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By Kourosh Ziabari

14 December, 2012

@Countercurrents.org

American philosopher and cultural critic Henry A. Giroux believes that under the influence of the government, the higher education system in the United States has moved toward silencing progressive and alternative voices which try to challenge the U.S. militarism and its expansionistic policies. He also believes that the American students are not trained to be critical thinkers.

“I think many students are weary of America ‘s expansionist policies but there is not enough dissent among college students over such policies at the present time to actually challenge them. Many American students are educated largely to be consumers not critical thinkers and those who do escape the strangulating grip of a poisonous market driven neo-liberalism are suffering under the burden of debt while facing a future in which they will be underemployed or unemployed,” said Prof. Giroux in an exclusive interview with Tehran Times conducted last week.

Prof. Henry A. Giroux is a cultural critic and one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy who is best known for his contributions to cultural studies, youth studies, higher education and critical theory.

Seven books written by Giroux have been chosen as significant books of the year by the “American Educational Studies Association.” He has authored 33 books the latest of which is “Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability” which was published in 2012.

He has served as the Director of the Waterbury Forum in Education and Cultural Studies. He moved to McMaster University in May 2004, where he currently holds the Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies and currently runs the Public Intellectual project. Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors.

What follows is the text of Tehran Times’ interview with Prof. Giroux.

Q: What the majority of people around the world have heard about the United States is that it is a beacon of freedom in which everybody, is free to express his viewpoints, even if that certain viewpoint is not much favorable according to the mainstream discourse. What’s the reality? Are the leftist professors in the universities, for example, really free to express their unconventional opinions, in such cases as the special Israeli-American relationship, or other similar matters?

A: Academic dissent has been under attack for a long time in the United States . Its more notable moments came in the 1920s, the 1950s, and more recently after 9/11. What is new is that right wing elite, religious fundamentalists, and corporate groups have changed their strategy in limiting dissent. Instead of simply attacking, firing, and shaming intellectuals who criticize mainstream policies such as the Israeli-American relations–though that still happens–the more sophisticated approach is to prevent such intellectuals from getting tenure, influencing who gets hired, and finding ways to actually shape what is taught in the classroom.

For instance, some major donors are now demanding that particular books be read in classes. In one case, a donor demanded that Ayn Rand’s right wing book, “ Atlas Shrugged ,” be required reading in the class. In other cases, billionaire and mega corporate donors are trying to shape curriculum and hiring procedures as part of their gifts to higher education. This is not simply reactionary but undermines every noble principle that education embodies.

The other strategy is to increase the number of non-tenured professors in the profession so as to not only make them powerless in setting policy but also to keep them suspended in a state of fear over what they say in order not to jeopardize their paltry paying jobs. Over 70 percent of academics in higher education is either on a non-tenured track or is hired part-time. This is a form of indentured labor that undercuts a culture of questioning, dissent, and makes a joke out of academic freedom. As higher education becomes more expensive, corporatized, and devalued as a social good, there is also less and less room to teach subjects or create and sustain academic fields not tied directly to occupational training. In this instance, training is substituted for any viable form of critical education and the formative culture necessary for an educated citizenry withers.

Q: What do the new generation of American students and the foreign students who come to the United States for pursuing their studies, think about the U.S. foreign policy? Has the academia begun to challenge the American militarism, its hegemony and expansionistic policies? Does debate on such subjects take place in the American universities smoothly?

A: I think many students are weary of America ‘s expansionist policies but there is not enough dissent among college students over such policies at the present time to actually challenge them. Many American students are educated largely to be consumers not critical thinkers and those who do escape the strangulating grip of a poisonous market driven neo-liberalism are suffering under the burden of debt while facing a future in which they will be underemployed or unemployed. The present bears down on many American students as a burden as inequality and social disparities grow day by day. America has become the land of downward mobility for an entire generation of young people and not simply for a few. Under such circumstances, time becomes a burden and dissent a luxury, though within the last few years dissent has been growing. This movement is promising, but it does not have the reach and scope to make a real difference in power and control by the rich, mega corporations and financial elite. But its success remains to be tested.

Q: One of your perennial concerns, as reflected in your writings, has been social injustice. The United States last year witnessed the most unprecedented nationwide protests at the growing rift between the rich and poor and the social inequality in the framework of the Occupy Wall Street movement. What do you think about this movement and its achievements? Has it realized the objectives it was pursuing from the outset?

A: I think many young people in the Occupy Movement are changing the nature of the public conversation about politics, power, pedagogy, and hope. Young people are rejecting a future of debt, a society dominated by market values, militarism, a survival of the fittest ethic, and finance capital.

What they have made clear is that in order for democracy to become meaningful, all citizens, old and young, should be equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live. This is a message we heard from the brave students fighting tuition hikes and the destruction of civil liberties and social provisions in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Wall Street Movement has already won a decisive battle in producing a new language for how to talk about inequality, class and racial injustice, and the shape of a real democracy. For such a movement to succeed, progressives, educators, workers, middle-class professionals, and others need listen to the Wall Street Movement and young people all over the world who are insisting that the relationship between knowledge and power can be emancipatory, that their histories and experiences matter, and that what they say and do counts in their struggle to unlearn dominating privileges, productively reconstruct their relations with others, and transform, when necessary, the world around them. More importantly, they need to join students in engaging in a practice of freedom that points to new and radical forms of pedagogies that have a direct link to building social movements in and out of the colleges and universities.

Q: What’s your analysis of the popular uprisings in the Arab countries of the Middle East ? The whole scenario started with a Tunisian street vendor putting himself on fire in protest at the humiliation he had suffered, and the economic difficulties he and his family were subject to. Then the protests were extended to the rest of Arab world and engulfed the whole Middle East . Can we interpret these upheavals in the light of a set of revolutions aimed at realizing confiscated political, social and economic rights?

A: All of these protests emerge out of different religious, economic, political, and historical situations. What they have in common is the demand for an expansion of religious, social, political, and personal rights. They collectively signify a historical watershed in which the burning desire for democracy can no longer be contained. Young people, as a result of the new electronic and screen technologies, have immediate access to modes of knowledge, values, and social relations that point to the possibility of a future free of economic, political, and social injustice. Ideas can no longer be contained as they were under modernity. Borders are collapsing in the symbolic sense, knowledge flows, passions bleed into different bodies, public spheres, populations, and nations. Domination and domestic state terrorism can no longer isolate itself from the rest of the world. Democracy can no longer be contained, hidden behind walls, and contained by real and symbolic weapons of mass destruction. Democracy has become an aphrodisiac and tonic merging passion and a kind of wakefulness to the possibility of a new future, a new life, and new hopes.

Q: In your writings, you’ve spoken of the concept of economic Darwinism and called it one of the root causes of unbridled individualism which leads to the erosion of social responsibility, public values and community. Would you please share with us your insight on this concept and the impact it has had on the American lives?

A: Social Darwinism is the value system that drives the American economy. It is an ethic dominated by a war against all ethos which celebrates a radical individualism, extreme form of competitiveness, and separates actions from moral considerations. It is a poisonous worldview that views politics as an extension of war. In essence it is a form of domestic terrorism. It is a form of terrorism because it abstracts economics from ethics and social costs, makes a mockery of democracy, works to dismantle the welfare state, thrives on militarization, undermines any public sphere not governed by market values, and transforms people into commodities. Neo-liberalism’s rigid emphasis on unfettered individualism, competitiveness and flexibility displaces compassion, sharing and a concern for the welfare of others. In doing so, it dissolves crucial social bonds and undermines the profound nature of social responsibility and its ensuing concern for others. In removing individuals from broader social obligations, it not only tears up social solidarities, it also promotes a kind of individualism that is almost pathological in its disdain for public goods, community, social provisions, and public values. Given its tendency to instrumentalize knowledge, it exhibits mistrust for thoughtfulness, complexity, and critical dialogue and in doing so contributes to a culture of stupidity and cruelty in which the dominant ethic is organized around the discourse of war and a survival of the fittest mentality. Neo-liberalism is the antithesis of democracy.

The consequences of this worldview are everywhere in American society. Deregulation, privatization, atomization, and commodification now rule American institutions turning over the commanding heights of power to mega corporations, the defense industry, and ideological fundamentalists. America is a hugely rich country marked by massive poverty, inequality in wealth and income, and a political system controlled by big money. Its cultural apparatuses are controlled by mega corporations and its political system is now largely controlled by the apostles of finance and militarism. It is a country that is on the brink of a very dark historical period in which the winds of authoritarianism are posed to destroy all remnants of a claim to democracy.

Q: What do you think about the function of the multinational corporate media, their interests and their long-term objectives? Is it possible to have a sincere and ethical journalism while there are certain people in the power hierarchy who specify the direction and set the policies of the mainstream media?

A: A democracy cannot survive without a formative culture to support it. That culture is shaped in the commanding educational apparatuses in which knowledge is produced and subjects and identities are constructed. The mainstream media in the U.S. is largely controlled by 5 mega corporations that have abandoned their responsibility to act as a fourth estate, to make power accountable and offer critical analyses of American foreign and domestic policy. Instead, we have a mainstream media that trades in either an endless commercial bombardment of the American public, raises an insipid celebratory culture to the status of a state religion, and substitutes the obligations of real citizenship for the demands of consumerism and shopping. On the other hand, the new media is increasingly providing new public spaces for oppositional voices to be heard from a wide variety of sources, ranging from students and teachers to labor organizers and a range of new public intellectuals. There is no hope for the mainstream media. It has sold its soul to the market place and has largely become an inept source of legitimation for corporate and political sovereignty.

Q: What’s your viewpoint regarding the gradual decline of the U.S. imperial power and the weakening of its political, economic hegemony over the developing world? It seems that such countries as Brazil , China and Russia are emerging as serious contenders of the American economy and political power. Would you please share your viewpoint on that with us?

A: There are many other people who can speak to this issue more forcefully than I can. I am thinking particularly of Noam Chomsky, Andrew Bacevich, and Glenn Greenwald, among others. But what is clear is the U.S. is now facing a political and economic challenge unlike anything it has faced in the past. Politics is now local and power is global and that means that the U.S. has no way to challenge, within the usual rules, the power of multinational corporations that now write the rules for domestic and foreign policy. Moreover, this power is global and has no allegiance to the nation state except to use it to further its own financial interests. Hence, the full-fledged attack on the welfare state, women, minorities of class and color, public servants, and the institutions that do not buy completely into market driven values. As the power of the state crumbles, the state is reconfigured largely as a punishing state used increasingly to criminalize the behavior of those caught in dire social problems such as homelessness, debt servitude, unemployment, poverty, and various disabilities. Moreover, the model of the prison and its culture are seeping and spreading into schools where young people are now arrested for trivial behaviors such as dress code violations. How can a country that substitutes prisons for schools, revels in a culture of massive inequality and cruelty, and arrests huge numbers of its citizens make any claim on the future or for that matter even have one?

Q: And finally, what’s your prediction for President Obama’s upcoming second term? Will he yield to the pressures by Israeli lobby and comply with their demands in such cases as a possible military strike against Iran , the continued blockade of the Gaza Strip and settlement constructions, etc? Is there any way for Obama to evade being pushed by Israel ?

A: One would hope that Obama would show some courage in his second term and rule according to the precepts of justice rather than political pragmatism. I think that it is important to note that during his first time Obama moved the United States closer to the dictates of an authoritarian state. He initiated the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows him to kidnap and hold indefinitely without judicial rights anyone deemed a terrorist (a vague and abusive term); he has implanted targeted assassinations, which has included at least two American citizens living abroad; he has implemented what might be called an unaccountable surveillance state, and he has expanded the use of sinister drones to conduct a new and more ruthless type of warfare, which more often than not has resulted in the needless killing of innocent civilians. Obama has helped to create a Golden Age for executioners, revealing the grisly and gruesome side of state power committed to death through the use of cold, calculating machines run by automatons. Obama is not a liberal. He is not even progressive, but a conservative centrist who leans heavily towards the extremist elements in the Republican Party. He is inflexible around Israel ‘s repressive policies towards Palestinians and he has done nothing to address what it would mean to bring peace to the region.

But change is not made by people in power. It is often made by people in the streets. It is made by social movements who refuse to become the excess, disappeared, and disposable populations produced by authoritarian regimes. I am not optimistic but at the same time history is open and I would hope that as the Occupy Movement and other progressive social movements develop in the U.S. under the strain of severe political and economic conditions that Obama may find his footing and exhibit the kind of moral and political courage that is necessary to dismantle the allegiance to militarism that now characterizes its expansionist policies.

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He writes for Global Research, CounterCurrents.org, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages.

Five Martyred including People’s Assembly Member, 23 Injured in Three Terrorist Bombings Targeting Interior Ministry Building

Dec 12, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA)- Three terrorist bombings took place on Wednesday evening, targeting the Interior Ministry building Kafarsouseh area in Damascus, martyring five and injuring 23.

A statement from the Interior Ministry said that at 5:20 PM of Wednesday 12/12/2012, three explosions took place in front the Interior Ministry building, two of them caused by explosive devices with a delay between the two, followed five minutes later by the explosion of car bomb carrying around 200 kilograms of explosives, martyring five and injuring 23, including civilians and Ministry personnel.

The statement said that the authorities at the Ministry began investigations and lifted evidence, remains of explosives, and body parts from the site and sent them to labs to uncover the details of this terrorists attack.

The Ministry affirmed that this criminal act will not dissuade it from combating terrorism along with the Army and Armed Forces, vowing to exert all its forces and sacrifice everything for the sake of the security of citizens and the country, stressing that it will show no leniency in pursuing murderous takfiri terrorists.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry announced that the Interior Minister and senior officers at the Ministry are safe and unharmed.

People’s Assembly Member Martyred in Terrorist Attack on Interior Ministry

Among that martyrs was member of the People’s Assembly for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, Abdullah Kayrouz.

In a statement, the Politburo of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party said that the martyrdom of Kayrouz and other Syrians in the bombings that took place on Wednesday constitute clear evidence of the heinous, undiscriminating crimes committed by the armed terrorist groups in Syria.

The statement said that the Syrian Social Nationalist Party condemns terrorism and extremism and holds the western, Arab and regional forces that support terrorists groups responsible for the shedding of Syrian blood.

The statement affirmed that the blood of martyrs only makes Syrians more determined to confront the conspiracy targeting their homeland, and that terrorism will not dissuade them from carrying out their national duties and defending Syria’s unity and stability.

Kayrouz was born in the town of Kafer Takharim in Idleb. He assumed several posts in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party before becoming a member of its Politburo and a member of the People’s Assembly for Aleppo province.

Terrorists Detonate Explosive Device in Microbus in al-Mazzeh 86 Neighborhood, Martyring Three Citizens including a Journalist and Injuring Eight

Terrorists on Wednesday evening detonated an explosive device planted in a public transport minibus while it was in front of Hafez Ibrahim School in al-Mazzeh 86 neighborhood in Damascus, martyring and injuring a number of civilians including women and children.

A source at Martyr Yousef al-Azmeh Hosptial told SANA that the bodies of two martyrs arrived at the hospital, one of the a child, along with three people suffering critical injures due to the bombing.

A source at al-Muwasat Hospital said that the body of one woman who was martyred in the blast arrived at the hospital, along with five injure people, some of them women and children.

SANA’s reporter who visited the site of the attack said that the explosion destroyed the minibus completely and caused severe material damages to nearby cars and shops.

Al-Mazeh 86 was targeted several times by terrorists, most recently by an explosive device planted in a car near al-Saadeh bakery on December 6th which led to the martyring of one citizen and the injuring of others.

Journalist Anmar Yassin Mohammad who works at the News Center was among those who were martyred in this terrorist attack.

Mohammad worked as a chief editor and a program producer at the General Establishment of Radio and Television’s News Center, working on programs such as the daily news program Headlines and Columns and The World This Morning, in addition to working on a variety of other programs and interviews and as a field reporter.

Mohammad was born in 1973. He left behind a wife and two children.

One Citizen Martyred, Four Injured by Two Explosive Devices Blasts in Jaramana

Terrorists on Wednesday detonated two roadside bombs at the entrance of al-Qurayat neighborhood in Jaramana in Damascus Countryside, killing a citizen and injuring 4 others in addition to causing material damage.

A source at Jaramana Surgical Hospital told SANA reporter that a body of a martyr was admitted to the hospital, in addition to 4 citizens with light injures who were given necessary treatment.

Another source at al-Radi Hospital said that a citizen injured in the explosion was admitted to the hospital.

Member of Damascus Countryside Governorate Council, Iyad Barakat, said that the detonation of the two explosive devices took place near the Second Elementary School of Jaramana.

Terrorists Detonate 2 Explosive Devices in al-Qanawat, Citizen Injured

Meanwhile, terrorists blew up two explosive devices behind the Justice Palace building in al-Qanawat area in Damascus, injuring one citizen.

A source at Damascus Police Command told SANA reporter that the terrorists had attached one explosive device to a car, adding that the second one was planted between two parked vehicles.

The source said that one citizen was wounded by the terrorist attack, adding that there was material damage to the surrounding cars and stores.

A Number of Citizens, including Children, Martyred by Terrorists’ Shellfire in Aleppo

Terrorist groups fired a number of shells on al-Neel Street near the Orphaned Girl School, al-Qalaaji Hospital crossroad and the local market in Aleppo.

The terrorist attack caused the martyrdom of nine citizens at least, including children, a number of casualties and material damage.

An official source told SANA reporter that the authorities pursued the terrorists and clashed with them, killing and injuring many.

Terrorists Killed in Several Provinces, Explosive Devices Workshop Discovered in Damascus Countryside

Dec 12, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA) – A unit of the Armed Forces on Wednesday clashed with an armed terrorist group in Joret al-Shayyah neighborhood in Homs.

SANA reporter quoted a source in the province as saying that scores of terrorists, including snipers and machinegun shooters, were killed and others were wounded in the clashes.

In Homs countryside, an Armed Forces unit destroyed a gathering of terrorists north of al-Mustafa Mosque in the town of al-Rastan, inflicting heavy losses upon the terrorists.

In the village of al-Ghanto in Telbiseh countryside, an Armed forces unit destroyed 8 cars, some of which were equipped with heavy machineguns, which were used by terrorists to move around and transport weapons and munitions.

Another unit destroyed 4 cars equipped with machineguns along with the terrorists inside them in al-Nsasirye in Teldo area.

Terrorists’ Hideout Stormed in Damascus, Explosive Devices Workshop Discovered in Daraya, Damascus Countryside

The security authorities stormed an armed terrorist group’s hideout in a neighborhood in Damascus, killing all of its members.

The leader of the terrorist group, Iyad Ibrahim al-Dabbas, was identified among the dead.

An army unit  discovered a workshop for manufacturing explosive devices near al-Furn roundabout in Daraya city in Damascus Countryside.

An official source told SANA reporter that the army unit seized tens of explosive devices that were ready for remote detonation inside the workshop, in addition to materials and tools used by terrorists to make explosives.

The source added that another unit of the Armed Forces foiled terrorists’ attempt to detonate two explosive devices near al-Bashaer al-Arabiya Kindergarten in al-Kournish area in Daraya. It indicated that one of the explosive devices weighed 30 kg and it was planted at the entrance of the kindergarten while the second explosive device, weighing 50 kg, was planted on the street adjacent  to the kindergarten.

In Darayya, an Armed Forces units eliminated a number of terrorists including Abdelmajid Shamshan, Munir al-Muwadamani, Maamound Ghabash, and Nazih Ashour.

The Armed Forces also destroyed a number of terrorist hideouts along with the terrorists, weapons and munitions inside them in Douma and Harasta. The terrorists killed in these operations include Mahmoud al-Rayes and Mohammad Elewa, two leaders of terrorist groups, along with Anwar al-Boushi, Mohammad Abu Taqiya, and five snipers.

In an operation in Sheba’a, the Armed Forces killed or injured a number of terrorists and destroyed a van loaded with weapons, munitions and terrorist near Aqraba.

After investigations and surveillance, an Armed Forces unit dealt with an armed terrorist group in the eastern part of al-Ghouta, eliminating its members including the group’s leader Tahsin Barakat.

Armed Forces Units Eliminate Terrorists in Aleppo and Its Countryside

A source in Aleppo province said that Armed Forces units destroyed terrorist hideouts and gatherings in Aleppo countryside, specifically in the areas of Babnes, al-Huwaydi farm in al-Maslamiye, near Amrit company, al-Qarya Mosque in Handarat, and Ibn Hayyan School in Hreitan, eliminating large numbers of terrorists and injuring others.

Other units targeted gatherings of terrorists near Aalam al-Sehr complex, al-Rashidin in al-Zarbeh, Qabtan al-Jabal, the Great Mosque in Mare’a, the cemetery in Kafer Da’ael, and enar the finance department and the municipality building in al-Safira.

The Armed Forces also destroyed eight vehicles along with terrorist inside them in Tal Rahhal and carried out several operations in Daret Azza.

In Aleppo city, Armed Forces units killed Ala’a al-Za’im, a leader of a terrorist group, alogn with several members of his group in the Castello area, in addition to destroying a missile launcher in Busta al-Basha near Saad bin Muaz, and a gathering of terrorists in al-Lairamoun near the bus stations area and Marketna mall.

Other units also targeted gatherings of Terrorists in Bani Zeid, Hanano housings, the Old City near Aleppo Citadel, and the schools of Zhuhair bin Abi Sulma and Zakariya al-Qawwas.

Terrorists’ Hideouts Destroyed, Terrorists Killed in Idleb Countryside

Military units carried out last night and early morning today several qualitative operations, destroying terrorists’ hideouts and killing dozens of the terrorists inside of them in Idleb countryside.

An official source told SANA reporter that the bodies of the terrorists Mohammad Abdul Rahman Shuheim and Abi al-Nour al-Sibaei were identified among the killed as a result of the operations carried out in Sarja, Khan al-Subul and Saraqeb towns.

The source added that the military units destroyed several terrorists’ hideouts completely in Sarmin, Taranba, Ein al-Sooda, al-Janoudiyeh and al-Ghassaniyeg in Jisr al-Shugour countryside. The Armed Forces are continuing hunting the armed terrorist groups in al-Hamediyeh and Maaret al-Numaan in Idleb Province according to the source.

An Armed Forces unit clashed with an armed terrorist group that attempted to attack an army checkpoint at Kafer Najd bridge in Ariha area, with the clash resulting in the killing of four terrorists including Ahmad Rahhal and injuring others.

An Armed Forces unit targeted a terrorist gathering in al-Bara, killing a number of terrorists and destroying their machinegun-equipped vehicles.

Another unit targeted a gathering of terrorists in the town of al-Maghara, killing 28 terrorists and wounding many others, while yet another unit targeted a terrorist gathering in the town of Shannan, killing a number of terrorists including Sallouh Obeid, Mohammad al-Sayyed and Khaled al-Bek.

Five Explosive Devices Dismantled in Hama Province

Army engineering  units dismantled five explosive devices rigged for detonation that were planted on al-Twayna bridge in al-Sqailibiye area in Hama province.

A source in the province told SANA’s reporter that the devices ranged in weight from 25 to 30 kilograms.

Military Source in Central Region Dismisses News of Any Massacre in Aqrab, Hama Countryside

Dec 12, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- A military source in the Central Region on Wednesday denied news claiming that a massacre took place in Aqrab in Hama countryside.

Lavrov: US Recognition of Opposition Syrian Coalition Contradicts Geneva Statement

Dec 12, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA)- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that the US recognition of the opposition Syrian coalition contradicts what was agreed on in Geneva Statement regarding launching a comprehensive Syrian dialogue between representatives of the government and the opposition.

In a press conference following his talks with his Slovakian counterpart, Miroslav Lajcak, in Moscow on Wednesday, Lavrov wondered about this recognition, saying that by recognizing the opposition Syrian coalition, the US decided to bet on the military victory of the opposition.

The Russian Minister added that “Moscow will ask for explanations from Washington regarding its vision on the situation and its subsequent steps in light of this recognition.”

“Naturally, we will go for our American partners and see how they will act according to this announcement as it constitutes an unexpected turning point to Russia,” he confirmed.

He stressed that the American side showed during the latest talks in Geneva understanding to the need to create a climate for the Syrian comprehensive dialogue with the participation of the government.

While including one faction of terrorist groups committing terrorist acts in Syria in its list of international terrorism, Washington has recognized the rest of factions representing the political council of these groups.

US President Barack Obama awarded the ‘Doha Coalition’ as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people”, in a new step that stresses the U.S. hypocrisy and double standards policy towards terrorism in Syria.

The US recognition of the Doha Coalition followed that of the European Union, constituting an aggression on the right of the Syrian people to determine their future and elect their representatives by themselves through recognizing externally-formed organizations as guardians for the Syrians.

The U.S. and European moves are considered obstacles in the way of the international efforts seeking a solution to the crisis in Syria through dialogue since the Doha Coalition has taken terrorism as a means to achieve the goals of its founders and funders.

Damascus First Attorney-General Issues 3 Arrest Warrants in Absentia against al-Hariri, Saqr and al-Mikdad

Dec 12, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The First Attorney-General in Damascus Mohammed Marwan al-Loji issued three arrest warrants in absentia against the Lebanese MPs Saad Eddin al-Hariri and Oqab Saqr and the Syrian citizen Loai al-Mikdad.

In a statement to SANA, al-Loji said that the crimes committed by these people are terrorist crimes and those involved in them are terrorists which makes them liable to the international law on terrorism. He added that any state where those wanted men exist should hand them over to the Syrian authorities to be prosecuted, indicating that the failure to implement any of these warrants constitutes a breach of the international law.

The First Attorney-General said that the Public Prosecution was informed about the records which revealed the involvement of al-Hariri and Saqr in providing money and arms to the terrorists in Syria and the death of some terrorists sent by al-Hariri and Saqr on the Syrian-Lebanese borders.

He added that the Public Prosecution has filed a public interest litigation against the two Lebanese MPs and the Syrian citizen involved with them to take necessary procedures and start collecting evidence and investigation reports in this regard.

Al-Loji said that it was the duty of the Lebanese authorities to lift the parliamentary immunity of the involved MPs and refer them to the Lebanese justice or hand them over to the Syrian justice in terms of the agreements signed between the two sides.

He added that the Public Prosecution continues collecting evidence and follows up on what has been revealed regarding any statements or recorded phone calls, pointing out that a public interest litigation will be filed against anyone who proved to be involved in terrorist acts in Syria.

Lebanese National Media Agency announced Tuesday that the Interpol at the Lebanese Interior Security received via web arrest warrants form the Syrian Judicial authorities against Saad al-Hariri, MP Uqab Saqr and Spokesman of the “Free Army” Louai al-Mikdad on charges of arming this “Army”.

The Interpol will refer the arrest warrants to the Special General Prosecution.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister: Solution to Crisis in Syria through Disarming Disputed Parties, Launching Peaceful Dialogue

Dec 12, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA) – The Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the Zionist entity which occupied the Arab territories with a British-U.S. support is the main reason for what is taking place in Syria and the aggressive attacks against it.

In a statement to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), Mahathir Mohamad indicated that the crisis in Syria turned into a war between the East and the West, with the foreign powers exerting all efforts to overthrow the Syrian government. “In case the situation got more complicated in any state and the protests against its political system escalated, the army of that state should protect its people,” he added.

He attributed the difference between the situation in Syria and the similar cases to two main reasons, the first is related to the diversity in the Syrian society and the strength of the Syrian army while the second reason is that the foreign countries and their forces are doing their best to bring down the Syrian government.

The Malaysian Former Premier stressed that the solution to the crisis lies in disarming the disputed parties and starting a peaceful dialogue to settle tension in countries and then reducing the number of victims through preventing the escalation of attacks.

Higher Committee for Relief Discusses Humanitarian Aid Offered to Affected Families

Dec 12, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Participants in the Higher Committee for Relief meeting held on Wednesday focused on following up on what has been implemented in terms of providing humanitarian aid and solving problems which hinder the national efforts to help the affected families in the temporary makeshift shelters.

Minister of Social Affairs and Labor, Jassim Zakarya, said that SYP 23 million were transferred to about 40 civil associations to help them in providing aid to the affected families.

He referred to the Higher Committee for Relief humanitarian activities in Aleppo city to meet the citizens’ basic needs through distributing food and health aid and opening new temporary makeshift shelters in the city.

The Minister stressed the need for specifying obstacles hindering the delivery of aid to all areas and facilitating the passage of humanitarian convoys.

He added that a committee was formed to follow up on and evaluate the civil organizations’ work and funds with the aim of activating their role.

Minister Zakarya indicated that the Ministry has recently formed a committee to deal with any phenomenon regarding children who lost their parents and provide care for them.

In turn, Minister of State for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Affairs, Joseph Sweid said that a map to deliver humanitarian aid to the affected families in all provinces was set up in coordination with the sub-committees in order to meet all needs.

Director of International Organizations Department at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry Hussam-Eddin Ala reviewed the UN proposed project within the framework of the response plan for the first half of 2013 to be adopted before the end of this year.

He added that the United Nations proposed USD 523 million to fund the projects in the 2013 plan.

Syrian Human Rights Network, Syrian Family Forum Denounce Terrorist Bombings in Damascus

Dec 12, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Syrian Human Rights Network denounced the terrorist bombings which were committed by armed terrorist groups on Wednesday, resulting in the martyring and injuring of citizens.

In a statement, the Network said that these attacks are part of the efforts to undermine civil peace exerted by the opposition groups which are linked to foreign agendas, which constitutes a violation of the international human rights laws and resolutions that condemn terrorists and those who support and fund it.

The statement called for bringing the opposition groups that support terrorism to justice, stressing that those who support, finance and direct terrorism must be subject to articles 25 and 27 of the Rome Statute.

Syrian Family Forum Condemns Terrorist Bombings in Damascus

The Syrian Family Forum condemned the terrorist bombings that took place in Damascus on Wednesday, martyring and injuring innocent civilians.

In a statement, the Forum held the United States and its minions in the region – including Al Saud, Al Thani, the Doha coalition and its supporters – responsible for these crimes.

Austrian State Secretary Calls for Keeping Austrian Unit in UNDOF Forces

Dec 12, 2012

VIENNES, (SANA) – Austrian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Reinhold Lopatka stressed the need for maintaining  the deployment of the Austrian forces operating in the United Nations Disengagement Forces (UNDOF) deployed in the Golan, as the Austrian forces have a good reputation and considerable experience that allows them to take the necessary steps and precautions to protect themselves in light of the events in Syria.

In a statement issued by the Austrian State Secretary for Foreign Affairs on Wednesday, Lopatka said that Austria asked the UN to take extra precautionary measures to protect the UNDOF forces, particularly after the recent attacks by terrorists on a convoy transporting Austrian soldiers on the road to Damascus International Airport.

The statement said that the Austrian Parliament approved extending the mission of Austrian international forces operating in 12 areas around the world, including the Golan and South Lebanon.

The aforementioned attack by terrorists injured two members of the Austrian unit operating with the UNDOF forces.

Mother of Ukrainian Journalists Abducted in Syria Issues Appeal for Her Release

Dec 12, 2012

KIEV, (SANA) – The mother of Ukrainian journalist Anhar Kochneva, who was abducted in early October by terrorists in Syria who threaten to kill her, issued on appeal on Wednesday to release her daughter, asking her government and Russia to assist in this.

In a video broadcast by the Ukrainian channel 1+1, Lyudmila Kochneva was shown crying and addressing those who kidnapped her daughter, reminding them that they too have mothers and children and begging them to release her daughter.

In turn, the Ukrainian Foreign Minsitry warned Kochneva’s abductors from harming her.

Media sources reported that the terrorist group currently holding Kochneva hostage threatened to kill her on Thursday unless they receive a ransom of USD 50 million.

Authorities Confiscate Car Loaded with 300 Gas Cylinders to Be Smuggled in Hasaka

Dec 12, 2012

HASAKA, (SANA) – Authorities seized on Wednesday a car loaded with 300 gas cylinders for domestic use that were prepared for smuggling near al-Baydar crossroad on al-Qamishli-Tal Tamer road in Hasaka countryside.

An official source in the Province told SANA reporter that the cylinders were distributed to the citizens of al-Derbasiyeh town immediately at the official price.

The authorities confiscated last week a car loaded with 600 gas cylinders , as they were prepared for smuggling in the same area.

Khamenei: Sides Stoking Violence and Igniting Civil War in Syria Responsible for Continuing Crisis

Dec 11, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, said that the parties which work on stoking violence and igniting a civil war in Syria are responsible for continuing the crisis in it.

Meeting the participants in the International Conference for Islamic Awakening in Tehran, Khamenei warned of the enemies’ attempts to create divisions among Muslims through exploiting their racial and sectarian disputes.

He called upon all Muslims to solve their disputes through dialogue and peaceful means and be aware of the western-U.S. moves.

Khamenei hailed the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, expressing appreciation of the Palestinian resistance’s victory over the Israeli enemy in its recent assault on the Gaza Strip.

MASSAR Carries out Several Activities Targeting Displaced Children and Youths in Lattakia

Dec 11, 2012

LATTAKIA, (SANA) – Lattakia’s Exploring Centre “Amwaj MASSAR” continued to hold several activities targeting children and youths with the aim of developing a generation able to shoulder responsibility towards the society.

Amwaj MASSAR is one of the projects of the Syria Trust for Development, which has expanded activities to include all children affected by the recent events, that forced large numbers of children and youths to leave their houses because of the acts of the armed terrorist groups.

The Trust, in cooperation with the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs and with the assistance of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, started a series of activities in the makeshift centers in the city, including distributing 300 baskets of children milk to families staying at the Sport City.

Activities, carried out in the framework of MASSAR, also included visits to elementary schools, in cooperation with the Education Directorate in Lattakia, where the Trust made medical tests to all the 6-year-old children in the school.

The Trust made several other health-related and artistic activities, including shaving for about 100 children, and taking hundreds others to watch films.

The Syria Trust for Development is a non-governmental and non-profit organization that works on empowering societies and persons through encouraging social initiatives and building partnerships with the civil society organizations

By Asjylyn Loder, Anthony Dipaola and Grant Smith

13 December, 2012

@ Bloomberg

Whether crude costs $60 a barrel or twice that amount, the U.S. is almost free of depending on imported energy and positioned to supplant Saudi Arabia as the world’s No. 1 producer of oil.

Even if U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil drops 30 percent from the current $86 a barrel, oil companies will boost production as new technologies allow them to extract crude from shale formations, said Ed Morse, the global head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc. The nation, which was last self- sufficient when Harry S. Truman was president in 1952, met 83 percent of its energy needs in the first eight months of this year, according to the Energy Department in Washington.

Saudi Arabia can’t afford a decline of that magnitude after the government pledged an unprecedented $630 billion on social welfare and building projects. The kingdom, which uses Brent crude to help set export rates, couldn’t meet those commitments if prices fell 25 percent from the current $108 a barrel, according to Samuel Ciszuk, an oil consultant at KBC Energy Economics in Walton-on-Thames, England.

“U.S. shale oil producers can’t lose,” Leo Drollas, the chief economist at the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies, which was founded by Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister, said in a Dec. 10 telephone interview. “The Saudis really need to balance their budget at about $95. For the U.S. producers, that is more than ample.”

New Deposits

U.S. average daily output will climb 14 percent this year, the most in six decades, according to the Energy Department, as Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Chesapeake Energy Corp. exploit new deposits from North Dakota to Texas. Even though America’s 6.8 million barrels a day in November was 30 percent less than Saudi Arabia’s 9.7 million, the International Energy Agency says the U.S. will be bigger by 2020.

West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, will rise about 15 percent through 2015, to $100 a barrel, according to the median of 13 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Brent, the benchmark for Arab Light and Arab Medium grades, may gain less than 1 percent, to $110, the forecasts show.

WTI slipped 88 cents, or 1 percent, to settle at $85.89 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent for January settlement on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange fell $1.59, or 1.5 percent, to $107.91 a barrel. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries yesterday kept its official production ceiling at 30 million barrels a day.

Abdullah’s Pledge

While Morse says U.S. producers break even with prices of about $72 to $75 a barrel, and will keep drilling new shale wells at $60 because they’ve already hedged future output, Saudi Arabia faces different challenges.

Last year, as popular uprisings toppled leaders in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and sparked a civil war in Syria, Saudi King Abdullah promised to spend $130 billion on extra subsidies for housing and benefits as well as $500 billion for previously announced infrastructure projects.

The kingdom’s population of 28.4 million is growing 2.9 percent a year, according to the Central Department of Statistics and Information. At current rates, it will need all its own oil by 2032, leaving nothing to export, Citigroup said in a Sept. 4 report. The country uses about 25 percent of its fuel production domestically, more per capita than any other industrialized nation, the report said.

Fuel Misuse

Waste and misuse of fossil fuels threaten to double consumption by 2030, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in a Nov. 24 speech in Riyadh. The kingdom consumes an average of 2.5 barrels of oil and oil equivalents to produce $1,000 of national income, twice the global average, he said.

“The Saudis are trying to do two things: they want to keep prices from going too high to hurt economic activity and at the same time not let oil go below $100 a barrel,” Ciszuk, the KBC Energy consultant said in a telephone interview Dec. 5. “I would struggle to see the Saudis willing or able to take oil prices low enough to cut off U.S. shale developments since even they need oil in the $80s to balance the government budget through 2013 and 2014.”

For all the growth in U.S. production, Al-Naimi told reporters at yesterday’s OPEC meeting he isn’t concerned by the burgeoning output from shale deposits, while United Arab Emirates Oil Minister Mohammed Al-Hamli said producers are “very concerned” and will protect their interests.

Global Sway

Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest member, can still sway global markets more than other nations. It has spare capacity to pump as much as 12.5 million barrels a day, or 29 percent more than last month’s levels, which were the lowest in 13 months, according to an OPEC report this week. The country supplies more than 10 percent of the world’s oil.

“The U.S. will never be the new Saudi Arabia,” said Mike Wittner, Societe Generale’s New York-based head of oil market research for the Americas. “The Saudis are able to increase production when they want to and are willing to cut when they need to, and the U.S. will never do either of those things.”

U.S. stockpiles have grown 13 percent in 2012 as production climbed to nearly a 19-year high, according to the Energy Department. The rise in reserves is one reason why the average regular unleaded gasoline price has tumbled from this year’s high of $3.936 a gallon, according to data compiled by AAA. The current price of $3.315 is 1.1 percent higher than the start of the year.

Shrinking Spread

Analysts estimate WTI will rise more than Brent in coming years partly because of the way oil pipelines flow in the U.S., bringing crude to the nation’s storage hub and delivery point for Nymex futures contracts in Cushing, Oklahoma. The American grade has traded at an average discount of about $17 a barrel this year, compared with a premium of about 95 cents in the 10 years through 2010.

Brent has also been buoyed by U.S. and European sanctions on Iran, which choked off about 1 million barrels a day, or 1.1 percent of the global total, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Buzzard field in the North Sea, which pumps 200,000 barrels a day, was shut for two months for maintenance.

The price gap will narrow to as little as $4.50 next year, as the glut in Cushing eases, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The Seaway pipeline, operated by Enbridge Inc. and Enterprise Products Partners LP, will be able to send 400,000 barrels a day from Cushing to the Houston area starting Jan. 1, compared with 150,000 a day now, Enterprise Chief Executive Officer Mike Creel said on Nov. 13.

Big Short

The last time the U.S. rivaled Saudi Arabia proved a disaster for America’s oil industry and for the kingdom. U.S. production expanded 10 percent from 1976 to 1985, reaching the highest level since the Arab embargo in 1973.

By late 1985, the Saudis were pumping more crude to defend their market dominance. WTI plunged to $10 a barrel in March 1986. U.S. output declined for 21 of the next 22 years and didn’t start growing again until 2009.

Now, the U.S. may be producing too much oil and WTI may drop as low as $50 a barrel within the next two years unless policy makers scrap a law limiting exports, Francisco Blanch, the head of commodities research for Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York, said in an interview.

“WTI is our big short for next year,” Blanch said. Should futures fall to between $50 and $65 a barrel, production gains will slow, he said.

If the U.S. natural gas market is any guide, declining prices don’t guarantee reduced supply. Gas dropped to a 10-year- low of $1.902 per million British thermal units in April. New production technology helped drive inventories to a record last month even though the number of gas rigs operating in the country fell to a 13-year low on Nov. 9, according to Houston- based Baker Hughes Inc.

“What’s going on with U.S. oil is the biggest development over the last 40 years,” Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said in a telephone interview. “U.S. shale, rather than anything, is the game changer. OPEC nations are concerned, all of them.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Asjylyn Loder in New York at aloder@bloomberg.net; Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net; Grant Smith in London at gsmith52@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net; Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

®2012 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

President al-Assad Receives Islamic Education Preachers, Stresses Need for Emphasizing True Islamic Values

Dec 11, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday received Islamic education preachers working in the mosques and Islamic institutes of Damascus and its countryside.

During the meeting, President al-Assad stressed the need for emphasizing the true Islamic values which are based on the great moral values embodied by the Prophet Mohammad.

The President also pointed out to the strong correlation between Arabism and Islam, both of which constitute pillars of the Syrian society.

For their part, the preachers underlined Syria’s capabilities for holding Islamic activities, thanking President al-Assad for his support to the pioneering experience of Islamic preaching by women which had a significant positive impact on woman in Syrian society.

The meeting was attended by Minister of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) Dr. Mohammad Abdelsattar al-Sayed.

Military Operations against al-Qaeda-linked Terrorist Groups Continue in Several Areas, Scores of Terrorists Eliminated

Dec 11, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA)_ Units of the Armed Forces on Tuesday continued pursuing terrorists belonging to Jabhat al-Nusra in Aqraba town in Damascus Countryside, killing a number of them and injuring others.

An official source in the province told SANA reporter that a unit of the Armed Forces clashed with an armed terrorist group near the International School in Aqraba, killing 4 snipers.

The source said that all members of an armed terrorist group, who were looting and killing citizens, were killed near Abu-Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in Aqraba.

The sources added that the terrorist group has wreaked havoc and devastation in the mosque.

In al-Ziyabiye, an Armed Forcfes unit eliminated a number of terrorists from Jabhet al-Nusra, including a Libyan called Omar Ghabathi, Ibrahim Kharfoush, and Ghassab al-Abdullah.

In Darayya, an Armed Forces unit clashed with terrorist groups and eliminated a number of snipers in al-Zaytoun roundabout, including Ala’a Ziyade, Mohammad al-Nakkash, Mohammad Nour al-Shemali, and Marwan Kharibeh.

In the town of Sheba’a, another unit carried out an operation which resulted in the destruction of a terrorist hideout al0ong with the weapons, munitions and terrorists inside it, including terrorists Mohammad Mousa and Zakariya al-Bekaei.

Terrorists Killed or Injured While Rigging Car Bomb in al-Qadam in Damascus

A car bomb exploded while terrorists were rigging it with large amounts of explosives in al-Qadam neighborhood in Damascus, resulting in killing or injuring all the members of the terrorist group.

An official source told SANA’s reporter that the explosion took place near al-Dabe’a roundabout in al-Dahabiye street in the neighborhood while the terrorists were rigging the car before transporting it and detonating it elsewhere.

The Syrian Army continues its national Duty in Aleppo

The armed forces today targeted gatherings in Aleppo and its countryside, killing scores of the terrorists and destroying  their cars and munitions.

At al-Mislemiya, Babnes, al-Bab in Aleppo countryside, the army destroyed 12 cars loaded with weapon and munitions, in addition to destroying 8 cars on Tadef- Sharbaa road and 14 cars on Tal Rifaat-Fafin road.

In the city of Aleppo, units of the army targeted gatherings of terrorists in Tal al-Zarazeer, Baaedin, al-Shaar, al-Lermon, killing tens of them and injuring others , particularly near the Pullman station where a number of vehicles, equipped with machineguns were destroyed.

Al-Kindi Hospital and External Road of Aleppo Airport Cleared from Terrorists

Units of the Armed Forces restored in a series of precise and quick operations regular traffic movement to the external road of Aleppo International Airport after having eliminated the groups of mercenary terrorists which hindered the citizens’ movement towards the Airport from al-Ramouseh.

An official source told SANA reporter that the operations resulted in killing scores of terrorists and destroying their gatherings and criminal equipment.

The source added that another military unit cleared al-Kindi Hospital in the city of Aleppo from the armed terrorist groups which had used it as a den to store ammunition and weapons and attack the residents in the area.

Turkish and Foreign Terrorists Killed in Bustan al-Basha

SANA reporter quoted the source as saying that the army continued to tighten the noose the mercenary terrorists in Bustan al-Basha area and cleared Wajih Abdul-Daem School from the terrorists.

An armed terrorist group was killed in the area, with most of its members are from Turkish and other foreign nationalities, according to the source.

In the old city of Aleppo, the army units killed scores of mercenary terrorists and injured others in al-Zahrawi, al-Khabiyeh and al-Bandareh markets and the prison street.

The Army eliminates Terrorists in Homs Countryside

The Army units today destroyed 4 cars equipped with heavy machineguns and mortars in addition to a factory for preparing explosives and an advanced communications center in al-Hilmouz, Talbeisa.

An official source in Homs told SANA reporter that the army operation led to the killing of tens of the most dangerous terrorists, among them Awad al-Sidiq, Satam Dilleh, A’ed al-Hamwi, shahin al-Hifiyan known as al-Satour and Yazid Marwan known as “the scorpion”.

The source added that another army unit destroyed a den for terrorists near al-Maasara in Talbeisa, killing all terrorists hidden inside it, among them were Ali Hourani, Mahmoud al-Daher and Mustafa al-Khateeb.

At al-Warsha neighborhood in Homs, a unit of the army clashed with terrorists who were terrifying citizens and families, killing a sniper called Mohammad Abbarah.

Armed Forces Eliminate Scores of Terrorists in Deir Ezzor

The Armed Forces continued clearing areas in Deir Ezzor and its countryside from the armed terrorist groups.

An official source told SANA that the army clashed with terrorists near Fuad Cinema in Deir Ezzor city nd killed 4 terrorists.

The source added that the army killed and injured the members of the so-called “al-Mustafa Battalion” in al-Takaya Street.

In al-Jbeila neighborhood, an army unit clashed with armed terrorist groups, eliminating scores of terrorists and injuring others.

The Armed Forces also killed and injured members of a terrorist group in al-Sheikh Yaseen area in the city.

Another army unit eliminated members of the so-called “al-Qadeysseh Battalion” in the area of Hatlah in Deir Ezzor countryside.

Popular March in al-Maadi in Aleppo Demands Expulsion of Terrorist Groups

Dec 11, 2012

ALEPPO, (SANA)- A popular march went out in al-Maadi Area in the city of Aleppo on Tuesday, demanding the expulsion of the armed terrorist groups from the area.

Hundreds of residents participated in the march expressing their condemnation of the terrorist groups that are targeting citizens and services institutions, including bakeries, telephone and electricity networks and infrastructure in the area.

SANA reporter said the protesters marched the main streets in al-Maadi area chanting slogans demanding the expulsion of the terrorists and putting an end to their attacks and violations.

They voiced their denunciation of the Western and regional countries that are supporting and funding the terrorism targeting the Syrian people.

Workshop by People’s Assembly and UNFPA on Population Development

Dec 11, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Speaker of the People’s Assembly, Mohammad Jihad al-Laham, stressed continuing efforts to restore security and stability to all areas and rehabilitate infrastructure destroyed by the armed terrorist groups, which are funded and armed by regional and western countries, particularly Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the US.

Al-Laham was Speaking at the opening of a workshop on monitoring and evaluating population and development issues, organized in cooperation with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA).

He stressed that security and stability are essential to provide the appropriate foundation and environment to achieve development, therefore “Syria will not tolerate the takfiri terrorism which targets its people from all spectrums and political affiliations and it will root out its tools.”

The Speaker indicated to the People’s Assembly role in setting up necessary programs and plans to enhance the population development in Syria and contribute to improving society, particularly under the current circumstances which negatively affected all development sectors and hindered the implementation of several programs.

Al-Laham stressed the need for preparing regular reports on population development to ensure effective results that help deal with the damage caused to all society classes and rehabilitate the damaged infrastructure and achieve economic stability in order to create a social safety network that meets the people’s aspirations.

He said that population development constitutes part of the comprehensive development adopted by Syria with the aim of improving the citizens’ livelihood and provide better chances for the youth.

This goal will not be achieved, Al-Lahham highlighted, unless the efforts of the executive and legislative institutions in Syria are united with those of civil and international organizations, particularly the UNFPA, to raise awareness of issues related to population and reproductive health in order to draw outappropriate plans to achieve development.

Al-Laham affirmed that the government will spare no efforts to contribute to rehabilitating destroyed residences and to provide subsidies and financial compensations to those whose properties were damaged in the current circumstances.

He stressed that Syria will achieve victory over the conspirators thanks to its people, leadership and the sacrifices of its army, stressing determination to build a better future that guarantees the citizens’ rights and meet their aspirations.

The UNFPA Assistant Representative in Syria, Omar Ballan, emphasized the importance of the workshop in shedding light on the objective, economic, educational and social circumstances which affect the women’s health.

He highlighted the important role of People’s Assembly in monitoring, evaluating and contributing to provide data on issues related to population.

Ballan stressed the UNFPA’s commitment to support the efforts exerted by the People’s Assembly to enhance awareness of population and development through setting up response plans and participating in all training, capability building and educational activities.

He pointed out to the Fund’s efforts to collect data in order to set up the 2013 response plan, adding that the current data should be further developed to better specify the needs.

Representatives from the Ministries of Health and the Social Affairs and Labor, the Planning and International Cooperation Commission and the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs participated in the workshop.

Participants in the workshop stressed the need to spread the culture of small families using mass media, and making population issues a priority in meetings of the Cabinet and relevant authorities.

They also stressed the need to hold seminars and meetings to tackle the facts of the effects of population growth, encourage family planning, stressing the need for mass media in spreading awareness about population growth and the need to include the concepts of populations issues, family planning and reproductive health in school curricula.

The participants called for implementing plans to combat all forms of discrimination against women, in addition to focusing on balancing between economic growth and population growth.

The first session dealt with criteria of evaluation and monitoring in population issues, with participants saying that an integrated monitoring and evaluation system was designed and will be used in the public sector as a preliminary step.

They also called for increasing the participation of the People’s Assembly in dealing with population issues, in addition to implementing a national population strategy, and issuing laws for protecting women from violence and harassment and protecting children and people with special needs from violence, abuse and neglect.

Al-Zoubi: Terrorists’ Victories Imaginary, US-Western Statements on Chemical Weapons Caused by Inability to Achieve Gains on Ground

Dec 11, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Minister of Information Omran al-Zoubi said that the victories claimed by some media outlets of the armed terrorist groups are “baseless and imaginary victories,”

In an interview on the Lebanese al-Manar TV on Monday, Minister al-Zoubi said that there are clashes in specific areas in Damascus Countryside and attempts by the terrorist organizations to achieve any kind of progress, adding that the life is normal in Damascus.

Al-Zoubi added that these terrorist groups are extremist Takfiri organizations, stressing that “When the US places Jabhat al-Nusra on the international terrorist organizations’ list, that is because it realizes the nature of these groups which are fighting the Syrian Armed Forces,”

He highlighted that Syria realizes the nature of the confront with the enemy plot and is working on protecting the state institutions and infrastructure.

He pointed out that the suffering of the Syrians in securing some materials is caused by the acts of the terrorist groups which are attacking the vehicles transporting wheat, petroleum and other goods.

He noted that the terrorist bombings in residential areas aim at terrorizing people, embarrassing the security and military system and alluding the public opinion to the idea that they can do whatever they want whenever they want, adding that these acts are part of media and military policy for those sides.

Al-Zoubi said that the US-western repeated talks on the chemical weapons in Syria are caused by their inability to achieve any progress on the ground, “Syria doesn’t own any internationally-banned weapons, whether chemical, nuclear or biological”, he stressed, adding that “Even if Syria possessed such weapons, it will not use them for moral reasons,”

“Statements on this topic resemble those issued against Iraq and other countries. We don’t ignore any possibility, including the Iraqi scenario. The world can’t bear the consequences of such risk. The western countries should realize that Syria isn’t a simple or easy country. Damascus has friends and there are regional and international balances,”

Minister al-Zoubi added that there are intelligence agencies operating on the Syrian soil since the beginning of the crisis, embodied in the existence of advanced equipment and technologies among the terrorist groups and in high-tech sabotage acts committed by the terrorists.

He considered the Turkish talks on Syrian threats against Turkey as naive, adding that Syria never threatened, attacked or interfered in any neighboring countries’ affairs.

“Deployment of the Patriot missiles doesn’t target Syria only, it is part of radars and early warning systems established by the US with cooperation with the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. These systems target Iran, Syria, Cyprus, Greece, Egypt and other countries,” he noted.

Minister al-Zoubi stressed that the USA sat at the table with Russia when it felt that its project is falling, adding that “Yet, the dialogue between the two sides is positive if the talks are based on respecting the Syrian independency and as long as the talks will lead to a political process based on supporting the national dialogue,”

Al-Zoubi stressed the need to adhering to Geneva statement and the initiative of the former UN envoy Kofi Annan, that are based on respecting national independence and not meddling in the countries’ internal affairs.

Al-Zoubi added that the Syrians, who brought President Bashar al-Assad to power through ballots, are the only side to determine how and who to rule.

He said that the political leadership has been saying, right from the beginning of the crisis, that the destiny of the leadership is determined only by the people.

Minister al-Zoubi said Russia’s stance towards Syria is “firm, not contradicted, rather clear and frank” as it shows keenness on the interest of Syrian state and people.

” Russia also rejects any foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, mainly in a sovereign issue and calls for the necessity of unifying efforts to support a political process based on dialogue, the participation of all Syrian sides without exception and halting violence, ” he added.

Minister al-Zoubi said “Doha coalition is a political gathering that has been already existed and reproduced and its members are the same who had formed Istanbul Council.

He added that the Syrian opposition abroad, including Doha coalition don’t behave in Syria’s interest because pursuing the path of violence, rejecting dialogue and adopting foreign agendas mean that the opposition has no political project.

The Minister underlined that the formation of the so-called military councils for the armed groups will only lead to more violence, killing and destruction.

He pointed out that Syria has well-documented information that confirm that Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) encompasses several armed groups with different names, asserting that the US inclusion of the Front in its international list of terrorist organizations is not enough and doesn’t reflect the US commitment to the UN Security Council’s resolutions on combating terrorism.

“Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government directly, openly and flagrantly violates its international obligations regarding cooperation in combating terrorism,” Minister al-Zoubi said, calling on the international community and the UN to put pressure on all countries to commit to combating terrorism.

The information minister said it is regrettable to talk about the self-dissociation policy and at the same time dividing this policy with respect to options of all states and governments.” self-dissociation policy is not an option of the Lebanese government in terms of its ministers only, but is supposed to be the option of Lebanon as a whole because the government is the side who leads the Lebanese state,”

Minister al-Zoubi asserted that some leaders and figures in the Lebanese Future party are responsible for smuggling weapons to the armed terrorist groups in Syria, recruiting fighters and financing these groups which violate the agreements signed between Syria and Lebanon on all levels and breach the rules of the international law.

Churkin: Opposition Fighters in Syria Use Anti-aircraft Missiles Smuggled from Libya

Dec 11, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA) – Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, stressed that there is information which indicates that the anti-aircraft missiles smuggled from Libya are being used by the armed groups in Syria.

Russia Today website quoted Churkin as saying in a speech in front of the UN Security Council on Monday that the infiltration of weapons from Libya will influence not only the neighboring countries.

He stressed the necessity of considering a decision on preventing the smuggling of weapons from Libya, including portable anti-aircraft missiles, in line with a UN Security Council resolution in this regard, adding that the presence of chemical weapons in this country further complicates the problem.

Khamenei: Sides Stoking Violence and Igniting Civil War in Syria Responsible for Continuing Crisis

Dec 11, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, said that the parties which work on stoking violence and igniting a civil war in Syria are responsible for continuing the crisis in it.

Meeting the participants in the International Conference for Islamic Awakening in Tehran, Khamenei warned of the enemies’ attempts to create divisions among Muslims through exploiting their racial and sectarian disputes.

He called upon all Muslims to solve their disputes through dialogue and peaceful means and be aware of the western-U.S. moves.

Khamenei hailed the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, expressing appreciation of the Palestinian resistance’s victory over the Israeli enemy in its recent assault on the Gaza Strip

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Discusses with Syrian and Chinese Ambassadors in Russia the Situation in Syria

Dec 11, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA) – The Russian President’s Envoy to the Middle East, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, on Tuesday discussed with Syria’s Ambassador in Russia Riyad Haddad the situation in Syria.

A statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the meeting underlined the effective efforts exerted by Russia to expedite the cessation of violence in Syria and moving to a political track.

The statement said that the two sides affirmed conviction that the closing statement of the Geneva meeting of the work group on Syria issued on June 30th still forms the irreplaceable and consensual basis of finding a peaceful solution for the crisis in Syria.

Earlier, Bogdanov discussed with China’s Ambassador in Russia Li Hui the situation in Syria.

A statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry after the meeting said the two side discussed the situation in Syria and work in the framework of unifying international efforts to achieve a diplomatic and political resolution for the crisis in Syria and to support the mission of UN Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Ibrahimi.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that claims that Russia and China are responsible for the continuation of the crisis are shameful and unjust claims.

Regarding the use of veto in the Security Council to prevent issuing unilateral decisions that threaten only the government and disregard the acts of armed opposition groups, Lavrov noted that the right to veto isn’t a whim, rather it’s part of international law and the UN charter and was based on a US initiative during the formation of the UN.

Syrian Human Rights Network Calls on UNICEF to Condemn Armed Groups’ Crimes against Children in Syria

Dec 11, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Syrian Human Rights Network called upon the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to condemn the crimes, acts of violence and violations committed by the armed terrorist groups against children in Syria.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the network called on the UNICEF representative to carry out her duty towards children inside Syria and abroad in terms of what they are exposed to by the mercenary gangs, backed by countries that are known for their support of terrorism in the region and the world.

The statement condemned the fact that the armed terrorist groups are using and exploiting the children in their crimes against humanity and childhood, stressing that the network has documented the armed groups’ violations and crimes against children.

The network highlighted the necessity for the UNICEF to pay attention to these crimes and condemn them as its mission is to care for children’s rights and protect them.

“It is better to protect children than teaching them how to commit a crime which arouses fears over bringing up a generation that is used to the culture of murdering and terrorism in which the UNICEF took part through overlooking the crimes of the terrorist groups,” the statement said.

It added that the UNICEF policy of double standards towards these violations is a flagrant breach of the children rights care and protection which the organization claimsto be one of its main priorities and principles.

The network cited the conduct of the UNICEF goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie in terms of visiting al-Zaatari camp in Jordan while ignoring the displaced families inside Syria as an evidence on the organization’s double standards policy.

The network called on the UNICEF ambassador to visit displaced families and children and inspect their situation in Syria so that her work and donation will not be in the framework of instigating on sedition and conspiring against Syria, the thing which violates the goals of the organization.

The network highlighted the violations and crimes being committed against children at schools, particularly regarding the terrorists’ mortar attacks on schools.

“Not condemning these crimes by international and human rights organizations stresses that these organizations are biased to violence and instigate it, said the statement.

Opposition Coordination Body Head Warns of Western Policy against Syria

Dec 11, 2012

BEIRUT, (SANA) – Haytham Manna, Head of the Syrian opposition Coordination Body abroad, described the meetings of the opposition abroad in Doha as a kitchen for conspiring against the homeland and dividing roles and goods.

In an article published by the Lebanese As-Safir newspaper, Manna said that the Body considered the Western and Gulf keenness to make those parties meeting abroad look as “representatives of the homeland, the opposition and the people” a serious attempt to cancel all possibilities for a civil democratic transition in Syria.

Manna warned against the dangers of the western policy towards Syria which is mainly based on providing unlimited support to an opposition group that announced itself in Doha.

He said that all indications refer that “a hearty diplomatic, financial and even military injection” will be provided to Doha Coalition in Marrakech where a meeting of the so-called “Friends of Syria” will be held on Wednesday.

Manna revealed that the Coordination Body has received veiled threats and warnings directed by several western officials regarding its stance towards Doha coalition, adding that the Body was threatened with marginalization if it did not join the coalition.

He reminded those who claim to do service to Syria that the number of innocent victims has doubled due to their silence towards the Turkish involvement in facilitating the movement of extremists into Syria through the Turkish borders.

Political Crisis in Egypt Turns to a Military Crisis with Economic Repercussions

Dec 10, 2012

CAIRO, (SANA) – Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi asked the army to help the police forces in cracking down on demonstrators until the declaration of the results of the referendum on the new constitution, giving the military the authority to apprehend civilians.

AFP said that a presidential decree stipulating for the armed forces to support police in ‘preserving security and protecting vital institutions’ was put into effect until the declaration of the constitution’s referendum, scheduled on Saturday.

Earlier, the National Salvation Front rejected the referendum on the new constitution draft, describing it as a prevarication policy and a challenge for the will of the Egyptian people, calling for mass demonstrations on Tuesday in all Egyptian provinces.

Meanwhile, the sit-in held in front of the Presidential Palace (Kasr al-Ittihadia) continued for the fourth consecutive day.

The Presidential Guard finished the building of barriers in all roads leading into the palace, while security forces enhanced presence and tightened security in the area. 6 tanks, 6 armored vehicles and a number of soldiers were deployed in it.

The Egyptian Stock Market lost EGP 2.29 billion as it was affected by the turmoil in the country and by the decision made by the government to increase taxes by 50% . President Morsi had to cancel the decision on the same day.

Dear Friends and Comrades,

A delegation of South African Christian Church leaders has just returned from a one-week solidarity visit to the holy cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem in Palestine-Israel. On their return, they released this joint statement [extracts]:

“Being South African, it felt like walking into another apartheid ambush.  We witnessed violations of international law on so many levels – the multiple Israeli house demolitions, the discriminatory Israeli legal system, the daily intimidation of Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces, the Israeli Apartheid Wall and its associated regime of restrictions on movement and access for Palestinians, the imprisonment of a large percentage of Palestinians (including children), the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian water and land, the closure of previously bustling Palestinian streets and businesses, separate pavements for Israelis and Palestinians…”

“We did not expect the extent to which Israel violates international law to oppress the Palestinian people.  Our exposure to the Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Israeli-Occupied West Bank was overwhelming, one which traumatised us….”

The South African Christian delegation included the Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in Southern Africa, Bishop Zipho Siwa; the General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa and President of the World Communion of Reformed Churches Southern Africa, Reverend Jerry Pillay; the Secretary General of the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa, Reverend Moss Nthla; and the Deputy Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church, Dominee Braam Haanekom.

The delegation ended their statement supporting, amongst other things, “responsible” tourism to the Holy Land as well as the Palestinian people’s 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel:

“We realize though that the biblical call issued by Jesus is not only to “come and see” but to “go and tell” what you have seen and heard. However, it does not end just with the latter. Further, Jesus calls us to “go and do” (act)…”

“The Palestinians [Christians as well] are asking the world for economic, cultural and other forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) – a strategy that helped us to end apartheid in South Africa.  We believe that maximum pressure must be put on Israel to abide by international law.” Click here for the full statement, photos and further info.

MEANWHILE THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL OTHER WORLDWIDE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL SUCCESSES :

1. NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY ENDS CONTRACT WITH ISRAELI-COMPLICIT COMPANY, G4S: In a major success for the campaign against Israeli prison contractor, Group 4 Securicor (G4S), the University of Oslo has announced that it will terminate its contract with the company in July 2013. The University Director, Ole Ottersen, said: “The university wishes by no means to support companies that operate in an ethical grey zone”. G4S is a security company (operating in South Africa as well) that has an Israeli contract to provide equipment and services to Israeli prisons in which Palestinian political prisoners, including several child prisoners, are detained. G4S also provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints and Israel’s illegal settlements. The Israeli government has recently confirmed that G4S also provides equipment to Israel’s illegal Apartheid Wall.

2. LARGEST EVER TRADE UNION TO BOYCOTT ISRAEL: Last month, one of the largest international trade unions, the Public Services International (PSI), at its World Congress voted to fully support and advance the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel campaign. The PSI World Congress also adopted a resolution to promote and partake-in an annual awareness-raising initiative, the Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) campaign. The PSI represents 20 million workers globally who deliver public services in 150 countries. Two South African trade unions, the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) and the National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) belong to the PSI.

3. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, 52 NOBEL LAUREATES AND OTHER NOTABLES CALL FOR ARMS EMBARGO ON ISRAEL: On the 19th of November Amnesty International called on the UN to impose an arms embargo on Israel (see: http://tinyurl.com/cykjvvr). Subsequently 52 international figures issued a statement supporting such an Israeli arms embargo. Signatories include the 1976 Irish Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire and Argentina’s 1980 Laureate, Adolfo Perez Esquível. Academics and Professors include Slavoj Zizek (Slovenia), Etienne Balibar (France), Noam Chomsky (USA) and Judith Butler (USA). Authors and artists include Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (USA), John Berger (France), John Pilger (Australia) and Naomi Klein, (USA). Government officials include, Senator Walden Bello (Philippines), Member of Parliament Christian Juhl (Denmark), Senator Vincenzo Vita (Italy), former President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, and the former UN Assistant General Secretary, Denis Halliday (Ireland). Other notable signatories were: Alice Walker (USA), Angela Davis (USA), South Africa’s international law expert, John Dugard, and Stéphane Hessel, the 95-year-old Holocaust survivor and co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

4. TOP EUROPEAN FOOTBALLERS CALL ON UEFA TO DROP ISRAEL: More than 50 English Premier League and 1st division European footballers have issued an open letter in solidarity with the Palestinians and condemning the soccer body UEFA’s upcoming hosting of its 2013 Under 21 tournament in Israel. Signatories to the open letter include Chelsea’s Eden Hazard; Newcastle United’s Papiss Cissé; former Seville striker, Frédéric Kanouté; Abou Diaby of Arsenal and Pape Diop of West Ham United.

Finally, as is often the case, almost any solidarity with the Palestinians is vehemently opposed by the Israeli lobby who claim to want “neutrality” and “inaction”, but as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has put it: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS IN SOUTH AFRICA (BDS SOUTH AFRICA)

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By Mehrnaz Shahabi

11 December, 2012

@ Fairobserver.com

Economic sanctions are not only shattering the lives of the Iranian people but also strangling Iran’s social and cultural development. Iran is headed for a humanitarian catastrophe unless steps are taken to avert it.

[This article is based on a talk presented by independent researcher Mehrnaz Shahabi on November 17 at the Nour Festival of Arts in London, which seeks to celebrate, explore and promote culture and arts in the Middle East and North Africa.]

For 33 years now, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran has been the target of US economic sanctions, which have increased in scope and severity over time. The impact of sanctions on populations is not always quantifiable and can be contradictory. Despite their negative impact in isolating and hindering Iran’s economic progress, and the tragic loss of life due to the boycott of spare parts for the aging Iranian airline, in so far as necessity is the mother of invention, sanctions in many instances have acted as an impetus for technological progress; and the experience of success and survival through adversity has infused a collective sense of empowerment and self-confidence.

When I was asked in July to talk about the impact of sanctions on Iranian society, the idea was to place some emphasis on the arts and artists. Since then, the reality of the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding as a result of the economic warfare on Iran has shifted the emphasis, by necessity, from the artists to their audience, since it is inconceivable to think of arts separately from the audience at which it is directed.

The current sanctions by the US and the EU, under the pretext of a manufactured dispute over Iran’s civilian nuclear programme, are comprehensive sanctions against Iran’s economy for inflicting intentional collective punishment. The damage to the economy and the injury inflicted on the lives of the population in all respects is unambiguous and lethal.

Impact on Healthcare

These sanctions, which went into effect at the end of July 2012, target, amongst other things, Iran’s banking and export of oil. Export of oil comprises 80 percent of Iran’s foreign revenue which finances infrastructural work, social and welfare services, hospitals, schools, universities, state employees’ salaries and pensions. The value of Iranian currency has declined by 80 percent in the past year. The prices of imported machinery, medicine, and many types of foodstuff have risen beyond the reach of ordinary people. Many factories and businesses have folded, and unemployment is mounting.

However, the most critical impact of sanctions is on the availability of drugs and the health of the population. Iran is making 97 percent of its needed drugs domestically, and pharmaceuticals are heavily subsidised. The devalued currency means that raw materials imported for drug production are now a lot more expensive. In many cases, the raw material cannot even be paid for because of the banking sanctions, particularly as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), in compliance with the EU sanctions has stopped its electronic communication services for Iranian financial institutions and transactions from Iran. As a result, even domestically-produced drugs are becoming unavailable. Two drug manufacturing companies closed this October, and pharmacies are experiencing widespread closures and bankruptcies.

The most advanced life saving drugs cannot be made in generic form.These include drugs for heart disease, lung problems, kidney disease and dialysis, multiple sclerosis, thalassemia, haemophilia and many forms of cancer.

All of the surgeries for thousands of haemophilic patients have been cancelled because a shortage of coagulant drugs. A 15-year-old child died at the end of October due to the absence of coagulant medication. The head of Iran’s Haemophilia Society has said, “This is a blatant hostage-taking of the most vulnerable people by countries which claim they care about human rights. Even a few days of delay can have serious consequences like haemorrhage and disability.”

The drugs for many forms of cancer, particularly leukaemia, which is rife in Iran, cannot be imported, and this absence of drugs is happening in a context where the number of cancer patients in Iran has risen dramatically. It is predicted that by 2015 there will be a “cancer tsunami” in Iran.

In Iraq, a UNICEF survey estimated that 500,000 children under five had died, as a result of sanctions on the country, between 1991 and 1998. One can presume that by the time of the 2003 invasion, and under deteriorating conditions of poor water sanitation, malnutrition, disease, and the near absence of medication, many more would have died in the entire population. With millions of lives currently at risk in Iran, it is predicted that the death rate there could dwarf the casualties in Iraq.

I was in Iran recently and returned last Tuesday. Whilst there, this dire humanitarian situation was confirmed by medics and chemists with whom I spoke. Also, some students in medical chemistry told me that they can no longer afford the ingredients to make the drugs required for their doctorate work.

The Effect on Culture and Arts

There is no doubt about the direct or indirect detrimental effects of these sanctions on Iranian society at economic, political, social, cultural and artistic levels. I attended the re-launch of the magazine Danesh va Mardom (Science and People). The writers, poets, translators, and scientists present there were unanimously concerned about the impact of sanctions. I was told how the price of paper had multiplied more than fivefold. In fact, the publishers syndicate has recently warned that publishing is no longer viable.

The double impact of the devalued currency and financial sanctions have made it very difficult to access scientific and other academic papers to keep abreast with the most recent developments and to have effective scientific and cultural exchanges with those outside of Iran. I heard repeatedly from very bright graduates that there was no prospect for jobs and no budget for research, and that there is an unprecedented flood of “brain drain” out of the country.

An example of a visible impact on the arts is the virtual winding up of the National Symphony Orchestra, which according to its young conductor, Barda Kiaros, has not practiced and whose musicians have not been paid for over two months. He says that the Tehran Symphony Orchestra too does not receive the recognition it deserves and has not performed the work of great composers in concert for two years.

Abdolhossein Mokhtabaad, a famous composer and traditional singer, commented on the effects of sanctions and expressed the belief that the economic situation is not conducive to arts. He said that artists are not supported and likened artistic work in Iran to the work of a tightrope artist — always walking on a thin line.

For an insecure, debilitated, and hand-to-mouth population, artistic appreciation and artistic expression become a rare luxury, even irrelevant on the hierarchy of their people’s priorities. Not only do sanctions destroy the infrastructure for cultural and artistic development, they also create a state of economic and political siege directed at forced regime change, which is intensifying the securitization of Iranian society with dire consequences for civil and political rights, including artistic expression.

The strangulation of Iran’s rights and silencing of its voice on the international scene then finds its parallel in the strangulation and silencing of Iranians’ rights and voice, including artistic expression, at the domestic level. As in Iraq, sanctions are not only destroying the most vulnerable sections of the population but are devastating and weakening the middle class in Iran as the historical engine for creativity and scientific and cultural progress.

No one amongst the leaders or the grassroots of Iran’s legitimate domestic opposition has called for sanctions on Iran. In fact, they have warned that sanctions and war will be the biggest blow to the civil society and democratic aspirations in Iran.

Artistic expressions may defy political repression and economic poverty and find channels and forms of expression, as exemplified by the proud achievements of Iranian cinema. However, there is a tipping point when hardship does not strengthen but destroys the cultural and artistic development, in the long-term and at a societal level.

The economic sanctions on Iran are illegal under the international law and meet the UN definition of genocide. Nonetheless, US Congressman Brad Sherman has said “Critics [of the sanctions] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.” Similarly, Congressman Gary Ackerman said, “The goal…is to inflict crippling, unendurable economic pain over there.” These sentiments to target the population to feel the pain of the sanctions are echoed by other Western statesmen.

The UN Convention on Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such…[including] causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [and] deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” How else are we to interpret the sanctions affecting the import of baby milk and tetanus vaccine, and the announcement by Iran’s Ministry of Health that Iran’s medical drug reserves will run out within two months?

Denis Halliday, who resigned as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq after 34 years of service for the UN in protest against the impact of economic sanctions on the people of Iraq, described the sanctions as genocidal. Another humanitarian catastrophe and another genocide is now unfolding in Iran. Iranian society and Iranian artists are being strangulated into silence and a collective silent death, unless we intervene boldly in true artistic spirit.

Update: Iran’s Ministry of Health announced on November 30 that with the Central Bank’s release of $130 million of its foreign currency reserves at a relatively cheap emergency exchange rate, the import of urgently-needed pharmaceutical drugs had begun. The Central Bank also agreed to allocate $1.5 to 2 billion from its foreign currency reserves to cover the pharmaceutical needs of the population for the next year.

The emergency health crisis, however, will only be temporarily abated. On the same day as the announcement of Iran’s Ministry of Health on November 30, the US Senate approved another round of draconian sanctions against Iran’s economy. These sanctions, which came as an amendment to the US National Defense Authorization Act, further target Iran’s ports, shipbuilding, shipping, and energy sectors. In violation of the international trade law, the sanctions also attempt to deplete Iran’s foreign currency reserve by penalizing countries who make payments of gold or other precious metals in exchange for Iran’s gas and oil, as Turkey did this year when it reportedly paid $6.4 billion in gold for Iranian natural gas.

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich’s Blog

11 December 12

@ readersupportednews.org

Washington has a way of focusing the nation’s attention on tactical games over partisan maneuvers that are symptoms of a few really big problems. But we almost never get to debate or even discuss the big problems because the tactical games overwhelm everything else.

The debate over the fiscal cliff, for example, is really about tactical maneuvers preceding a negotiation about how best to reduce the federal budget deficit. This, in turn, is a fragment of a bigger debate over whether we should be embracing austerity economics and reducing the budget deficit in the next few years or, alternatively, using public spending and investing to grow the economy and increase the number of jobs.

Even this larger debate is just one part of what should be the central debate of our time – why median wages continue to drop and poverty to increase at the same time income and wealth are becoming ever more concentrated at the top, and what should be done to counter the trend.

With a shrinking share of total income and wealth, the middle class and poor simply don’t have the purchasing power to get the economy back on solid footing. (The wealthy don’t spend enough of their income or assets to make up for this shortfall, and they invest their savings wherever around the world they can get the highest return).

As a result, consumer spending – fully 70 percent of economic activity – isn’t up to the task of keeping the economy going. This puts greater pressure on government to be purchaser of last resort.

The dilemma isn’t just economic. It’s also political. As money concentrates at the top, so does power. That concentrated power generates even more entrenched wealth at the top, and less for the middle class and the poor.

A case in point is what’s now happening in Michigan. In the state where the American labor movement was born – and where, because of labor unions, the American middle class once had the bargaining power to gain a significant portion of the nation’s total income – Republicans and big money are striking back.

Legislators in the Michigan state House, followed almost immediately by Republicans who dominate the state Senate, voted Thursday afternoon to eliminate basic union organizing and workplace protections for both public and private-sector workers. Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder says he’ll sign the measure.

This anti-labor blitzkreig was launched and coordinated by “Americans for Prosperity” – a group developed and funded by the right-wing industrialists and billionaire campaign donors Charles and David Koch, to “pave the way for right to work in states across our nation.”

The Koch brothers are the same ones, not incidentally, who several years ago backed a group called “Citizen’s United,” on its way to the Supreme Court for an opinion by the Court’s Republican majority that opened the floodgates to big money corrupting our federal and state governments. (The brothers Koch have also entertained Justices Scalia and Thomas at strategy meetings they’ve organized of Republican donors.)

Connect the dots: As unions have withered, the middle class’s share of total income and wealth has dropped. The decline of the median wage in America over the last three decades correlates exactly with the declining percentage of American workers who are unionized.

And as the super-rich have grown even wealthier, they’ve been able to extend their power through the Supreme Court and the Republican Party – advancing a war on the middle class.

These moneyed interests may lose a skirmish or two, particularly at the federal level when the public’s attention is focused there (Michigan voters went overwhelmingly for President Obama and Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow on November 6). But the moneyed interests are patient and relentless and, as is evident in Michigan, able to strike suddenly with extraordinary organization and precision.

They’ve taken on our tax system, successfully raising taxes on the middle class and the poor (Social Security payroll taxes, sales taxes, and user fees) while reducing their own top marginal tax rates. They’ve taken on public spending – cutting government workers and programs the poor and middle class depend on (teachers and school budgets, social workers and family support services, job training and unemployment insurance, to name only a few.)

And they’ve taken on the unions that once negotiated good wages on behalf of the middle class and of those who aspired to join it.

The result has been a degree of inequality this nation hasn’t witnessed since the days of the robber barons of the late nineteenth century – an inequality that’s harming our economy as much as it’s undermining our democracy.

As Washington fiddles over the fiscal cliff, a larger battle over inequality is being waged all over America.

By Hassan N. Gardezi

10 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Introduction

There is a war raging in our times between a coalition of states led by the United States of America and al-Qaeda which has entered its second decade. One of the parties in this war, the United States, needs no introduction. After the collapse of the Soviet Union it became the sole superpower and is known in all corners of the world as the most powerful nation on all accounts, political, military, economic and socio-cultural. However, al-Qaeda as a global force is not understood so well and needs some introduction and defining.

Al-Qaeda came out of the 1980s jihad (Islamic holy war) against the Soviet backed government of Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in Kabul. This jihad was mobilized by the United States, [1] in collaboration with the Saudi royalty and Pakistan’s military dictator Gen. Zia. The Saudis lavishly financed the jihad with their oil wealth, but what turned out to be their more fateful contribution was Osama bin Laden whose arrival in Afghanistan was arranged through the chief of the Saudi Secret Service, Prince Faisal al Turki, and the CIA. After the former Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in 1989 Osama, the accomplished holly warrior and some of his Arab comrades founded the organisation named al-Qaeda with a view to continue their jihad against the American “infidel,” who they thought was defiling the holy land of Islam by deploying its troops in Saudi Arabia in the wake of the first Gulf War.

Since its inception, however, the organisation has undergone changes in its composition, following, and geographical sphere of activity.  Today’s al-Qaeda, both as a political construct originating with the US establishment and as an existential reality stands for a loosely affiliated plurality of groups and individuals operating on a trans-national level with a shared mission and common tactics used to attain that mission. The plurality of groups linked to al-Qaeda range from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban to Ansar al Sharia of Libya and Al Nusra Front of Syria.

The al-Qaeda Mission and the War on Terror

The overriding mission of al-Qaeda is to dominate the world, the Muslim world in particular, by imposing its own brand of socio-political order based on the Sunni-Salafi sharia laws of Saudi Arabia. This places al-Qaeda in conflict with the United States which also wants to dominate the world, but for different reasons that have to do with imperialist possession and control. While al-Qaeda has no interest in the imperial phenomena, it is convinced that it cannot achieve its goal of dominating the world without overpowering the “enemies of Islam,” defined primarily as infidels (unbelievers). The United States of America being the leading global power is at the top of al-Qaeda’s of infidel enemies. It was in retaliation to al-Qaeda’s alleged targeting of this “enemy of Islam” that led to the formal declaration of war on terror by President George W. Bush in 2001.

The “war on terror” despite the ambiguity of the phrase, is essentially a war of domination like the previous two world wars, albeit with some uniquely anomalous features. The first and foremost anomaly of this war lies in the fact that one of the combatants is a non-state, trans-national entity called al-Qaeda. As President Obama likes to reiterate, the goal of the war on terror is to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda.” Although under his “AfPak” policy Obama has extended the theatre of the war to include Pakistan with Afghanistan, the operations of al-Qaeda are not confined to these two countries. No continent or country seems to be free from actual or potential deadly attacks by the floating holy warriors of al-Qaeda. The problem is further complicated enormously when the United States itself finds it necessary to collude with the so called  al-Qaeda enemy when it suits its purpose, as being witnessed in the case of Libya and Syria.

The Libyan Nightmare

On 15 February 2011 a peaceful anti-government demonstration was staged in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi, long associated with opposition to the Gaddafi regime. As the regime moved to quell the demonstration, the Security Council of the United Nations went into action with amazing haste and on February 26 and passed first of its resolutions calling for a freeze of the assets of Gaddafi and a number of his regime’s designated officials and a ban on their travel abroad, charging that the government had used excessive force against the demonstrators of Benghazi.. This was soon followed by a second resolution passed on March 17 declaring a No Fly Zone over Libya which gave the US-led NATO powers the pretext to intervene with air attacks on the country.  The global news channels including the Qatar based Al Jazeera, once the emerging face of an alternative to imperialist propaganda, kept telling the listeners that all this was being done out of “humanitarian concern”  for the safety of Libyan people.

On March 28 President Obama addressed the nation to say, in part, that:

“Confronted by brutal repression and looming crisis I have ordered warships into the Mediterranean. European allies declared their willingness to commit recourses to stop killing. The Libyan opposition and Arab League appealed the world to save lives in Libya. At my direction America led the effort with our allies at the United Nations Security Council to pass the historic resolution that authorized the no fly zone to stop the regime’s attacks from the air and further authorized all the necessary measures to protect the Libyan people.” [2]

This is a remarkably revealing quote from the address of the president of United States. It makes quite clear that it was the United States that had the Security Council meetings convened, and resolutions passed to intervene militarily in Libya soon after the first peaceful demonstration took place in Benghazi. Furthermore Obama’s story of Gaddafi’s “killing” of his people and the “necessary measures to protect Libyan people” sounds more like a replay of Bush’s story of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction.” And, while Obama could very well be correct regarding the messages he says he was getting from the European allies and the Arab League, his reference to “Libyan opposition” does need some scrutiny.

From the beginning of armed confrontations Libya’s state media continued to insist that the Gaddafi opposition was being led by ruthless al-Qaeda operatives. The US and NATO sources, however, either denied these claims or simply remained silent. Their warplanes continued the air attacks to cripple the Libyan defence forces and pin Gaddafi down to his hideouts as heavily armed opposition militias marched on to Tripoli, leaving blood and destruction in their trail. Finally on October 20, 2011 grisly images of a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi being lynched to death amidst shouts of allah-o-akbar (God is great) were flashed on the global television networks. Reportedly he was trying to escape to safety from his hometown of Sirte when his convoy was attacked by NATO war planes providing the ground militias the opportunity to grab and kill him.

The reaction of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, caught on a widely circulated video, perhaps correctly reflected the mood of the entire US establishment at the news of Gaddafi’s murder. The good lady was about to sit down for an American TV interview in Kabul when she was told about the killing. After a moment’s pause she burst into a cackle of laughter uttering the words, “We came, we saw, he is dead,” waving her arms in the air.

Gaddafi’s horrible death may have served as a warning to dictators, especially those prone to get on the wrong side of the only superpower on earth, but it has certainly not brought Libya any closer to peace and democracy. After the fall of the regime some renegade ministers of Gaddafi’s erstwhile cabinets who had earlier joined together to form the National Transition Council (NTC) in Benghazi took over the rule of Libya, but not for long. On August 9, 2012 the governance of Libya, now fragmented into many tribal and regional factions and overrun by killing and torturing militias, was transferred to yet another interim  body, the 200 member General National Congress (GNC). This Congress chose the pro-Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohammed Magarief as its president who had been a long time opponent of the Gaddafi regime and had been living in the United States for many years. Magarief is the current titular president of Libya rendered lawless.

The al-Qaeda connection

It is no longer a secret that the main militia on the ground in Libya leading the opposition to bring about a violent regime change was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, LIFG. This group has been well-known to the US establishment since its formation by the Libyan mujahideen, holy warriors, who had gone to Afghanistan in order to fight in the CIA sponsored jihad of the 1980s. Having returned from that holy war they decided to overthrow the secular regime of Muammar Gaddafi and replace it with an Islamic state. At the same time LIFG alienated its US facilitators by linking up with al-Qaeda. In 2004 the United States formally designated LIFG a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and after 9/11 had it banned by the Security Council of the United Nations. The CIA also began to keep a closer watch on the activists of the group. Those detained for suspected links to al-Qaeda’s terrorist activities were handed over to Libya under the notorious “rendition” policy.

One of them arrested in Malaysia and rendered to Libya, after being kept in a CIA secret prison for some time, was Abdel Hakim Belhaj. He too had fought in the 1980s CIA sponsored Afghanistan Jihad and later joined al-Qaeda. After his rendition Libya kept him jailed, but released him under some kind of a reconciliation deal in late 2010. He resumed his political activities when the February15 anti-Gaddafi demonstration took place in Benghazi followed by the US-led NATO intervention. Commanding a heavily armed LIFG militia band Belhadj marched on to Tripoli under cover of NATO air attacks and occupied the city on 23 August, 2011. That for all practical purposes was the end Gaddafi’s long rule over Libya. Belhadj installed himself the military commander of Tripoli. With the regime change completed over the next two months by the murder of Gaddafi, Belhadj was off to Syria planning the overthrow of Bashar al Assad government with the Free Syrian Army.

But al-Qaeda’s business in Libya was not over yet. On the 2012 anniversary of 9/11 another al-Qaeda linked militia calling itself Ansar al Sharia along with some prominent LIFG members attacked the Benghazi consulate of the United States and killed US ambassador, Chris Stevens along with three of his staff present there. The Obama administration first tried to portray the killing of the ambassador as the spontaneous act of a Muslim mob enraged over the recent showing of an anti-Islam film made in the United States, but under the election year scrutiny, had to admit at least this much that the killing of the ambassador was a planed act of a terrorist group.

The Syrian Nightmare

Rallies in opposition to the Syrian regime of Bashar al Asaad began to appear in mid-March 2011. Several reasons can be cited to account for these protests, including the contagion effect of the so-called Arab Spring and the long rule of the Bath Party led by the Assad family belonging to the minority Alawi sect. But an important factor that cannot be ignored is that of neo-liberal economic reforms that created much hardship for the lower income working class population. In this context it must be remembered that before the reforms were undertaken in the mid 1990s and pursued at an accelerated pace by Bashar al Assad when he took over in 2000, the Syrian state had a sizable public sector and supported a significant range of basic social programmes. The neo-liberal reforms led to rapid privatisation of the state sector enterprises and the dismantling of social programmes such as food and fuel subsidies, creating serious economic difficulties for the people.

While economic problems were clearly a major underlying factor in precipitating the protests, external powers and vested interests moved in quickly to transform the public unrest into a deadly melee for geopolitical domination. The same combinations of NATO Europeans and Arab league petro-monarchies led by the United States that were at work to bring down the Gaddafi regime began to sabotage the Bashar rule Syria. They heavily financed and armed al-Qaeda inspired Syrian and external Islamists to kill and destroy presumably to save the country for democracy or Islamic caliphate depending on who was interpreting the bloodshed in progress.

The Obama administration once again “led the effort,” this time behind the scenes, to summon the United Nations Security Council meetings to get a suitable resolution passed against the Bashar al Assad regime so that the Libyan ambush could be repeated in Syria. Starting in June 2011 a string of resolutions were moved in the Security Council meetings to condemn the Syrian regime or subject the country to international sanctions but all failed, not only because Russia and China cast their vetoes, but also because important states with long records of democratic rule such as India, Brazil and South Africa were also invariably opposed the moves. Those opposed to anti- regime resolutions were all very concerned about something the US and Western mainstream media have tried to push under the rug – the manipulation of the Security Council’s No Fly Zone Resolution by the United States and its allies to bring about violent regime change in Libya leading to Gaddafi murder. As one member of a UN mission said, “The ghost of Libya is haunting the debates on Syria.” [3]

However, the repeated rebuffs by the Security Council have not deterred the United States and its allies from clinging on to the objective of removing Bashar al Assad from power, no matter how much more the people of Syria have to suffer. Through its Arab allies, the Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular, the United States has managed to supply enough petro-dollars and heavy arms, including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian militias to keep the proxy war going and people dying. [4]

As a matter of fact the centre of the anti-Syrian activity led by the United States has been shifted out of the chambers of United Nations in New York to Doha in the oil-rich sheikhdom of Qatar. Here in the comfort of Luxury hotels a conference was held in early November 2012 to plan strategy to achieve a violent regime change and to cover up the al-Qaeda face of hard core Islamist militias in Syria. At the end of the conference, publicised extensively by the mainstream global media, the formation of a unified body to drive Assad out of power was announced under the rather pretentious name of “National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary Opposition Forces. In the meantime, ordinary Syrians keep dying and driven out of their homes by the explosions of suicide and car bombs of

Al-Nusra Front with al-Qaeda fingerprints.

Since the Doha conference global media has been awash with news of the success of militia fighters in having reached the suburbs of the Syrian capital, Damascus. BBC has also been reporting bomb explosions in the suburbs of Damascus with heavy loss of life, blamed invariably on Bashar for not quitting his job.  And in case none of these acts of war and terrorism work to bring about regime change in Syria, a new pretext is already being manufactures for US-NATAO intervention Libya style…  On December 3, 2012 giants of the corporate media, The New York Times, CNN and others broke the new of “intelligence” reports alleging that Bashar al Assad is planning to use chemical weapons to kill his opponents, complete with threats of retaliation issued by President Obama and his secretary of state, Hilary Clinton. The BBC News (America) in its December 3 television broadcast even spiced up its story by telling its audience that Hafiz al Assad had in fact used deadly chemicals on his opposition, only to apologize for telling a lie the next day.

Analysis

The United States is the leading power engaged in a very costly and prolonged war with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. In the context of this ongoing war it does appear inconsistent for it to be in collusion with al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria. However, Afghanistan war has to be seen in the perspective of the overall foreign policy of United States, especially as it has been evolving since mid 1940s. At the end of the Second World War the United States emerged as a superpower that found it expedient to launch a more ambitious imperial project of dominating the world politically and economically, a policy which immediately brought it into intense rivalry with the other superpower, the Soviet Union. That rivalry produced the Cold War and its far-reaching global repercussions that are well known today. What is perhaps not so well known is that in the interstices of the Gold War had also emerged another regional, but nonetheless a major, obstacle to the forces of imperialism. This was the movement, known as pan-Arab nationalism or simply Arab nationalism that flourished in 1950s and 60s.

The movement was politically dominated by the personality of Jamal Adel Nasser and was aimed at unifying the vast region of Arabic speaking Middle East and North Africa stretching from the Arabian Sea to Atlantic Ocean on the basis of common language, history and ancestry, rather than religion. Ideologically this movement was secular and anti-imperialist, emphasising modernity, progress, socialist equality and ownership of the Arab natural assets for the benefit of the Arab people. Other than Nasser of Egypt the heads of state that more or less identified with the movement and its ideology included Ben Bella of Algeria, Houari Boumediene of Tunisia, Gaafar Nimeiry of Sudan, Hafiz al-Assad and Basher al-Assad of Syria Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

For all practical purposes the Arab Nationalist movement of the 1950s and 60s collapsed under the relentless opposition of Islamist groups of the time such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and the devastating impact of the 1967 Israel-Arab War. But the vestigial memories of the movement and fears of its resurrection in one form or the other through the initiative and leadership of a younger more educated and cosmopolitan Arab generation continue to haunt both the Islamists under the umbrella of al-Qaeda and the United States’ establishment. That is precisely the reason why the US and al-Qaeda while at war in Afghanistan have found it expedient to gang up in a last ditch battle to eliminate their common enemies in Libya and Syria.

[1] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview in Le Noviel Observateur, January, 15-21,1998

[2] Quoted in The Atlantic, September 28, 2012

[3] The Huffington Post, February 2, 2012.

[4] The New York Times, October 14, 2012.

By Francis A. Boyle

10 December, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Speech delivered at Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights , University of the Sacred Heart San Juan, Puerto Rico December 7-10, 2012

Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to near genocidal conditions. Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called “Pacific” Ocean would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 194l, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched and menaced by the neoconservative Republican Bush Junior administration and the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration are now threatening to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Junior administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Middle East and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against “international terrorism” or “Islamic fundamentalism”; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled humanitarian intervention/responsibility to protect (R2P). Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundaments and energizers of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Junior/ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America (e.g., the Pentagon’s reactivization of the U.S. Fourth Fleet in 2008), and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. Today the U.S. Fourth Fleet threatens Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador for sure.

Toward accomplishing that first objective, in 2007 the neoconservative Bush Junior administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, steal, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. In 2011 Libya then proved to be the first victim of AFRICOM under the neoliberal Obama administration, thus demonstrating the truly bi-partisan and non-partisan nature of U.S. imperial foreign policy decision-making. Let us put aside as beyond the scope of this paper the American conquest, extermination, and ethnic cleansing of the Indians from off the face of the continent of North America. Since America’s instigation of the Spanish-American War in 1898, U.S. foreign policy decision-making has been alternatively conducted by reactionary imperialists, conservative imperialists, and liberal imperialists for the past 115 years and counting.

This world-girdling burst of U.S. imperialism at the start of humankind’s new millennium is what my teacher, mentor, and friend the late, great Professor Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal book Politics Among Nations 52-53 (4th ed. 1968):

The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind….

The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.

Since September 11, 2001, it is the Unlimited Imperialists à la Alexander, Napoleon, and Hitler who have been in charge of conducting American foreign policy decision-making. After September 11, 2001 the people of the world have witnessed successive governments in the United States that have demonstrated little respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, or the United States Constitution. Instead, the world has watched a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by groups of men and women who are thoroughly Hobbist and Machiavellian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign affairs and American domestic policy. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the U.S. government’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well recognized principles of both international law and United States domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare, which applies to the President himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending on the substantive issues involved, these international and domestic crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offences of “crimes against peace”—e.g., Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, and perhaps their longstanding threatened war of aggression against Iran. Their criminal responsibility also concerns “crimes against humanity” and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare: torture, enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, drone strikes, etc. Furthermore, various officials of the United States government have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956) are international crimes in their own right: planning, and preparation, solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting. Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that over six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment, and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that these officials of the United States government currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Saddam Hussein, Bush Junior, Tony Blair, or Barack Obama.

According to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or mercenary contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes. This category of officialdom who actually knew or should have known of the commission of these international crimes under their jurisdiction and failed to do anything about them include at the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command the President, the Vice-President, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A. Director, National Security Advisor and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chiefs, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 of 1956. Today in international legal terms, the United States government itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany. As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and the United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by U.S. government officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.

For that very reason, large numbers of American citizens have decided to act on their own cognizance by means of civil resistance in order to demand that the U.S. government adhere to basic principles of international law, of U.S. domestic law, and of the U.S. Constitution in its conduct of foreign affairs and military operations. Mistakenly, however, such actions have been defined to constitute classic instances of “civil disobedience” as historically practiced in the United States. And the conventional status quo admonition by the U.S. power elite and its sycophantic news media for those who knowingly engage in “civil disobedience” has always been that they must meekly accept their punishment for having performed a prima facie breach of the positive laws as a demonstration of their good faith and moral commitment. Nothing could be further from the truth! Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs! The U.S. government officials are the outlaws!

Here I would like to suggest a different way of thinking about civil resistance activities that are specifically designed to thwart, prevent, or impede ongoing criminal activity by officials of the U.S. government under well‑recognized principles of international and U.S. domestic law. Such civil resistance activities represent the last constitutional avenue open to the American people to preserve their democratic form of government with its historical commitment to the rule of law and human rights. Civil resistance is the last hope America has to prevent the U.S. government from moving even farther down the path of lawless violence in Africa, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, military interventionism into Latin America, and nuclear confrontation with Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, and China.

Such measures of “civil resistance” must not be confused with, and indeed must be carefully distinguished from, acts of “civil disobedience” as traditionally defined. In today’s civil resistance cases, what we witness are American citizens attempting to prevent the ongoing commission of international and domestic crimes under well-recognized principles of international law and U.S. domestic law. This is a phenomenon essentially different from the classic civil disobedience cases of the 1950s and 1960s where incredibly courageous African Americans and their supporters were conscientiously violating domestic laws for the express purpose of changing them. By contrast, today’s civil resisters are acting for the express purpose of upholding the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution, human rights, and international law. Applying the term “civil disobedience” to such civil resistors mistakenly presumes their guilt and thus perversely exonerates the U.S. government criminals.

Civil resistors disobeyed nothing, but to the contrary obeyed international law and the United States Constitution. By contrast, U.S. government officials disobeyed fundamental principles of international law as well as U.S. criminal law and thus committed international crimes and U.S. domestic crimes as well as impeachable violations of the United States Constitution. The civil resistors are the sheriffs enforcing international law, U.S. criminal law and the U.S. Constitution against the criminals working for the U.S. government!

Today the American people must reaffirm their commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding their government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes. They must not permit any aspect of their foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definition of that term as set forth in U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956), the U.S. War Crimes Act, and the Geneva Conventions. The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes. That is precisely what American civil resisters are doing today!

This same right of civil resistance extends pari passu to all citizens of the world community of states. Everyone around the world has both the right and the duty under international law to resist ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the U.S. government and its nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as Britain, the other NATO states, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, Puerto Rico, etc. If not so restrained, the U.S. government could very well precipitate a Third World War. Here in Puerto Rico we saw the stunning example of the most courageous civil resistors against Yankee Imperialism on Vieques.

The future of American foreign policy and the peace of the world lie in the hands of American citizens and the peoples of the world—not the bureaucrats, legislators, judges, lobbyist, think-tanks, professors, and self-styled experts who inhibit Washington, D.C., New York City, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Civil resistance is the way to go! This is our Nuremberg Moment now!

Thank you.

Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include “ Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (2003), and “ The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law” (2010).

The Armed Forces Continue Targeting Terrorists and Their Hideouts

Dec 10, 2012

PROVINCES, (SANA)- A unit of the Armed Forces on Sunday carried out a qualitative operation against terrorists near the Feed Foundation in Aliramon in Aleppo city, killing 20 terrorists.

A unit of the Internal Security Forces charged with the protection of the Greek Hospital in Aleppo on Saturday clashed with an armed terrorist group attempting to attack the hospital.

An Interior Ministry source said that the clash resulted in the killing of one of the terrorists and the injury of two others.

The source added that a 7mm pistol, night vision surveillance camera and HYT wireless device were seized in the clash.

Meanwhile, a unit of the Armed Forces killed 29 terrorists in an operation in which they targeted a gathering for Jabhat al-Nusra members near Chicken Restaurant in Bustan al-Basha in Aleppo city.

The Armed Forces also targeted terrorists’ gatherings in Darat Izza, Qibtan al-Jabal, Handrat and al-Mislmyeh, killing and injuring scores of terrorists and destroying their weapons and ammunition.

Another army unit destroyed a terrorists’ hideout and destroyed weapons and ammunition inside it in Khanaser.

In Aleppo city, the army targeted terrorists’ gatherings near the mosques of Suhaib and al-Na’na’i, destroying a vehicle equipped with heavy machinegun.

Terrorists’ gatherings in Bustan al-Basha and Bani Zaid were targeted, heavy losses were inflicted upon terrorists in these areas.

SANA reporter said that two terrorist groups clashed with each others as there were disputes over money in Deir Hafer, adding that scores of terrorists were killed or injured in the clash.

Al-Bakkarah Area Cleared from Terrorist Groups

The Armed Forces completely cleared al-Bakkarh area in Aleppo countryside from the armed terrorist groups.

70 Members of so-called ‘Military Council’ of Jabhat al-Nusra Killed in Damascus Countryside

A unit of the Armed Forces killed an armed terrorist group from Jabhat al-Nusra in al-Hejjeira town in Damascus Countryside.

SANA reporter quoted an official source in the province as saying that a number of terrorists were killed, among them terrorists Wael Masri, Izzat Ibrahim, Ahmad Fuad and Imad Zarzour were identified.

The source added that another army unit killed and injured 70 terrorists in an operation in which it targeted a hideout for the so-called ‘Military Council’ of Jabhat al-Nusra in al-Dhyiabiyeh town.

SANA reporter said amounts of weapons and ammunition were destroyed in the operation.

In the meantime, the Armed Forces continued operations against Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the city of Daraya.

An official source told SANA reporter that the army units inflicted heavy losses upon the terrorists in an operation it carried out in the area.

A warehouse including large amounts of weapons and ammunition used by the terrorists was destroyed in the operation.

A unit of the Armed Forces clashed with a terrorist group that attacked an army and law enforcement forces checkpoint on Daraa highway.

An official source told SANA reporter that the clashes resulted in leaving the group’s members dead and injured.

In the farms in Sheba’a area, an Armed Forces unit eliminated a number of terrorist group leaders, including Ahmad Mohammad Rajab.

An Armed Forces unit carried out an operation which resulted in the destruction of a number of terrorist hideouts along with the weapons and munitions inside them and elimination of a number of terrorists, including an Iraqi nicknamed Abu Omar al-Fallujah, in addition to Ala’a Zaher al-Khalaf, Adnan al-Awad, and Saleh al-Manzouri.

In al-Ziyabiye, another unit carried out an operation, destroying terrorist gatherings and hideouts along with the weapons, munitions and terrorists inside them, some of which were Tunisians and Jordanians.

The terrorists who were killed in the operation include Tunisian Ayman al-Hamadi and Jordanian Iyad al-Ala’ai, in addition to Fadi al-Hamdan, Farouk al-Sheikh, Mohammad al-Nader, Nasim al-Hamad, and a leader of a terrorist group known as Abu Ghadab.

Jabhat al-Nusra Terrorists Killed, their Hideouts Destroyed in Homs

A unit of the Armed Forces killed a number of al-Qaeda- affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in al-Haidariyeh town in the countryside of al-Quseir in Homs.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that a mortar used by the terrorists in attacking citizens and their properties was destroyed in the operation.

It added that another army unit destroyed a number of terrorists’ hideouts in al-Sultaniyeh farms and killed all terrorists inside.

The Armed Forces destroyed a terrorists’ hideout and a weapons’ warehouse in al-Rawsheh neighborhood in Homs.

An official source told SANA that 6 terrorists were killed and 4 were injured in Bab Hood neighborhood.

In al-Qseir countryside, an army unit killed and injured scores of terrorists and destroyed a vehicle equipped with rocket platform in the areas of al-Haidariyeh.

Terrorist Arrested, Weapons and Ammunition Seized in Salamyieh, Hama

Meanwhile, authorities on Sunday stormed a terrorist group’s hideout in Daher al-Mugher al-Gharbi neighborhood in Salamyieh in Hama and arrested one of the most wanted terrorists.

An official source in the province told SANA reporter that the authorities seized the terrorist weapons and ammunition.

The source added that citizen Ismael Mohammad al-Ziyab, who was kidnapped by an armed terrorist group, released in the operation.

Terrorists’ Hideouts and Vehicles Destroyed, 3 Explosive Devices Dismantled in Idleb

Units of the Armed Forces continued pursuing Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the countryside of Idleb, killing and injuring many of them.

A unit of the Armed Forces destroyed a vehicle equipped with a heavy machinegun which the terrorists used in attacking the residents in Bsanqoul town in Ariha, killing scores of mercenary terrorists and injuring others.

The source added that the army also destroyed a number of terrorist groups’ hideouts and vehicles in Saraqeb and killed all the terrorists inside.

On the other hand, an army unit foiled terrorists’ attempt to detonate three explosive devices planted on al-Mastoumeh – Ariha road, weighed between 25 – 30 kg.

Armed Forces Destroy Pick-up with terrorists onboard in Jisr al-Shughour in Idleb

A unit of the Armed Forces targeted a pick-up loaded with munitions, weapons and military suits to terrorists in Jisr al-Shghour area in Idleb province.

A source in the province told SANA reporter that the Armed Forces eliminated several terrorists who were using the car.

Foreign and Expatriates Ministry: Syria Won’t Use Chemical Weapons, If It Possesses Any, Whatever the Circumstances

Dec 10, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- Syria on Saturday reaffirmed that it will not use chemical weapons, if it possesses any, whatever the circumstances as it is defending its people against terrorism supported by known countries, citing the USA on top.

Syria’s reaffirmation came in two identical letters addressed by the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry to the Chairman of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary General.

“The U.S. administration has consistently worked over the past year to launch a campaign of allegations on the possibility that Syria could use chemical weapons during the current crisis,” said the Ministry.

It reiterated Syria’s openly repeated stress through the diplomatic frameworks that it “will not use chemical weapons, if it possessesany, whatever the circumstances because it is defending its people against terrorism supported by known countries, above all is the USA.”

“What raises concerns regarding this news circulated by the media is our serious fear that some of countries backing terrorism and terrorists might provide the armed terrorist groups with chemical weapons and claim that it was the Syrian government which did use the weapons,” said the Ministry in its letters.

It referred in this context to information revealed by the Turkish Yurt newspaper which said that members from al-Qaeda are manufacturing chemical weapons at a laboratory near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, and that they have threatened to use them against the Syrian civilians.

The letters also made reference to the Turkish newspaper indicating footages posted on the internet in which terrorists appear making poisonous gas from chemical materials which al-Qaeda got from a Turkish company and which were tested on living creatures.

“Those countries launching the campaign against Syria had better follow up on that act and hold those terrorists and the parties which helped them get the chemical materials to account,” the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said.

It pointed out that the Syrian government, out of its care for its people’s lives, had asked the UN Supervision Mission to visit, inspect and calculate the stocks of a private sector chlorine processing plant, located to the east of Aleppo city, after information that the terrorist groups were then planning to take hold of it.

The Supervision Mission however could not do this because the terrorists opened fire on its members as they were trying to visit the plant, the Ministry added.

“The terrorist groups recently took hold of the plant which includes tons of the poisonous chlorine following the latest U.S.-Western campaign, with all the risks this issue implies,” it said.

The Ministry expressed Syria’s warning that the terrorist groups might resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people, and its denunciation of the international community’s inaction to deal with the developments after the terrorist groups recently took hold of a Chlorine processing plant to the east of Aleppo city.

“Syria also denounces not holding the supporters of the terrorist groups to account according to the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” the letters added.

They slammed the hostile campaign against Syria as being characterized by the absence of the moral dimension, saying that “countries which used these or other similar weapons like the US, are not worthy to launch such a campaign, especially that [the US] used the pretext of Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify its invasion and occupation of this Arab country in 2003.

The Foreign and Expatriates Ministry highlighted that Syria has scores of times made it clear that it will not use chemical weapons, if they exist, against its people under any circumstance, and stressed its commitment to its legal obligations according to the agreements and protocols it signed.

“Moreover, the Ministry added, “Syria submitted by the end of 2003 a draft resolution to the UN Security Council on Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC)Weapons.”

However, the Ministry said, the US and the countries following it hindered the draft resolution and prevented the Security Council from adopting it.

It went on saying that Syria was not surprised by the U.S. move a few days ago to foil the UN efforts to hold a conference to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, which was due to be held by the end of 2012.

“All of that was in defense of Israel, the only party in the region which has not signed the WMD agreements,” it added.

The Ministry concluded its letters by saying that “such campaign doesn’t work with Syria which has always adhered to is independence and sovereignty,” stressing that these media campaigns cannot mislead the Syrian people or the international public opinion, which has started to realize the reality of the conspiracies hatched against Syria and the real reasons behind continuing the shedding of the Syrian blood for which the terrorist groups and those supporting them are responsible in front of history and the nations.

Saudi Arabia Sends Most Wanted Criminals to Syria, Yemeni Websites Reveal

Dec 10, 2012

SANAA, (SANA) – Yemeni independent news websites published on Sunday a Saudi secret official document confirming that the regime of al-Saud ordered the release of a group of hundreds of most wanted criminals who are sentenced to death on crimes related to drug smuggling, killing and rape to send them to Syria and join the armed terrorist groups.

The document showed that an agreement was reached between the Saudi authorities and a number of criminals from several Arab and non-Arab nationalities who were exempted from the death penalty and given monthly salaries for their families in Saudi Arabia and releasing them to go to Syria.

According to the document, the criminals are 105 Yemenis, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghans, 194 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, 21 Palestinians and 44 Kuwaitis.

The document said that those criminals will be trained to be sent to ‘Jihad’ in Syria.

Four Citizens Martyred in Terrorist Missile Attack in Homs, Car Bomb Explodes in al-Fahhameh in Damascus

Dec 10, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- An armed terrorist group on Sunday fired missile shells on the southern al-Arman neighborhood in the city of Homs, martyring a number of citizens, injuring others and causing considerable material damages.

An official source told SANA that an armed Terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda fired missile shells on the neighborhood, martyring four citizens and injuring others, in addition of causing grave material damages to shops, infrastructure, and water and electricity networks in the area.

Car Bomb Explodes in al-Fahhameh in Damascus, Injuring the Driver

Earlier on the day, terrorists detonated an explosive device attached to a private car in al-Fahhameh area in Damascus, causing severe injury of the driver.

SANA reporter said that the terrorist explosion resulted in complete destruction of the car in addition to material damage in a shop.

Brahimi: Efforts to find Political Solution to Crisis in Syria Possible

Dec 10, 2012

GENEVA, (SANA)-The UN Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, following talks he held with US and Russian officials, announced they agreed that efforts to seek political solution to the crisis in Syria are still possible

“The meeting was constructive and it was held within an atmosphere of cooperation.. we discussed means to go ahead in a peaceful process and mobilizing a greater international movement in order to find a political solution to the crisis in Syria,” Reuters quoted Brahimi as saying in a statement issued after a day-long talks in Geneva.

UN: Brahimi’s Talks with Russian and US Officials on Syria Constructive

The UN said in a statement the talks that the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi held with Russian and U.S. officials in Geneva were constructive.

Participants in the talks said that a political process to end the crisis in Syria is necessary and still possible.

AFP reported the international organization as saying that the meeting was constructive and it was held in an atmosphere of cooperation, adding that the participants called for more international work for a political solution to the crisis in Syria.

Egyptians Continue Their Stage-In Before Presidential Palace

Dec 10, 2012

CAIRO, (SANA) – Egyptians demonstrators participated in a stage-in in front of the Presidential Palace (Kasr al-Ittihadia) in Cairo for the third consecutive day in condemnation of the decisions of the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

Thousands of demonstrators went to support the stage-in, while mass marches went off in several areas in the capital as to assemble before the palace.

Participants carried placards demanding the downfall of the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, and subjecting the sides responsible for killing peaceful demonstrators last Wednesday to trials.

Political powers stressed the need to cancel the referendum call and resort to dialogue to overcome the current crisis.

Political sides said that the National Salvation Front will meet later to adopt unified stance on the Constitutional Declaration, adding that the Supplementary Declaration is a kind of prevarication policy.

The Front dismissed the calls to make a referendum on the new constitution draft, calling for mass marches on Tuesday in all Egyptian provinces.

Earlier, tens of demonstrators gathered in front of Morsi’s house in Sharkia province after the statement issued by the Egyptian Presidency. Police forces used tear gas grenades to disperse the demonstrators.

Follow-up Committee of Tehran National Dialogue Conference Calls for Finding Peaceful Solution to Crisis in Syria

Dec 10, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The follow-up committee on national dialogue emerged from Tehran Conference held its first meeting in Damascus on Sunday.

The Follow-up committee agreed on forming central committees and subcommittees to achieve the goals concerning launching the national comprehensive dialogue and specifying the inside and outside Syrian parties to encourage them and persuade them to the attend dialogue, pointing out that the most important goals of the newly formed committees will be working to hold a new national dialogue conference in Damascus.

The committee also agreed that its new name is “the Follow-up Committee on Comprehensive National Dialogue” and it is tasked with launching dialogue to get out of the crisis in Syria.

It called for broadcasting two TV programs on a daily basis on the work of the committee and the Syrian opposition.

Representatives of political and popular parties participated in the meeting which focused on means of expanding the committee’s work and role in launching the comprehensive national dialogue and finding a peaceful solution to the crisis in Syria.

The participants also discussed establishing communication bridges among all political forces inside and outside Syria, preparing a national dialogue table based on firm principles, following up on the stages achieved by the National Dialogue Conference in Tehran and launching a Syrian national initiative for reconciliation away from foreign intervention.

They also called for holding an extended national dialogue conference in Syria and laying the foundation for ending all acts of violence.

Member of People’s Assembly, Faisal Azouz, expressed hope that this meeting will complete what was started at Tehran Conference “based on the participation of all parties and not excluding any political force that rejects violence.”

He called for making this conference the starting point to launch an expanded dialogue that includes all the Syrians to rescue Syria.

In turn, Chairman of the National Initiative for Syrian Kurds, Omar Ossi, called for forming a political office and a secretary for the follow-up committee representing all the participating popular and political spectrums to help permanently follow up the committee’s work.

Member of People’s Assembly, Khaled al-Abboud, said that this meeting constitutes a platform for an open dialogue among all political forces inside Syria and abroad.

He added that the follow up committee is open to all those who want to participate in it and contribute to reproducing the Syrian political scene to help solve the crisis in Syria.

For his part, Head of the National Youth for Justice and Development Party, Barwin Ibrahim, called for real work to combat corruption and find solution to the crisis, indicating that the Syrian media should be transparent in dealing with the events and give chance to all parties to express their viewpoints.

Representative of the opposition Third Movement, Mazen Mughrabiyeh, called for holding a serious national dialogue conference in Syria, considering that the problem currently facing Syria is a political one that should be solved.

Participants in Tehran Conference held on November 20 and 21 agreed on the formation of a follow-up committee to set the necessary preparations to follow up on the comprehensive national dialogue.

For his part, Fatih Jamous, leader of the Peaceful Change Path Movement, stressed that the impotence of finding a solution to the crisis in Syria is due to the absence of decisive parties from the negotiation table, highlighting the importance of these parties to be present at the table to launch dialogue and find specific axes to work for emerging from the crisis in Syria.

Founder of the Syrian Family Forum, Ahed Sharifeh, emphasized that the homeland is the compass for this joint work, calling for encouraging all sides to sit at the dialogue table to serve the interests of the Syrian people.

Chairman of the Secular Social Democratic Movement, Nabil Fayad, pointed out to the necessity of addressing decision-making centers abroad and the public opinion to clarify what is going on in Syria and the crimes committed by the armed groups.

He added that documented reports have been submitted to some U.S. Congress members on the violations committed by the armed groups against the Syrian people.

Secretary of the Popular Will Party Council, Alaa Arafat, highlighted the importance of finding a Syrian initiative to solve the crisis, adding that this initiative should be the task of the Follow-up Committee on National Dialogue.

Secretary-General of the Syrian National Youth Party, Maher Mirhej, pointed out to the efforts exerted by the party to communicate with armed opposition groups, adding that the armed groups which amounted to 175 groups expressed readiness to reject the Doha Coalition.

Lavrov: We Don’t Discuss the Destiny of Syrian Leadership with Any Party

Dec 09, 2012

MOSCOW, (SANA)- Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, announced that the upcoming meeting on Syria which is to be held on the level of the deputy foreign ministers of Russia and the US, with the participation of the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will take place on Sunday and Monday. Speaking on the sidelines of the round table held under the title ‘Russia and the Changing World’, Lavrov pointed out that he met the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and Brahimi in Dublin and that they agreed on holding a special meeting for experts on the level of deputy foreign ministers to hold intensive talks.

He stressed that Russia is ready for such meetings if the Geneva Declaration is the basis for the talks without ultimatums or preconditions.

Lavrov revealed that there are unclean attempts by some countries known for distorting facts to portray Russia’s stance towards the situation in Syria contrary to the reality.

He stressed the need to force all sides to lay down arms and sit to dialogue table instead of the unavailing and endless talk about the departure of the Syrian leadership.

“My country doesn’t hold talks with any party on the destiny of the Syrian leadership and it is not clinging to anybody,” said the Russian Foreign Minister, considering that all attempts to portray the situation differently are unclean “even for the diplomacy of those countries that are known for attempts at distorting the facts.”

The Russian Foreign Minister said, “There are attempts to create an image that the Syrian Government is planning to use chemical weapons. We are dealing seriously with any rumors in this regard, and we are making sure of the truth through contacting the Syrian Government”.

He added, “According to our information which we present to the Americans in response to their demand and to the European colleagues, the Syrian Government does not have any intention to use chemical weapons”.

He went on saying that the greatest danger of chemical weapons is that they could go to gunmen, pointing out that currently there are organizations linked to al-Qaeda becoming active in Syria.

Body of Patriarch IV Hazim Arrives to Mariamite Cathedral in Damascus

Dec 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The body of Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East Ignatius IV Hazim was laid out in the Mariamite Cathedral in Damascus on Sunday, where prayers were held presided upon by Archbishop Saba Esper, Archbishop of Houran and Jabal a-Arab.

Representatives of churches in Syria and citizens attended the prayers to pay their respects to the late Patriarch.

The body of Patriarch Hazim arrived at 3 PM on Sunday to the Syrian-Lebanese border crossing point, accompanied by Lebanese figures including former minister Yakoub al-Sarrab representing former Lebanese President Emil Lahhoud and former foreign minister Eli Salem.

In Damascus, the Patriarch’s convoy followed in footsteps of St. Paul the Apostle, crossing the Road Called Straight and arriving at the Mariamite Cathedral at 4:30 PM where the Syrian national anthem was played upon its arrival.

The funeral of Patriarch Hazim will be held at 2 PM on Monday at the Cathedral and he wil be laid to rest in the Patriarchs’ burial ground.

Salehi: Syria’s Enemies Started to Reconsider their Stances Realizing their Wrong Path

Dec 09, 2012

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Iran’s Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, said that targeting Syria is the targeting of the resistance in the region, stressing support to Syria’s government and people against the western-U.S. scheme which aims at undermining its key role in the region and its support to the resistance.

During a meeting with Syria’s Ambassador to Iran, Adnan Mahmoud, in which Salehi received his credentials, the Iranian Foreign Minister underlined the need for joint efforts to face the economic war against Syrian and Iran, pointing out to the strategic relations between the two countries.

He added that Syria’s enemies have started to realize that they were going in the wrong path and that the situation in Syria will not end up in a way that serves their interests so they have begun to reconsider their stances towards Syria.

Salehi reiterated his country’s stance towards the crisis in Syria based on the belief that the solution to the crisis should be through dialogue between the government and the national opposition which believes in dialogue and rejects foreign intervention and the armed groups’ terrorist acts.

He stressed the need for pushing the bilateral relations forward and overcoming all obstacles hindering trade and economic cooperation between the two countries.

The Iranian Foreign Minister wished Ambassador Mahmoud success in his mission in a way that contributes to boosting bilateral cooperation in all fields.

In turn, Ambassador Mahmoud stressed the importance of making a qualitative leap in bilateral relations and preserving direct communication to overcome obstacles facing the implementation of signed agreements between both sides.

Terrorist Group Attacks ‘Qaboun 2’ Electricity Plant, Causing Outages in Several Areas

Dec 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- An armed terrorist group attacked on Saturday night the Electric Power Transmission Plant ‘Qaboun 2’ in al-Qaboun neighborhood in Damascus, causing it to go out of service.

Minister of Electricity, Eng. Imad Khamis, told SANA reporter that the power transformers inside the plant were burned as a result of the attack, which caused power outages in the areas fed by the plant.

The Minister stressed that the repair workshops headed immediately to the targeted plant to fix the damage and restore service.

Khamis noted that the areas affected by the attack, including al-Mazra’eh, al-Qusour, al-Thawra Street, al-Qaboun and Barzeh, will be gradually fed by other sources until repair works are finished, which the Minister said will take a week.

Syria’s Ambassador in Algeria Refutes Media Claims of His Resignation

Dec 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Syria’s Ambassador in Algeria Dr. Numair al-Ghanem affirmed on Sunday that the claims by some media outlets which are complicit in the shedding in Syria blood on him resigning his post are baseless.

In a phone call with SANA, Ghanem said that these allegations are part of the psychological warfare that seeks to undermine Syrians’ confidence, affirming that such fabrications and rumors are proof the of the utter stupidity and failure of Syria’s enemies.

He said that this attempt will fail, and that he and his colleagues in the diplomatic corps will continue to work in Syria and abroad to follow the directives of President Bashar al-Assad, concluding by stressing that Syria will not break thanks to the Syrian Arab Army which is confronting the west’s mercenaries and minions in the region.

Stands in Solidarity with Homeland Held in South Africa, Slovakia, Russia, Czech and Spain

Dec 09, 2012

CAPITALS, (SANA)- Members of the Syrian and Lebanese community in South Africa reiterated their rejection of the aggression targeting Syria because of its national stances, stressing their support to Syria’s national and pan-Arab project led by President Bashar al-Assad.

During a stand of solidarity with Syria held on Saturday in front of the Syrian Embassy in Pretoria, the participants emphasized that Syria’s territorial integrity and the unity of its people are red lines.

They highlighted that the Syrian Arab Army is the only party responsible for protecting the homeland and getting it out of its crisis.

They affirmed that Syria’s security is the security of Lebanon and that the targeting of Syria is the targeting of the resistance project in the face of the imperialist schemes which the West is trying to bring life to.

Syrians in Slovakia Reiterates Adherence to Homeland

In the same context, Syrian students and community in Slovakia reiterated solidarity with their motherland in confronting terrorism and the global conspiracy hatched against it, expressing support to Syria and its leadership and people.

The National Union of Syrian Students, Slovakia Branch, organized a march in solidarity with Syria, in cooperation with the Syrian community in Slovakia with participation of Arab and Slovakian youth activists.

The participants in the march raised the Syrian flag and toured the streets of the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, including the Presidential Palace, the Parliament and the old City.

They thanked Russia and the friendly countries for supporting the Syrian people in confronting the conspiracy.

They also expressed complete rejection of all forms of foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, voicing confidence that Syria will overcome the crisis due to the wisdom of its leadership, awareness of its people and sacrifices of its army.

They reiterated support to President Bashar al-Assad in facing the challenges that aim at undermining Syria’s unity, stability and security, hailing the reforms launched by the Syrian leadership.

Solidarity Stand for Syria Held in Russia

The Syrian community, the National union of Syrian Students Union in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States, in cooperation with a number of active Russian organizations on Saturday staged a solidarity stand at the Martyrs Square in Moscow to express their support to Syria against the armed terrorist groups.

Participants reiterated their support to Syria’s leadership, army and people in face of the conspiracies hatched against it, stressing their readiness to exert all they can to defend their homeland and protect it in its battle against terrorist and extremist groups which are backed by western countries and their regional allies in Turkey and kingdoms and sheikdoms of the Gulf.

They hailed the firm and principled stances of the Russian and Chinese leaderships which prevented foreign military intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, expressing gratitude and support to these stances.

Representative of the Anti-Globalization Movement in Russia told SANA correspondent in Moscow that the movement’s participation in this stand is an expression of solidarity with Syria and rejection of foreign interference in its affairs.

On deploying Patriot missiles along the Syrian-Turkish borders, the representative said this issue is a flagrant provocation as Turkey is offering its territories for terrorist activities against Syria.

Speeches delivered at the event stressed that the US and its agents want to escalate tension to double up their presence in the region and hinder the efforts of the Syrian people to preserve independence and sovereignty.

Syrian Students in Prague Srtress Rejection of Foreign Interference in Syria

In the same context, Syrian students at the Czech universities reiterated their rejection of regional and international pressure and conspiracies against Syria.

Organizing a stand in solidarity in the Czech capital of Prague, the students stressed support to their homeland and rejection of any foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.

They condemned the instigative and misleading media campaign launched by some channels and international organizations against their country, voicing support to the current reforms in Syria.

The participants stressed that the Syrians only have the solution, hailing the sacrifices of the Syrian Arab Army against terrorism and the foreign-backed terrorists.

They expressed gratitude to the countries and peoples who stand by Syria at the international forums to thwart the conspiracy, especially Russia and China.

Arab students, Czech citizens and representative from the Czech National Socialist Party participated in the stand.

Syrian Students in Spain Hold Rally in Support of Homeland

Syrian students and members of the Syrian community in Spain rallied in front of the Spanish foreign ministry in Madrid to voice their support for their homeland.

Participants denounced the countries that support armed terrorist groups and those who tamper with Syria’s security and shed blood in the name of Jihad.

They also saluted the Syrian Arab Army which managed to confront mercenaries and foiled the conspiracies against Syria.

Prime Minister Stresses Importance of Work with National Parties to Boost Unity

Dec 09, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- Prime Minister, Wael al-Halqi, highlighted the importance of communication and coordination between the government and the representatives of the Syrian national parties to work as one team to boost steadfastness in the face of the conspiracies and consolidate national unity.

The Premier’s remarks came during his meeting with the Secretary General of the Syrian Communist Party (Unified), Hanin Nimir, and members of the Party’s politburo on Sunday.

Al-Halqi stressed the need for activating the role of the parties of the National Progressive Front and the popular, vocational and civil organizations in protecting the public and private properties and preserving the constructive diversity of the Syrian community.

For his part, Nimir said the battle which Syria is engaged in is a political, military, economic and social one, hailing the great efforts exerted by the government to strengthen the steadfastness of the national economy.

Nimir highly valued the role of the Armed Forces in confronting terrorism and restoring security and stability to Syria.

A Popular Walk in Honor of Martyrs in Sweida

Dec 09, 2012

SWEIDA, (SANA) – Youth and civil figures in Shahba city in Sweida organized a walk from al-Baath Arab Socialist Party headquarters in the city to the tombs of the martyrs who were targeted by the armed terrorist groups while carrying out their national duty.

Families of a number of martyrs participated in the event which aimed at honoring the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the sake of defending their country.

USA Starts Arming Terrorist Groups in Syria

Dec 09, 2012

LONDON, WASHINGTON, (SANA) – After the failure of the tools of the US in the region and after Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia proved impotence in face of the Syrian people’s steadfastness, the US has started playing its last card which is arming the opposition which is under the control of al-Qaeda Takfiri minds, according to the New York Times Newspaper.

The Newspaper said that an armed group linked to al-Qaeda has become more effective in fights against the Syrian Arab army.

Meanwhile, the British Sunday Times Newspaper said that the US started an underground process to send weapons to the Syrian opposition, adding that the Syrian opposition has been acquiring weapons from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey with the blessings of the US since last Spring.

The Newspaper pointed out that the US will send mortars, missile launchers and anti-tank missiles through its allies in the Middle East.

It added that US President, Barack Obama, authorized the US Central Intelligence (CIA) to carry out an underground process to support the opposition forces earlier this year.

The Sunday Times noted that the Americans bought part of the weapons of the former Libyan Leader, Moammar al-Qaddafi’s arsenals, including SA 7 missils, Strela 2 missiles which can be used  to down aircrafts.

It pointed out that the US Department of State is contacting field commanders of the Syrian armed opposition forces.

US diplomats and CIA officials have established a channel for direct contact with the Syrian opposition military formations.

Turkey a Large Border Crossing to Jihadists Coming to Syria

Dec 08, 2012

ANKARA, (SANA) – After the US enlisted the terrorist organization of Jabhat al-Nusra on the international terrorism list, several western media outlets affirmed that Turkey is the main entrance for this terrorism into Syria.

Western media interviewed terrorists who spoke about the places they are coming from and the manner in which they enter Syria through Turkey.

A terrorist told the AFP that the journey of the extremists begin in Turkey, adding that they spare no effort to avoid journalists although they are spread all across the border areas between Turkey and Syria.

The AFP said it interviewed terrorists of several nationalities in Turkey and Syria, including Egyptians, Saudis and Algerians.

International Crisis Group stressed that there are foreign extremists who are directly involved in the fighting along with the armed groups in Syria.

The Group added that majority of these extremists are within the Salafi organizations, adding that the ambiguity circling their movements and locations made it so difficult to know their numbers and influence.