Syria's elusive political settlement

Friends of Syrians? Don't they realized that it is not easy to dislodge the deep state, as experiences in Turkey & Egypt had shown?

Uploaded on Oct 22, 2013 | news...peace for Syria. Problems to make SNC attend Geneva 2?

Children dieing of lead poisoning in Nigeria

Published on 20 Oct 2013 | More than seven hundred people - most of them children - have been poisoned to death in Nigeria.

As usual the culprits are not named, they named only those who came to the 'rescue'! 

Syria : has no formidable alternative to the present?

Kerry to Europe for Syria Talks, he doesn't get it?

Published on 20 Oct 2013 | U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Europe for another round of talks with countries that are backing opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They are trying to get political opponents to agree to talks on a transitional government in Geneva.

Philippine Muslims ask for education boost

Published on 19 Oct 2013 | Muslims in the Philippines are asking the government to help their children learn Islam in schools. The country is predominantly Christian. Muslims make up about 15 percent of the population. Now parents are pushing for a new bill that would help boost religious education.

Behind Bars: RT goes inside Gitmo

Published on Oct 17, 2013 | Everyone may know the name of America's most-notorious prison - but few know what really happens behind the barbed wire at Guantanamo. RT has been given rare access to the facility that's been indefinitely detaining terror suspects without charge for more than a decade.

Israel's Ambassador Admits Toppling Assad a Longtime Goal

Published on 20 Sep 2013 | Pt 1. - Robert Parry: Israeli Ambassador's omission points to Israel backing Syrian jihadist, making Saudi Arabia and Israel strange bedfellows in the Syrian conflict.

Published on 20 Sep 2013 | Pt 2. - Robert Parry: Israeli Ambassador's omission points to Israel backing Syrian jihadist, making Saudi Arabia and Israel strange bedfellows in the Syrian conflict

Will Morsi gets a public trial come Nov 4?

Morsi Trial Raises Tensions in Divided Egypt

Published on 15 Oct 2013 | The trial next month of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is expected to heighten political divisions in the volatile nation and test the credibility of Egypt's judicial system. VOA's Elizabeth Arrott has more from Cairo.

SEA : a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone!

 

full agreement here >>>

Rambo styled raid foiled?

October, 2013 | The Americans are trying to barge into the Horn of Africa but they were beaten back by Al-Shabab fighters over the weekend. When a group of Navy Seals went guns blazing to attack a house in Barawe, the para-military group put up a stiff fight driving the Americans back into the sea. This, however, is not likely to deter the Americans from future mischief.

Washington DC, Crescent-online | October 7, 2013, 20:12 pm EDT

In what was billed as a gung-ho Navy Seals assault on Al Shabab safe house in the Somali town of Barawe over the weekend ended in disaster for the Americans. After a fierce gun-battle in which the lightly armed Al Shabab fighters held their ground, the Americans were beaten back and they fled the scene leaving some equipment behind.

The Pentagon admitted today (October 7) that the target of the failed raid was a Kenyan whom they accused of plotting attacks on parliament buildings and the UN headquarters in Nairobi.

Peace deal possible in Syria, at last?

Can there be hope for peace in Syria? For the first time in nearly three years, both local and international developments point to such a possibility. With realization in Western capitals that Russia and Iran are the most influential players in Syria, hopes have been aroused that movement toward a peace deal may be forthcoming. There are also no opposition demands for Bashar al-Asad to step down, at least at this stage.

Beirut, Crescent-online | October 4, 2013

Following from the US-Iran thaw, however modest, hopes have been aroused of some kind of a peace deal in Syria. Two days ago, Ahmed Jarba, head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) said his group would be willing to participate in the Geneva-2 talks if the Arab countries supporting the SNC would guarantee that the interim government would be put in place in Syria.

Significantly, Jarba did not say anything about President Bashar al-Asad’s removal from power. This demand may come up again but with recent developments, this is becoming a moot point.

There have been other developments as well that lead one to speculate that the tide might be turning in Syria. On September 30, the veteran Middle East correspondent for the Independent reported that some members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had traveled to Damascus for talks with a senior Asad advisor. They were given government guarantees of safe passage.

In areas under FSA control, such as Aleppo and Homs province, government schools and other institutions have opened. Further, there are efforts by the government to attract soldiers that had defected to the FSA to rejoin the army. There will be no reprisals or punishment.

This has the added advantage of ending fighting in rebel-held areas, and using the returning deserters to go after the foreign mercenaries that the vast majority in Syria now fears.

There have been defections from the FSA to al-Qaeda affiliated groups. There has also been fighting between the two groups with the better-armed foreign mercenaries, brutal and without loyalty to anyone, besting FSA fighters.

Rebel infighting in Syria intensifies

Terrorism has never been a successful strategy. Its only consequence is suffering for ordinary people. This is what is happening in Syria. The terrorist groups, however, are now fighting each other because they are unable to dislodge the government of Bashar al-Asad. Their foreign masters--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, the US, France, Britain and Israel, to name a few--have also realized that these terrorists cannot deliver. Istanbul, Crescent-online

September 27, 2013, 12:17 EDT

Never united except in their subservience to their foreign masters, the rebels in Syria are now at each other’s throats and giving ultimatums for others to surrender. According to inside sources, Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists have given the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) 48 hours to disarm.

The two groups never got along because each claimed to represent all the fighters—an untenable assertion—but now they are fighting each other openly. The ultimatum went into effect at 8 pm local time on Thursday.

According to reports from Syria, al-Qaeda-affiliated group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), issued the ultimatum to the FSA to surrender in 48 hours. What these terrorists would do after 48 hours was left unclear but it is certain that fighting between the groups will intensify. Low intensity fighting has already been going on for months.

Britain’s Jane’s Defence Consultancy estimates there are at least 100,000 foreign mercenaries in Syria. They are split into myriad groups with no centralized command. The mercenaries have flooded into Syria from neighbouring countries—Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon—as well as from countries as far as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Chechnya.

British government says it has legal authority to attack Syria without UN ruling

August 30 |  ABC

The British government has published internal legal advice it says shows it is legally entitled to take military action against Syria even if the UN Security Council ruled against it.

The news comes as both Britain and Russia deploy military resources to strategic areas as tensions grow in the Syrian crisis.

Key points

Russia sends warships to the Mediterranean, but says it is nothing out of the ordinary. Britain sends six Typhoon jets to base in Cyprus. France says strike plans against Assad regime "difficult to develop". UN team investigating chemical weapons use to leave Syria on Saturday

The British government is insisting there should be a military response to the use of chemical weapons, but getting political and popular backing for intervention will not be easy.

British MPs were recalled early from their summer holidays in the hope of gaining parliamentary support for military action against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

The leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, Ed Miliband, says parliament should not have to decide whether to approve military intervention in Syria on what he calls an "artificial timetable".

"This is a very grave decision to take military action that the House of Commons is deciding," he said.

"And I didn't think that that decision should be made on an artificial timetable when the House of Commons wouldn't have even seen the evidence today from the United Nations weapons inspectors.

"I'm determined we learn the lessons of the past, including Iraq."

US report confirms Israel has at least 80 nuclear warheads

View of the Israeli nuclear facility in the Negev Desert outside Dimona

A newly released report in a US professional journal confirms that the Israeli regime possesses at least 80 operative nuclear warheads and has enough material to produce up to 190 more.

The report published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen estimate that Israel halted its production of nuclear warheads back in 2004 “once it reached around 80 munitions,” RT reports Monday.

However, the experts add, the Tel Aviv regime “can easily double its arsenal since it has enough fissile material to build at least another 115 bombs.”

• “There are rumors that Israel is equipping some of its submarines with nuclear-capable cruise missiles,” the report says, echoing the 2013 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook on Armament and International Security, which also implied that the Israeli regime may have nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missiles and reported the same assessment of nuclear stockpiles.

It is still not known how many nuclear warheads of the total inventory could already be deployed, as Israel continues to maintain its long-held policy of nuclear ambiguity, under which it never confirms nor denies its possession of nuclear and other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

In December 2012, Tel Aviv once again dismissed the latest demand from the members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to join the accord.

The suspicions about Israeli nuclear warheads were fueled by the fact that Germany supplied Israel with five Dolphin-class submarines, which are supposedly capable of launching nuclear missiles, and signed a contract to build yet another one.

Israeli regime’s stockpiles of WMD have come under particular scrutiny following the US-Russian recent agreement for the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons, which is seen as a significant step towards a WMD-free region.

This is while Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari also stated last Thursday that “The main danger of WMD is the Israeli nuclear arsenal,” stressing that the Tel Aviv regime also possesses chemical weapons but “nobody is speaking about that.”

The Syrian envoy further described his country’s chemical weapons as “a mere deterrence against the Israeli nuclear arsenal” and other WMD, referring to a declassified CIA report on Israel's chemical weapons program.

Moreover, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday: “It's well known that Syria has a certain arsenal of chemical weapons and the Syrians always viewed that as an alternative to Israel's nuclear weapons.”

This is while recently declassified CIA documents suggest that the Israeli regime secretly built up its own stockpile of chemical and biological weapons decades ago, adding more fuel to the lingering complaint of Arab states, who constantly accuse Tel Aviv of possessing nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, during a speech on Sunday before talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said that "in any case, Israel must be poised and ready to defend itself, by itself, against any threat - and this capability and readiness are more important now than ever."

MFB/SL

Public response to Obama's war drums!

Walking up to the tricks?

Published on Aug 31, 2013 | A PR problem & nightmare for the neo-liberals or the Project New America Century.

Tariq Ramadan: 'Egypt is returning to a Mubarak era' - BBC World News

Published on 20 Aug 2013 | Tariq Ramadan, a Muslim theologian whose grandfather is one of the founding members of the Muslim Brotherhood, told BBC World News that Egypt is on the verge of returning to a 'Mubarak style' era.

Professor Ramadan added that he does not believe that its members are behind the recent attacks on Coptic churches.

Saudi Prince Bandar going to great lengths to topple Assad: Report

Foreign-backed militants fighting Syrian government forces gather along a road in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor. 
(File photo)

Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud has been striving to rally Western support to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

An article published on The Wall Street Journal Sunday said the prince has been making efforts behind the scenes to realize Riyadh’s top foreign policy goal of ousting Assad. 

“Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Elysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime, according to Arab, American and European officials,” the article said. 

It said the prince has meanwhile commissioned Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir with persuading US Congress and the administration of President Barack Obama to expand Washington’s role in Syria. 

US officials say Prince Bandar and Jubeir have told Washington that they do not necessarily expect a victory by the Syrian militants anytime soon, but they want to gradually change the battlefield in their favor. 

The Saudi plan is to steadily strengthen moderate groups of militants in Syria with the goal of someday seeing them in control in Damascus, it noted. 

On Tuesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal urged "firm and serious" action against Syria over an alleged chemical weapons attack which killed hundreds of people near Damascus on August 21, accusing the Assad government of having "lost its Arab identity." 

Syria has been gripped by a deadly unrest since March 2011. The United Nations says more than 100,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the outbreak of the violence.

source >>

Leaked Documents: U.S. Framed Syria in Chemical Weapons Attack

Published on 26 Aug 2013

Kenyataan Tuan Guru Nik Aziz

Kebenaran Itu Milik Allah, Bukan Di Barat dan Bukan Di Timur

Saya tidak terkejut apabila bekas Presiden Mesir, Hosni Mubarak dibebaskan daripada penjara oleh Mahkamah Mesir. Inilah tujuan sebenar rampasan kuasa yang dilakukan oleh tentera. Tidak perlu berlindung di sebalik alasan ekonomi dan sebagainya. Padahal kezaliman Hosni Mubarak selama 30 tahun menduduki takhta presiden satu fakta yang tidak boleh dinafikan sama sekali. Barangkali, Sheikh Al-Azhar yang kuat menyokong rampasan kuasa tentera pun sudah berpuas hati dengan pembebasan Hosni Mubarak. Saya menghormati kelilmuan yang ada pada Sheikh Al-Azhar, namun pendirian beliau dalam hal ini jelas salah seterang cahaya matahari di siang hari. Pada saya, inilah ujian berat yang sedang dihadapi oleh gerakan Islam khususnya di Mesir iaitu di saat para pemimpin mereka disumbat ke dalam penjara manakala penjenayah besar dilepas bebas.

Berpuas hatilah kerajaan Saudi yang kuat menyokong rampasan kuasa tentera. Benarlah kenyataan bahawa kebenaran itu milik Allah, tidak di Barat dan tidak Timur. Sekalipun penjaga dua tanah suci dimuliakan Allah SWT dengan tugas ini, namun belum tentu mereka memegang anak kunci kebenaran. Di samping menjaga dua tanah Suci, Saudi jugalah yang menjaga telaga minyak yang menghilangkan haus Amerika sekian lama. Inilah satu-satunya negara yang dinamakan sempena nama pemerintahnya iaitu Bani Saud.

Justeru, janganlah Saudi menyangka dengan sokongan mereka kepada tentera Mesir, mereka boleh mempengaruhi seluruh umat Islam di dunia. Jika darah Abdullah bin Zubair radhiallahuanhu pernah tertumpah akibat diperangi oleh Hajjaj bin Yusuf di Tanah Mekah, apa peliknya darah umat Islam di negara lain tertumpah angkara pemerintah Saudi hari ini? Jika kabilah Arab Jahiliyyah pun pernah bertugas untuk menjaga Tanah Suci sebelum kedatangan Islam, apakah jaminan penjaga Tanah Suci hari ini bebas dari melakukan kesilapan?

Syria refugees pour into Iraqi Kurdistan in thousands

Published on Aug 18, 2013 | Thousands of refugees from Syria are pouring over the border into Iraqi Kurdistan, the UN refugee agency says. Up to 10,000 crossed at Peshkhabour on Saturday, adding to an earlier influx of 7,000 on Thursday. The UN says the reasons are not entirely clear. Alan Paul from Save the Children told BBC News: "We don't know when the flood [of people] will stop."

Egypt's Foreign Aid - who actually benefit? THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and ....?

Published on Aug 16, 2013 | Egypt's Crisis Threatens Foreign Aid

Stratfor Vice President of Global Analysis Reva Bhalla explains the strategic interests driving foreign aid to Egypt and how ongoing unrest could affect the country's relationships with international donors.

WHERE IS MORSI NOW?

His daughter Shaimaa told a news conference in Cairo that the family was taking legal measures against the army. Mr Morsi has been held at an undisclosed location, without charge, since he was removed from power on 3 July.

BBC REPORT  HERE  :

Egypt's Ousted President Morsi Abducted By Army   Mr Morsi's son Osama spoke of his anger at his father's "kidnapping"