Musings by Shahidul Alam
![Anti-war protesters demonstrate against proposals to bomb Syria outside the Houses of Parliament in London [REUTERS]](http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2015/12/2/1994c16d0b4b4345a42451413d007f48_18.jpg "7/7 Survivor: Why we should not bomb Syria")
John Tulloch is a British university lecturer who is best known as a survivor of the July 7, 2005 London Bombings. Continue reading “7/7 Survivor: Why we should not bomb Syria”
by TAJ HASHMI*
While people across the world for the last three years have been watching the unbelievable resurgence in state- and non-state-actor-sponsored violence and terror across the Arab World ? Libya, Egypt, Syria, Gaza, and of late, Iraq ? the Obama Administration?s recent decision to ramp up its nuclear capability has almost remained unnoticed to most analysts, let alone the common people. Even if, very similar to what happened during the Cold War, America?s ramped up nuclear capability does not lead to a nuclear conflagration, this is going to signal further nuclear proliferation, arms race and a new cold war. Continue reading “STRANGER THAN FICTION: America?s ramped up nuclear capability: Prelude to another Cold War?”
The situation in Syria is an object of serious preoccupation and once more the United States, assuming the role of the world’s policeman, proposes to invade Syria in the name of “Freedom” and “Human Rights”.
Continue reading “Open letter to President Barack Obama”
They did it once and look where they got us. Do not let the hawks lead us into another meaningless slaughter. Their profit must not come at the cost of our peace.
Regarding the facts:
Talking Points?from Phyllis Bennis, Director, New Internationalism Project Institute for Policy Studlies
Tom Hayden ? A Call for Forceful Diplomacy?http://www.pdamerica.org/component/k2/item/1809-tom-hayden-a-call-for-forceful-diplomacy
McClatchy News Service, ?To some, US case for Syrian gas attack, strike has too many holes,???http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/02/201027/to-some-us-case-for-syrian-gas.html#.Uid-LFcpg_g
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, ?Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account Is More Credible????http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/09/01/which-syrian-chemical-attack-account-is-more-credible/ Continue reading “Syria: Stop another senseless war”
WASHINGTON — A U.S.-led attack on Syria without United Nations support would be a war crime regardless of congressional approval, Noam Chomsky, the antiwar activist and author, said in response to President Barack Obama’s announcement that he would seek Hill approval. Continue reading “Noam Chomsky Weighs In On Syria Strike”
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has suggested that high-level Syrian government figures could be assassinated as part of the US-backed civil war to oust President Bashir al-Assad. Carr?s remarks underscore the reckless and illegal character of the US-led regime change operation underway in Syria, taking place with the full support of the Australian Labor government.
Interviewed on Monday on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation?s ?Four Corners? program, the foreign minister expressed concern that the Syrian army had proven a more effective fighting force than the so-called rebels, who have been funded and armed by Washington?s allies in the region, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
?I think we?d know the conflict has evened up if there is a major defection from the Assad government, especially a defection that takes part of its armed forces with it,? Carr continued. ?Perhaps?this sounds brutal and callous?perhaps an assassination, combined with a major defection taking a large part of its military, is what is required to get, one, a ceasefire, and, two, political negotiations.? Continue reading “Australian foreign minister suggests ?assassination? of Syrian leaders”
But the obsession with radical Islam misses a more meaningful analogy for the current state of siege in the Middle East and Afghanistan: the helicopters hovering above the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975 as North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the city.
That hasty departure ended America?s long and costly involvement in Indochina, which, like the Middle East today, the United States had inherited from defunct European empires. Of course, Southeast Asia had no natural resources to tempt the United States and no ally like Israel to defend. But it appeared to be at the front line of the worldwide battle against Communism, and American policy makers had unsuccessfully tried both proxy despots and military firepower to make the locals advance their strategic interests. Continue reading “America?s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East”
I’d thought of writing about Monsanto this week — the US-based biotech giant which is being sued by five million Brazilian farmers for 7.7 billion dollars for its seed-patenting, rightly dubbed “GM genocide” — but the press statement from Amnesty International USA, which had slipped into my inbox caught my eye.
Headlined, “Urgent: From Syria’s Frontlines“, it spoke of an Amnesty report to be released this week which has uncovered “widespread new evidence of heinous war crimes committed by the Syrian government armed forces and militias.” Amnesty’s ?investigations of the Houla and Dara massacres, claims the release, provides “unequivocal evidence that the Syrian army is responsible for gross violations of human rights on a massive scale.”
Only Bashar al-Assad’s armed forces and militias? Only the Syrian army? No mention of atrocities committed by the rebel forces? Of the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s admission that al-Qaeda is supporting the armed insurrection in Syria? Which, as Paul Joseph Watson points out, is consistent with reports that these same terrorists had helped to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and had been airlifted to Syria by NATO forces? That al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has publicly lent support to Syrian rebel forces? (“Clinton: Al Qaeda, U.S., Helping Syrian Rebels,” Global Research, March 2, 2012). Continue reading “AMNESTY USA ON SYRIAN GOVERNMENT'S WAR CRIMES: The whole truth?”
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, May 28, 2012
The British media has been caught yet again with its pants down in the effort to sell a NATO-led attack on Syria, with the revelation that BBC News used a years-old photo of dead Iraqi children to depict victims of an alleged government assault on the town of Houla.
In a report issued hours after the massacre, the BBC used a photo that was first published over nine years ago and taken in Al Mussayyib, Iraq. The image shows a child skipping over the dead bodies of hundreds of Iraqi children who have been transported from a mass grave to be identified.
Continue reading “BBC Caught In Syria Massacre Propaganda Hoax”