Archive for the ‘Middle East Issues’ Category

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. The Mass Media and getting things wrong about Syria

Posted: 04/26/2013 by editor in Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Syria
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Not looking and not seen doesn't mean that one also refrains from making judgment

Not looking and not seeing doesn’t mean that one also refrains from making judgment

WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO AND MALAK CHABKOUN

But don’t you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.”

― Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters In Search of an Author

Humans can be very strange creatures. Strange because we seek “the latest news” but are in practice seeking nothing more than the emotional-intellectual comfort that comes with the confirmation of our beliefs. We all “know” things, the news just confirms to us that our convictions are actually “right” or even that they are “the truth”. We humans seem to be avid consumers of a sort of passion play where the characters represented fit their roles and repeat them endlessly. We are drawn to the sources we know are going to give us answers that fit our worldview, our way of thinking, and we generally aren’t questioning their content, much less their framing of it.

This desire to fulfil this need is particularly true when we are faced with events that we have little knowledge about – events that are so far from us physically and mentally that we run to our comfort zone to explain to us how we should feel about said events. The problem is compounded as we turn to these sources again and again, sources which tell us that they are keeping us informed, lulling us into the idea that we know and are aware, when in fact we do not know and we are not aware. This creates the problem of cognitive dissonance, which is the illusion of believing that we know something when in fact we do not have the knowledge or information to process events unfamiliar to us.

So, how do we think? We often tend to think categorically. It is the way that verbal communication is taught at a primary level, so it lasts a lifetime. We all know how much time and effort can be saved once you divide the world into convenient categories of good/bad, black/white, us/them, etc. Therefore, the news source or information that one seeks already fits neatly into this paradigm, and in addition, it is one that more often than not is culturally familiar. This is not to say that there is no truth to some binary thinking. Unadulterated extremes indeed do exist, and at times we are even aware of what they are because the parameters to judge them are clear, but to attribute a value judgment to something, one has to know its true nature. One has to go beneath the surface. Subjectivity can’t be avoided because of our human nature, but it would help if we knew more facts than we think we do!

msm

Because they lie. But does that mean the “alternative” media tells the truth? No.

When thinking out of the box is just thinking in a different box

Many people will not watch TV because they are diffident about what the corporate media is telling them. It’s in fact correct and reasonable to mistrust something that tells you to buy what you don’t need with money you haven’t got and makes you feel miserable for that feeling of consumerist desire that TV implants along with its programming. Some who don’t watch TV because they are convinced it is “the idiot box” that creates conformity around falsehood at any rate have to obtain their information from someplace, and quite a few of them reject the Mainstream Media (MSM) because they attribute to it the same faults as TV, ie, that it peddles lies and that they want to “think independently” and “think out of the box”. This is why they tend to avoid newspapers or Internet sites that are connected with any corporate ownership, and most of the time that leads them to “alternative” news. Alternative news has its own pundits, its own worldview and its own pecking order of news analysis that runs the gamut from political correctness to conspiracy theory (and everything else in between). But it can be just as equally full of lies, rumour, false ideology as the corporate media. Thinking out of the box in this case isn’t happening, it’s just that the box might not be made on a production line and it looks more creative. And, as far as the alternative media goes on Syria, their box has been pretty badly distorted most of the time.

In an effort to be the alternative source on Syria, many outlets have taken to making predictions and speculations out of context. These predictions and speculations based on current events in no way offer a comprehensive view of the situation, thus leaving us with definitions of the conflict ranging from “civil war” to “Jihad” or “holy war” in Syria. Furthermore, these alternative outlets often ignore the context in which the Syrian revolution is occurring – including both historical context and regional context.  Finally, the gravest error may be that many of them then turn to an extremist explanation on either end of the spectrum, some exaggerating to the point of lying to get the attention of the MSM.

Sites that we came to know and trust for their coverage of the invasion of Iraq have for the most part, and with the stellar exception of Uruknet, been repeating as if by rote the same rhetoric (then, we didn’t call it rhetoric, because it made perfect sense with the objective facts on the ground) they used for making the public reject any intervention in Iraq, but this time they are transferring it to Syria. Virtually ignoring the fact that the situation is entirely different in almost every essential way, they dust out the anti-war slogans. The only problem is, they are not so much anti-war as they against THIS war, more specifically, against any kind of opposition to Assad, and therefore, they are anti-revolution. Reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries: being labelled by those words should chill their spines, but the consumers of these sites instead insist upon remaining virginal in their “defiance” and they repeat blatant lies such as that of there being no revolution in Syria, just a Western-based plan for take-over of Syria.

Suspending belief/suspending the moral compass

They used to say that seeing is believing, that you should always suspend your belief until you had evidence, and the best kind was physical evidence, visual proof. In the case of the Syrian revolution, first “they” (the counter-revolutionaries who read the alternative media a-critically) said, “we need proof” (that there is unhappiness in Syria). So they saw protests. Dozens of protests just like in all the other countries in the region were having and largely for the same reasons. But this was not to be trusted.

Syria, in the collective imagination of the alternative media progressive had always been “a good guy” for the mere virtue that “the West” had it on a rogue list. Now, rogue lists are ridiculous at best, especially if those paying the price are not the leaders of those nations, and if the compiler of the list has invaded nations in a serial way, but paying the price are the people who face restrictions because they are citizens of those nations, so it is criminal at worst. But to turn Syria into an “anti-Imperialist paradise” also would require evidence to demonstrate such a claim… which has not been forthcoming. Yet… there was no believing the videos making their way out, they were just not taken into consideration, no matter that there were hundreds of thousands of them and they certainly could not continue to be labelled as creations of a film studio in Doha as many “anti-Imperialist pundits” were saying, taking the cue from the regime prompts.

But, the fact that there had been even less protests over the decades than places like Egypt, Tunisia and Lebanon actually can serve to give an idea of how bad things really were in Syria before the revolution. There was a prohibition of providing evidence of the massacres, torture chambers, arbitrary detention and massive limitations on human rights. The truth and facts about life in Syria under Assad were kept well under wraps. That was because for a Syrian to even speak about all of this, inside Syria meant disappearance, torture or death and outside Syria meant the possibility of never returning home, even for a visit. It was one of those situations of “you wash the dirty laundry in the home” on a monumental scale. It is really not the fault of the consumers of alternative media if they believed the lies, all of us who rejected the “rogue state” way of thinking did that. But we weren’t entirely to blame, we didn’t have that much chance of knowing any differently. We’ve all signed petitions for the release of bloggers, but the actual EXTENT of the silencing of internal dissent was not fully understood. There was no way to understand it. The regime was so repressive that this information could NOT get out “unpunished”.

Then, things changed. It took the courageous actions of children to wake up what had been 40 years of slumber induced by severe repression and humiliation at the hands of the Assad family. People found their courage and voices and started to take to the streets in Syria, bloggers who alluded to things and kept their criticisms to complaints about the lack of liberation of occupied Golan, were taking pictures, filming events, showing visual evidence of what they had with great difficulty gotten out there “before”. Then, it wasn’t just bloggers anymore. Anyone who happened to have a cell phone was filming what was happening in every part of Syria, in a constantly growing way, and evidence of the oppression, the repression and the revolution were available free of charge and without any kind of filter, be it the MSM or the Alternative media.

But what happened? The videos were STILL not good enough, the evidence was still not convincing enough to override a fiery speech by Assad that said he was the last resistant figure to the threat of the West and Israel. And he found defenders in high places who would label him as the last great Arab leader, rhetoric not that different from the hagiography in Syrian media, as unearthed by Azmi Bishara which literally states:

“Love sprung out from Assad’s heart to water the earth of the deserving periphery of the country, reaching those who, one hopes, can still understand the language of love. He anointed his words with the tears of the bereaved orphans and widows, bowing before their sacrifices and paying homage to their selflessness. His love flowed into the mosques, where the devout were treated to a mix of the heart and the mind. …”

“Yet it was not love alone, but he his wrath erupted, burning away his enemies who do not understand the language of love … The President of Syria has made explicitly clear that the intention is no longer to chase terrorist groups from one area only for them to regroup in another. Rather, the aim now is to destroy these groups. Full stop.”

The Syrian version of The Dear Leader, one must presume.

A supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carrying his image, with words written on her face that reads in Arabic ''Bashar I love you'', takes part in a rally to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the Baath Party, at al-Sabaa Bahrat square in Damascus April 7, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Khaled al-Hariri

A supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carrying his image, with words written on her face that reads in Arabic ”Bashar I love you”, takes part in a rally to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the Baath Party, at al-Sabaa Bahrat square in Damascus April 7, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Khaled al-Hariri

Yet, the true problem is not only that they see and they refuse to believe, but they have come up with reasons for why Assad has to be “backed”.  They insist that the revolution is fake, (as if they know a real one!) and that it’s simply masses (millions!) who are blindly saying the slogans that their “prompters” in (take your pick) Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the NATO, the United States, (as if they are interchangeable and have the same agendas!) have prepared for them. They forget the adage that is a truism for activism regarding Palestine/Iraq/Afghanistan:  if one is armed with a just cause, there is no need to lie, or even to exaggerate. The facts of things alone, the evidence of misery, of oppression, of suffering and struggle are sufficient and require no justification, just a moral compass that is still working.

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter

The problem that was pointed out at the beginning of this essay is that language and culture are the crux of understanding the problem and getting to the bottom of the truth, and then acting in a consistent and morally viable way. The average person reading this will have English as his or her first language, will live in a Western country and will be familiar with the rhetoric of the dominant culture. That means that the person reading this will already know that calling one a terrorist is condemning his cause and considering its perpetrator anathema. We are all fully aware that some political parties are systematically labelled and blacklisted by the USA and Israel as “terrorist organisations”, despite the fact that they have even been victorious in elections in Palestine that were deemed legitimate by the overseeing bodies of the UN. We have rejected those labels because our “moral compass” understood that they were created in a climate of oppression, were aimed at liberating occupied lands and they restrict their operations to military ones. We activists consider them as freedom fighters and there is no need to defend them or their purposes, though we are still entitled to critically appraise their actions as serving the ends of the cause or falling into political party dormancy.

Likewise, it is easy to refer to the party that uses a car bomb in a city as a terrorist, and even to accept the (later almost always debunked) Syrian regime’s claims that it is work of the opposition (when they are being nice they call them rebels, but most of the time they are translated in even the most liberal-radical news sources as “terrorists”, when they don’t call them “rats”.) Yet, it is the armed opposition, the Free Syrian Army and then the constellation of armed forces alone who are called terrorists when they are defending a liberated town, or what remains of it after the shelling and armoured tanks finally roll back out to fill themselves with more lethal shells. Why are the alternative left and anti-imperialists information sources not referring to air strikes over Aleppo and other towns and cities as terrorism? Why do they seem to ignore bodies of women, children and men of all ages with their throats slit and their hands tied when it is clear beyond all doubt that the perpetrators of these acts (crimes) are either the “regular” army or the armed thugs known as “Shabbiha”? Does the blood of these victims cry less vendetta because the hand holding the knife works for the “president”?

Misunderstanding of these words is one of the major errors of the pundits and the media.

Misunderstanding of these words is one of the major errors of the pundits and the media.

Otherness and Understanding

Resistance is not a new concept in the Middle East. The region has had its share of both external and internal leadership imposed on the masses. Syria is no exception. In 1920, the French colonised the country of Syria and remained there until 1946, when Syria regained its full independence. In the first battle for independence in 1925, Sunnis, Druze and Christians coordinated to oppose French rule and mistreatment of segments of the population. While the revolt was eventually put down, it is often remembered with fondness for the ideals it stood for, and it paved the way for the battle for full independence.

In between independence from France and the Assad family rule, there were several coups in Syria. In 1970, a new family came to power – the Assad family. This family was to spend over 40 years controlling the lives of Syrians – their social gatherings, their speech, their religiosity, their mode of dress and their economy. The old lessons of resistance from the days of French rule had been taken to the grave but were suddenly recalled by the Syrian people when the regime arrested and tortured school boys for writing, “The people want the fall of the regime,” on their school’s wall in March 2010. Syrians in the Dar’aa Province mobilised in peaceful protests, often calling for “freedom,” “isqat annithaam” (the fall of the regime), justice, and an end to corruption. Other provinces began to follow suit, mobilising in mass protests when regime forces responded to the peaceful uprising in Dar’aa with bullets, arrests and eventually shells.

Thousands of these demonstrations, all peaceful, are documented by hours and hours of video footage on YouTube. Two years after the uprising, the footage continues to uploaded by activists on a daily basis, with most demonstrations mobilising on Fridays. Of course, because most of the signs and chants are in English, this often makes non-Arabic speakers weary, particularly if they hear the demonstrators chant the words made famous by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army psychologist accused of killing 13 people in an attack on Fort Hood. These two words are Allahu Akbar – literally translated as “God is Most Great.” While Major Hasan is accused of shouting these words during the attack, many non-Arabic speakers do not realise that this phrase is actually very multi-dimensional and, more importantly, a phrase that has been in existence for thousands of years before Major Hasan came into the picture.

In the Syrian demonstrations, when Allahu Akbar is chanted, it can range from signifying that the protestors feel that God is the Most Almighty to serving as a prayer for help from God. The phrase is often very contextual – for example, in the videos where the Assad regime has perpetrated some sort of attack on civilians, the phrase signifies a plea to God – that God is greater than all of the evil happening in Syria. In demonstrations supporting freedom and justice, the phrase will often signify triumph and a vow to persevere, with God’s power, in the struggle for freedom. Yet many, from seasoned journalists to “instant book pundits” have defined this phrase as the battle cry of the “religious war” and thus have painted the entire revolution with the same brush, lacking even the most basic understanding of what is going on or what protestors mean when they use the phrase. Furthermore, they ignore the rest of the innovative words being written, created and chanted by the Syrian people and focus on this one phrase, yet another example of refusing to come to an understanding based on facts and knowledge rather than personal comfort and preconceptions.

Understanding the culture and language of “the other” is always a prerequisite for legibility of their message, in any media/medium. But if you don’t know the language, roll with the emotion and understand where the players are coming from. We are so embedded in our own cultures, that we fail to realise that we are unable to decipher what we think is obvious. An example comes to mind of a classic film. Fellini’s “8 ½” is about a filmmaker going through a terrible creativity block. He moves from scene to scene attempting to overcome it. Fellini is a poet, Marcello Mastroianni is an artist, both of them able to break through the language barrier and communicate this situation and the sentiments involved. In fact, this film is loved by many people who don’t know any Italian. However, it is a product of its culture and language and only an Italian speaker would truly understand the final, moving and amusing scene, where everyone in the film magically appears and partly under direction and partly spontaneously, simply start to go in a massive “ring around the Rosie”, eventually involving the director who up to that moment couldn’t figure out how to get back to his work. It is five or so minutes of circus music and movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCIg4sQWIE

To an Italian, what everyone is doing is encouraging him to “girare” (go around in a circle), which is the Italian word for “filming”. The metaphor and its poetry and beauty doesn’t need to be explained to an Italian, but it would escape others, who see the beauty but don’t quite understand it because it is outside of their cultural reference. So, what is this example saying? That we can’t know all the cultural cues that come to us by the messages (verbal, visual and so on) during the Syrian revolution unless we are Syrians or have a deep and correct exposure to them, far removed from our OWN filters. We have to be careful, if we can’t be knowledgeable, and in all cases, we have to be SENSITIVE. We can see and on a human level sympathise with the human suffering in Syria right now. Ignoring it or replacing it with the wrong frame or with our own frame is never going to be of service of truth and justice, and isn’t that what we are into activism for in the first place?

Idiot petitions by ignorant pacificists “let the blood flow, just give me rainbows”

Posted: 06/29/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, Refugees, Syria
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An idiotic petition is circulating, so far luckily with only 99 signatories. But read it and see how it is a textbook example of muddling issues.

“War is not the answer. Not in Iran. Not in Syria.

Intervention in Syria only makes matters worse. All sides are committing war crimes, and providing arms only results in more killing.

The US and all foreign governments should stay out of Syria and let the Syrian people resolve their own political matters in their own way. Our government must keep its arms, funding and troops out of Syria.”

Mixing issues (such as the “war” against Iran that has been announced as being around the corner for 9 years now, just confounds people and keeps reality hidden. But more sinister are the assumptions made.

1) No one does want war who is a normal person. Apparently, neither did any protesters who took to the streets as is a right of assembly free people hold dear, and the reactionary regime either forced them into death or capitulation. The more death there was, the less the people remained silent and capitulation became impossible. This is how revolutions at times begin, when a resistance occurs in the face of lack of reforms and when oppression is the answer to dissent.

2) Who says it makes matters “worse”. Apparently, someone living in California does not seem to think it is bad enough that civilians are massacred, tortured, arrested, infants are slaughtered, towns are shelled to the ground, unconventional weapons are unleashed, water is poisoned and medicine is withheld from the wounded? Refugees are not fleeing their homes and losing their possessions and loved ones? Does he or she ignore the destruction the regime carries out so that it maintains itself in power?

3) The author puts on equal footing the “war crimes”…. Is this a joke? How can the acts of the deserting soldiers ever be compared to the regular army and the Shabihha? Do they have prisons, tanks, helicopters?

4) The USA isn’t getting involved, never planned on it, unless finger-wagging and tongue-wagging is involvement. On the other hand, Russia, Iran, Lebanon and China provide material and political support including weapons and mercenaries.

5) The ultimate smack in the face against people in Syria (though this petition never claimed it cared about them) is that it believes it is possible and preferable to “let the Syrian people resolve their own political matters in their own way.” The naiveté of a statement of the sort is alarming, as if this is a political dispute that does not involve crimes against humanity and genocide. Yes, “let them” sort it out, while we put our blindfolds on, or sign some idiotic petition because peace is nice, rainbows and flowers are better than guns and severed throats of infants.

The Realpolitik of armchair anti-imperialists

Posted: 02/29/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Internet and Communication, Iran, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Syria
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A Syrian protester

WRITTEN BY ENRICO DE ANGELIS – translated by Mary Rizzo

The Syrian revolution is a conspiracy devised by the United States: thus goes the discourse of many leftists activists and their newspapers. But behind this vision is a distorted reading of reality and an increasing difficulty in interpreting the complexity of the contemporary world. Which risks making them lose credibility even in the future struggles. 

Since the revolt in Syria started, many have been convinced that it has been an American-Zionist conspiracy that has been behind the scenes, directing the uprising. They say that the majority of Syrians still support Bashar al-Assad.  They say that the living is still good in Syria and that the life conditions were better than in the other Arab states where the revolts broke out. They say that the activists of the opposition and the mainstream media that support them exaggerate the number of victims. They say that right from the start it was an insurrection armed by the United States and Gulf countries. They say that Syria is the last secular State and especially that it is the last bastion, together with Iran, against the policies of the United States and their allies in the region. Expressing this vision of what is happening in Syria since last March are persons who see themselves as belonging to the so-called Anti-imperialist camp. It is difficult to identify with precision those who belong to it: more than anything else, it is with a way of thinking, which emerges when one finds himself in discussion with human rights activists, those who sympathise with the Palestinian cause, anarchists, exponents of social centres (translator’s note, leftist student groups) and many others. In general, those who are against the world order that has the stamp of the United States. But it is a reading that at times also finds its expression in more official ways. In Italy, an example is il manifesto, which since the start had an attitude regarding Syria that can be called ambiguous at best. Any argument seems valid as long as it deviates the attention from the repression of the regime regarding the protests: the geo-political interests at play, the lack of precision in the count of the victims, the armed character of the revolt, the infiltration by al Qaeda and Iraqi Jihadists.

And, on the other hand, il manifesto is in good company – in a recent article entitles “The United States should stay out of Syria”, the American magazine The Nation  begins immediately with a geo-political analysis of the question, stressing who is against whom in the international panorama. Then it follows saying that “the Syrian opposition is, at least in its most external form, obscure” and concludes that the revolt could end in a massacre of the Alawites. Joseph Massad, the champion of the conspiracy theory writes in al-Jazeera English that the Syrian revolt has been “taken hostage” by the imperialist forces within (???) and outside Syria, and that certainly the outcome cannot be a true democracy. And in that vein still others. In these months I often found myself encountering persons who have these opinions. An example is an Italian activist I met in Tahrir Square in Cairo, on the occasion of 25 January, anniversay of the Egyptian revolt. He also came to celebrate with the victory against the Mubarak regime with the Egyptians. But when it comes to Syria, the position is striking, “the situation is completely different. The Egyptian regime was supported by the United States, the Syrian one is on the other hand against them.”

When Che Guevara talks like Kissinger – This is the first point that I’d like to discuss: the cold realpolitik that comprises this way of thinking. Suddenly the discourse of human rights, the defence of freedom at all costs, the opposition to State violence against citizens slip into the background. What counts now are only geo-political types of concerns. Though hidden behind other arguments, the discourse is essentially: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, no matter what he does. Syria and its regime is the enemy of the United States, thus it has to be protected. The Syrian people can be sacrificed on the altar of the global struggle of anti-imperialism, because, too bad for them, they happen to be fighting from the wrong side. What is important is to be against the United States, and anything that goes against the, is fine with me. This passage from a discourse based on ethics to a discourse based exclusively on political concerns seems to be experienced by those who use it without contradictions. Che Guevara all of a sudden starts to talk like Kissinger or Metternich, yet, everything seems normal. What happens on a local level counts for nothing, the struggle of a people for their freedom: the only thing that counts is geo-political equilibrium.

Protesters waving the revolutionary flag (pre-Assad era flag)

An erroneous reconstruction of reality – The second consideration goes under the name of ignorance. Because the contradiction referred to above is often overcome by claiming that it’s not truly a spontaneous revolt, but it is an armed insurrection orchestrated by the United States with the intention to intervene militarily. This is the same script that is used regarding the Iraq war of 2003 or, more recently, that in Libya. If the revolt is authentic, then the humanitarian case does not exist. There is no place here for challenging in detail all the pieces that make up this invented mosaic. And I don’t want to deny that there are foreign interests at play: there always are some. In fact, the longer the revolt lasts and the more that the clampdown of it is bloody, the more that an external intervention becomes pressing and influential, conditioning the future of the country. As a Syrian activist has said: when you don’t know who to turn to, you would even deal with the Devil.

But to think that the insurrection in Syria is fruit of a pre-ordained plan from outside is simply false. And for those who know the situation well, for those who have followed every single development since the beginning, there is no shadow of a doubt. No regional or international power wanted a revolt in Syria. It is sufficient to analyse the declarations of the American administration since last March. After less than a month Hillary Clinto declares that “Assad is a reformer”, dismissing the repression as “disproportionate use of force” and reassures Assad, excluding armed intervention in Syria. On 20 May Obama states that “Assad should lead the transition towards democracy”. On 20 May, Obama repeats that “Assad has to step down in the interest of the Syrian people”. And lastly, 6 February he excludes once more any military intervention. Clearly, it is not what one can call a defamation campaign as the one against Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of 2003. On the contrary, the doors have always remained open for Bashar al-Assad, even when the brutality of the repression had become clear to all. The Syrian National Council, the main opposition organ abroad, has been recognised only one month ago and by very few countries. And the Free Syria Army, despite all the widespread rumours this year, judging by the rudimentary arms it possesses, has not yet received any help from foreign countries.

A revolution against the entire world – The Syrian revolution, as some activists have written, seems to be a revolution against the entire world. Not in the sense that there is any kind of conspiracy against it, but in the sense that the struggle for independence is evidently a solitary struggle. No external actor has the force to intervene, or the intention to place their bets on this revolution. Yet everyone follows it closely, anxious to understand how it will end and to know which horse to bet on so that they can cash in when all is over and done. There are many interests that must be safeguarded, except for the Syrian ones. The truth is that the Bashar al-Assad regime is convenient for everyone, the West and Israel included. Syria and the Assads have always barked tremendously and bitten very little, and they offered stability to the entire area. Fundamentally, Israel needs to have a threat to exhibit in order to continue reciting the role of victim under siege. And the Assad regime constitutes a threat only on paper. On the contrary, a truly independent Syria is a certain loss for someone and the terrible unknown for the others. It is precisely for this reason that the lack of solidarity in those movements and those persons who instead are always ready to participate in protests for Palestine or against the wars of NATO stands out even more as incomprehensible behaviour.

It is a world, that of the “anti-imperialists”, which shows that it not only has remained behind in its own incapacity to understand contemporary reality and its transformations, but also to be imprisoned within ideological prisons that impede them from reading the nature of local phenomena in their specificity. They say: one always must read events in a global key. But even if that were true, one first of all needs to read them well, and second, they need to do so without forgetting the persons who live in places where the events take place and who are undergoing more often than not local forces. As the Syrians know well, at times local powers can be more violent and ferocious than global ones. What does it matter to a Syrian if in the end the United States should make gains in geopolitical interests, if this of course is true, if the day before a follower of Assad has killed his brother? The Syrian regime perhaps is not a friend of the West, but it is an oppressive regime that has in recent years started a process of free market policies and policies of centralisation of economic power that resemble unrestrained capitalism, limited only to the need to ensure that the distribution of wealth is compatible with the interests of the authorities.

The loss of credibility of international solidarity movements – It is a paradox and disquieting that the insurrection brought forward in the first place in the name of freedom, democracy and social justice, and which is brought ahead by the less advantaged social classes of the country, is perceived as a revolt in favour of global imperialism. Why can’t one simply be on the side of the people and against the forces that limit their freedoms, wherever they may be? But this would already be an operation that is far too complex within the rigid framework of imperialism vs the free world. One is either against Iran or against the United States. These persons in general exhibit a presumptuous scepticism that often translates into a hasty conclusion: the mainstream media lies, therefore, reality is the opposite of what they affirm. In other words, if CNN affirms that there is a massacre in Syria, it means that the revolt has been organised by the Americans. They know how the world works, the others are poor lobotomised idiots who drink down anything that the mass media decides to force their way.

But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the world (and also that of the media) is much more complex than that. If it is true that the mainstream media are often subordinated by the agendas of governments, it is also true that one cannot so easily dismiss them and thing that there is a permanent international conspiracy woven by the United States. But all of this, for those pseudo-intellectuals who are sitting comfortably in their own armchairs while people die, is if no importance at all. They should however remember one thing, and that is when they take to the streets again to march for a just cause, against the occupation of Palestine or against another NATO intervention, they will have very much less credibility from now on.

continua su: http://www.fanpage.it/la-realpolitik-dell-anti-imperialista-da-salotto/#ixzz1nZvtmQWG
http://www.fanpage.it

Alawite statement against Assad Regime ARABIC

Posted: 02/06/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, Resistance, Syria
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grazie Mobin Safi    نحن مواطنون وناشطون سياسيون ومثقفون من منبت علوي وخصوصا من حمص وريف الساحل، ندين بقوة

The Assad System: To Kill More

جرائم بشار الأسد وندين بالخصوص القصف الذي تعرضت له مدينتنا الباسلة مدينة حمص الذي راح ضحيته اكثر من ثلاثمئة وخمسون شهيداً، بينهم شبان وأطفال ونساء، كلهم أ…برياء وكلهم سوريون وكلهم مظلومون وندين كل أنواع القتل والإجتياح التي يمارسها …النظام في ريف دمشق وحماه وإدلب وكل مكان من سورية، نحن ومن منطلق حرصنا على وطننا السوري المعذّب ندعو بشدة أهلنا السوريين من كل الطوائف والإثنيات للبقاء صفاً واحداً لتفويت الفتنة التي يحاول النظام الأسدي المجرم زرعها لجرالبلاد إلى حرب أهلية لا يعرف أحد كيف أوأين تنتهي، نحن السوريون العلويون في كل مكان من سورية ننبّه أخواننا إلى أن الجيش الأسدي يستخدم أحياء العلويين في حمص ليمارس إعتداءه على بقية الأحياء محاولاً بهذه الوسيلة إثارة الإقتتال الطائفي، لذلك فنحن نحمّل افراد النظام ا…لأسدي وكل المتعاملين معه من اشخاص وقوى واحزاب في الداخل والخارج مسؤولية ما يجري في البلاد ونحملهم بالأخص مسؤولية أيقاد الفتنة الطائفية التي قد تؤدي إلى تقسيم سورية، كما ندعو كل العسكريين الشرفاء من ضباط وصف ضباط ورجال أمن الإنشقاق عن آلة نظام العصابة القاتلة، هذه الآلة المدمّرة لبنيان الوطن السوري الحبيب، كما ندعوهم الوقوف في وجه هذا النظام اللاوطني في محاولته لزرع الفتنة الطائفية والمناطقية والقومية ومحاولة تقسيم سورية كي يبقى على أشلائها، كما إننا ندين الموقف الروسي اللامسؤول ونحمّل النظام الروسي القاتل مسؤولية كل طفل وامرأة ورجل يقتل برصاصه وأسلحته ونعلن ما يلي : 1- وقوفنا العلني واللا مشروط إلى جانب الثوار في سوريا 2- وقوفنا العلني واللا مشروط ضد العصابات الحاكمة لسوريا وضد من يساندها أو يدعمها مهما اختلفت التسميات والحجج 3- وقوفنا العلني واللا مشروط ضد الذين يراهنون على قتل الشعب فهؤلاء هم أعداء سوريا المستقبل مهما اختلفت انتماءاتهم عاشت سورية حرة واحدة مستقلة من الموقعين: د. تماضر عبدالله د.توفيق دنيا -د.رامي حسين- رشا عمران- نزار حمود كفاح علي ديب- المحامي عُباب رياض خليل- عادل محفوظ -الفنانة لويز عبدالكريم -الفنانة ريم علي- يامن حسين- عبدالكريم علي- فايق المير فراس سعد- عُلا رمضان- ماهر إبراهيم- مرح وسّوف- نينار حسن -علي بدرية- علي عبود- ربا حسن- غياث الجندي- راغدة حسين- ميلاد أمين علي نزير -علي سهير- أسمر خلدون الإبراهيم- محمود سلمان محمود عبدالله أسماء- عمار سوزان- سلوم تميم- أحمد أحمد- م أحمد شعبان وسّوف -سليمان علي- حسام وقّاف- حبيب محمد- نضال سعيد ماهر اسماعيل جميلة بركات- نضال س سلامه -ربى حداد- عادل سعود- عبير محمد نهلة -عباس ماهر اسبر- نور الهدى -عودة علي -سعد بيسان الفقيه- صبا خضور هشام- شوكت احمد -اياد الكردي- سميرة قابقلي عبير سليمان -سلاف صبح -همام حداد- وسيم حسن- علي سعد -علي علي- نوار قاسم

A Statement from Members of the Alawite Sect Condemning the Regime’s Atrocities (anche in ITALIANO)

Posted: 02/06/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, Religion, Syria
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The Assad System: To Kill More

VERSIONE ITALIANA SEGUE!

by لجان التنسيق المحلية في سوريا on Sunday, 5 February 2012 at 23:30

A Statement of Condemnation from Homs the Coastal Cities (Alawites)

We the citizens, political activists, and intellectuals from the Alawite sect in Homs and the surrounding suburbs of the coastal cities, strongly condemn the massacres committed by Bashar al-Assad. In particular, we condemn the bombardment of our city, the brave city of Homs, where hundreds were martyred and hundreds more wounded, including women and children. These people are oppressed innocent Syrians that have been affected. We condemn the massacres and raids committed by the regime in Damascus, Hama, Idlib, and all the Syrian cities and towns. Out of fear for our beloved Syria, we are committed to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people. We call upon all sects and ethnic minority groups to unite as one and to halt all efforts put forth by the Assad regime to drag the country into a never-ending civil war. We, the Syrian Alawites, warn all of our brothers and sisters in Syria that Assad’s Army has been using Alawite dominated neighborhoods in Homs, to launch its assaults on the remaining neighborhoods and surrounding areas. It has been doing so to spark a sectarian revenge among the people of Homs. We hold Assad’s regime and forces along with Ba’ath Party members at home and abroad, completely responsible for the massacres in the country. In particular, we hold them responsible for igniting sectarian strife to divide Syria.

Moreover, we call upon all honorable military soldiers, officers, aides and security members to defect from the regime’s destructive army; a killing machine that is destroying our beloved Syrian nation. We also call upon them, to stand united against this unpatriotic regime that promotes sectarian and regional strife in its attempt to divide Syria.

In addition, we condemn the irresponsible stance of the killer Russian regime and hold them entirely responsible for each child, woman and man murdered by their bullets and weapons.

We announce the following:

- Our public and unconditional support of the Syrian revolutionaries

- Our public and unconditional denouncement of the Syrian thugs ruling the country and everyone supporting it despite of his/her motivations and excuses.

- Our public and unconditional support against those who encourage the killing of the unarmed civilians; for they are the true enemies of the new Syria regardless of their sect.

Long Live Syria: One Independent, Free and Democratic Country

Una Dichiarazione da alcuni membri della comunità Alawita siriana condannando le atrocità del regime

Una Dichiarazione di Condanna da Homs le Città Costiere (Alawite) Tradotto in italiano da Luca Urbinati

Noi i cittadini, attivisti politici ed intellettuali della comunità Alawita ad Homs e dei circostanti sobborghi delle città costiere, condanniamo duramente i massacri commessi da Bashar al-Assad.

In particolare, condanniamo il bombardamento nella nostra città, la coraggiosa città di Homs, dove centinaia sono stati martirizzati ed altri centinaia feriti, compresi donne e bambini. Queste persone sono innocenti Siriani oppressi che sono stati colpiti. Noi condanniamo i massacri ed i raid commessi dal regime a Damasco, Hama, Idlib e tutte le città e cittadine Siriane. Per paura della nostra amata Siria, noi siamo impegnati di alleviare la sofferenza del popolo Siriano. Noi invochiamo tutti i credi religiosi e  gruppi di minoranza etnica ad unirsi come uno a fermare tutti gli sforzi tesi dal regime di Assad per portare il Paese ad un’infinita guerra civile. Noi, i Siriani Alawiti, mettiamo in guardia tutti i nostri fratelli e sorelle in Siria che l’Esercito di Assad ha utilizzato quartieri dominati Alawiti ad Homs, per lanciare i suoi assalti nei rimanenti quartieri ed aree circostanti. E’ stato fatto così, per accendere una settaria vendetta in mezzo al popolo di Homs. Noi riteniamo il regime di Assad e forze, insieme con i membri del Partito di Ba’ath in Patria ed all’estero, completamente responsabili dei massacri nel Paese. In particolare, li riteniamo responsabili di accendere un settario conflitto per dividere la Syria.

Inoltre, invochiamo tutti gli onorevoli militari soldati, ufficiali, aiutanti e membri della sicurezza a disertare dall’esercito distruttivo del regime; una macchina per uccidere che sta distruggendo la nostra amata nazione Siriana.

Invochiamo anche loro, ad unirsi contro l’antipatriottico regime che promuove un conflitto settario e regionale, con il suo intento di dividere la Siria.

In aggiunta, noi condanniamo l’iriresponsabile posizione del killer-regime Russo e lo riteniamo interamente responsabile per ogni bambino, donna e uomo ucciso dalle loro pallottole ed armi.

Annunciamo il seguente:
- il Nostro pubblico ed incondizionato supporto ai Siriani rivoluzionari.
- la Nostra pubblica ed incondizionata denuncia del teppismo sparso nel Paese ed ogniuno che lo supporta nonostante le sue motivazioni e scuse.
- il Nostro pubblico ed incondizionato supporto contro quelli che incoraggiano l’uccisione dei civili disarmati; per loro sono i veri nemici della nuova Syria senza riguardo del loro settore.

Lunga vita alla Siria: Un Indipendente, Libero e Democratico Paese

Dr. Tamador Abdallah

Dr. Taofic Dunia

Dr. Rami Hussein

Rasha Omran

Nizar Hammoud

Kifah Ali Deeb

Obab Riad Kalil, JD

Adel Mahfouth

Artist Louise AbdelKareem

Artist Reem Ali

Yamen Hussein

Fouad Malla

Abdelkareem Ali

Fayek Almeir

Firas Saad

Oula Ramadan

Maher Ibrahim

Marah Wassouf

Ninar Hasan

Sarah Saleh

Ali Badrieh

Ali Aboud

Rami Kousa

Rouba Hasan

Ghayath Aljundi

Raghida Hussein

Rawan Masoud

Milad Amin

Ali Nazir Ali

Suheir Asmar

Khaldoun Ibrahim

Mahmoud Salman

Mahmoud Abdallah

Asma’ Ammar

Susanne Salloum

Tamim Ahmad

Ahmad M. Ahmad

Shaban Wassouf

Suleiman Ali

Hussam Wakkaf

Habib Mohammad

Nidal Sa’id

Maher Ismail

Jamileh Barakat

Nidal S. Salamah

Rouba Haddad

Adel Masoud

Abeer Mohammad

Nahla Abbas

A. Dachan: Our children in Syria – S. Hamadi: The Martyrdom of Syrian Children

Posted: 01/30/2012 by editor in Children\'s Corner, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Syria
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Our Children in Syria
WRITTEN BY Asmae Dachan, translated by Mary Rizzo

Syrian children carry the photo of Hamza Al Khatib, before and after his torture and death

Every parent would like to buy their own children toys so that they can play, books so that they can get an education, clothes and shoes to wear, food and drink for their nourishment. They would like to smile while they get out of bed during the night to check on their children as they sleep in their room, tucking them in well under their covers; wake them up in the morning, help them get ready, bring them to school, kiss them goodbye and then embrace them again when they return from work, sit beside them on the sofa, listen to them tell about their day, watch their eyes light up when they are excited, look through their notebooks with them to see what they are learning, hugging them tightly, watch a film with them…

These are scenes from daily life: you may be asking yourself why I have used a conditional mode for this text. Because in Syria, for 11 months, none of these things exist any longer. In Syria, it has been exactly the love of freedom of a group of children from the city of Dar’à who wrote on a wall of their school “The people want the fall of the regime” to cause the repression and wicked violence of the bloody regime, which has been in power for over 40 years. In Syria, for 11 months, unarmed civilians are suffering unspeakable violence, they are under the guns of snipers and their homes shelled by armoured tanks. To this day, there are over 7,000 dead, among them, 400 children! Children who have been torn away from life, from the love of their families, their relatives, their friends. Children who have been deprived of the right to play, dream, grow.

More than 400 flowers cut by the criminal hands of the dictator Assad and his militia. More than 400 little voices who filled the lives and homes of their mothers and fathers, the classes of their schools, the streets of their towns, the gardens and playgrounds and now have been silenced forever. More than 400 innocent victims full of love and curious to discover life, who today sleep eternally. More than 400 tiny souls who will always remain in the hearts and the memories of those who loved them, including the other children with whom they shared the days in school or the afternoons of play. 400 times “goodbye” to these pure angels.

Their stories burn in our souls as if we are being branded. Our children in Syria know what it means to be tortured, they know what it means to die on account of an infection, from a bullet that penetrates their bodies, from a grenade launched against the homes they live in. Our children in Syria have learned what it means to spend days without eating and drinking, they know what it means to die from the cold, since the regime with determination cut the electricity and the gas, and they prohibited the inhabited centres in the zones of the protests from being supplied with these basic necessities. In Syria our children know what it means to see their own mother or father die before their eyes, they know what it means to look fear in the eyes…

Today in Syria parents are forced to buy shrouds for their children, and when it is not possible, they give them the final farewell wrapping them in their own blankets.

What kind of humanity can accept all of this?

In Syria our children die twice: The first time at the hands of the regime, the second time on account of the world’s indifference!

Do not be accomplices in this slaughter of innocents!
The Martyrdom of Syrian Children WITH VIDEO

WRITTEN BY SHADY HAMADI, translated by Mary Rizzo

victims of a massacre, women and children included

The week that has just ended has been the bloodiest since the start of the Syrian uprising. At least 66 killed yesterday alone, as reported by activists in Syria. The regime of Damascus has started a violent offensive against the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the protesters: the deaths come from each one of these groups. The Syrian Foreign Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al Chaar has declared, by means of the official SANA news agency that, “the regime is determined to re-establish order and security and to clean the territory of its criminals.”

In the suburbs of Saqba and Zabadani, which are now under the control of the FSA, there are equally heavy attacks from the regime underway, which aim at regaining control, not only of these two zones, but of the entire band of suburbs surrounding the capital. The Arab League, due to the escalation of the violence, has ended their observers mission. Nabil al Arabi, secretary of the Arab League, has flown to New York in order to United Nations’ support for a plan of peaceful transition of power.

What is now in Syria becoming a true war of liberation encloses one tragedy in another: it is that of the Syrian children who have become involuntary protagonists in a revolution that is robbing their innocence from them. More than 400 children have died from violence since the beginning of the protests.

Hamza al-Khatib, born in October 1997 in Jiza, in the Daraa province, was arrested on 29 April in a checkpoint, while he was going to Daraa with other persons to bring aid to the citizens under siege by the Syrian regular militia. The body of the child was brought to his family completely mutilated, his penis was cut off, and bearing many other signs of torture, he had gunshot wounds on his limbs and chest.

Tamer Mohammad al-Sharey, 15 years old, he was arrested together with Hamza al-Khatib and like him, he died under torture; his teeth were pulled out of his mouth while he was alive, they gouged out his eyes and shot him in the legs, stomach and face. Signs of cigarette burns were found on every part of his body.

And several days ago was the terrible massacre of children in the village of Hasal al Wuard. Eleven components of the Bahado family were executed by the regime’s “security forces” and among the victims, five children. How long will mankind be attracted to evil, How long will be keep accepting that all of this happens?

Original http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2012/01/30/martirio-bambini-siriani/187597/

The Women of the Syrian Spring

Posted: 01/23/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Syria
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WRITTEN BY SHADY HAMADI, translated by Mary Rizzo

Fadwa Soliman

Since the start of the Syrian revolution, approximately eleven months ago, women have played a role that is equal to that of men. Young Syrian women have been leading the protest, they are at the head of human rights organisations and they are leading protagonists in the political opposition. But who are these women?

Fadwa Soliman was one of Syria’s most famous actresses. When the revolution began, she decided to actively participate. Her parents, upon discovering their daughter’s choice, disowned her, because they were dedicated supporters of the president Assad as well as belonging to the same religious group as the Assad family, the Alawite sect. Being a public figure whose face was known to all, Fadwa, wanted by the police, decided to cut her long black hair so as to render herself less recognisable. Her activity, in this moment, is concentrated especially in leading protests and sending video messages by means of You Tube. She has been living in hiding for months, and every day she is forced to change where she is living so as to avoid capture.

Razan Zaithouni, born in 1977, she manages a network of local coordination committees for human rights in Syria. She is wanted because she is accused by the Syrian regime of being a foreign spy. Razan Zaithouni was awarded the Sakharov Prize in October and also in 2011 won the Anna Politkovskaya Award. Her husband is currently detained in the Syrian prisons.

Bassma Kodmani, spokesperson of the Syrian National Council – the principle opposition group to the regime – in 1968 left Syria with his parents who abandoned their country due to political problems, transferring themselves to Paris. Prior to the start of the revolution, she had published various books in France and has managed, for the Ford Foundation, the programme of government and cooperation in the Middle East. She is the most influential Syrian woman on a political level at this moment, and she is the second in command of the Syrian National Council.

Suhair Atassi, human rights activits, member of the Atassi family, which has a lengthy political history behind it, manages the Jamal Atassi Forum. In this moment the form is only online because it was outlawed by the government. She was arrested at the start of the protests and released several months later. Her identity card has been taken by the security forces so as to prevent her from escaping. She lives under the constant threat of being arrested again.

The list of the women who are changing Syria is long. Christian, Muslim, Alawite women, as well as women from all the other religions are participating, collaborating actively in this spring that is late in blooming. I believe that the saying “behind every great man there is a great woman” isn’t sufficient for the Syrian situation, because men and women are walking side by side, hand in hand.

PLEASE WATCH THIS IMPORTANT VIDEO MESSAGE

Original: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2012/01/23/donne-della-primavera-siriana/185771/

Global Day of Rage in Solidarity with the Syrian People – Giornata Mondiale della collera per Siria

Posted: 01/20/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Syria
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Global day of rage

21 January 2012 Global Day of Rage in Solidarity with the Syrian People

Why?

  • Because the Syrian people have been undergoing the atrocities of the dictatorship of the Assad dynasty for more than 40 years. First, the father Hafez, then his son Bashar, with the complicity of the entire family and the mercenaries of the Ba’ath party.
  • Because the Syrian people, for 11 months, have taken to the streets to demand the end of this regime, to demand the respect of their human rights, invoking freedom and democracy and for this reason, and no other, are killed by an inhumane repression.
  • Because in Syria innocents are dying, children are killed in cold blood, as well as adolescents, women and men of every age, unarmed and defenceless civilians. The centres of their towns and villages are bombarded and shelled and their places of worship are broken into. Universities are raided in order to arrest and kill those who oppose the regime.
  • Because in Syria there is a strike to demand the protection and safeguarding of human dignity, paid for in blood.
  • Because in Syria thousands of people are imprisoned for thought crimes: even children!!
  • Because in Syria women are abducted and raped, including minors, in order to dissuade people from the desire to demand their freedom.
  • Because in Syria funeral processions are shot upon and the bodies of the martyrs are subject to every kind of vilification.
  • Because in Syria the regime controls information, instruction, economy and every aspect of the people’s lives.
  • Because there are entire cities in Syria that are subject to constant shelling by armoured tanks of the regime, with snipers positioned on the roofs and in the streets who are there to kill passers-by and protesters.
  • Because the world is standing by and only watching, from the UN to the Arab League, no one has moved a finger decisively and effectively to make this massacre cease!!
  • Because 6,700 martyrs, many of them children, thousands of wounded and mutilated people, prisoners and desaparicidos ask that this massacre ENDS and that justice be done!!

These are only some of the reasons for which, the 21st of January 2012, the World Day of Rage in Solidarity with the Syrian People has been declared. We can no longer stand by in silence! Silence and indifference are accomplices in this massacre! We make an appeal to the consciences of everyone, citizens, administrations, workers, political and religious leaders, academics and students, for mobilisation towards the respect of human rights in Syria.

SYRIA ASKS FOR FREEDOM: LET US SUPPORT HER!!

Giornata Mondiale della Collera per la Siria

21 gennaio 2012 Giornata Mondiale della collera in Solidarietà con il Popolo Siriano
Sabato, 21 gennaio 2012 sarà celebrata dalle donne e dagli uomini liberi di tutto il mondo la Giornata Mondiale della collera in Solidarietà con il Popolo… Siriano.
Perché?

• Perché il popolo siriano subisce le atrocità della dittatura della dinastia Assad da oltre 40 anni. Prima il padre, Hafez, poi il figlio, Bashar, con la complicità di tutta la famiglia e dei mercenari del partito Ba’ath.

• Perché il popolo siriano da 11 mesi è sceso in piazza per chiedere la fine di questo regime, per domandare il rispetto dei diritti umani, invocando libertà e democrazia e per questo viene colpito a morte da una repressione disumana.

• Perché in Siria muoiono innocenti, vengono uccisi a sangue freddo bambini, adolescenti, donne e uomini di ogni età, civili inermi e disarmati. Si bombardano i centri abitati e si fa irruzione dei luoghi di culto e nelle università per arrestare e uccidere chi si oppone al regime.

• Perché in Siria chi sciopera per chiedere la tutela e la salvaguardia della propria dignità paga con il sangue.

• Perché in Siria migliaia di persone si trovano in carcere per reati d’opinione: anche bambini!

• Perché in Siria vengono sequestrate e stuprate le donne, comprese le minorenni, per dissuadere il popolo dalla volontà di chiedere libertà.

• Perché in Siria sparano sui cortei funebri e vilipendiano i corpi dei martiri.

• Perché in Siria il regime controlla l’informazione, l’istruzione, l’economia e tutti gli aspetti della vita del popolo.

• Perché ci sono intere città in Siria che vengono bombardare dai carro armati del regime, con i cecchini appostati sui tetti e nelle strade per uccidere i passanti e i dimostranti.

• Perché il mondo sta a guardare, dall’ONU alla Lega Araba, nessuno si è mosso con decisione ed efficacia per dire stop al massacro!

• Perché 6700 martiri, tra cui molti bambini, migliaia di feriti e mutilati, di prigionieri e di desaparecidos chiedono che venga fermato il massacro e sia fatta giustizia!!!

Queste sono alcune della cause per cui il 21 gennaio 2012 è stata proclamata la Giornata Mondiale della collera in solidarietà con il Popolo Siriano! Non possiamo più sopportare in silenzio! Il silenzio e l’indifferenza sono complici di questo massacro! Ci appelliamo alle coscienze di tutti, cittadini, amministrazioni, lavoratori, esponenti politici e religiosi, accademici e studenti, per una mobilitazione generale per il rispetto dei diritti umani in Siria.

LA SIRIA CHIEDE LIBERTA’: SOSTENIAMOLA!

The Syrian revolution against the Assad Regime / La rivolta siriana contro il regime di Assad

Posted: 01/19/2012 by editor in Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Syria
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Ho dovuto sacrificare la nazione siriana per salvare il regime

Written by ASMAE DACHAN, translated by Mary Rizzo

It’s been ten long months since the start of the Syrian revolution against the regime of Bashar Assad. Ten months that have cost the lives of more than 6,000 martyrs, with thousands of people wounded, thousands tortured and thousands who have disappeared. There have been people forced from their homes and have become refugees. And, there is constant abuse against women and ferocious brutality against children. The regime in Syria has lasted for more than 40 years, since the father of the current dictator-president, Hafez Assad, rose to power by a coup d’état. Upon his death, power passed “by inheritance” to Bashar, and this dynasty has brought about an ever-growing discontent, while the regime continues to impose a curfew, which for over 40 years has served to impede and prohibit any kind of demonstration or right for the people to assemble.

Watching the images of the protests on TV, a group of children from the city of Dar’à wrote on a wall of their school, “The people want the fall of the regime”. The children were identified and abducted, then they were tortured and their bodies thrown in the streets. Their parents went into the squares to protest, in a pacific manner, but as a response to this, the regime opened fire on them and they are remembered as the first fallen martyrs.

Thus began the Syrian revolution: with slogans, chants, songs, protests, the voices of young Syrians who came from every part of the country: in particular, the people of Homs, Hama and Dar’à. The regime deployed its army in the cities, it started a policy of extreme and violent repression, using the instruments of abductions, rape and terrible torture. In many parts of these cities, there has been no supply of gas or electricity for months, they are running out of medicine and even food, including milk for their children. There are thousands of refugees, both internal and those who seek refuge abroad.

But nothing can bend the will of the people, not even the lining up of the so-called Shabbiha, that is, the infiltrate squadrons, those shadow-like figures who clandestinely join in the protests to stab the youth, even the children, then to indicate them to the secret services, who will arrest them and kill them. But the voice of the revolution cannot be silenced. Not even the deployment of the army, from which each day dozens of soldiers who no longer want to shoot into the crowds are defecting from, giving life to the Free Syrian Army. To distinguish the spontaneous protests of the Syrian revolution from those ordered by the regime to its supporters, the new Syria has chosen a new flag. The old flag with the colours black, white and red has been abandoned in order to adopt the new won, green, white and black, with 3 red stars.

One of the particularities of this revolution is its horizontal character: everything is organised, spread and transmitted by means of the network, with messages, videos, slogans and documents transmitted from one part of the world to another. In this way, for the first time, Syrians of the diaspora are involved, that is, those Syrians who had emigrated, some of whom had never been allowed to return home due to the regime. So has been born the first free and actual Syrian opposition, the SNC Syrian National Council, which is now working with international diplomacy in order to bring the country towards freedom. At this moment, the international community is doing very little, the Arab League is worse. The mission of the observers has proved itself to be useless.

The Syrian people are alone, but they are not surrendering. We will continue until Freedom comes!   Asmae Dachan

I am against the regime

I am against the regime because it is helped by wicked people who know it will protect their interests.

I am against the regime because it invokes democracy, but it unleashes its own army against every individual who asks for freedom. I am against the regime because I am tired of recognising the individual errors that have caused thousands of martyrs. I am against the regime because it says it is fighting against armed gangs, yet its death squadrons (Shabbiha) brazenly bring and use weapons against protesters. I am against the regime because it invokes reforms, but at the same time raises the rank and degree of its corrupt affiliates, while protecting those who are responsible for the massacre of so many innocents. I am against the regime because it talks about conspiracies against it, as if it was were itself doing its duty towards its own people.

Hani Dalati from Aleppo

La rivolta siriana contro il regime di assad

Ho dovuto sacrificare la nazione siriana per salvare il regime

Sono ormai dieci lunghi mesi che è iniziata la rivolta siriana contro il regime di bashar assad. Dieci mesi che sono costati la vita ad oltre 6000 martiri, con migliaia di feriti, di persone torturate, scomparse, con sfollati e profughi, abusi su donne e ferocia contro i bambini. Il regime in Siria dura da oltre 40 anni, da quando il padre del dittatore-presidente attuale, hafez assad, salì al potere con un colpo di stato. Alla sua morte il potere è passato “per eredità” a bashar, con un malcontento popolare sempre più diffuso, mentre continua a perdurare il regime di coprifuoco, che di fatto impedisce ogni manifestazione o riunione popolare, da oltre 40 anni.

Guardando in tv le immagini delle manifestazioni, un gruppo di bambini della città di Dar’à ha scritto sul muro della scuola “Il popolo vuole la caduta del regime”. Individuati e sequestrati, i bambini sono stati torturati e poi gettati in strada. I loro genitori sono scesi in piazza a manifestare, in modo pacifico, ma per tutta risposta il regime ha aperto su di loro il fuoco e sono caduti i primi martiri.  Ha preso così il via la rivolta siriana: cori, canti, manifestazioni, le voci dei giovani siriani si sono rincorse da una parte all’altra del paese: in particolare, a Homs, Hama, Dar’à. Il regime ha schierato l’esercito nelle città, ha avviato politiche di repressione feroce, mettendo in atto sequestri, stupri e torture terribili. In molti quartieri manca la corrente e il gas da mesi, mancano i medicinali e persino i viveri, il latte per bambini. Si contano migliaia di sfollati e profughi.

Ma nulla può piegare la volontà del popolo, nemmeno lo schieramento dei cosiddetti shabbiha, cioè gli infiltrati, i fantasmi che si intrufolano nelle manifestazioni per accoltellare i giovani, persino i bambini, segnalarli ai servizi segreti, farli arrestare e uccider, ma la voce della rivolta è inarrestabile. Nemmeno lo schieramento dell’esercito, da cui ogni giorno si defezionano decine di soldati che non vogliono sparare sulla folla e hanno dato vita al Free Syrian Army. Per distinguere le manifestazioni spontanee della rivolta siriana da quelle ordinate dal regime ai suoi sostenitori, la nuova Siria ha scelto una nuova bandiera. È stata lasciata quella nera bianca e rossa per adottare quella nuova, verde, bianca e nera, con 3 stelle rosse.

Una delle peculiarità e di questa rivolta è il suo carattere orizzontale: tutto si organizza, si diffonde e si trasmette tramite la rete, con messaggi, video, slogan e documenti trasmessi da una parte all’altra del mondo. Vengono così coinvolti, per la prima volta, anche i siriani della diaspora, i siriani cioè, emigrati all’estero, alcuni dei quali non hanno mai potuto fare ritorno a casa per via del regime. Nasce così la prima opposizione siriana libera e reale, il SNC Syrian National Council, che sta ora lavorando con le diplomazie internazionali per portare il Paese verso la libertà. Ad oggi la comunità internazionale tentenna, la Lega Araba peggio. La missione degli osservatori non è servita a nulla.

Il popolo siriano è solo, ma non si arrende. Andremo avanti fino alla Libertà!

Asmae Dachan


Sono contro il regime perché si fa aiutare da persone infami per tutelare i suoi interessi.

Sono contro il regime perché invoca la democrazia, ma scatena il suo esercito contro ogni individuo che chiede libertà. Sono contro il regime perché mi sono stancato di riconoscere gli errori individuali che hanno causato migliaia di martiri. Sono contro il regime perché dice di lottare contro bande armate e i suoi squadroni della morte (Shabbiha) portano e usano spudoratamente le armi contro i manifestanti. Sono contro il regime perché invoca riforme e allo stesso tempo eleva di grado i suoi affiliati corrotti e protegge i responsabili del massacro di tanti innocenti. Sono contro il regime perché parla di complotto ai suoi danni, come se intanto stesse facendo il suo dovere nei confronti del suo popolo.

Hani Dalati, Aleppo

Syrian Declaration of Dignity – Dichiarazione della Dignità

Posted: 01/13/2012 by editor in Documents, Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Syria
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Declaration of Dignity
by لجان التنسيق المحلية في سوريا on Monday, 19 December 2011 at 18:47

Symbol of the Syrian Struggle for Dignity

The humiliation our Syrian nation faces is incomparable to any other of its kind. Women and men, fathers and mothers, and sons and daughters of all ethnic and religious backgrounds have faced enormous abuses. Our nation’s people have been forced, through decades of dictatorship and tyranny, to accept regular offenses as part of their daily lives. The disregard and contempt for human dignity have resulted in barbarous acts that have hurt both the national unity and the human conscience throughout the country.

Syrians have struggled bravely for their freedom and their dignity, and have paid a very high price during their struggle: the lives of many, as well as dignity of many others.

From our participation in this glorious uprising, the uprising of dignity, and from our perspective, we hereby announce that:

·         Syrians are precious and their lives are valuable.

·         No public authority has the right to deprive any Syrian of life, or expose any Syrian to risk without legitimate authority.

·         No one is allowed to torture Syrians, or harm their physical or psychological integrity.

·         Syrian citizens are their own masters, and no government authority may arrest Syrians or deny them their right to self-determination, unless there is a legal reason issued by a fair, impartial, independent, and legitimate judicial authority.

·         No one, whether a public figure or private individual, has the right to curse or ridicule the Syrian citizen, or abuse him or her with obscenities, nor to treat him or her harshly or brutally, in a manner that affects his or dignity or self-respect.

·         Every Syrian citizen shall be secure in his or her home, property, and life. No public authority shall interfere with these rights unless they have a legal reason to do so, as determined by a fair, impartial, independent, and legitimate judicial authority.

·         No public authority may stop any Syrian from enjoying the fruits of his or her labor; the Syrian worker will not be taken advantage of.

·         No public authority may undermine any Syrian’s religious belief, or lack thereof, nor force anyone to accept any belief that goes against his or her conscience.

·         All Syrian citizens are equal in dignity and honor.

·         The diverse religious and ethnic groups that make up the Syrian community are all equal in Syria in their dignity and honor. The state may not favor one group over another.

·         The commitment to people’s dignity serves as the basis for freedom, justice, and civil peace in the country.

·         Syria’s strength is measured by the dignity of its weakest citizens.

·         Syrians cannot and should not accept any dealings that would adversely impact their dignity or honor.

Local Coordination Committees in Syria 19-11-2011

Dichiarazione della Dignità 

by لجان التنسيق المحلية في سوريا

lunedì, 19 dicembre 2011

Comitato dei Coordinamenti locali in Siria

il simbolo per la lotta siriana per la libertà e la dignità

L’umiliazione che la nostra nazione, la Siria, deve affrontare, non può essere confrontata con nessun’ altra umiliazione. Donne e uomini, padri, madri, figli e figlie di ogni provenienza etnica e religiosa sono testimoni di abusi terrificanti. La gente della nostra nazione è stata costretto, attraverso decenni di dittatura e tirannia, ad accettare le offese costanti come se, semplicemente, facessero parte delle loro vita quotidiana. Il disdegno ed il disprezzo della dignità umana si è manifestato in atti barbarici che hanno ferito non solo l’unità nazionale, ma anche la coscienza umana in ogni parte del Paese.

I siriani hanno lottato con coraggio per la loro libertà e la loro dignità e hanno pagato un prezzo altissimo durante la loro lotta: le vite di molti ed anche la dignità di molti altri.

Dalla nostra partecipazione in questo intifada gloriosa, l’intifada della dignità e dalla nostra prospettiva, annunciamo che:

·          I siriani sono preziosi e le loro vite hanno grande valore.

·          Nessuna autorità pubblica ha il diritto di togliere la vita ai siriani, o di esporli a rischi senza l’autorità legittima di farlo.

·          Nessuno ha il diritto di torturare i siriani, o di recare loro dolore o danno nella loro integrità fisica o psicologica.

·          I cittadini siriani sono gli artefici del proprio destino e nessuna autorità governativa ha il diritto di arrestarli oppure di negare il loro diritto all’autodeterminazione, se non esiste un motivo legale che è stato emanato da una legittima autorità che è obiettiva, imparziale e indipendente.

·          Nessuno, neanche se è una figura pubblica o un individuo privato, ha il diritto di maledire o ridicolizzare un cittadino siriano, né abusare di lui o di lei con parole oscene, né di trattare lui o lei con durezza o brutalità, in una maniera che mina alla sua dignità o auto-stima.

·          Ogni cittadino siriano deve essere sicuro nella propria casa, come deve essere sicura la propria proprietà e la propria vita. Nessun autorità pubblica ha il diritto di interferire con questi diritti se non con un motivo legale di farlo, motivo determinato sempre da un legittima autorità che deve essere obiettiva, imparziale ed indipendente.

·          Nessuna autorità pubblica ha il diritto di proibire a qualsiasi siriano di godere dei frutti del proprio lavoro; i lavoratori siriani non devono essere soggetti allo sfruttamento.

·          Nessuna  autorità pubblica ha il diritto di penalizzare o di punire alcun siriano per la sua fede religiosa, o per la mancanza di fede religiosa, né può costringere alcuna persona ad accettare qualsiasi credo che vada contro la propria coscienza.

·          Tutti i cittadini siriani sono uguali in dignità ed in onore.

·          I diversi gruppi religiosi ed etnici che compongono la comunità siriani sono tutti uguali in Siria nella loro dignità ed onore. Lo Stato non deve favorire un gruppo a discapito degli altri.

·          L’impegno verso la dignità delle persone serve come  base per la libertà, la giustizia e la pace civile nel Paese.

·          La forza della Siria è misurata a secondo la dignità dei suoi cittadini più deboli.

·          I siriani non possono e non dovrebbero accettare alcun patto che possa avere un impatto negativo sulla loro dignità.

Rimproverando quelli della “Resistenza” araba

Posted: 01/13/2012 by editor in Europe, Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Syria
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scritto da Maysaloon, tradotto da Mary Rizzo
orignale Berating the Arab Resistance Crowd  

to many pundits, it's all about Western Imperialism

Dovrebbe essere condotta un’indagine seria sul comportamento di alcuni individui riguardo alla rivoluzione siriana. Nonostante il fatto che siano in prima linea per la causa palestinese, e siano stati tra i primi a denunciare ogni volta che un’ingiustizia veniva compiuta, hanno dimostrato, a dispetto dei loro migliori tentativi di mantenere un’apparenza di imparzialità, di essere tra i peggiori sostenitori del regime siriano.

Che esista una cospirazione contro il regime siriano oppure no, voi state sostenendo l’uccisione di siriani innocenti quando non solo vi rifiutate di condannare il regime siriano, ma abbandonate il popolo siriano ai capricci e alle stragi dei servizi di sicurezza di Assad con il proposito d’essere “imparziali” rispetto a entrambi le parti. Ma esiste una sola parte da sostenere, siccome esiste una parte che fa stragi di gente e l’altra che subisce le stragi.

Io trovo una vera assenza di coerenza tra quelli i quali, per esempio, pretendono i più alti livelli di integrità giornalistica quando si parla della Siria, ma al tempo stesso si sentono in dovere di disseminare YouTube di video del Bahrain oppure delle proteste di Qatif in Arabia Saudita dell’Est, senza pretendere dagli attivisti di quei luoghi lo stesso livello di esame minuzioso. Inoltre, gli errori commessi dagli attivisti siriani non possono essere perdonati, ma gli errori degli attivisti in Paesi governati dai regimi “venduti”, sono ignorati ed a volte addirittura giustificati. La storia delle incubatrici per neonati ora viene citata come un esempio imperdonabile per cui non si deve fare affidamento sugli attivisti siriani, ma le migliaia di video che documentano la brutalità di Assad sono opportunamente ignorati. Se quegli stessi video fossero usciti invece dal Bahrain, dallo Yemen oppure dall’ Egitto, questi stessi attivisti “pro-resistenza” sarebbe sul piede di guerra.

Poi ci dicono che la rivoluzione siriana è guidata dalla Fratellanza Musulmana, e che sono schifosi, e non ci si deve fidare di loro; ma la Fratellanza Musulmana era attiva anche in Egitto, però la rivoluzione egiziana è posta sull’altare della santità con retweets sul Twitter, oppure con citazioni su Facebook, che sono coerentemente contro lo SCAF attualmente al potere, e completamente dalla parte delle manifestazioni – anche se i movimenti di protesta in Egitto sono una moltitudine di persone, compresi quelli dalla sinistra, laici, salafiti e membri della Fratellanza Musulmana. Però, il fatto che in Siria ci siano anche i salafiti che sono esplicitamente contro la repressione del regime significa che è una condanna de facto, che la rivoluzione siriana è stato dirottata, oppure che è guidato dai “Wahhabi Sauditi”. Questa gente non ha capito – oppure ignora – il punto che non esiste una rivoluzione nella storia che fosse portata avanti da una massa monolitica con una sola ideologia, e che non c’è mai stata una rivoluzione totalmente libera dall’interferenza straniera e dai progetti eversivi. Ma, per loro, la rivoluzione siriana deve essere uccisa prima ancora d’essere nata, e quando è già stata partorita, deve essere abbandonata e lasciata a morire perché non è il giusto tipo di rivoluzione e non è all’altezza dei loro ideali.

Alcuni scherniscono i canti della rivoluzione siriana, e fanno commenti molto sprezzanti riguarda alla mancanza di “valore” culturale e linguistico dei canti in confronto a quelli delle altre rivoluzioni – come se questo fosse una specie di concorso creativo (i canti siriani, infatti, sono ampiamente ammirati come alcuni dei più creativi e orecchiabili di tutti i canti nel mondo arabo). Quelle stesse persone poi mettono sullo stesso piano l’ opposizione siriana – politicamente frammentata e lungamente repressa – con i rappresentanti della rivoluzione siriana, e vogliono raddoppiare il peso del popolo siriano insistendo che la rivoluzione deve rimanere “pura” e che il popolo deve combattere non solo il regime, ma anche le figure politiche dell’opposizione, compresa la Fratellanza Musulmana. Io insisto che questo è crudele ed anche stupido. C’e gente che è costretta a confrontarsi con una brutalità schiacciante, mentre voi insegnate le finezze di principi rivoluzionari dall’altra parte del mondo o al di là del mare? E’ come dire ai manifestanti in Bahrain che, mentre un poliziotto ti sta spezzando la tua gamba, devi insistere nella denuncia contro Iran e l’Arabia Saudita, altrimenti la vostra rivoluzione non è abbastanza pura e non è degna del loro sostegno.

Ci sono molte parole che io potrei dire a persone del genere, ma non userò quel tipo di linguaggio. La rivoluzione siriana non ha bisogno di voi; il popolo siriano non ha bisogno di voi; e la causa palestinese che voi così dogmaticamente e passionatamente difendete – per qualsiasi motivo – certamente non ha bisogno di voi.

Posted by Maysaloonat 11:02 AM Tradotto in italiano da mary rizzo

Syria: interview with the Syrian-Italian writer Shady Hamadi

Posted: 12/10/2011 by editor in Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Strategy for Liberation, Syria, War
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Shady Hamadi

“Just like a poet, I will try to escape, to make a breakout from prison, to make the road on which I take flight become your road and to take you with me to safety” (Voices from the Spirit – S.H.). Shady Hamadi was born on 23 May 1988 in Milan, of a Syrian father and Italian mother. A very young writer, he is the son of a political dissident who had been tortured and sent into exile.

by Angela Zurzolo, translated by Mary Rizzo

“For a certain period we even tried to go back to Syria. Then, in 1997 we received amnesty from President Assad. Despite that, my father was always stopped at the airport and he was only able to enter Syria twice in his 35 – almost 40 – years of exile.”

Shady Hamadi instead has seen Syria three times, in 2001, in 2006 and then in 2009, “the first time that I can say I had really been there.”

He recounts: “Syria enchants you, it is for this reason that many Italians who have been there are unable to accept and to understand that behind the ‘beautiful’ Damascus, there is a population who for 40 years has been downtrodden and oppressed. If one said anything at all against the President, he would be intercepted by the omnipresent Syrian Secret Services and then they would drag him away in the dead of the night.”

This is one Damascus. Then there is another, the one hidden behind the poetry clubs, the one that is found under Hotel Fardus, where the intellectuals of the “Damascus Declaration” met in 2001: “Directors, actors and poets who wrote verses against the regime. Kurds and Syrians together.”

Since the start of the protests in Syria, Shady Hamadi has stepped forward to encourage the Syrians who live in Italy to publicly air their dissent. A ‘moral obligation2, inherited, he says, even from history and from the example of his father, who had been arrested and tortured various times during the 1960s.

“This revolution is the moment for those whose fathers had been tortured and forced into exile to put themselves on the line, as I have been trying to do since this May.”

Of his father he mentions that “he was a young leader of the Arab Nationalist Party that was ‘thrown’ in prison numerous times, as well as tortured with electrical wires and beaten with clubs. They would kill people right before his eyes in order to try to get him to talk.”

Concerning the Syrian situation, Hamadi insists that Hezbollah are controlling the border between Syria and Lebanon, while the Iranians are alongside Assad’s army at the checkpoints. “Some NGO reports denounce cases of persons kidnapped in Lebanon and then brought to Syria.”

Regarding Turkey, the other key player in the Syrian events, he stresses: “Now they are playing an important role for our people, but we must not forget that Ankara is responsible for the kidnapping of Colonel Harmoush who came from the city of Deraa – one of the first to have founded the ‘free officials’, and who ended up in Syrian hands thanks precisely to the help of Turkish intelligence. The colonel was then executed before dozens of officials. His sacrifice has awakened the conscience of many in the army.”

On the shabbiha, commonly defined as “armed forces that get their orders directly from Assad”, Shady explains that “they are not actually armed forces in the normal sense of the term,” but instead “mafia bands that belong to some important families who deeply believe in the ideology of the regime.”

“The shabbiha are dressed in plainclothes, they ride in pickups, armed with Kalashnikovs, and they are the reason why in Aleppo and Damascus there have not yet been the large protests as we see in all the rest of Syria.”

The regime, Shady affirms, resists because the armed forces number “almost 400 thousand men, 100 thousand of them are loyalists to Maher al Assad.”

And regarding the Arab League proposal, Hamadi comments: “It has been an excellent move, I only hope that the League will keep the same consistency in the future as well, with the other countries that are violating human rights and personal dignity. Because the revolutions of this Arab Spring have been done in the name of dignity.” Indeed, “Assad should have been able to easily have saved himself right from the start, if he had granted freedom of thought, dignity and free elections.”

Then, when asked about the French proposal to open a humanitarian corridor, he observes: “We need to see what clauses this is going to bring with it. The Syrian people have already expressed their will to not want military intervention from the French or from the Americans. No one should be entering into our country. We can save ourselves by ourselves. But we need consistency in foreign diplomacy, which has never happened. Just think about this: Bashar was decorated on the 11th of March of 2010 with honours from the Italian Republic. Is that not scandalous?”

For Shady, consistency has never been a strong point of the Italian government: “Look at the optimal relationship between Berlusconi and Gaddafi or the fact that after having granted honours to Assad, the Italian parliamentary and ministerial authorities welcomed Burhan Ghaioun, leader of the SNC, to Rome.”

“The meeting with the Vatican was instead organised to clarify that there will not be a Christian diaspora from Syria as well, as has happened in Iraq and how it is presumed will happen in Egypt.”

It is precisely the fear of sectarian clashes that dominates, while Hamadi stresses that among the revolutionaries there are both Sunnis and Alawis, many of whom are renowned intellectuals.

“The solution that we are hoping for,” he concludes, “is that of the no fly zone, a buffer zone. Then the defections of the army will reach 85%.”

10 December 2011

http://www.osservatorioiraq.it/siria-intervista-allo-scrittore-siriano-shady-hamadi Italian original

Teen killed for refusing to march for Assad

Posted: 11/15/2011 by editor in Children\'s Corner, Human Rights, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Syria
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The lifeless body of 14 year old Mohmmed Abdul Salam Al Mlaessa

The 14 year old shot dead by a soldier in front of his classmates

He was a model student, just like the rest of his classmates. Mohammed was a student at one of the institutes for gifted youth in Eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. The other morning, together with his classmates, Mohammed was taken from his classroom: brought to the street, he was forced to join in a pro-regime march in the city of Deir ez Zor, a hotbed of dissent. Mohammed dared to give voice to those who like him did not want to go and protest against the decision of the Arab League to suspend Syria for the brutality of Assad’s repression of dissenters. He dared to ask to simply go home. The response was a bullet in his chest, in front of his classmates as they witnessed in
shock.

The teen had fallen to the ground, but Assad’s military security forces continued to shoot: first they kicked him and clubbed him with sticks and then they ended by firing one more shot into his side. “Make sure he is dead,” was the order given by the commander of the Military Security Forces, in the account given of the incident before the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO with a London base that has access to a large number of voluntary informers who life in Syria.

Mohammed Abdul Salam Al Mlaessa was only 14 years old. How he was beaten and brought to such pitiful condition at the end of this brutal execution can be seen in the videos on You Tube (it is not possible to verify the authenticity, Western journalists are forbidden to report by the regime): a bullet hole in the left side, his face plummeted and in a pool of blood. An “exemplary” lesson for the other youth present.

That Damascus is afraid of students was something that was clear from the start:  at the beginning of the protests, last March, repression against a group of youth that had made anti-Assad graffiti on the walls of their school. “From primary school to high school, the youth of Syria are in the front line in the protests,” Mousab Azzawi, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights states. “No regime can resist when students protest and for this reason, they fear them, they kill them, they take them as hostages. And they make their families hear their voice over the phone as they are torturing them.”

The funeral of Mohammed was attended by at least 45 thousand people, according to estimates. “To disperse the crowd, agents used electrical sticks that provoked temporary paralysis,” Azzawi states. At the ceremony there was an evening sit-in with 8 thousand youths in what has been renamed “Liberty Square”. The gathering was dispersed by firing from the security forces: here there were two of the day’s thirty victims, the majority of which in the city of Homs, the capital of the protesters, where the deserters have taken refuge. But also in the streets of Hama, Deraa, Idleb, people continue to be killed. The activists report that yesterday forty protesters had been killed by soldiers near the Jordan border.

The repression has not stopped, despite the agreement made by Damascus on 2 November to follow the Arab League’s peace plan which calls for the end of the violence and the withdrawal of the tanks from the cities. And after the assaults on the Embassies of the Arab countries that had announced the suspension of Syria from the pan-Arab organisation, the regime has used the iron fist to fill the squares with pro-Assad marches and demonstrations. The case of Mohammed is not an isolated one. Similar incidents have been reported in other parts of the country. Azzawi states: “This same Sunday at Hama, the security forces shot against a group of students who had refused to participate in a loyalist march: five of them never again opened their eyes.”

Alessandra Muglia for Corriere della Sera (translated by Mary Rizzo)

http://www.corriere.it/esteri/11_novembre_15/20111115NAZ19_22_97cf31c6-0f59-11e1-a19b-d568c0d63dd6.shtmlv

 

 STATEMENT FROM THE SYRIAN OBSERVATORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, Sunday, 13 November 2011 19:41
On November the
13th , 2011, 09.15 local time in Dir Zour, the elements of military security took out the students of the pioneer students school in the city by force to the street and compelled them to participate in a march organized by Syrian security forces to condemn the decisions of Arab League concerning the  suspending of Syrian membership in the League.When first-graders of high school refused to participate in the march, and asked to be allowed to go back homes, security forces arrested the student Mohamed Abdul Salam Al-Mlaessa (14 years) who spoke on behalf of his classmates who do not want to participate in the march supporting Syrian Regime, and shot him directly in his chest just under the right wishbone in front of his friends. Then, they started beating him with batons while he bleeds in front of all students crowded for few minutes. When they were not sure about his Death, several minutes after the first shot in his chest, and the awful beating he was subjected to, the commander of the present elements of military security recommended the elements to shoot him again to ensure that he dies (this is literally what the commander said), and this is exactly what happened through the second shot in the flank of the child Mohamed Abdul Salam Al-Mlaessa, which led to his death.Syrian Observatory for Human Rights calls on all Arab and International organizations concerned with protecting civilians and child rights, to urgently intervene to protect civilians in Syria and refer all those responsible for committing such crimes against civilians in Syria to International Criminal Court to consider what might be a typical example of the crimes against humanity that are taking place daily in Syria.To see the documenting videos, you can click on the links below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=68_uLBMKs0o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-QdqGQ5Auc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT6nrDpSrVQ

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

London, November
13th , 2011

Karen Nakamura – The gas connection to death and destruction

Posted: 06/20/2011 by editor in "Israel", Egypt, Lebanon, Middle East Issues, Palestine, Uncategorized
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Israeli drilling plans

As a little flotilla passes overhead, the Leviathan Reservoir slumbers deep below. A vast oil and gas deposit, little has been said about it in the American press since its existence was confirmed in 2010. But Israel is ecstatic, Lebanon is vigilant and Gaza is getting screwed.

Job 3:8 “Let them curse it …who are ready to raise up a leviathan,” i.e. necromancers who rouse and control wild beasts at will… In Isaiah 27:1; “leviathan  the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked (wriggling) serpent,” (Gleaned from Bible-history.com.)

“In Israel’s deep waters, in virgin territory, a monster natural gas discovery has been made.” Noble Energy CEO Charles Davidson.

“With Israel suddenly awash in gas… the discoveries put Israel on the global energy map long dominated by oil-rich nations in the Middle East.” Houston Chronicle  Jan. 5, 2010.

According to Press TV (June 18,) Noble Energy was granted permission by Israeli officials to begin developing a natural gas field off the Gaza Strip coastline. Israel’s Ministry of National Infrastructure is claiming the shortage/disruption of natural gas from Egypt is the reason it granted approval.

That Israel has any right to Palestine’s resources is negated by UN Resolution 3005 states clearly that the natural wealth and resources of the Gaza Strip are to be controlled by the citizens of Gaza.

Kanan Pbeid, a Gaza Energy expert was quoted in the Press TV article saying: “This is nothing but theft of Palestinian’s natural resources. Palestinians are the only ones who should benefit from natural gas reserves.”

But the Gaza deposits are only part of a huge gas and oil reservoir that Israel is trying to claim as its own.

The Leviathan Reservoir lies within the Levant Basin Province (LBP), which itself lies under the continental shelf off the eastern Mediterranean coast. Estimates of the gas deposits within the LBP run to 16 trillion cubic feet and are worth an approximately $95 billion. It’s the largest natural gas discovery anywhere in the last ten years.

The Israelis already have, among others, an active drill site located 129 kilometers (80 miles) off Haifa. It dwarfs the discovery of the Tamar 1 drill site 47 kilometers (29 miles) to the southeast. That reserve is estimated to be worth US $15 billion.

These realities may also explain why Israel is attempting to keep prying eyes away from the deep-water sites. Is that one reason why the IDF boarded the Free Gaza flotilla in international waters, waters it’s trying to claim according to its interpretation of International Maritime Law? Does a closer inspection show that Israel is also disregarding International Maritime borders on top of those it’s ignoring in Palestine?

there's gas in them thar waters....

The accompanying United States Geological Survey (USGS) map shows the Levant Basin Province layout published Dec. 29, 2010. To access the full report look for “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the Levant Basin Province, Eastern Mediterranean” at the USGS site. A rough triangle, LBP is divided into three groups of subterranean rock and encompasses 83,000 square kilometers or 51,573 square miles.

The USGS actually discovered the untapped field before 2008, but it was the publication of the above Assessment and the “simultaneous discovery” of productive drill sites that caused the excitement in 2010. Because the drill sites are off the Israeli coast, Israel and the funding consortium are acting on the assumption that Israel has pretty much exclusive access to the shelf’s resources. They point to Israeli-issued extraction licenses granted to the Matan and Dalit /Michal drill sites as their legal basis to develop and drill. Israel and Cyprus are also in talks about development rights.

The Leviathan consortium is a joint venture between the Houston based Noble Energy Inc. and the Israeli companies Delek Group Ltd. Isramco, Dor Oil, Avner Oil and Ratio Oil Exploration. With certain stipulations, this consortium already accounts for approximately half of Israel’s oil and gas recovery activity. Other Israeli companies, such as Zion Oil, are also players with drill sites near the Dead Sea among others.

Some of the CEOs of these companies have strong fundamentalist Christians and Hassidic views. Devoutly religious, they readily admit applying their religious views to their work, viewing the discoveries as Yahweh’s “Blessing on Israel” to allow it to be energy independent. Others are more business oriented and plan on exporting to Europe and/or Asian.

What the Leviathan reserve will eventually yield in benefits to Israeli is being furiously debated. The Tamar gas site alone could generate annual revenues of NIS 2-3 billion in the next 30 years. The Israeli government commissioned Sheshinski Committee recommended the income be used to retire Israel’s external debt.

However! Despite the jubilation in Israeli financial markets over the country’s future prosperity, there are a couple flies in the ointment.

Within a week of the announcement in 2010, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Aki al-Shami asked U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to “exert every possible effort to prevent Israel exploiting Lebanon’s maritime hydrocarbon resources, which fall within its exclusive economic zone.”

The United Nations rejected this appeal not on lack of merit but because the UNIFIL’s mandate under resolution 1701: “does not include the demarcation of maritime borders. National conflicts and maritime conflicts are two separate things.”

That means the case passes to the appropriate commission, perhaps the International Maritime Organization, which is mandated by the UN to handle legal matters pertaining to international shipping or perhaps under a wing of the courts in The Hague. There are legal avenues.

The Levant Basin Province situated on the Eurasian-Arabian-African continental plate intersection is 51,573 square miles, hardly within the internationally recognized maritime borders of 12 miles from the shore of any country. There was an effort in the late 20th century to extent this maritime border to 400 miles but was never adopted due to problems related to contiguous national borders in Europe and the like.

According the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and using its map as a visualization tool, the Levant Basin Province starts in a sharp point under the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula close to the Israeli border and runs up the Levant Transform Zone through Israel, Lebanon and Syria as it bumps against the Jordan Rift Valley on the east. It ends inland from the Turkish coast then juts out in a triangle reaching into the Mediterranean and into Cyprus’ territorial island waters. The last leg of the triangle shoots south in a wide curve under the Mediterranean until it rejoins the Sinai point. It’s divided into three sub-strata reserves.

The Levant Margin Reservoirs western edge runs north/south a mile or so off the shores of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Its land mass is pushed upward causing the ripples that form the hills of Jerusalem and the Lebanon Mountains until they bump into the Jordan Valley It contains mostly natural gas and some oil.

The Levant Sub-salt Reservoirs are under deep water and abuts the Levant Margin Reservoir off the Lebanese, Syrian and Turkish shores then fans west to Cyprus. It holds the best oil and much of the natural gas of the entire Levant Reservoirs.

Adjoining it and formed by the rising seabed and shallower waters, the Plio-Pleistocene Reservoir begins at the Lebanon/Israeli border, reaches west to the Eratosthemes Seamount south of Cyprus then turns southeast to travel the Nile Delta Cone to the Sinai Peninsula. In shallow waters, it contains mostly gas and some oil. The Levant Margin Reservoirs contains oil and gas fields. The Plio-Pleistocene Reservoirs includes eight gas fields, and the Levant Sub-Salt Reservoirs have two discoveries (Tamar, Datil). This accounting does not include development sites at the proposed Leviathan drill site or elsewhere.

Israel claims the Tamar and Leviathan drill sites are within Israel’s coastal territory and therefore theirs to exploit. However a look at the USGS map shows a roughly even split at the Lebanon/Israeli border of the Plio-Pleistocene and Levant Sub-Salt Reservoir vast amount of coastal territory belongs to Lebanon.

Then there’s Palestine. For years Israel has tapped into the oil/gas reserves off the northeast tip of Gaza and which were once part of the Palestinian territories. British Gas drilled two wells: the Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2. These fields are estimated to be worth at $4 billion.

“I think,” Haidar Eid, a political analyst said in the Press TV article, “this comes in line with Israel’s consistent policy of stealing Palestinian’s land,
stealing natural resources and I think that Israel knows very well that it can get away with murder due to an international conspiracy of silence.”

The truth is, according to epalestine.com, Gaza is sitting on a major gas field contain an estimated 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas. In addition Palestine has an oil reserve 22 miles off the Gaza Strip. There is no reason, except for Israeli greed, that Palestine couldn’t achieve self-sufficiency when it is recognized as an independent state.

www.presstv.ir/detail/184762.html

USGS/ Assessment of Undiscovered
Oil/Levant Basin Province

World Petroleum
Resources Project

Brenda Heard – United we stand, divided they fall

Posted: 05/13/2011 by editor in "Israel", Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Lebanon, Middle East Issues, Palestine, People's Movements / Struggles, Zionism
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Jubliant Americans

News during the last couple of weeks has rumbled in to shake an already rickety balance of world order. Perhaps one of the most disturbing images accompanying those headlines, though, was not that of more bruised and bulleted bodies. Rather, the image was of what the Associated Press termed a ‘jubilant crowd’. As though they had just won the World Cup Final, Americans waved flags as they sang and chanted their patriotic celebration.

Osama Bin Laden, they had just been told, had been shot dead. After nearly a decade-long manhunt, he had finally been pounced upon in Pakistan. The crowd cheered. And when President Obama made the official announcement, he coaxed the nation to cheer the same; he concluded by quoting the American pledge of allegiance:

‘Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all’.

‘Indivisible’. In this one word lies the notion that has fed American policy for many, many years: united we stand-divided they fall.

This is the disturbing aspect about the spectacle that accompanied a political assassination. The power that drives the ruin of lives has been reduced to a sports-style competition. The longstanding game strategy has become brazen: (1) unite ourselves to challenge a common enemy-of-the-day, (2) keep all designated enemies splintered with hostilities, and then (3) exploit the resulting instability. A 2005 report called ‘Dividing Our Enemies’, a report produced by the US Special Operations Command, admits frankly: ‘exploiting the rivalries or animosities among the insurgent bands clearly meets our goals’.

By way of example, just last month President Obama gave a speech stressing the importance of strengthening the nation by all working together. Meanwhile, American leaders were bristling at the renewed rumours of an impending reconciliation between the Fatah and Hamas parties of Palestine. They then promptly issued threats to cut off American support to the Palestinians should the Palestinians choose to work together themselves.

Within days, twenty-seven US Senators formerly demanded that President Obama ‘stand by its refusal to work with any Palestinian government that includes Hamas’. The Senators declared:

‘It is imperative for you [President Obama] to make clear to President Abbas that Palestinian Authority participation in a unity government with an unreformed Hamas will jeopardize its relationship with the United States, including its receipt of U.S. aid’.

Why had political support and financial aid been offered in the first place? Clearly not to facilitate a stable government of national unity. Repeatedly over the years, whenever the Palestinians have expressed their own unity, they have been rebuked for seeking their own terms of agreement. Only those Palestinians who were willing to abide by the terms of the Western “Israeli” Alliance were welcome.

This American pattern of provoking and prolonging internal hostilities amongst strategically targeted populations has been played out time and again in the Middle East. With protecting its “Israeli” project in the forefront, successive American governments have spared no effort to tame the Palestinians and Lebanese. Being unprocurable, Lebanon was played. From the 1950′s onward, relentless political manipulation and violent interference ensued.

Just as they had with the Palestinians, American governments offered political support and financial aid to select Lebanese-but only as a means of leverage. In the run-up to the Lebanese national election of 2009, for example, US Vice President Biden warned that his government would assess its willingness to continue aid to Lebanon ‘based on the composition of the new [Lebanese] government and the policies it advocates’. Years of open hostility toward Lebanese parties supportive of the Resistance clarified beyond any doubt what he meant.

Yet again in January 2011, the US cautioned that it ‘would have great concerns about a government within which Hizbullah plays a leading role’ and warned once again it could cut off aid, that tantalising carrot dangled in the faces of those pursued as strategic allies. A game played by house rules. But when the so-called assistance is bartered not for peace and stability, but solely for the political gain of the lender, then the role of the international community has gone terribly wrong.

Eleven years ago this month, the Lebanese thwarted the strategy of the Western “Israeli” Alliance to divide and conquer. The Lebanese Resistance rejected the presence of American-paid mercenaries and liberated its land from military occupation. The Resistance liberated its people from the dictum of imposed division. In so doing, the Resistance confirmed that the right to a durable national unity is not the prerogative of the Western world.

In similar fashion, the various calls for reform we are witnessing today in the Arab world are calls for integrity. They are resistance to a state divided from its people, resistance to a people divided from each other, and resistance to foreign states imposing their own agendas. In particular, the eagerness of the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples to achieve national unity is a key element of this developing global balance. Yet their eagerness has not been cheered; instead, it has been routinely met with stern disapproval from America-the self-proclaimed champion of united patriotism.

The concept of national unity, whether Arab or Western, should guide and grow with its people. It should be built on what is right about its own people-and not on what it perceives to be wrong about another. If we are ever to establish peaceful relations, the role of the international community is to be an honest broker in the pursuit of mutual benefit. When lives are at stake, it is simply not a game.

Brenda Heard is Founder of Friends of Lebanon, London. Details of the Lebanese Resistance & Liberation Day event in London, 25 May, ‘Reform as Resistance: emerging independence within the Arab world’ can be found here.

http://www.english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=14083&cid=269

Nous ne nous laisserons pas pas arrêter : Vittorio a été tué pour laisser un message, “Tenez-vous loin de la bande de Gaza et la Palestine”

Posted: 04/15/2011 by editor in "Israel", Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, Palestine, People's Movements / Struggles
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Écrit par Pasquale Navarra pour Forum Palestina (traduit en français par Wassyla-Heyett). 

Les causes et la dynamique de l’enlèvement et l’assassinat de Vittorio Arrigoni, activiste et correspondant du Mouvement international de solidarité avec la Palestine dans la bande de Gaza, sont pour le moment en cours de reconstitution. Certaines informations et  évaluations peuvent néanmoins être données, même maintenant.

Vittorio était sur le point de retourner en Italie pour collaborer avec la mission de la flottille de la liberté qui avait décidé de briser en mai le blocus contre les Palestiniens de Gaza, que Vittorio avait systématiquement dénoncé en fournissant une documentation depuis des années.

Vittorio a été découvert déjà mort quand la police palestinienne, aidé par la population locale, a été en mesure de trouver l’endroit où il avait été retenu en otage. L’ultimatum 30 heures n’a été rien de plus qu’un prétexte. Les ravisseurs étaient très jeunes, y compris au moins l’un d’entre eux qui était un citoyen jordanien (et non palestinien). 

Le groupe qui a enlevé et tué Vittorio appartient à cette pléiade de groupes islamistes salafistes, très différents de l’actuel Islam politique que le mouvement Hamas, qui gouverne la bande de Gaza, a comme référence. Ces groupes sont beaucoup plus actifs contre les autres courants islamiques corrompus et les régimes arabes – accusés d’apostasie – qu’ils ne sont opposés à l’occupation israélienne de la Palestine ou de la présence des États-Unis au Moyen-Orient. 

Certains de ces groupes appartiennent au réseau de l’Islam politique qui a comme référence l’Arabie saoudite, est financé et armé par elle. Certains de ces groupes ont déjà provoqué des affrontements et des problèmes très graves dans les camps de réfugiés palestiniens au Liban. 

En ces semaines où les alliances au Moyen-Orient sont brusquement bousculées par les révoltes des peuples et les tensions qui sont présentes dans toute la région, la monarchie saoudienne a établi une alliance avec Israël pour marquer l’ennemi commun représenté par l’Iran et son influence dans la région du Golfe et du Moyen-Orient. Cette alliance a été renforcée par un récent sommet à Moscou auquel participaient à la fois Netanyahu et les dirigeants des services services saoudiens. 

Ces dernières semaines, les autorités israéliennes ont lancé une campagne d’intimidation contre les militants et les campagnes internationales de solidarité avec la Palestine, en particulier contre la flottille de la liberté qui appareillera en mai pour se diriger vers la bande de Gaza, et contre le mouvement de boycott, de désinvestissement et de sanctions contre Israël. Les autorités israéliennes ont demandé aux gouvernements des pays qui ont des navires en partance de leurs côtes ou dans lesquels les campagnes BDS sont importantes, d’intervenir contre les activistes. Le Premier ministre italien Silvio Berlusconi a déjà accepté la demande du gouvernement israélien. Les services secrets israéliens ont été activés pour utiliser tous les moyens nécessaires afin de maintenir les militants internationaux loin de Gaza et de Palestine.

Nous n’avons pas tous les éléments de preuve, mais nous considérons que l’enlèvement et l’assassinat de Vittorio correspond peut-être au sale boulot effectué par les groupes islamistes liés au réseau d’Arabie Saoudite aujourd’hui alliée avec Israël. Le message aux militants internationaux est fort, claire et déconcertant: “Tenez vous loin de Gaza, tenez vous loin de  Palestine”, “Aucune internationalisation de la question palestinienne ne sera tolérée par les autorités de Tel-Aviv et ses alliés”. 

Nous tenons à adresser un message fort et clair à tous ceux qui en Israël ou dans le monde arabe, en Europe ou aux États-Unis entendent ​​resserrer l’étau de l’isolement et de la liquidation autour du droit à l’autodétermination des Palestiniens. Nous le devons à cette population qui se bat pour sa liberté depuis plus de soixante ans et maintenant nous le devons aussi à Vittorio. 

Forum Palestina 

Nasrallah speaks about the people’s revolutions VIDEO!

Posted: 03/21/2011 by editor in Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Video
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Adib S Kawar – Where are the Arabs? A response to Robert Grenier

Posted: 03/18/2011 by editor in "Israel", Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Libya, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance
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freedom fighters in BenghaziThe author of the article I post below, Robert Grenier, rightly asked: “Where are the Arabs?” but in our opinion, we Arab Nationalists, also believe that he had also rightly volunteered to reply to his own question which is in his own words:

“…the primary motivating principles of the rebels have been clear: A desire for personal liberty, dignity and collective social empowerment.” 

Once an Egyptian Arab intellectual lady, Huda Hanum Shaarawi, replied after the 1948 Palestinian Arab Nakbah to the question: “How is it possible that seven Arab states and their armies were defeated by one state “Israel”? Her reply was simple and clear: “Because they were seven states with seven armies and seven ‘leaderships’ each quarrelling with the rest, while the enemy was one with one leadership, one army for one state.”, which the author has described below:

Robert Grenier was the CIA’s chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.” As a high CIA officer he should have known why did the British  Mr. Sykes and the French M. Picot come together to plan to divide the east Mediterranean Arab territories even before the defeat and  expulsion of the Ottoman Turks from it. They met and agreed to conclude on what is known as “The Sykes Picot Agreement”, that is, to  apply the principle of “divide and rule”, of course to create small weak Arab states that cannot defend themselves in the face of the colonialist powers and their colonialist ambitions, who were at the time in the first place Great Britain and France.

And lately why the old Zionist fox Shimon Peres to be joined at a later time by Condoleezza Rice, U.S Secretary of State under George W. Bush, further try to divide the present Arab states into a smaller states based on religious and ethnic minorities, which Zionists and other colonialist powers shall try to create between them feuds and enmities so as to resort to these colonialist powers for protection against their other Arab brothers… then Zionists and other colonialists shall be able to control them all, but fortunately enough what is known as the New Middle East colonialist conspiracy did not see the light, and with the domino theory of Arab revolutions presently taking place shall never be realized, and hopefully an Arab unity shall instead be realized to counteract these Zionist and western colonialist conspiracies.

Now the aim of young Arab revolutionaries is to get rid of these rulers who want to keep their control on what they consider as their subjects in collaboration with their colonialist protectors, but the young Arab citizens who want to be no more subjects of their corrupt ruers, but real citizens and be able to decide their own fate are struggling to overthrow all these rotten, corrupt and isolationist rulers. That is why those particular rulers shall not volunteer to come to give assistance to Libyan Arabs or any revolutionary Arabs citizens revolting against their rotten rulers… because as we said and saw that by the domino theory, revolutions shall pass from one Arab state to another. They, Arab rulers, want to keep their chairs under the seat of their pants and keep on riding on the backs of what they consider their obedient subjects. The young revolutionaries want their freedom and liberty from their internal and external rulers.

In a big and rich Arab state, an official and a member of the ruling family commented on the simple and rightful demands of their young citizens whom they consider “subjects” who gathered peacefully. As is the case with all Arab rulers, the official said after denying that there were gatherings and demands: “The cooperation of citizens with security men to confront those who call for anarchy was a good proof and spontaneous response against those calling for evil in a peaceful country.” He added that, “driving people to overstep matters to what doesn’t achieve demands or reform, calls for dialogue,and that is exactly what those in command in the state call for”!!!!

Another highly posted official said: “Some of those calling for evil gathered in front of the ministry of internal affairs,” he claimed that, “they want to make of the state a place of chaos, they are organizing purposeless demonstrations that have no high aims, but they proved that they don’t know the people of their state”!!!

From Libya, correspondent Ogharit Dandaash wrote the story of the engineer Almahdi Zeo:

“Before February 14th there was not a single exceptional matter or incident that makes it to informational mass media, nor was there a political stance, be it pro or con, regarding the regime that was in the activities of this Benghazi engineer who was in his forties. Engineer Almahdi Zeo was living a quiet life in Benghazi, his financial status was as described by those who knew him well as “better than good (kwaiseh)”. Zeo was the head of a family, and the father of two daughters studying at university, who never heard or noticed him fidgeting when Gaddafi and his men ruling from their stronghold of terror in Benghazi were mentioned.

On February 15th 2011 the young people of Benghazi didn’t expect the official birth for the February 17th revolution, to mount the winds of change that blew from their neighborhood. They demonstrated and were confronted from the Benghazi battalion of terror with fire in front of the court house… many of the revolutionary fell down martyrs…

While the young revolutionaries were marching in the funeral of their martyred comrades, Zeo was passing an ordinary day during his monotonous life. He passed in front of the headquarters of the battalion on his way to practice his ordinary daily routine work, it was inevitable that some incident should happen to attract his attention. Young people returning from the funeral of their beloved comrades, were, without notice, confronted with live fire, the source of which was from the battalion of Al-Fadel Omar, the headquarters of the soldiers of the regime, where any activists with political opposition to the regime, or with any ideas that contradict those of the Gaddafi Green holy Book. Zeo stopped to see the young people confronting the heavily armed soldiers with their naked chests, He returned home to tell his two daughters about 18 years olds fighting without help.

The following morning he returned to practice his ordinary work, believing that the zeal of the young couldn’t but be aborted with the regime’s brutality, but just in front of the same battalion tens of young people returned for another sit down with other supporters… Zeo realized after a long life of submission and looking aside shall not end with the feeling at ease required by other human beings, those youngsters realized, before it was too late, that there is a difference between living as ordinary human beings and a life full with a humanitarian meaning.

That night he hugged his beloved ones like he had never done before, he talked to them about small heroic incidents that history books didn’t mention, and about which no poems were written, but they leave their effect in people’s souls that had submitted to accepting life at ease, and as an ordinary matter… and left his house.

The place is the headquarters of the Benghazi battalion, date before the new Libyan history, attendants, the young persons seated on the ground, the occasion: drawing a new road map for the revolution.

The engineer said: “Success depends on the element of surprise: Clearly, we need to act quickly.

One of youth there understood: the moment the road opens, we attack.

Another youth pointed out to another group of young people, the brothers coming here are from Baida, they came to help us.

The engineer said, “I am going ahead”.

The engineer mounts his car that was loaded with gas containers for home use, and drives towards the wall of the two storey building housing the battalion’s headquarters, which is impossible to enter to or to break into. He steps on the accelerator to maximum speed, hits the wall, the car explodes, the wall crumbles creating an opening, the youngsters rush into the headquarters.

The element of surprise dispersed the soldiers who ran away, the revolutionaries took control and they obtained their first quantity of arms, they took control of the helm of the battle and thus the battle turned in their favor. After some confrontations, the Abu Al-Fadel Omar battalion fell and its leader fled to Tripoli along with Assaadi Al-Gaddafi (One of Muamar Gaddafi’s sons) who took refuge at the battalion’s headquarters after the outbreak of revolution. Then the weapons and ammunitions stores are now in the service of the revolution born on February 17th.

The fall of the battalion contributed to the liberation of Benghazi, and the revolutionaries gave credit in that to Engineer Almahdi Zeo for the morale and military help he gave to them, and encouraging many officers and soldiers to defect from Gaddafi’s forces and join the revolutionaries, and opening the door wide open for victories, which made the east of Libya fall from the hands of Gaddafi into the hands of the revolution within four days.

Martyr Al-Mahdi Zeo did not live to reap the fruits of the trees he planted, but those Libyan young men and women who had never heard of Engineer Zeo know now that the engineer of the realized revolution shall be the name who they shall tell to their children and grandchildren when their hair shall turn grey about a revolution executed by dreamers who didn’t wait enjoy its fruits.

So we should not expect from these decaying, rotten and dictatorial regimes to step in to help other revolutions against their equally decaying, rotten and dictatorial Arab regimes… they are equally bad and should be overthrown by young Arab revolutionaries.

“Where are the Arabs?” The other Arabs, are the young revolutionary Arabs, who are each cleaning the dirt the old Arab dictatorial and rotten Arab regimes left over by colonialism behind. Good things are coming with Arab liberty and unity. 

So we cannot but agree with Robert Grenier saying: “A new day is dawning in the Arab world. The revolutions underway have only just begun, and there is much to be sorted out in the countries where the democratic wave has taken hold. The response of other regional regimes, under less acute and immediate pressure, but still grappling with the challenge of socio-political changes now set perhaps inexorably in motion, remains very much to be seen. For all that its common outlook is rapidly evolving, the Arab world has a long way to go in coming to a firm consensus about what forms of rule will meet its minimum standards of acceptability.”

 ORIGINAL PIECE

Opinion
‘Where are the Arabs?’ By: Robert Grenier 

If Arab states are serious about ending Gaddafi’s menace to his people, they must take the lead in helping the rebels.

Robert Grenier Last Modified: 13 Mar 2011 08:35 GMT
If Arab states do not act now, when the last Libyan rebel lies bleeding in the desert, his final words
may well be: ‘Where are the Arabs?’

It was August of 1982. For seven weeks, Beirut had been sealed off, under attack by Israel from land, sea and air. Water and electricity supplies were cut. The Israelis had secured the airport and much of the southern suburbs. The Syrians had been defeated, their air force wiped from the Lebanese skies. Chairman Arafat and the PLO were seemingly at the mercy of their enemies, utterly dependent upon the international community to arrange an evacuation of their fighters which would bring an end to the carnage. Isolated and alone, all the leader of the Palestinian movement could do was look into the cameras and plead: “Where are the Arabs?”

In January of 1991, a nominally extensive international coalition of armed forces, led by the US but including many of the Arab countries, stood poised in northern Saudi Arabia to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. It might have seemed that much of the Arab world was unified, and had engaged the United States and the international community in their cause to liberate a brutally occupied Arab country.

But in many of the Arab capitals, and to a seeming majority in the Arab street, the armies massed in the Saudi desert were anything but a sign of Arab strength and unity. For in point of fact, the Arab countries had had comparatively little to do with organizing this un-authorized, largely Western coalition. Many Arab nationalists from across the region asserted strenuously that the Arabs should not rely upon the Americans to sort out their difficulties, arguing in favor of an “Arab solution” to the crisis. In fact, however, this was mere posturing: An Arab solution to the crisis would have amounted to meek acquiescence in Saddam Hussein’s intra-Arab aggression. Those Arab countries most threatened by Saddam were not about to entrust their fate to regional Arab councils. They did not wish one day to be left, alone, to make the entreaty: “Where are the Arabs?”

Today, in the deserts along the coast of Libya, patriots are fighting to liberate themselves and their country from over 40 years of brutal, arbitrary misrule. Although tribal and other social divisions are no doubt playing a role in determining the fault lines of the civil war progressively settling over Libya, the primary motivating principles of the rebels have been clear: A desire for personal liberty, dignity and collective social empowerment. In this they have been transparently inspired by the courage of their brothers and sisters in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in many other parts of the Arab world. But as they attempt to withstand the onslaught of Muammar Gaddafi’s better-armed loyalists, and as those rebels most hard-pressed repeatedly plead for at least limited outside assistance, well they might ask: “Where are the Arabs?”

Passivity and diffidence

A new day is dawning in the Arab world. The revolutions underway have only just begun, and there is much to be sorted out in the countries where the democratic wave has taken hold. The response of other regional regimes, under less acute and immediate pressure, but still grappling with the challenge of socio-political changes now set perhaps inexorably in motion, remains very much to be seen. For all that its common outlook is rapidly evolving, the Arab world has a long way to go in coming to a firm consensus about what forms of rule will meet its minimum standards of acceptability.

Nonetheless, the latest indications of Arab intent in the context of Libya are positive, if as yet insufficient. A clear message has been sent by both the GCC and the Arab League that Gaddafi’s brutality toward his people is not acceptable, and has effectively delegitimised his government. The Arab nations have taken a clear stand in favour of a UN Security Council-imposed no-fly zone, and for urgent outreach to the National Transitional Council in Benghazi.

So far, perhaps, so good. Still, troubling signs of traditional passivity and diffidence remain. The Arabs are deferring action to the international community without suggestions as to how that action should be implemented, and with no firm commitment for their own direct involvement. The Arab League ministers aver that a no-fly zone should only be for the purpose of protecting Libyan civilians, and should end as quickly as possible. They continue to express concern over foreign intervention, while requesting precisely that. Their ambivalence is palpable.

At the same time, evidence is mounting that the international fixation on a no-fly zone may be a distraction from more urgently-needed action, and may in fact be counter-productive. First of all, it is not at all clear how great a threat is posed by Gaddafi’s air strikes, per se. While the military situation remains confused, it seems more likely that Gaddafi’s armour and artillery pose the more lethal danger to both rebel and civilian targets.

Moreover, imposition of a no-fly zone would be no simple task. Security Council agreement is far from assured: The Council is divided, and the Chinese, in particular, will do what they can to avoid approving international interference in internal Libyan affairs, out of fear of the negative precedent it might set for themselves. While others might well participate, the US, clearly, would have to take the lead. (As far we Arabs are concerned, we have no trust with the United States and other western powers, their policies are equally colonialist, and we suffered enough on their hands and their rogue adopted and nursed our Zionist entity- A.S.K.)

Following its doctrine, the US would need to attack Libyan air defences first; the potential for significant collateral damage is considerable. The Americans would also require a helicopter-borne “combat search and rescue (CSAR)” capability to be in place for downed pilots before they would willingly act. And there are not nearly enough aircraft in theatre, yet, for an effective no-fly effort. Finally, it may simply be too much to suppose that the Americans, already engaged militarily in two Muslim countries, should now intervene in a third, when the risk to their already weak regional standing from those who may advocate international action now, but will no doubt quickly criticise any missteps, is so great.

Taking the lead
If the Arab League is serious about ending Gaddafi’s menace to his people, they should focus on providing the National Transitional Council with the means to defeat him and his loyalist forces. The US, the EU and NATO have all made clear that they will only act with a clear legal mandate and with regional support. Therefore, it is up to the Arab nations to take the initiative.

It is very likely that the softness in the Arab League stance is a reflection of the divisions between those members on either side of the “democratic revolutionary” divide. Hobbled by the need for consensus, the League as a whole has gone about as far as it is capable; it is unlikely to take the tough decisions and hard actions necessary to counter Gaddafi’s resurgence. Those whose commitment to support of the rebellion is notably strong – Egypt and the GCC countries in particular – must be prepared to take the lead from here.

First, they should move quickly to recognise the Council in Benghazi as the legitimate government of Libya, and immediately request modification of the current UN arms embargo to exclude its forces. Meanwhile, a rapid assessment of the rebels’ military requirements is needed; these would likely include ammunition, anti-armour weapons, and perhaps rockets or artillery. It is clearly within the capabilities of at least some of the Arab countries to provide these rapidly by air, most likely with logistical assistance from the US or NATO. In this context, it would become far easier, and more palatable, for the US and NATO to provide overhead intelligence, perhaps off-shore jamming of Libyan military communications, and other forms of assistance to the transitional government.

We can begin to imagine that such an Arab-led initiative on behalf of the Libyans could help to build a new, cooperative relationship with America and the West – one which flows from Arab empowerment and collective resolve, and not, as in the past, from Arab weakness.

The time has come, in short, for the Arab regimes to demonstrate regionally and internationally the will and courage to act demonstrated by many of their own citizens domestically. Otherwise, they run the risk, in what is supposed to be a transforming Middle East, that when the last Libyan rebel lies bleeding in the desert, the boot of a pro-Gaddafi thug upon his neck, his last gasp will be: “Where are the Arabs?”

Robert Grenier was the CIA’s chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan, from 1999 to 2002. He was also the director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.Source:

Al Jazeera

Danny Williams – Call me Sancho Panza (are flotillas Quixotic? The tide certainly has not changed for the better)

Posted: 03/18/2011 by editor in "Israel", Europe, Grassroots Activism, Middle East Issues, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Rant / Musings / Discussion, Zionism
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Don Quixote and Sancho PanzaHero or madman? Four hundred years ago Don Quixote, Cervantes’s cavalier clod, set out from La Mancha on a decrepit horse, Sancho Panza by his side, to win the heart of Dulcinea. Quixote was a dreamer with good intentions and his legend has endured, but for all the wrong reasons. We remember him for his misadventures, albeit chivalrous, but at the end of the day Quixote saved no one and made no difference except perhaps in the hearts of those he encountered. In truth, his righteous intentions and noble acts often led to grave consequences.

In a strange sort of way, it feels like we’re seeing these misadventures played out before our eyes, and as in Cervantes’s brilliant parody, with equally tragic results.

The quixotic endeavour known as the Freedom Flotilla is about to embark on its second act at the end of May 2011. The first flotilla, which reached its dramatic end on 31 May 2010, saw a tiny fleet of boats carrying peace activists – and according to Israel, a group of Turkish militants – face off against one of the most powerful armed forces in the world. Well, at least no one can accuse them of battling windmills but one must question the sanity and cynicism of organizers who deliberately sought acclaim through known adversity. Perhaps like Quixote, they truly believed they were “born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.”

So they got their headlines, but at such a cost. The incident, planned as a publicity-raising exercise more than anything else, set off a series of protests and diplomatic wrist-slaps around the world. Europeans very much want to see a negotiated end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. But significantly, the flotilla disaster has failed to hurt Israel’s international standing. Indeed, within a few weeks of the raid, Israel’s proponents were lining up to affirm their support. “Israel’s basic right to self-defense should not be questioned,” wrote one group that included Jose Maria Aznar, a former prime minister of Spain, David Trimble, a former first minister of Northern Ireland, Alejandro Toledo, a former president of Peru, and Marcello Pera, a former president of the Italian Senate.

Since the demise of Israel’s relations with Turkey (which, admittedly, began before the flotilla incident), Israel’s Mediterranean neighbours have been practically tripping over themselves to improve ties to Israel. Last November Italy’s air force conducted a joint training exercise with the IAF. In February, Israeli President Shimon Peres visited Spain where he met with Spanish PM Jose Luis Zapatero and the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I who hosted Peres at a royal reception. Last week, Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias arrived in Israel for the first visit by a Cypriot head of state in over 10 years. While in Jerusalem Christofias, Cyprus’ first Communist president, became the first European leader to publicly denounce the flotilla project. “Terror activities in Gaza are unacceptable,” stated Christofias, “and therefore we have prevented the flotillas from leaving.” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142898

No state is benefiting from Israel’s estrangement from Turkey more than Greece. Israel’s ties to Greece have been strengthening on an almost daily basis. It should be remembered that Greece initially withdrew from joint military exercises with Israel in protest at the raid. But within a few months, Greece was hosting senior members of the IDF, including navy head Eli Marom (who ordered the Mavi Marmara attack), and Israel’s PM and his wife.
http://multimedia.jta.org/images/multimedia/bibius_0/F100817GPO05_m.jpg

“We see the (European) market expanding to the Mediterranean and certainly we would like to integrate Israel into this European market,” said Prime Minister George Papandreou. “I think this is vital for Israel’s economy but also for its strategic security. “Last month, Greek’s PM promised visiting Jewish American leaders that Athens would help Israel forge even CLOSER ties with the European Union, particularly through gaining access to European markets. Not a word about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians or even the detention of 30 Greek activists on board Mavi Marmara. A non-issue!

Other European states have been equally nonchalant toward the tiny protest movement. Just a few weeks before the raid, on 10 May 2010, Israel had been invited by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to become a member. One might have expected the deadly assault to affect the discussions. One would be wrong. The formal agreement was signed in Paris on 28 June 2010.

The love-fest has continued throughout the EU. Last month, the Dutch parliament passed a pro-Israel bill affirming Israel’s existence as a Jewish, democratic state and urging the EU not to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. The bill declared that the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state would not bring closer a lasting peace, and therefore the Dutch government will advance a European (EU) policy that rejects the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and means a European call to the Palestinian leaders to resume direct negotiations with Israel. In other words, a complete dismissal of Palestinian rejection of Jewish self-determination and agreement with Israel’s position that it has been the PA and its refusal to negotiate that is the stumbling block, not Israeli actions. It’s also impossible not to notice tightening relations between Israel and Poland which includes several recent military deals. In Jerusalem last month for the first ever Polish-Israeli governmental forum, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared, “You have a real friend in Europe and it is important that both countries will strengthen each other’s image.” (And again, not a mention of Israel’s treatment of Gaza’s population.) http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11858.shtml

If that doesn’t seem significant consider this: in July 2011, Poland will assume the rotating presidency of the EU.

There’s more. Last month, a computer scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University was appointed by the European Commission to its Scientific Council, the governing body of the European Research Council (ERC). A few days later, Israel was selected to host the 2011/13 Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) European Under-21 final tournament. Yes, international organizations are still planning events in Israel, business is up (4.1% in 2010) and tourists are flocking to the country in droves.

Other than some public admonishment from known critics of Israel, such as Catherine Ashton, the British government has all but forgotten last year’s raid. Prime Minister David Cameron, who last year condemned the attack, has now reversed his position saying that Israel was “within its rights to search vessels bringing cargo into Gaza.” And last week, George Galloway’s Viva Palestina announced that it can no longer fund-raise in behalf of any future flotilla as a result of suspected ties to Hamas. Although no links have been proven, Viva Palestina obviously believes the investigation is ongoing. Was this inquiry ordered from above? The timing is certainly suspicious.

The incident definitely didn’t affect Israel’s relationship with the US. In August 2010, the two countries signed a formal co-operation pact between NASA and the Israel Space Agency (ISA). The US has continued to shield Israel from legal action and has endorsed Israel’s Turkel Report, an examination of the details of the raid, as a “credible and impartial and transparent investigation.”

The issue at hand is not the cause, which is worthwhile and laudable, but the methods and motivation of some so-called peace-activists who, like Quixote, are “spurred on by the conviction that the world [needs their] immediate presence.”

If, then, the Freedom Flotilla’s hope was to embarrass Israel into lifting its blockade of the Gaza strip, it was a dismal failure. A second flotilla planned for May 2011, will also likely end in disaster, the boats stopped by force, activists detained and possibly killed. The movement will succeed at getting more headlines for a cause that’s barely been out of the news for 40 years. Will international condemnation follow? Probably. Will it make a difference? It hasn’t yet.

That’s not to say the plan is meaningless: it empowers and validates human rights activists trying to make a difference; more importantly, the global movement gives hope to Gaza’s entrapped population. That sort of gesture shouldn’t be dismissed. But there is a troubling flip-side that must be addressed, and that is the powerful influence of a small group of narcissistic, self-righteous Don Quixotes (and I put Turkey’s PM Erdogan, who is seeing re-election just weeks after the scheduled flotilla, in this group) who may be championing a failed strategy at the expense of putting the time and effort into developing realistic strategies for real peace. Before another flotilla sails, I think it’s time this prospect is considered.

Brenda Heard – No thank you, the Arabs have their own minds

Posted: 03/18/2011 by editor in "Israel", Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Europe, Hasbara / Zionist Propaganda, Middle East Issues, People's Movements / Struggles, Zionism
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Cameron likes private Israeli security orgs

‘With me you have a prime minister whose belief in Israel is indestructible’, David Cameron assured over a thousand supporters of a private security organisation that polices the English Jewish communities.  While his commitment has long been common knowledge, his word choice underscores the need for concern.

When we say we ‘believe in’ something, we are making a personal value judgement.  Whether we ‘believe in’ God, or we ‘believe in’ drinking five litres of water a day, the phrase means that we think the concept is valid.  The British Prime Minister’s word choice points to a political phenomenon: Israel has never been a traditional state as much as it has been an ethos.  From the beginning, the Israeli project has been an ideology imposed at the expense of those whose only fault was to have been caught unawares on a coveted land. 

Indeed the whole of Cameron’s speech, which can be read here http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/46044/david-camerons-speech-cst, exudes a passion for a conceptual people under siege.  Cameron thus describes his belief in the Israeli project as ‘indestructible’—defensively and defiantly ‘indestructible’. 

The need for concern lies with his personal adulation dictating the terms of his political management.  Certainly, to guarantee equal rights for English people of all religious faiths is admirable.  But throughout his speech Cameron equates ‘Jewish’ with ‘Israeli’—as if all London Jews were pro-Israeli (they are not) and as if all Israelis were Jewish (they are not).   Such a stance discredits both demographics.  Likewise, his promise that he ‘will always be an advocate for the State of Israel’ denies the possibility of a conflict of interest with his sworn duty as Prime Minister to be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth: to be an advocate for the United Kingdom.

Equally as worrisome, though, is the Prime Minister’s characterisation of the recent upheavals in the Arab world.  Cameron notes that ‘this instability may seem a cause for concern for Israel’, but he then shrewdly reassures his audience.  This is a ‘precious moment of opportunity’, he says.  ‘We want to see Israel driving the process, which means seizing the initiative.  Doing so is absolutely vital’.

Vital to whom?  Is it vital to the Libyan people against whom Muammar and Saif al-Islam Gaddafi are using mercenary weapons outsourced from similar Israeli ‘security firms’?  No, not vital, but lethal to those seeking redress.

Cameron devotes a significant portion of his speech to discussing the Arab uprisings as an ‘opportunity’ for Israel and its Western patrons to remake the region to better suit themselves.  This myopic exploitation typifies the pattern of defining all matters and all peoples of the Greater Middle East in terms of the Western-Israeli Alliance. 

A spirit of entitlement and superiority has for many long and bloody years pervaded Western foreign policies.  Many of those who have been suffocated by such attitudes have at last realised that they deserve to decide for themselves their own business.

A state is a dynamic entity.  No state comprises people of identical values.  Its success lies in achieving a balance in the cultural expression of those values.   But this balance cannot be imposed.  It can be determined only by the people themselves. 

The Arab peoples have had enough of the condescending advisories from those who have their strategic eye on Aladdin’s cave.  The Arab peoples do not need the dubious money-maker George Soros to sort out on the BBC the Arabs’ handling of their own natural resources.  Nor do they need David Cameron’s vision of ‘stability and security for all.’  Because his vision is simply not for all.  He said it himself: he will always be an advocate for the State of Israel. 

The seemingly contagious quests for Arab autonomy throughout the region have been propelled by people who want and need and demand a voice.  Their own voice.  The uprisings are neither pro-Westernism, nor anti-Westernism.  Rather, the uprisings are about self-respect.  The uprisings are resistance to imposed ideologies.  Let us be clear: the region is not for sale.

www.english.moqawama.org

Originally posted at http://english.moqawama.org/essaydetails.php?eid=13593&cid=269  

Photo from http://thecst.org.uk/blog/?p=2359   

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