that Israel can get control of the Middle East’s energy reserves, eventually replacing the United States as the ruling state in the world. It has also been necessary for Tel Aviv to remain silent so as not to expose their role in the ‘revolutions’, given the fact that the Jihadist fanatics don’t realize they are fighting for Israel.
This is the ideology of Zionism which cares no more for Jews than it does for its perceived enemies.   The Jewish colony is determined to become a ruling state in the Middle East in the insane delusion that this will enable it to replace the United States as a global hegemon, once the US collapses fighting Israel’s wars.
Israeli Prime Minister once told American talk show host Bill Maher that the reason why Israel always wins short conflicts, while the United States gets bogged down in endless wars. ‘’ The secret is that we have America’’, he said.
But Israel is itself slowly collapsing. If one excludes the enslaved Palestinian population, the Jewish state still has the highest level of poverty in the developed world with more and more Jews choosing to leave the ‘promised’ land, a garrison state led by mad men, an anti-Semitic entity threatening to engulf the world in war and destruction. Israel cares no more about its own working class Jews than any other ethnic community.
In fact, if the Likudnik crooks running the Israeli colony get their way, working class Israelis will be among the first to pay as they are conscripted to fight terrorists created by their own government. With orthodox Jews protesting in the streets of New York against Israel and Haredi Jewish minority opposing Israel’s rampant militarism, Zionism is coming under increased attack from Jewish religious authorities and non-Zionist Jews both inside and outside of the occupied territories.
This is not the first time that Roland Dumas has spoken out against wars of aggression waged by successive French regimes. In 2011 he revealed that he had been asked by the United States when he was foreign minister in the Mitterrand administration to organize the bombing of Libya. On that occasion the French refused to cooperate.  Dumas, a lawyer by profession, offered to defend Colonel Gaddafi, at the International Criminal Court in the event of his arrest by Nato.
Dumas was also vocal in condemning France’s brutal neo-colonial bombing of the Ivory Coast earlier in 2011, were death squads and terrorists similar to those later deployed in Libya and Syria were unleashed upon the Ivoirian population in order to install a IMF puppet dictator Alassane Quattara in power. Gbagbo was described as one of the greatest African leaders of the past 20 years by Jean Ziegler, sociologist and former member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council.
Gbagbo had plans to nationalize banks and wrest control of the country’s currency from the colonial finance institutions in Paris. He also wanted to roll back many of the worst effects of IMF restructuring by nationalizing industries and creating a functioning, universal free health service. All of this threatened the interests of French corporations in the former French colony. So, the Parisian oligarchy went to work to find a suitable replacement as caretaker of their Ivoirian colony.
They sent in armed terrorist gangs, or ‘rebel’s in the doublespeak of imperialism, who murdered all before them while the French media blamed president Gbagbo for the violence that ensued. Gbagbo and Gaddafi had opposed Africom, the Pentagon’s plan to recolonize Africa. That was another reason for the  2011 bombing of their two African countries.
The formula is always the same. Imperialism backs ‘rebels’, whenever its interests are threatened by regimes that love their country more than foreign corporations.  One should not forgot that during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, General Franco and his cronies were also ‘rebels’ and they, like their counterparts in Libya in 2011, were bombed to power by foreign powers, replacing a progressive, republican administration with fascism.
There are pro-Israeli fanatics in France who have used the analogy of the Spanish Civil War as justification for intervention in Libya and Syria. The pseudo-philosopher Henry Bernard Levy is one of them.  Of course, the ignoramus Levy doesn’t realize that the reason France, England and the USA did not officially intervene in the Spanish Civil War is because they were covertly helping the ‘rebels’ from the start. They enabled arms shipments to the Francoist ‘rebels’ while preventing arms deliveries to the Spanish government, who, like Syria today, were helped by Moscow. Anyone who has studied the Spanish Civil War knows that all the imperialist countries wanted Franco as a bulwark against communism.
There is nothing imperialism loves more than a rebel without a cause. What imperialism hates, however, are revolutionaries. That is why the ‘rebels’ which imperialism sends into other countries to colonize them on behalf of foreign banks and corporations, have to be marketed as ‘revolutionaries’ in order to assure the support of the Monty Python brigade of petty-bourgeois, ‘ leftist’ dupes such as Democracy Now! and their ilk.
Dumas is not the only top French official to denounce the New World Order.  Former French ambassador to Syria Michel Raimbaud wrote a book in 2012  entitled ‘Le Soudan dans tous les états’, where he revealed how Israel planned and instigated a civil war in South Sudan in order to balkanize a country led by a pro-Palestinian government. He also exposed the pro-Israeli media groups and ‘human rights’ NGOS who created the ‘humanitarian’ narrative calling for military intervention by the United States in the conflict.
The subject was covered extensively by African investigative journalist Charles Onana in his 2009 book, Al-Bashir & Darfour LA CONTRE ENQUÊTE.
There are many more retired French officials who are speaking out about the ruinous policies of this French government, including the former head of French domestic intelligence Yves Bonnet. There have also been reports of dissent in the French armed forces and intelligence apparatus.
After the assassination of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011, the former French ambassador to Libya Christian Graeff told French radio station France Culture that it was responsible for the diffusion of lies and war propaganda on behalf of Nato throughout the war.  Graeff also warned the broadcasters that such disinformation could only work on the minds of serfs but not in a country of free minds.
The power of the Israeli lobby in France is a subject rarely discussed in polite circles. In France there is a law against questioning or denial of the holocaust. However, denial of the Korean holocaust, Guatemalan holocaust, Palestinian holocaust, Indonesian holocaust and the dozens of other US/Israeli supported genocides is not only perfectly legal but is the respectable norm.
The same lobby which introduced the Loi Gayssot in 1990, effectively ending freedom of expression in France, would also like to ban any independent investigations of genocides whose narratives they have written, such as the Rwanda genocide, where Israel played a key role in supporting the ‘rebels’ led by Paul Kagame, who invaded Rwanda from Uganda from 1991 to 1994, leading to the genocide of both Tutus and Tutsis. Many serious scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide, which the Israel lobby repeatedly uses as a case study to justify ‘humanitarian’ intervention by Western powers.  The Zionist thought police would like to see such authors prosecuted for ‘negating’ imperialism’s disgusting lies on African conflicts.
Now, the Israeli Lobby is forcing the (their) French government to prosecute twitter messages which the lobby deems ‘anti-Semitic’. This is one further step towards the creation of a totalitarian state where any criticism of imperialism, foreign wars, racism, oppression, perhaps eventually capitalism itself could fall under the rubric of ‘anti-Semitism’.
These people are sick, and those who cow down to them are sicker. Perhaps the etymology of sickness, a word cognate with the German Sicherheit (security) according to dictionary.com, is not a coincidence. For what is particularly sick about our society is the cult of security,  endless surveillance, ubiquitous cameras, the cult of the all seeing eye, the prurient gaze as part of the incessant discourse on terrorism by those who specialize in the training of the very terrorists they claim to be protecting us from.  Whether or not the words security and sickness are linguistically related, they are certainly cognate in a philosophical sense.
Roland Dumas and others like him should be highly commended for having to guts to say what so many others are too morally corrupt, too weak and cowardly to admit.
As the French government and its media agencies drum up hysteria for war on Syria, Roland Dumas, now in the twilight of his years, is warning people of the consequences of not understanding where Israel is leading  the world. Will enough people heed the warning?

Monday, July 29, 2013

Syrian Air Force Bombing Civilians



Courtesy Of Human Rights Watch

(Aleppo, April 11, 2013) -- The Syrian Air Force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate, and in some cases deliberate, air strikes against civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war), and people who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.

The 75-page report, "Death from the Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians," is based on visits to 50 sites of government air strikes in opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia governorates, and more than 140 interviews with witnesses and victims. The air strikes Human Rights Watch documented killed at least 152 civilians. According to a network of local Syrian activists, air strikes have killed more than 4,300 civilians across Syria since July 2012.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Monday, July 01, 2013

Who Benefits If The Killing In Syria Goes On?



All The Players Have Their Own Agendas, and None Seems To Involve A Ceasefire... Just Yet

By Patrick Cockburn


The best hope for an end to the killing in Syria is for the United States and Russia to push both sides in the conflict to agree a ceasefire in which each holds the territory it currently controls. In a civil war of such savagery, diplomacy with any ambition to determine who holds power in future will founder because both sides believe they can still win.
The US, Russia and Iran could see themselves being sucked into an ever more violent conflict and one that is rapidly spreading. It is destabilising Syria's neighbours in Jordan and Lebanon as Shia and Sunni support opposing sides. Even Turkey's new-found prosperity is vulnerable as a result of its whole-hearted backing for Syria's rebels.
However, the chance of any talks taking place in Geneva have dimmed in the past few days. The Syrian opposition has rejected the idea, though its intentions are very much determined by its paymasters in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Going by the evidence of their own leaders, the rebels, inside and outside Syria, are so divided and dysfunctional they may not be in the business of talking to anybody.

Even if the opposition were better organised, they might still not want to talk. One of its leaders said: "We have to make the removal of the regime fundamental to any political solution." This may sound obvious, but an unstated part of opposition policy is that they can only win if the West and its allies among the Sunni states of the Middle East decide on massive military involvement to remove President Bashar al-Assad. They want a Libyan-type solution in which Assad would be overthrown, as was Muammar Gaddafi by Nato in 2011, with the rebels conducting a well-publicised mopping up.

However, the truth is that Assad was never as politically or militarily weak as portrayed in the international media or, until a few months ago, by foreign leaders. After two years of war he holds almost all the main cities and towns of Syria and the inner core of his regime has held together. This has become more evident in the past two months, as government forces go on the offensive and make limited but definite gains.

Foreign perceptions have changed. Six months ago, German intelligence was predicting Assad's fall. Now, it has been publicly saying it expects the government to secure its grip on Damascus and all of southern Syria by the end of the year.
The White House has said in the past few days that its top priority in Syria is to impose regime change, but this is a recipe for a very long conflict. Why should Assad and his government surrender when they are more than holding their own on the battlefield? 
Moreover, Washington appears to have shut the door on the idea of Iran, a main player, attending Geneva talks. This again is unrealistic if the aim of negotiations is to end the fighting. 
And Britain and France are playing a small but mischievous role in ensuring the slaughter in Syria continues. By successfully ending the EU embargo on arms for the rebels they will not bring talks nearer, as they pretend, but make them unlikely to take place at all. The type of weapons they will send are not going to tip the military balance. Government forces are too strong for this. The current stalemate is too well rooted in realities on the ground. 
The most significant impact of more arms for the rebels will be to persuade them that, if they refuse to negotiate, they will eventually get full-scale Western military intervention such as a Libya-type no-fly zone, which, in practice, meant Nato air forces joining the war.
It may be that Russia announced that it was selling Syria a sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missile system precisely in order to block this. By offering more arms, the EU will also be putting off the day when the two sides talk to each other through mutual exhaustion and the knowledge that neither can win.
At this stage, mutual hatred is too great for any long-term deal on sharing power. Everybody is caught up in what we used to call in Belfast "the politics of the last atrocity". Power-sharing would be geographical, with each side holding its own territory.
There may be a more sinister reason why the US has started setting the bar so high for talks. Washington's involvement is greater than appears because so much of it goes through Qatar, with the CIA determining who gets arms and money sent via Turkey. This would also explain why Britain and France are so keen to send the rebels weapons.

The explanation for the actions of the Western states may be that they do not want the war to end except as a victory for their allies. This certainly is the view of many in the Middle East, such as Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the former Iraqi National Security Adviser, who told me:
the civil war "is the best option for the West and Israel because it knocks out Syria as an opponent of their policies and keeps Iran busy. Hezbollah is preoccupied by Syria and not with Israel. Turkey's idea of a new Ottoman empire is gone with the wind."
This is a cynical but probably correct explanation for why the US, Britain, France and the Sunni monarchies do not want the war to end until they can declare victory.

Monday, June 10, 2013

What Next After The Fall Of Qusayr?



We Look At How The Balance Of Power Has Shifted After Syrian Soldiers Retook A Strategic City From The Rebels.


Courtesy Of Al-Jazeera

"I am worried that the nature of the conflict may have reached and passed a tipping point and that now this is very much a full-scale sectarian conflict - there is no doubt that President Assad has initiated this by recruiting Hezbollah forces and inviting Iranian aid and forces into his country ... The problem is that the worst thing that can happen right now is for Assad's regime to fail because now that we have reached this point of inviting foreign fighters in on both sides - both Sunni and Shiite - this is no longer about achieving democratic ends to the protests that began two years ago."

- Robert Densemore, a defence and military analyst