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Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 31-08-2012 13:47 Post subject: |
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More lies on Syria :
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/syri-a31.shtml
| Quote: | [......]
An important element of this campaign of disinformation is the constant citing of ever escalating and wholly unverifiable casualty figures, coupled with accusations of endless massacres and atrocities by the Syrian Army.
In the run-up to the Security Council, allegations centred on opposition claims of a massacre in the town of Daraya. It was first reported Sunday that 200 mainly Sunni civilians had been killed. By Wednesday a figure of upwards of 400 was being cited.
Like similar claims of massacres in Houla and Qubair, made before previous Security Council meetings and also meant to justify action against Syria, the media’s account of events in Deraya is already unravelling.
The first Western journalist into the town of Deraya was Robert Fisk of The Independent. He reported Wednesday that, far from being the result of an unprovoked massacre of civilians, several local residents told him of “hostage-taking by the Free Syria Army and desperate prisoner-exchange negotiations between the armed opponents of the regime and the Syrian army, before President Bashar al-Assad's government forces stormed into the town to seize it back from rebel control.”
Residents explained that opposition fighters had kidnapped civilians and off-duty soldiers, killing many and offering others as hostages in an exchange of prisoners.
Writing of “atrocities” that were “far more widespread than supposed,” Fisk cites a woman whom saw “at least 10 male bodies lying on the road near her home... adding that Syrian troops had not yet entered Daraya.”
Another man said that he believed most of the dead photographed lying in a graveyard and claimed as victims of the Syrian Army, “were related to the government army and included several off-duty conscripts.”
The witness said, “One of the dead was a postman—they included him because he was a government worker.”
Fisk comments, “If these stories are true, then the armed men—wearing hoods, according to another woman who described how they broke into her home and how she kissed them in a fearful attempt to prevent them shooting her own family—were armed insurgents rather than Syrian troops.”
By uncritically trumpeting the statements of opposition sources and attributing all deaths in a civil war to the alleged misdeeds of one side, the media is acting as a weapon on behalf of the imperialist powers seeking to divide up the Middle East between them. |
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| BlackRiverFalls I wear a fez now.
Joined: 03 Aug 2003 Total posts: 8716 Location: The Attic of Blinky Lights Age: 44 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 03-09-2012 19:16 Post subject: |
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Quite the revolution 
| Quote: | Egypt's sexual harassment of women 'epidemic'
Campaigners in Egypt say the problem of sexual harassment is reaching epidemic proportions, with a rise in such incidents over the past three months. For many Egyptian women, sexual harassment - which sometimes turns into violent mob-style attacks - is a daily fact of life, reports the BBC's Bethany Bell in Cairo.
Last winter, an Egyptian woman was assaulted by a crowd of men in the city of Alexandria.
In video footage of the incident, posted on the internet, she is hauled over men's shoulders and dragged along the ground, her screams barely audible over the shouts of the mob.
It is hard to tell who is attacking her and who is trying to help.
The case was one of the most extreme - but surveys say many Egyptian women face some form of sexual harassment every day.
Marwa, not her real name, says she worries about being groped or verbally harassed whenever she goes downtown. She says it makes her afraid.
"This is something that scares me, as a girl. When I want to go out, walking the street and someone harasses or annoys me, it makes me afraid.
"This stops me from going out. I try to be excessively cautious in the way I dress so I avoid wearing things that attract people."
'Deeply rooted'
The day I met Marwa, she was wearing a long headscarf pinned like a wimple under her chin, and a loose flowing dress with long sleeves over baggy trousers.
But dressing conservatively is no longer a protection, according to Dina Farid of the campaign group Egypt's Girls are a Red Line.
She says even women who wear the full-face veil - the niqab - are being targeted.
"It does not make a difference at all. Most of Egyptian ladies are veiled [with a headscarf] and most of them have experienced sexual harassment.
"Statistics say that most of the women or girls who have been sexually harassed have been veiled or completely covered up with the niqab."
Egyptian women are harassed by a large crowd of men and boys in a park in Cairo. Photo: August 2012 Harassers are getting younger, campaigners say
In 2008, a study by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights found that more than 80% of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment, and that the majority of the victims were those who wore Islamic headscarves.
Said Sadek, a sociologist from the American University in Cairo, says that the problem is deeply rooted in Egyptian society: a mixture of what he calls increasing Islamic conservatism, on the rise since the late 1960s, and old patriarchal attitudes.
"Religious fundamentalism arose, and they began to target women. They want women to go back to the home and not work.
"Male patriarchal culture does not accept that women are higher than men, because some women had education and got to work, and some men lagged behind and so one way to equalise status is to shock women and force a sexual situation on them anywhere.
"It is not the culture of the Pharaohs; it is the culture of the Bedouins," Mr Sadek says.
Mr Sadek and women's campaign groups also blame what they call the lack of security enforcement. They say the police should do more to enforce laws protecting women from harassment.
'Provocative dress'
And the harassers are getting younger and younger.
On the Qasr al-Nil bridge in central Cairo, a hotspot for harassment, I met a group of teenage boys hanging out near street stalls blaring loud music.
When I asked them about a recent case of mass harassment in which women at a park were groped by a gang of boys, they told me the girls brought it on themselves.
"If the girls were dressed respectably, no-one would touch them," one of them said. "It's the way girls dress that makes guys come on to them. The girls came wanting it - even women in niqab."
One of his friends told me the boys were not to blame, and that there was a difference between women who wore loose niqabs and tight ones.
A woman who wore a tight niqab was up for it, he added.
But attitudes like these horrify many Egyptian men - like Hamdy, a human rights activist.
"I really feel very upset myself because I think about my family, my sisters and my mother," he said.
"Before Eid [the festival at the end of Ramadan], I was downtown and I had my sisters with me. It gets very crowded and I had my eyes everywhere, looking around and I shouted at a pedlar who got in their way. In our religion this is something that is not allowed."
The new government says it is taking the problem seriously - although many campaigners argue it is not a priority yet.
For women - like Nancy, who lives in central Cairo - it is a question of freedom.
"I want to walk safely and like a human being. Nobody should touch or harass me - that's it." |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19440656 |
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| JamesWhitehead Piffle Prospector Joined: 02 Aug 2001 Total posts: 5779 Location: Manchester, UK Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-09-2012 19:51 Post subject: |
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If you go to Egypt, you will be sexually harassed. Full stop.
They are not too bothered about gender - or age, come to that.  |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-09-2012 23:22 Post subject: |
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And so it goes on.
| Quote: | Salafists raid Tunisian hotel bar for serving alcohol
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19481835
Some of the most radical branches of the ultra-conservative Salafists seek Sharia law
Related Stories
Salafists clash in Tunisian town
Tunisia profile
Muslim hardliners known as Salafists have attacked a hotel in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid because its bar still served alcohol, reports say.
Dozens of activists smashed bottles and chased away customers at the Horchani hotel, news agencies reported.
The sale and drinking of alcohol is legal in Tunisia, which is popular with foreign tourists.
The country has witnessed a resurgence of Islamist hardliners recently since the overthrow of President Ben Ali.
The central Sidi Bouzid is the cradle of Tunisia's revolution, which ended secular rule and triggered the Arab Spring.
Threats
Hotel owner Jamil Horchani told Reuters the Salafists "attacked the hotel on Monday night and smashed all its contents. They entered the rooms and damaged furniture and smashed bottles of alcohol."
They had previously threatened to attack the hotel if he did not stop serving alcoholic drinks, he said.
In May, Salafists in Sidi Bouzid staged an anti-alcohol protest demanding that hotels and bars be relocated outside the town, some 300km (186 miles) west of the capital Tunis.
The Tunisian uprising in January 2011 unseated veteran President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and inspired a wave of pro-democracy movements across North Africa and the Middle East.
But since the government's overthrow, Salafist fundamentalists have been gaining in power.
The movement's most radical branches are demanding the reintroduction of Sharia law into Tunisia. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 05-09-2012 00:01 Post subject: |
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| Disheartening but sadly not remotely surprising. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 08-09-2012 15:11 Post subject: |
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Ordinary people fight back to defend the Sufi Shrines.
| Quote: | Libya clashes break out over Sufi shrine attack
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19522215
Libyans have protested against the recent attacks on Sufi shrines
Libya Crisis
Has Libya bucked Islamist trend?
Curse of Sirte?
Ex-rebels reluctant to down arms
Amazigh demand recognition
Three people have been killed in clashes in Libya between local residents and Islamic extremists trying to destroy a Sufi shrine, the interior ministry says.
Officials said residents in the eastern town of Rajma clashed with Salafist Islamists who were trying to destroy the Sidi al-Lafi mausoleum.
It is the latest in a series of attacks on shrines belonging to the mystical Sufi branch of Islam in Libya.
Many Islamists view Sufis as heretics.
In Rajma, 50km (31 miles) south-east of the city of Benghazi, witnesses said armed local residents fought off Salafist extremists who were trying to destroy the mausoleum.
"The clashes left three people dead and several more wounded on both sides," Deputy Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif told AFP news agency.
He said Libyan security forces had brought the situation under control and dispersed the crowd with help from local tribal chiefs.
Earlier this month, two Sufi shrines in Zlitan and the capital Tripoli were destroyed in attacks also blamed on ultra-conservative Islamists.
Such attacks have increased since the end of the eight-month civil war that toppled Col Muammar Gaddafi, as the authorities struggle to control lawlessness.
Last week, Libyan Interior Minister Fawzi Abdelali resigned after Congress criticised his handling of the violence. |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 11:18 Post subject: |
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Shocking stuff from Libya:
| Quote: | US ambassador 'killed in Libya'
Ambassador Christopher Stevens is said to have suffocated in the attack
The US ambassador to Libya has died after an attack by militiamen on the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, reports say.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens is said to be among four US officials killed in a protest over a US-produced film that is said to insult the Prophet Muhammad.
The US state department has only confirmed the death of one official - but it has not named them.
Protesters have also attacked the US embassy in Cairo over the film.
In the attack in Benghazi, unidentified armed men stormed the grounds, shooting at buildings and throwing handmade bombs into the compound.
Security forces returned fire but Libyan officials say they were overwhelmed.
A Libyan official has said Ambassador Stevens died from suffocation as a result of the attack.
In a statement earlier, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed the death of a US official, saying: "We are heartbroken by this terrible loss".
"Some have sought to justify this vicious behaviour as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet," she said in a statement.
"The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."
Reports say a militia known as the Ansar al-Sharia brigade was involved in the attack, but the group has denied the claim, the BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli says.
Our correspondent says many people are still armed following the conflict that overthrew Col Muammar Gaddafi last year.
The film that sparked the demonstration is said to have been produced by a 52-year-old US citizen from California named Sam Bacile, and promoted by an expatriate Egyptian Copt.
The two men are described as having anti-Islamic views.
In Cairo, the US flag was torn down and set alight by the demonstrators
A trailer of the low-budget movie has appeared on YouTube translated into Arabic.
There were calls on social media networks for protests against US interests in the capital, Tripoli, but no disturbances have been confirmed, our correspondent says.
The rally followed a demonstration in Cairo, in which protesters breached the US embassy and tore down the US flag, which was flying at half mast to mark the 9/11 attacks, and replaced it with an Islamist banner.
Thousands of protesters had gathered outside the US embassy in the Egyptian capital.
Egyptian protesters condemned what they said was the humiliation of the Prophet of Islam under the pretext of freedom of speech.
"Both Muslims and Christians are participating in this protest against this offence to Islam," said one protester, according to Associated Press news agency.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19570254 |
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| Cavynaut Skoumed!
Usually tired. Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Total posts: 1976 Location: Crouch Wailing. UK. Age: 56 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 11:38 Post subject: |
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| Would never have happened while that nice Mr Gadaffi was in charge. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-09-2012 13:02 Post subject: |
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| Cavynaut wrote: | | Would never have happened while that nice Mr Gadaffi was in charge. |
Indeed.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
My condolences to the Ambassadors and the other diplomats families and friends.
This had nothing got to to do with the film and was really about fundamentalist Islamists tightening their control on Libya. The "parliament" has no power. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-09-2012 12:37 Post subject: |
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Probably the most telling is a quote from Sean Smith, one of the State Departments Officials killed during the raid-apparently he was an IT specialist and was involved in the EVE community (a MMO game). Vile_Rat was his username-he posted one of the following in one of the chat lines the night before the raid-
| Quote: | (12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures
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Related Link: http://themittani.com/news/rip-vile-rat |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-09-2012 12:38 Post subject: |
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Vid at link.
| Quote: | YouTube user "Abdalgadar Fadi" has uploaded a video on the arabic language version of the video sharing site purporting to show US Ambassador Christopher Stevens dragged from the consulate in Benghazi.
The translation of the text below the video reads: "Moment directed the U.S. ambassador before his death" and the headline translates to: “U.S. Ambassador and the people of Benghazi rescue attempt before his death.”
The victim in the video appears to be wearing the same pants, belt and t-shirt seen in this photo of Amb. Stevens.
The validity of the video and the accuracy of the description of the events it depicts are still under investigation, but through Twitter and Facebook the video has already taken a life of its own.
UPDATE 9:15 PM ET
Various tipsters have offered differing interpretations of what they hear and witness on this video. The shouts of "Allauha Akbar" are clearly heard and many assume that the cry is meant as a celebration of the attack on the consulate and Amb. Stevens.
However, Arab-speaking readers have pointed out that they hear people saying “Lift him” and "bring him out." But they can’t discern why the crowd is cheering.
Jenan Moussa, who identifies herself as a "Roving Reporter for Arabic Al Aan TV from Dubai" took to Twitter when the video first broke. Moussa claims that some men in the video were saying "he's alive" and "lift him" (referring to Amb. Stevens.) She writes that after reviewing the video she believes the crowd began cheering because the man was found alive.
UPDATE 10:05 PM ET
The New York Times now offers their translation to the events int he video:
“I swear, he’s dead,” one Libyan says, peering in.
“Bring him out, man! Bring him out,” another says.
“The man is alive. Move out of the way,” others shout. “Just bring him out, man.”
“Move, move, he is still alive!”
“Alive, Alive! God is great,” the crowd erupts, while someone calls to bring Mr. Stevens to a car.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/09/16/BREAKING-Video-Purports-To-Show-Ambassador-In-Libya |
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| Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 22-09-2012 20:46 Post subject: |
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Use extremists to do your dirty work (overthrow a foreign government), then when in power, provoke them so that you'll have an excuse to intervene.
Now that with the attack on the US embassy, the islamists who had helped to overthrow Gadhafi have provided a pretext for US soldiers to take foot on Libyan soil and US drones to fly over Libya, turning Libya into an outlet of Pakistan and Yemen, it seems we saw one more confirmation of the pattern. The whole plan has always been masquerading behind humanitarian intervention to build unstable states, that will be constantly at the mercy of more foreign intervention.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/manufacturing-failed-states/
| Quote: | Manufacturing Failed States
by Edward S. Herman / September 1st, 2012
During the Vietnam War, a sign over one of the U.S. army bases read “Killing Is Our Business, and Business Is Good.” Well, it was a very good business in Vietnam (and Cambodia, Laos, and Korea as well), the number of civilian deaths running into the millions. And it has been quite respectable in the years after Vietnam. The killings have been carried out both directly and via proxies on every continent, as U.S. “national security” has required bases, garrisons, assassinations, invasions, bombing wars, and the sponsorship of killer regimes, real terror networks, and programs everywhere in response to terrorist threats and challenges to the pitiful giant. Jan Knippers Black pointed out years ago in her great book United States Penetration of Brazil (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) that “national security” is a wonderfully elastic concept, expanding in accord with “what a nation, class or institution…thinks it should have,” with the result that it is those “whose wealth and power would appear to make them most secure who are, in fact, most paranoid, and who, by their frenetic attempts to ensure their security, bring on their own destruction.” (She was addressing the 1960s Brazilian threat of social democracy and its termination by a U.S.-supported counter-revolution and military dictatorship.) Add to this the search by the vested interests of the military-industrial-complex for missions to justify budget increases, and the mainstream media’s full cooperation in this search, and we have a frightening reality.
In reality, the fake-paranoid giant has had to struggle valiantly to produce more or less credible threats, especially with the fall of the “Evil Empire,” which this country had long been allegedly “containing.” Thank goodness that after relatively brief spurts of attention to narco-terrorism and then Saddam’s threatening weapons of mass destruction, Islamic terrorism came virtually out of nowhere to provide a successor threat, no doubt produced by hostility to U.S. freedoms and the Islamic world’s unwillingness to allow Israel to find a negotiating partner and peaceably settle any disputes with the Palestinians.
But in addition to maintaining the killing and associated arms business at a high level, the United States has become a large-scale manufacturer of failed states. By a failed state I mean one that has been crushed militarily or rendered unmanageable by political and/or economic destabilization and a resultant chaos and is unable (or is not permitted) for long periods to recover and take care of its citizens’ needs. Of course, the United States has been such a manufacturer for a long time, as in the cases of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala and those Indochinese states where killing was so good. But we have seen a dramatic resurgence in more recent times, some of it more or less peaceful, as in the cases of post-Soviet Russia and several of the Eastern European states, where income declines and sharply increased mortality rates resulted from “shock therapy” and Western-assisted but partly locally organized and supported elite semi-legal grand larceny (i.e., privatization under exceptionally corrupt conditions).
But there has been a fresh stream of failed states brought about by U.S. and NATO “humanitarian intervention” and regime change, carried out more aggressively in the wake of the death of the Soviet Union (and thus the end of an important if limited force of “containment”). Humanitarian intervention in Yugoslavia has been a model, with Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo turned into failed states, several other weaklings broken out, all of them Western clients or supplicants, plus a huge U.S. military base in Kosovo, with this package replacing one formerly independent social democratic state. This demonstration of the merits of imperial intervention set the stage for further failed-state manufacturing efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Libya, with a similar program well advanced today in Syria and one obviously in process for some years in the Free World’s treatment of a threatening Iran, following its happy relationship with the Western-imposed Shah dictatorship.
These manufactured failures have often had common features that show them to be a product of imperial policy and the projection of imperial power. One frequent feature is the rise and/or recognition of ethnic group rebels who claim victimhood, fight their government with terroristic acts, sometimes designed to provoke a violent government response, and who regularly appeal to the imperial powers to come to their aid. Sometimes foreign mercenaries are imported to aid the rebels, and both the indigenous rebels and mercenaries are often armed, trained and given logistical support by the imperial powers. The imperial powers encourage these rebel efforts as they find them useful to justify destabilizing, bombing, and eventually overthrowing the target regime.
This process was evident throughout the period of the dismantlement of Yugoslavia and creation of the resultant set of failed states. The NATO powers wanted Yugoslavia taken apart and the Republic of Serbia, its largest and most independent component, crushed. They encouraged nationalist elements within the other Republics to rebel, and all of these recognized that NATO would support and eventually go to war for them. This made for prolonged warfare and ethnic cleansing, but did eventually succeed in the destruction of Yugoslavia and creation of the residual failed states. (See Herman and Peterson, “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia,” Monthly Review, October 2007). Amusingly, Al Qaeda elements and mercenaries were imported into both Bosnia and Kosovo to help fight the target Republic (Serbia), with the knowledge and cooperation of the Clinton administration, as well as Iran. (See John Schindler’s Unholy Terror, which presses this theme very effectively, and is thereby unreviewable, except in Z Magazine! See my “Safari Journalism: Schindler’s Unholy Terror versus the Sarajevo Safari’s Mythical Multi-Ethnic Project, “ Z Magazine, April 2008). Al Qaeda was also one of the constituents of the freedom fighters engaged in the Libyan campaign, and is now admitted even if a little belatedly in the New York Times to be a factor in the Syria regime-change program (Rod Nordland, “Al Qaeda Taking Deadly New Role in Syria Conflict,” NYT, July 24, 2012). And, of course, it was a centerpiece in the regime change in Afghanistan and basis of the “blowback” of 9/11 (bin Laden having been an important Saudi-US.-sponsored rebel, subsequently abandoned by those sponsors, and later attacking, demonized, and killed by them).
These programs always involve serious “atrocities management,” whereby the government under attack is accused of major acts of violence against the rebels and their supporters, and is by this process effectively demonized and set up for more massive intervention. This was very important in the Yugoslav breakup wars, and possibly even more so in Libya and Syria. The process is greatly helped by the mobilization of international agencies, which participate in the demonization by denouncing the atrocities and sometimes indicting and prosecuting the targeted villains. In the case of Yugoslavia, the UN-established International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) worked hand-in-glove with the NATO powers in setting up the Serb leadership for prosecution and justifying any action the US and NATO wanted to take. In a beautiful illustration of the process, the ICTY prosecutor indicted Milosevic in May 1999 just as NATO turned to deliberately bombing Serb civilian facilities to hasten Serbian surrender, although these were war crimes and carried out under a UN Charter violation. But they diverted world attention from the unpleasant and illegal NATO behavior to the charges against the demonized Milosevic.
Similarly, with NATO eager to attack Libya, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court quickly indicted Muammar Gaddafi without even having conducted any independent investigation, and with an established prosecutor record of never having indicted anybody except Africans who were not Western clients. This kind of “juridical management” is invaluable to the imperial powers and feeds well into the advance of regime change and the manufacture of failed states.
There are also purportedly independent human rights groups and “democracy promotion” entities like Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the Open Society Institute that regularly get on the imperial bandwagon by featuring the violence of the targeted regime and its leaders. This also feeds into the mainstream media, the entire set providing the moral environment for more aggressive intervention on behalf of the victims.
This is helped still further by the fact that the atrocity claims and pictures of grieving widows and refugees, the seemingly compelling evidence on atrocities, and an establishment consensus on the “responsibility to protect” the victim populations, also affect liberal and left elements in the West, causing some to join the mainstream throng in denouncing the targeted regime and demanding humanitarian intervention, and many others to lapse into silence because of confusion and an unwillingness to be accused of “supporting the dictators.” The argument of the interventionists is that while we may seem to be supporting an expanding imperialism, exceptions must be made where exceptionally bad things are happening and the home public is aroused and wants action, but we may show our progressive credentials by trying to micro-manage and contain the imperial attack, as in insisting on adherence to a no-fly zone intervention in Libya. (See Gilbert Achcar, ”A legitimate and necessary debate from an anti-imperialist perspective,” ZNet, March 25, 2011; and my reply in “Gilbert Achcar’s Defense of Humanitarian Intervention,” MRZine, April 8, 2011, which refers to the “imperialist fine-tuning left.”).
There is a good case to be made that the United States itself is a failed or failing state. It obviously has not been crushed militarily by any foreign power, but its underlying population has been hugely damaged by its own permanent war system. In this case the military elite, with its contractor, banker, political, media and intellectual allies has greatly enlarged poverty and mass distress, shriveled the public services, and impoverished the country, making it impossible for the hamstrung and compromised leadership to properly service its ordinary citizens, despite steadily rising per capita productivity and GDP. The surpluses are drained into the war system and the consumption and ownership of a small minority, who, in what Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature calls the era of “recivilization,” are aggressively striving to go beyond mere surplus monopolization to transfers from the incomes, wealth and public claims of the great (and struggling) majority. As a failed state as well as in other ways the United States is surely an exceptional nation!
• Article first appeared in Z Magazine September 2012
Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and the media. |
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 23-09-2012 19:41 Post subject: |
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The groups involved would be long term secular opponents of the Regime who have been against the Islamists attacks from the start.
| Quote: | Syria opposition starts summit in Damascus
http://rt.com/news/syria-opposition-conference-meeting-788/
Published: 23 September, 2012, 15:50
Syria opposition members are holding a meeting in the capital Damascus to debate peaceful ways out of the long-lasting bloody conflict. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is boycotting the forum.
Fifteen opposition groups and six movements are participating in the National Conference for Rescuing Syria, RIA Novosti news agency reports.
The meeting is also attended by Russian, Iranian, Chinese ambassadors, as well as several ambassadors from Arab countries which maintain diplomatic missions in Syria.
Syrian oppositional National Coordination Body (NCB) heads the event, which started with the Syrian national anthem at a hotel in Damascus. However, the conference began without the presence of the country’s flag.
Security in the capital has been majorly stepped up for the event.
The Damascus conference is being held amid disagreements inside the Syrian opposition, with some opposition activists and groups boycotting its work.
In particular, the FSA has refused to take part, saying the participants do not “represent a true opposition and are only another face of the Syrian regime.”
The Syrian opposition remains divided between the mostly exiled opposition organizations, and the rebel fighters based inside the country, as well as domestic peaceful opposition groups.
The Syrian conflict has claimed up to 20,000 lives, according to UN estimates. |
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| Analis Great Old One Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Total posts: 851 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 03-10-2012 20:54 Post subject: |
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This conference is not the first of its kind, nor is it the first time that Western and Gulf governments have forbidden any mention of it. The novelty is that some of the rebels have come to realize that they were being used, and drown against their will in a spiral of slaughters and atrocities.
http://rt.com/news/syria-fsa-defected-officers-081/
| Quote: | Syrian rebels defect to government forces
A group of Syrian rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) defected and joined pro-government forces on Wednesday. The troops’ commander announced that “the road is open,” and called on to other rebels to abandon their uprising.
Eleven rebel troops – three officers, two warrant officers and six civilians – defected from the FSA and now support President Bashar al-Assad, AFP reported.
"We have decided to return to the army and cooperate with the Ministry of National Reconciliation," Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled Abdel Rahman al-Zamel said during a conference of non-combatant Syrian opposition groups.
“We are all Syrians, we reject a revolution that starts with the shedding of blood,” al-Zamel said, eliciting applause from the audience.
"The solution can't be achieved through holding weapons, blasts, sabotage or killing the innocent, but repenting from the wrongdoing and through political means,” Xinhua quoted al-Zamel as saying. He previously served as a captain in the Syrian Army, before joining the FSA months ago. He was reportedly the head of the FSA’s leadership in southern Syria, and acted as the deputy chief of the rebels' military council.
The appearance of al-Zamel and his men came as a surprise to the Damascus conference, organized by some 30 Syrian opposition groups with the aim of opening peaceful dialogue with the Syrian government to resolve the ongoing crisis in the country. The gathering was attended by ambassadors from Russia and Iran, and China’s temporary charge d'affaires for Syria – three nations who consistently supported the Assad regime over the past 18-month uprising.
Al-Zamel’s statement sparked debate among anti-regime activists – some argued that al-Zamel was forced to make his statement; others claimed that they had no idea who he was.
Yaser al-Abed, another FSA officer who attended the conference, formerly commanded a rebel group in Aleppo province. During the conference, al-Abed called on other insurgents to disarm and surrender: “Work your minds and know that holding weapons is nothing but a violation to the minds and freedom alike.”
“Syria is our home and honor, but they wanted to burn it. The most targeted things are our religion, nation and land,” al-Abed said. “I have known all that, and that is why I have decided to lay down my weapon to be a loving person who seeks the good and the humanity.”
The conference of opposition groups in the Syrian capital of Damascus called on both the Syrian authorities and the rebels to “immediately” end violence in the country though an international peace plan.
On Wednesday, twin car bombings by rebels targeting military command headquarters in Damascus, and a separate rebel attack killed four Syrian security officers and injured another 14.
That same day, rebel snipers killed a journalist with Iran’s Press TV, Syrian national Maya Nasser, as he reported on live TV about the bombings at the army headquarters. |
http://www.voltairenet.org/article175992.html
| Quote: | Popular transformation and the direction of the Syrian events
PARTNERS | 25 SEPTEMBER 2012
The 24th of September, the young men in the suburbs of Damascus surrender with their arms and taking the benefit of an amnesty
By Ghaleb Kandil
Popular transformation and the direction of the Syrian events
The winds of the ongoing transformations in Syria have reached the structure of the coordination committees formed in many Syrian regions at the beginning of the events, in order to organize the demonstrations and in some cases support the armed rebellion. In reality, these coordination committees constituted the main nerve on the field, through which turmoil was activated on the Syrian domestic arena.
Firstly, according to confirmed information, many coordination committees in the majority of the Syrian areas have started to adopt positions calling for the relinquishing of the weapons. Moreover, some of them are even trying to manage direct dialogue with the Syrian state and negotiate with it over guarantees that could be offered to those who relinquish their arms in the various towns, villages and neighborhoods. Consequently, numerous operations took place, in which the arms were surrendered and the status of the armed men was arranged, under the supervision of the coordination committees in Rif Damascus, Edlib, Rif Hama, Homs and Aleppo. This reveals that a major transformation actually took place at the level of the Syrian scene, and that the signs of the return from the climate of escalation, tension and turmoil are emerging and clearly point to the direction of the upcoming events.
Secondly, while attempting to understand the backdrop of this transformation, one should point to the state of tiredness and exhaustion suffered by the ordinary Syrian citizens, in light of events which blocked the economic wheel in numerous regions, affected properties, claimed lives and spread a state of comprehensive anarchy due to the control of the bandits and armed terrorist gangs that have undermined social and security stability wherever they are present, and practiced oppression and tyranny against the population. All of these elements paved the way before a serious turn at the level of the popular positions which were at first sympathetic with the rebellion and are now clashing with it, following the exposure of numerous facts. Hence, the people are now clearly expressing their wish to see the state re-imposing its full control, in the hope of regaining the missing stability.
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| ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17933 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 03-10-2012 22:35 Post subject: |
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Yesterday the Russians predicted a false flag operation.
| Quote: | The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on NATO and Middle East countries not to devise pretexts for military intervention in Syria. Russia has expressed concern that some provocation could occur at the Turkish-Syrian border that may give NATO the green light to intervene in Syria.
http://rt.com/politics/moscow-nato-syria-arab-spring-494/ |
Today:
| Quote: | Three people including a child were reportedly killed when a mortar bomb fired from Syria hit Turkey's southeastern border region of Akcakale on Wednesday. At least nine others were seriously wounded, the local mayor told CNN Turk television. At least eight wounded people were being taken to hospital, three of them police officers, Reuters said, citing witnesses.
http://rt.com/news/line/2012-10-03/#id38372 |
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