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War drums are beating again in Washington. This time Syria is in the crosshairs after a massacre there last week left more than 100 dead. As might be expected from an administration with an announced policy of “regime change” in Syria, the reaction was to blame only the Syrian government for the tragedy, expel Syrian diplomats from Washington, and announce that the US may attack Syria even without UN approval. Of course, the idea that the administration should follow the Constitution and seek a Declaration of War from Congress is considered even more anachronistic now than under the previous administration.

It may be the case that the Syrian military was responsible for the events last week, but recent bombings and attacks have been carried out by armed rebels with reported al-Qaeda ties. With the stakes so high, it would make sense to wait for a full investigation — unless the truth is less important than stirring up emotions in favor of a US attack.

There is ample reason to be skeptical about US government claims amplified in mainstream media reports. How many times recently have lies and exaggerations been used to push for the use of force overseas? It was not long ago that we were told Gaddafi was planning genocide for the people of Libya, and the only way to stop it was a US attack. Those claims turned out to be false, but by then the US and NATO had already bombed Libya, destroying its infrastructure, killing untold numbers of civilians, and leaving a gang of violent thugs in charge.

Likewise, we were told numerous falsehoods to increase popular support for the 2003 war on Iraq, including salacious stories of trans-Atlantic drones and WMDs. Advocates of war did not understand the complexities of Iraqi society, including its tribal and religious differences. As a result, Iraq today is a chaotic mess, with its ancient Christian population eliminated and the economy set back decades. An unnecessary war brought about by lies and manipulation never ends well.

Earlier still, we were told lies about genocide and massacres in Kosovo to pave the way for President Clinton’s bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. More than 12 years later, that region is every bit as unstable and dangerous as before the US intervention – and American troops are still there.

The story about the Syrian massacre keeps changing, which should raise suspicions. First, we were told that the killings were caused by government shelling, but then it was discovered that most were killed at close range with handgun fire and knives. No one has explained why government forces would take the time to go house to house binding the hands of the victims before shooting them, and then retreat to allow the rebels in to record the gruesome details. No one wants to ask or answer the disturbing questions, but it would be wise to ask ourselves who benefits from these stories.

We have seen media reports over the past several weeks that the Obama administration is providing direct “non-lethal” assistance to the rebels in Syria while facilitating the transfer of weapons from other Gulf States. This semi-covert assistance to rebels we don’t know much about threatens to become overt intervention. Last week Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said about Syria, “I think the military option should be considered.” And here all along I thought it was up to Congress to decide when we go to war, not the generals.

We are on a fast track to war against Syria. It is time to put on the brakes.

By Rep. Ron Paul

5 June 2012

@ Information Clearing House

New US battle guidelines partly designed to counter the military challenge from China are attracting strong criticism at home and abroad as unnecessarily provocative of one of America’s strongest economic partners.

The AirSea Battle fighting “concept” intends to maintain military dominance in strategically important areas as the US shifts its focus more towards Asia. It is being gradually disclosed by the Pentagon, which has viewed China’s military build-up in the past couple of decades with concern.

Yet as Washington struggles to strike the right balance between competition and co-operation in its relationship with Beijing and tries to cut military spending, there are warnings – even among military circles – that the new doctrine will aggravate relations with China unnecessarily.

“AirSea Battle is demonising China,” retired Gen James Cartwright, former vice-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said last week. “That’s not in anybody’s interest.”

The doctrine has powerful cold war echoes. Alarmed by the threat of Soviet troops over-running western Europe, American military planners developed a battle-fighting doctrine in the 1970s called AirLand Battle that became the basis for much of military policy in the later stages of the cold war, from new weapons to relationships with US allies.

AirSea Battle could have an equally important role to shape policy and strategy during the next two decades. Officials say it is meant to cement US alliances and to counter “anti-access, area-denial” weapons and capabilities that other countries have developed.

“This is probably the defining challenge today and, as we view it, in the near future,” Adm Jonathan Greenert, the navy chief, said last week in some of the first public comments on the subject by a senior Pentagon official.

Leon Panetta, defence secretary, will travel to Asia during the next week where he will be explaining the implications of the doctrine for US allies.

The battle guidelines attempt to address the big strategic themes now facing a military winding down from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars: the rise of Asia; the shift in focus to sea and air power that the vast Asia-Pacific region demands; and the potential importance of cyberwarfare.

AirSea Battle, however, is being developed in a very different context from its cold war cousin. Budgets will be much tighter in the coming years. And while the Soviet Union was a clear adversary which was economically isolated, the US and China have deep economic ties, from trade to Treasury bonds.

Amid such delicate politics, US officials insist publicly that AirSea Battle is not focused on one country or even one region, but on technologies being developed by a host of countries and potentially non-state actors. “This notion should not be hijacked by any particular scenario,” Gen Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, said last week when asked if China was the main target.

Yet privately officials acknowledge the Pentagon has been alarmed by China’s investments in precisely the “access-denial” weapons that AirSea Battle is designed to tackle, from ballistic missiles that can sink warships to submarines and Beijing’s emerging cyberwar capabilities.

The Pentagon has also made no secret of its view that Asia is now a central priority of its long-term strategy. “One of the key projects that your generation will have to face is sustaining and enhancing American strength across the great maritime region of the Pacific,” Mr Panetta told graduates of US Naval Academy at Annapolis this week.

For some observers, AirSea Battle will push the US into dangerously provocative war planning against China. One of the documents the Pentagon has published, called the Joint Operational Access Concept, recommends that in the event of any conflict, the US “attack enemy anti-access/area-denial defences in depth”. In the case of China’s anti-ship missiles, that would mean preparing for a large pre-emptive strike on military bases in mainland China.

“The big risk is that such an attack would lead to a very dramatic escalation and China might even think it was an attempt to take out its nuclear capability,” says Raoul Heinrichs at Australian National University.

The guidelines are also being introduced in an era of budget cuts. The Pentagon has already reduced its budget by $485bn over the next decade and could be forced to cut by a similar amount under a budget agreement in Congress. But AirSea Battle will require huge investments in a long-distance bombers, submarines and in cyber capabilities, which will mean bigger cuts in other programmes or reduced spending on health and benefits.

“For about the last 12 years, if you wanted something, we basically could afford it,” said Lt Gen George Flynn, one of the Pentagon’s senior planning officials. “The new fiscal reality is going to require us to make choices.”

By Geoff Dyer

31 May 2012

The Pentagon©Reuters

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters on Thursday that the Obama administration’s continued pursuing of diplomatic solutions in Syria has put military planners in the Pentagon in a strategic bind.

Complaining of a “lack of focus,” he declared that with a clear instruction for regime change, “I can build you a plan, and I know how many divisions, I know how many air wings … it takes.”

This is the second time that Dempsey has gone on record to threaten military action. Speaking following the alleged May 25 massacre of over 1000 people at Houla, he went on Fox News to declare, “Of course, there is always a military option … it may come to a point with Syria because of the atrocities.”

The Houla massacre was immediately blamed on the regime of Bashar al-Assad and attributed to shelling by his troops. Within days, however, investigations proved that most deaths had been the result of summary executions by shots at close range and stabbings. Opposition forces blamed pro-government Alawite Shabihi militia, while the government blamed terrorists associated with the Sunni insurgency seeking to destabilise the United Nations ceasefire on the eve of a visit to Syria by Kofi Annan.

Once again, Dempsey utilised an alleged massacre as a platform for his warmongering—joining a Republican lobby led by Senator John McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat, urging the direct arming of the Syrian opposition and US air support.

The massacre this time is reported to have taken place in the village of Qubair, 20 kilometres from Hama, on Wednesday. But such details as are available are even murkier and more open to question than was Houla. Initial reports spoke of anywhere between 87 and 100 dead, over half women and children. It was supposed to have followed the same pattern as Houla—heavy shelling preceding an attack by Shabiha militia.

This casualty figure has since been revised down to “at least 55 people,” according to the pro-opposition UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The victims are, it said, mostly from the same Al-Yateem family, including 18 women and children.

Footage purportedly from Mazraat al-Qubeir showed the bodies of what the cameraman states are a dozen women and children, as well as the remains of burned corpses. An anonymous activist claims that the bodies of between 25 and 30 men were taken away by the killers.

The Syrian government has again rejected such accounts, putting the death toll in the town at nine and blaming terrorist groups seeking to promote military intervention on the eve of Thursday’s report to the UN General Assembly by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby. This report is to be followed by a closed-door briefing of the UN Security Council.

At the general assembly, Syria’s permanent representative, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, said that the massacre was committed five hours before any clashes happened, and that the images broadcast by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya were not those of massacre victims. “The instigative media channels have taken to airing such fabrications before the UN Security Council meetings,” he said.

Al-Jaafari said that local people had affirmed that the gunmen who committed the crime came from another nearby village. “What is taking place in some parts of Syria is an unjustifiable heinous massacre, but countries supporting terrorists and facilitating their crimes in Syria are complicit in the bloodshed,” he said. “Are suicide bombings that targeted Syria acts in self-defence? Are attacks on hospitals, medical staffs and schools democratic aspects?”

Dempsey’s chivvying of the Obama administration does not reflect a fundamental difference over strategy between the Pentagon and the While House. Obama is as much a blood-soaked war criminal as Dempsey. The administration wants regime change in Syria, achieved firstly by destabilisation and then possibly some form of proxy war waged by its allies, the Gulf monarchies and Turkey. But it has to confront and neutralise the opposition of Russia, China, India and other states.

At the UN, Annan declared that his own peace plan “is not being implemented.” He told the Security Council that it was time to threaten “consequences” if Assad did not halt the strife, stating to reporters that other actions must be considered, “if the plan is not working, or if we decide it’s not the way to go.”

Ban Ki-moon joined in blaming the Assad regime. “For many months, it has been evident that President Assad and his government have lost all legitimacy,” he said. “The trail of blood leads back to those responsible.”

As the UN met, in Washington US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was hosting a meeting of representatives from 55 countries, with the aim of imposing additional punitive sanctions that would force the Syrian business elite to abandon the Assad regime. “Strong sanctions make clear to the Syrian business community and other supporters of the regime that their future is bleak so long as the Assad regime remains in power,” he said.

In Istanbul Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was taking part in a mini “Friends of Syria” meeting of foreign ministers and envoys from 16 European, Turkish and Arab countries discussing their plans for regime change. Clinton insisted that Assad must go and “transfer power” to an “interim representative government”. Her proposal is directed at winning support from Russia’s Vladimir Putin for a negotiated regime change like that organised in Yemen.

Though such an outcome is not excluded, Moscow remains at present opposed to what it recognises as a US attempt to bring Syria into its orbit, isolate Iran and secure its undisputed hegemony over the Middle East at the expense of Russia and China.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said of the reported massacre at Qubair, “There is no doubt that certain forces once again used vicious and despicable provocations to frustrate Kofi Annan’s plan.”

“It is imperative that the foreign players who are taking part in settling the Syrian problem use their channels to influence the armed opposition groups, whose increased recent activity and calls for outside intervention contradict this plan,” he continued.

Russia and China both reiterated their opposition to military intervention at the UN, with Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping stating, “You can’t say that because you dislike a country’s system, you can then think of ways to overturn its government.”

Russia’s Representative to the UN, Vitali Churkin, opposed unilateral pressure on Syria and sanctions, urging instead that the supplying of weapons and money to the opposition must end.

Moscow and Beijing were backed by India, whose representative Hardeep Singh Puri expressed concern at escalating attacks against both civilians and security forces.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that Moscow is proposing an international conference seeking to persuade all Syrian opposition groups to end violence and sit down for talks. This would involve the permanent members of the UN Security Council, Turkey, Iran, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the European Union.

He has the backing of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, comprising Russia, China and Central Asian states, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, which Thursday called for a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict, rejecting any “enforced handover of power”. Alongside economic cooperation, the SCO is pledged to military cooperation, intelligence sharing, and counterterrorism operations. Its intervention into the Syrian crisis is another sign of how the US drive for regime change threatens wider war in the region.

By Chris Marsden

09 June, 2012

@ WSWS.org

At least 18 Afghan civilians, including seven children, were killed early Wednesday morning after US special operations troops called in an air strike on their homes.

The massacre provoked an angry demonstration in Pul-i-Alam, the capital of Logar province southeast of Kabul, where the strike took place. Afghanistan’s PAN news service reported that residents came to the capital carrying the shattered bodies of the dead, to prove that the victims were civilians.

“The protesters chanted anti-US and anti-Afghan government slogans, saying ‘death to America, death to the Afghan government, death to [Afghan President] Hamid Karzai and death to Barack Obama,” PAN reported.

Security forces opened fire on the protesters, wounding at least one of them.

As is its standard operating procedure, the US-led occupation denied any knowledge of civilian victims, claiming all of the dead were “Taliban insurgents”.

“I do not have any reporting that would allow me to confirm civilian deaths,” Major Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the occupation forces said.

The Associated Press, however, reported Wednesday that its photographer in Logar province “saw the bodies of five women, seven children and six men piled in the back of vans that villagers drove to the capital of Logar province to protest the overnight strike.”

According to local Afghan officials, US special operations troops were mounting a night raid on a house in the Baraki Barak district in Logar province, when they came under fire. In response, they called in an air strike.

The strike reportedly hit the home of a village elder, Bashir Akhundzada, who was killed in the attack. The Associated Press quoted the head of the local village council as saying that a number of families had gathered at Akhundzada’s home Tuesday night for a wedding party.

“The house is completely destroyed,” said the local official. “Everyone is shoveling to try to get the bodies out. Some of the bodies have no legs, no hands.”

Two and a half weeks after the NATO summit in Chicago—where President Obama declared that “the Afghan war as we understand it is over”—violence in Afghanistan continues to escalate and the death toll continues to mount.

In Ghazni province, south of Logar, troops of the US 82nd Airborne are carrying out a major offensive in what has long been a stronghold of the armed opposition groups, as well as a route for men and supplies joining the fight from Pakistan. The Pentagon has billed the operation as the last major offensive in which massed American troops will be “clearing” villages, going house-to-house in a bid to drive out resistance forces.

An armed US helicopter went down over Ghazni province on Wednesday, killing two American pilots. “It is likely that the helo today was brought down due to enemy small arms and RPG fire,” a Pentagon official told CNN.

The 82nd Airborne units fighting in Ghazni are scheduled to leave Afghanistan in September, as the US military completes the drawdown of the troops sent there in the “surge” ordered by Obama in December 2009.

That drawdown will leave approximately 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan after September. While a formal deadline set by NATO calls for completing the withdrawal of all “combat forces” from Afghanistan by 2014, a “strategic partnership” deal signed by Obama and Karzai in Kabul at the beginning of last month sets the stage for a continued occupation of the country by what is projected to be at least 20,000 US troops, including large contingents of special operations forces. The US will maintain its control over air power in the country and, through the deployment of “trainers” and “advisors”, will direct the operations of the Afghan security forces.

The type of operation carried out in Logar province, involving Special Forces night raids and air strikes, will continue well past 2014 under the plans drafted by the Obama administration and the Pentagon. These operations are hated by the Afghan people and have prompted impotent protests by Karzai, who has publicly demanded that US military forces stop operations in Afghan villages and end air strikes that kill civilians. In reality, however, Karzai’s puppet regime, widely hated by the Afghan people, remains dependent upon US firepower to keep him in the presidential palace.

Washington is also escalating its military violence across the border in Pakistan, with eight drone strikes carried out against targets there over the past two weeks. Pakistan’s foreign ministry called in a senior US diplomat Tuesday following a drone strike the day before that killed at least 15 people in the northwestern frontier tribal region of North Waziristan. It was the third such strike in as many days, which together claimed 27 lives.

A statement issued by the Pakistani ministry called the drone strikes “unlawful, against international law, and a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty”.

Rebuffing the Pakistani protest, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Wednesday that the drone strikes are “about our sovereignty as well”. He claimed that the US is “fighting a war in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]” and is justified in doing so, “because there were a group of individuals who attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 of our citizens.”

While Panetta invokes September 11 as the pretext for Washington’s drone war in Pakistan, the majority of the missile strikes from the pilotless aircraft are directed at individuals suspected not of terrorist plots against the United States, but of resisting the more than decade-old US military occupation of Afghanistan.

The provocative character of Panetta’s comments were magnified by the fact that he delivered them from New Delhi, Pakistan’s historic rival in south Asia, where he also urged greater involvement of India in Afghanistan, a prospect seen by Islamabad as a direct threat to Pakistan’s strategic position in the region.

Demonstratively identifying US interests with those of India, Panetta said: “Just as India views the relationship with Pakistan as complicated, so we do. It is a complicated relationship, often times frustrating, often times difficult.”

Relations between Washington and Islamabad have been marked by tension, particularly since US air strikes on Pakistani posts on the Afghan border last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. In retaliation, Islamabad closed the routes from the port of Karachi to the Afghan border upon which the US-led occupation force depended for at least a third of its supplies.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it had reached deals with the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, allowing US troops and equipment to use their territory to enter and leave Afghanistan. This so-called Northern Distribution Network is considerably longer and more expensive than the route through Pakistan, but it appears Washington is turning to it as part of preparations for a protracted and intensifying military intervention in the South Asian country.

Due to a recent spate of abusive, racist and xenophobic comments we are forced to revise our comment policy and has put all comments on moderation que.

By Bill Van Auken

7 June 2012

@ WSWS.org

Great Britain and the British Commonwealth are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne as Queen of Great Britain and various other countries and head of the British Commonwealth . However the enthusiastic celebrations for a much-admired and much-loved monarch should not hide the Awful Truth of the over 727 million avoidable deaths linked to British imperialism and neocolonialism over the last 60 years.

The most useful parameter for assessing the success or otherwise of social policy is avoidable death (excess death, excess mortality, avoidable mortality, deaths that did not have to happen) which for a country over a given period can be defined as the difference  between deaths actually occurring and deaths expected for a peaceful and decently run country with the same demographics (the same population and age distribution). Avoidable deaths can be determined  for all countries since 1950 using data available from the UN Population Division. Most of the victims of colonialism and neocolonialism die not from bullets or beating but from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease.

A useful parameter  is 1950-2005 avoidable mortality/2005 population expressed as a percentage and is (m = million) 9.750m/ 366.7m = 2.7% (Overseas Europe i.e. Australia, Canada,  Apartheid Israel, New Zealand and the US), 19.680m/ 394.4m = 5.0% (Western Europe),  25.578m/ 338.8m = 7.6% (Eastern Europe),  50.579m/ 540.0m = 9.4% (Latin America and Caribbean),  168.585m/1,544.5m = 10.9% (East Asia),  49.147m/ 237.4m = 20.7% (Turkey, Iran and Central Asia), 70.536m/ 306.0m = 23.0% (Arab North Africa and Middle East), 140.222m/ 558.2m = 25.1% (South East Asia), 2.347m/ 8.6m = 27.3% (Pacific), 465.320m/ 1,459.0m = 31.9% (South Asia), and 300.8m/ 696.5m = 43.2% (non-Arab Africa).

The 1950-2005 avoidable mortality totals 1,300 million  for the whole world, 1,200 million for the non-European World and about 600 million for the Muslim World, these estimates being consonant with independently determined under-5 year old infant mortality in the same period totaling 880 million for the whole world, 850 million for the non-European world and 400  million for the Muslim World.  Data from the UN Population Division indicate that avoidable deaths in the Developing World (excluding China) currently total about 18 million per year,  a global avoidable mortality holocaust much greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from the deprivation) and the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British in 1942-1945 with Australian complicity) but less than the Zionist-ignored WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed) and the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35 million Chinese dying under Japanese occupation) (see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that usefully provides a mortality-related history every country in the world since the Neolithic era and  which is now available  for free perusal on the Web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ ) .

The summary data provided below is of 1950-2005 avoidable mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for the UK, for each country occupied by the UK since WW2 (listed alphabetically) and as a total for all the countries subject to occupation by the UK in the post-1945 era.. The asterisk (*) below indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (thus both the UK and the US were  major occupiers of Afghanistan , Iraq and Korea , leaving aside the many other minor participants). The data derive from Chapter 3 of my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality  since 1950” http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/chapter-3-correlates-and-causes-of-post.html .

UK [4.411m/59.598m = 7.4%] – Afghanistan* [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Bahamas [0.007m/0.321m = 2.3%], Bahrain [0.054m/0.754m = 7.2%], Bangladesh* [51.196m/152.593m = 33.6%], Barbados [0.015m/0.272m = 5.5%], Belize [0.014m/0.266m = 5.3%], Bhutan [0.908m/2.392m = 38.0%], Botswana [0.443m/1.801m = 24.6%], Brunei [0.020m/0.374m = 5.3%], Cameroon* [6.669m/16.564m = 40.3%], Cyprus [0.054m/0.813m = 6.6%]; Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Eritrea* [1.757m/4.456m = 39.4%], Ethiopia [36.133m/74.189m = 48.7%], Fiji [0.054m/0.854m = 6.3%], Gambia [0.606m/1.499m = 47.6%], Ghana [6.089m/21.833m = 27.9%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guyana [0.086m/0.768m = 11.2%], Hong Kong [0.125m/7.182m = 1.7%], India [351.900m/1096.917m = 32.1%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Israel [0.095m/6.685 = 1.4%], Jamaica [0.245m/2.701m =9.1%], Jordan* [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Kenya [10.015m/32.849m = 30.5%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Kuwait* [0.089m/2.671m = 3.3%], Lesotho [0.951m/1.797m =52.9%], Libya [0.785m/5.768m =13.6%], Malawi [6.976m/12.572m = 55.5%], Malaysia [2.344m/25.325m = 9.3%], Maldives [0.015m/0.338m = 4.4%], Malta [0.019m/0.397m = 4.8%], Myanmar [20.174m/50.696 = 39.8%], Nepal [10.650m/26.289m = 40.5%], Nigeria [49.737m/130.236m =38.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Oman [0.359m/3.020m =11.9%], Pakistan [49.700m/161.151m = 30.8%], Qatar [0.029m/0.628m = 4.6%], Saint Lucia [0.012m/0.152m = 7.9%], Saint Vincent & Grenadines [0.018m/0.121m =14.9%], Sierra Leone [4.548m/5.340m = 85.2%], Singapore [0.113m/4.372m = 2.6%], Solomon Islands* [0.050m/0.504m = 48.5%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m =51.8%], Sri Lanka [0.951m/19.366m = 4.9%], Sudan [13.471m/35.040m = 38.4%], Swaziland [0.471m/1.087m = 43.3%], Tanzania [14.682m/38.365m =38.3%], Tonga [0.020m/0.106m = 18.9%], Trinidad & Tobago [0.052m/1.311m = 4.0%], Uganda [11.121m/27.623m = 40.3%], United Arab Emirates [0.087m/3.106m =2.8%], Vanuatu [0.037m/0.222m = 16.7%], Yemen [6.798m/21.480m = 31.6%], Zambia [5.463m/11.043m = 49.5%], Zimbabwe [4.653m/12.963m =35.9%], total = 727.448m/2247.711m = 32.4%.

The 727 million avoidable deaths linked to British imperialism and neocolonialism over the period 1950-2005  can be compared to Indian avoidable deaths that totaled about 600 million (1757-1837), 500 million (under Queen Victoria, 1837-1901) and 400 million (from 1901-1947). The largest death toll associated with 55 years in the New Elizabethan Age is due to the much larger populations involved. The 727 million avoidable deaths linked to the UK in the period 1950-2005 can be compared to those in the same period in countries variously subjugated at some point since 1945 by other imperialist nations e.g. 142 million (due to France), 82 million (due to the US) and 24 million (due to Apartheid Israel).

The carnage continues. 18 million Third Worlders die avoidably on Spaceship Earth with the UK and its prosperous Anglo colonial offshoots of the US , Canada , Australia , New Zealand and Apartheid Israel having a major say on the running of flight deck. The UK has a major complicity (variously as the former colonial power and through diplomatic and military input) in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (0.1 million violent deaths and 1.9 million avoidable deaths from deprivation, 1936-2012, and 7 million refugees), the  ongoing Somali Genocide (0.4  million violent deaths and 1.8 million avoidable deaths from deprivation, 1992-2012, and 2 million refugees), the ongoing Iraqi Genocide (1.7 million violent deaths and 2.9 million avoidable deaths, 1990-2012, and 5-6 million refugees), the ongoing Afghan Genocide ( 1.4 million violent deaths and 4.2 million avoidable deaths, 2001-2012, and 3-4 million refugees), and the ongoing Libyan Genocide (0.1 million violent deaths, 2011-2012, and 1 million refugees) (for the Awful Truth see “Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

Of the 12 million Muslims killed since 1990 in the US-UK War on Muslims and of the 20 million Muslim refugees generated  about half have been children. Thou shalt not kill children. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Please tell everyone you can – because the Mainstream media of the Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies certainly won’t but will continue with holocaust-ignoring, genocide-ignoring censorship,  lies of commission, and lies of omission. The celebrations for the much-loved Queen Elizabeth II  hide an awful ongoing reality of British  involvement in deadly neocolonialism and genocidal wars,  with Syria and Iran likely to be the next victims.

By Dr Gideon Polya

07 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

Although it seems they fell out of fashion after the 1999 WTO protests, trade agreements are still being drafted. Every few months, urged by chambers of commerce and under cover of darkness, legislators ink up new pacts to make it easier for goods to flow and workers to be shed.

Last year, the US Korea Free Trade Agreement was passed. This year, making the Korea deal look piddly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is expanding. The TPP began in 2006 as a hardcore trade agreement between the most trade-dependent countries around the Pacific: Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Brunei joined the negotiations near their conclusion, rounding out the “Pacific 4.” Their zeal to reduce tariffs, harmonize standards, and prevent subsidies goes far beyond the ambitions of the World Trade Organization. And now six other countries want in: the U.S., Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam.

In part, the reason that news about trade agreements doesn’t hit front pages is because, er, it’s news about trade agreements. Not the stuff of which editors’ dreams are made. But just because the agreements don’t make the front pages doesn’t mean that people haven’t heard the news. There have been protests against the TPP across the Asia-Pacific region. And at the protests, people are connecting the dots. Like here in Okinawa, Japan.

This month, I visited a rally commemorating the 40th anniversary of this small Pacific island being transferred from the U.S. to Japan. Although Japan runs the prefecture, there’s a rather large U.S. base still here. And there were plenty of people ready to make the connection between an oppressive base and an oppressive trade agreement.

Okina Gaja is a 22-year-old representative from JA (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives, the national association of agricultural cooperatives). He doesn’t like the Trans-Pacific Partnership because farmers will be hit to the tune of $20 billion in rice alone [ref in Japanese]. What he really wants is some autonomy in setting the agenda of the island on which he lives. The TPP will prevent that. And the U.S. base will too. “I want the U.S. base out of Okinawa because without that, Okinawan economic independence is impossible,” he said.

If Gaja and the farmers he works with are to win their autonomy, they’ll have to defeat some of Japan’s most powerful interests. The country’s export industry is very excited by the TPP, and it’s worth understanding precisely why their enthusiasm has nothing to do with trade tariffs.

Remember that according to the economics textbooks, free trade agreements reduce the tariffs, the border taxes, that countries charge one another, thus making everyone better off. The tax that Japanese cars pay on entering the U.S. is 2.5 percent. Getting rid of the tariff will do little to address the Japanese car industry’s bigger problem: the exchange rate.

The Yen has appreciated against the dollar by 50 percent in the past five years, which makes Japanese cars that much more expensive in the U.S. But what the TPP does do is make social protections, the kinds that workers like but bosses would rather snip away, less tenable. It’ll be easier under the TPP for companies to challenge environmental and health safeguards, and financial regulations, among many other protections they’ll be able to shrug.

The bone of contention for the U.S. car industry is the thicket of fiddly and difficult domestic regulations that mean most foreign cars are not allowed to be sold here. The TPP will make the economic roads in Japan safer for U.S. companies to sell their SUVs, thus making the actual roads in Japan more dangerous.

Hirofumi Ochiai is a 43-year-old bus driver with the Odakyu company’s Bus Workers Union. He experienced firsthand the force of neoliberal economic policies under the Prime Ministership of Junichiro Koizumi in the early 2000s, when bus subsidies for rural transport networks were cut and workers’ conditions deteriorated. The result: On the most lucrative inter-city bus routes, fares fell. But crashes went up, and services deteriorated on routes that mattered, but weren’t profitable.

So Ochiai came on the march with his fellow drivers to help join the dots.

Ochiai has an incredibly articulate analysis. Deregulation, he says, is always organized by the privileged. Workers always lose, and the rich always win. It’s the same with war. Workers become soldiers while the privileged stay where they are. So, in solidarity with the workers inside the U.S. bases on Okinawa, he’s outside asking that they be freed to fight their fights back home in the U.S., and so that he can fight the same fight here in Japan.

By Raj Patel

2 June, 2012

@ YES! Magazine

Raj Patel is an award-winning writer, activist, and academic. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, a New York Times best-seller. He blogs at rajpatel.org

In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations).

Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.

So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel?

Part of the answer is in a single word – pride. From the Jewish perspective there was indeed much to be proud about. Little Israel with its small but highly professional defence force and its mainly citizen army had smashed the war machines of the frontline Arab states in six days. The Jewish David had slain the Arab Goliath. Israeli forces were in occupation of the whole of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip (Egyptian territory), the West Bank including Arab East Jerusalem (Jordanian territory) and the Golan Heights (Syrian territory). And it was not much of a secret that the Israelis could have gone on to capture Cairo, Amman and Damascus. There was nothing to stop them except the impossibility of maintaining the occupation of three Arab capitals.

But the intensity of the pride most Jews of the world experienced with Israel’s military victory was in large part a product of the intensity of the fear that came before it. In the three weeks before the war, the Jews of the world truly believed, because (like Israeli Jews) they were conditioned by Zionism to believe, that the Arabs were poised to attack and that Israel’s very existence was at stake and much in doubt.

The Jews of the world (and Israeli Jews) could not be blamed for believing that, but it was a big, fat propaganda lie. Though Egypt’s President Nasser had asked UNEF forces to withdraw, had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping and had reinforced his army in the Sinai, neither his Egypt nor any of the frontline Arab states had any intention of attacking Israel. And Israel’s leaders, and the Johnson administration, knew that.

In short, and as I detail and document in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, the offensive Israel launched at 0750 hours (local time) on Monday 5 June was not a pre-emptive strike or an act of self-defence. It was a war of aggression.

The summary truth about that war is this.

Assisted by the regeneration Palestinian nationalism, which became the tail that wagged the Arab dog despite the brutal efforts of the intelligence services of the frontline Arab states to prevent it happening, Israel’s military and political hawks set a trap for Nasser; and he walked into it, with eyes half-open, in the hope that the international community, led by the Johnson administration, would restrain Israel and require it and Egypt to settle the problem of the moment by diplomacy. From Nasser’s perspective that was not an unreasonable expectation because of the commitment, given by President Eisenhower, that in the event of the closure of the Straits of Tiran by Egypt to Israeli shipping, the U.S. would work with the “society of nations” to cause Egypt to restore Israel’s right of passage, and by so doing, prevent war.

A large part of the reason why today rational debate about making peace is impossible with the vast majority of Jews everywhere is that they still believe Egypt and the frontline Arab states were intending to annihilate Israel in 1967, and were only prevented from doing so by Israel’s pre-emptive strike.

If the statement that the Arabs were not intending to attack Israel and that the existence of the Zionist state was not in danger was only that of a goy (a non-Jew, me), it could be dismissed by supporters of Israel right or wrong as anti-Semitic conjecture. In fact the truth the statement represents was admitted by some of the key Israeli players – after the war, of course.

On this 45th anniversary of the start of the Six Days War, here is a reminder of what they said.

In an interview published in Le Monde on 28 February 1968, Israeli Chief of Staff Rabin said this: “I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.”

On 14 April 1971, a report in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar contained the following statement by Mordecai Bentov, a member of the wartime national government. “The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.”

On 4 April 1972, General Haim Bar-Lev, Rabin’s predecessor as chief of staff, was quoted in Ma’ariv as follows: “We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Days War, and we had never thought of such a possibility.”

In the same Israeli newspaper on the same day, General Ezer Weizmann, Chief of Operations during the war and a nephew of Chaim Weizmann, was quoted as saying: “There was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”

In the spring of 1972, General Matetiyahu Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war and one of 12 members of Israel’s General Staff, addressed a political literary club in Tel Aviv. He said: “The thesis according to which the danger of genocide hung over us in June 1967, and according to which Israel was fighting for her very physical survival, was nothing but a bluff which was born and bred after the war.”

In a radio debate Peled also said: “Israel was never in real danger and there was no evidence that Egypt had any intention of attacking Israel.” He added that “Israeli intelligence knew that Egypt was not prepared for war.”

In the same programme General Chaim Herzog (former Director of Military Intelligence, future Israeli Ambassador to the UN and President of his state) said: “There was no danger of annihilation. Neither Israeli headquarters nor the Pentagon – as the memoirs of President Johnson proved – believed in this danger.”

On 3 June 1972 Peled was even more explicit in an article of his own for Le Monde. He wrote: “All those stories about the huge danger we were facing because of our small territorial size, an argument expounded once the war was over, have never been considered in our calculations. While we proceeded towards the full mobilisation of our forces, no person in his right mind could believe that all this force was necessary to our ‘defence’ against the Egyptian threat. This force was to crush once and for all the Egyptians at the military level and their Soviet masters at the political level. To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.”

The preference of some generals for truth-telling after the event provoked something of a debate in Israel, but it was short-lived. If some Israeli journalists had had their way, the generals would have kept their mouths shut. Weizmann was one of those approached with the suggestion that he and others who wanted to speak out should “not exercise their inalienable right to free speech lest they prejudice world opinion and the Jewish diaspora against Israel.”

It is not surprising that debate in Israel was shut down before it led to some serious soul-searching about the nature of the state and whether it should continue to live by the lie as well as the sword; but it is more than remarkable, I think, that the mainstream Western media continues to prefer the convenience of the Zionist myth to the reality of what happened in 1967 and why. When reporters and commentators have need today to make reference to the Six Days War, almost all of them still tell it like the Zionists said it was in 1967 rather than how it really was. Obviously there are still limits to how far the mainstream media is prepared to go in challenging the Zionist account of history, but it could also be that lazy journalism is a factor in the equation.

For those journalists, lazy or not, who might still have doubts about who started the Six Days War, here’s a quote from what Prime Minister Begin said in an unguarded, public moment in 1982. “In June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us, We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

By Alan Hart

5 June 2012

@ Alanhart.net

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

Alex Thomson says crew was led to ‘free-fire zone’ as deaths would discredit Bashar al-Assad’s regime

The chief correspondent of Channel 4 News has claimed that Syrian rebels deliberately tried to get him and his crew killed by gunfire from government forces in a bid to discredit the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Alex Thomson alleged a small group from the Free Syrian Army deliberately guided the vehicle in which he and his Channel 4 News colleagues were travelling into what he described as a “free-fire zone” on a blocked road near the city of al-Qusayr, because “dead journos are bad for Damascus”.

Thomson said that after being led into a “no man’s land” between Syrian army and rebel forces by four men in a black car, his team were fired upon and forced to take evasive action, eventually managing to “floor it back to the road we’d been led in on”.

He also claimed that later on the same car of rebels blocked the road between their vehicle and the UN vehicles accompanying them, which he said prompted the UN escort to drive off and abandon them after seeing the Channel 4 team surrounded by “shouting militia”. The incident took place last weekend and Thomson is now back in the UK.

“Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow. We move out behind,” Thomson wrote in a Channel 4 News website blog published on Friday/ morning.

“We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man’s land,” he added.

“At that point there was the crack of a bullet and one of the slower three-point turns I’ve experienced. We screamed off into the nearest side-street for cover. Another dead end.

“There was no option but to drive back out on to the sniping ground and floor it back to the road we’d been led in on. Predictably the black car was there which had led us to the trap. They roared off as soon as we reappeared.

“I’m quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus.”

Thomson said this conviction was only strengthened half an hour later when “our four friends in the same beaten-up black car suddenly pulled out of a side street, blocking us from the UN vehicles ahead”.

“The UN duly drove back past us, witnessed us surrounded by shouting militia, and left town. Eventually we got out too and on the right route, back to Damascus,” he added.

“In a war where they slit the throats of toddlers back to the spine, what’s the big deal in sending a van full of journalists into the killing zone? It was nothing personal.”

A spokeswoman for ITN-produced Channel 4 News said: “The safety of our journalists is of paramount importance and we only ever send experienced teams into these hostile environments.

“Alex is an incredibly experienced journalist who has covered conflicts around the world for more than two decades and has used social media to share the full detail of these assignments. We will be reviewing this trip, as we do with every other foreign send and sharing the review across ITN as we continue to cover this complex and important story.”

By  Ben Dowell

8 June, 2012

@ guardian.co.uk

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.

The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities’ being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. “Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces . . . the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition,” Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

By John Rosenthal

11 June, 2012

@ National Review

John Rosenthal writes on European politics and transatlantic security issues. You can follow his work at www.trans-int.com or on Facebook.

This this article was first published at National Review

© National Review Online 2012. All Rights Reserved.

The Embassy of the Syrian Arab Republic presents its compliments to the esteemed recipients and has the honour to present the details of the massacres which happened on Friday, 25th May, 2012, in Taldao (Al-Houla) and Al-Shoumarieh, as follows : 1. Hundreds of gunmen gathered in an orderly and systematic manner around the sites of the massacres, armed with heavy weapons including anti-tank missiles. On Friday, 25th May, 2012, sharp at 1400 hours, they commenced their offensive attack on the area simultaneously from Al-Rastan, Talbiseh and Al-Qseir (places around Taldao). 2. The terrorist groups savagely killed the AlAbdulah family, comprising of Mohamad Abed AlNabi Abdulah, his wife and six children, and Rateeb Al-Alo and his son. 3. Also killed in the same manner was the AlSayed family, consisting of Areef Mohamad AlSayed, his wife Izdehar Ali Aldahir and their three children, Imad Mohamad AlSayed and Okbh Mohamad AlSayed. 4. The terrorist groups burnt crops and houses, and an unknown number of charred bodies were found there. 5. They vandalized the national hospital in Taldao which serves the people of the area. 6. They attacked five points for the Syrian Arab army positioned outside the area where the massacre happened. 7. The Syrian Arab Army did its duty in defending itself and innocent civilians and had clashed with the armed terrorist groups until 2300 hours, at which time the army managed to end the brutal assault, with three army members killed and sixteen soldiers injured; an addition to the martyrs’ list resulting from the two terrorist massacres. 8. Syria assures that no tank entered the area, affirming that the Syrian Army was in a state of self-defence and maintained the highest degree of self-control proportionality, and all reports to the contrary are pure lies as the terrorist groups were heavily armed and entered the area with the intent to kill. It was also an indication that with murder using knives, it became the “manner” of terrorist groups to commit their crimes as “offering a sacrifice under the Islamic way.” 9. The children, women and men were assembled at specific areas and if they had been killed by shellfire as biased news channels claim, there would have been dust all over them, whereas the images showed that the massacre was committed in cold blood and from close range. 10. The terrorist operation simultaneously from several areas indicates advanced planning for a terrorist crime which affected innocent Syrian nationals. 11. The residents of the area were supporters of the Syrian Arab army and were cheering it in full view of the world, and that cost them their lives. 12. The terrorist groups’ offensive on the town of Al-Shoumarieh in the countryside of Homs resulted in a horrible massacre on families there and the acts of a large sabotage as part of an escalation of crimes and terrorism prior to any United Nations Security Council sessions together with the announced visit of Mr Kofi Annan, the United Nations envoy to Syria. The groups committed crimes against the Syrian people at the timing of each of the Security Council’s meeting on Syria, or in this case, before the visit of Mr Annan to Damascus. The Syrian Government has informed the Human Rights Council of the terrorist groups using Syrian blood in return for a few lines in statements made by countries seeking to destroy Syria and killing her people in arguments of defence of human rights. Syria has warned of using Syrian blood in such a brutal way to stick the charges on the Syrian authorities, in a precedence that history has not seen. 13. The Government of the Syrian Arab Republic has condemned these ugly terrorist crimes in the strongest words possible. The crimes defy all definitions and descriptions of horrible crimes and systematically planned gross violation to human rights. Syria is determined to find the killers of the children, bring them to trial and not permit them to go unpunished. The Syrian Government has set up a committee by the defence, interior and justice ministries to investigate what happened and present a report within three days. Syria has announced that she is responsible for protecting her people from being killed and from terrorists, and she will do whatever is necessary in accordance with Syrian laws and Syrian international pledges to save her people from terrorism, which is supported and funded externally. In this context, Syria rejects any accusations of killing her own innocent citizens. 14. On 15th March, 2012, AlQaeda terrorist groups committed a massacre in the Karm AlLouz neighbourhood in Homs. It led to the death of fifteen Syrians, including a woman and her four children. It took place a day before the Meeting of the Security Council. 15. On 26th May, 2012, armed terrorist groups fired mortar shells from the AlWarsheh neighbourhood on AlNuzha and AlHadara in Homs, where it was cited that Janet Michael AlAkhrass and ten others were wounded in that attack. 16. On 26th May, 2012, an armed terrorist group hijacked the Agriculture Bank in AlBokamal city in the Der Alzor province and got away with an amount of 12 million Syrian bonds and stamps. 17. On 26th May, 2012, special authorities seized a store and a factory in Homs which terrorist groups used to manufacture improvised explosive devices. In one farm in Al-Gaseer in Homs, large quantities of materials for the manufacture of improvised explosives such as fertilizers, acid, gas canisters and dough fillings for explosives were discovered. A stolen car seized in Homs was also found there along with six Russian guns, three Bombakeshn guns, hand grenades, improvised explosives, a large amount of ammunition, military quivers, millitary uniforms and false car number plates. 18. On 26th May, 2012, special authorities clashed with an armed terrorist group which was attacking citizens and security forces in Douma. It led to the capture of some of its members and the death of others. The security forces found arms in the group’s possession which included improvised explosives, guns, ammunition and a stolen car from the countryside of Damascus Water Company. 19. In the Der Alzor countryside, an armed terrorist group intercepted a transport van ferrying engineers and technicians from the AlFurat Petroleum Company to work, and abducted them and the van to an unknown site. With this, there are currently more than 1,500 Syrians kidnapped and the fate of more than 1,000 still unknown. 20. In Tal Rifaat, Aleppo, an improvised explosive meant for a new massacre against Syrians blew up during preparations by some terrorists leading to some of them being killed and some wounded. All of the above indicate that demonstrations are no longer “peaceful” or that people are demanding for “freedom of opinion and expression.” The Syrian State is facing highly trained gunmen with sophisticated arms who seek to kill, slaughter and terrorise. In protecting its people, the Syrian State will do its job just as any State must to protect its people. What is happening confirms the truth of what Syria has been stressing, that she exposes the campaigns of terrorism supported and funded from abroad. What is more horrible to what is happening is the blood of the martyrs going as victims to media campaigns In an attempt to stick the crime on the Government of Syria.

Source: The Embassy of Syrian Arab Republican in Kuala Lumpur.