Babylon

About political holism

Political holism is based on the recognition that "we" are all members of a single whole. There's no "they," even though "we" are not all alike. Because "we" are all part of the whole, and therefore interdependent, we benefit from cooperating with each other. Political holism is a way of thinking about human cultures and nations as interdependent. Political holists search for solutions other than war to settle international disagreements. Their model of the world is one in which cooperation and negotiation, even with the enemy, even with the weak, promotes political stability more than warfare. In an overpopulated world with planet-wide environmental problems, the development of weapons of mass destruction has rendered war obsolete as an effective means to resolve disputes.

Political dualists consider political holists unpatriotic for questioning the necessity to defeat "them." In times of impending war, political dualists tend to measure patriotism by the intensity of one's hostility to the country's immediate enemy. Naturally, they would view as disloyalty any suggestion that the enemy is not evil, any call for cooperation with the enemy, any criticism of one's own country.
To political dualists, cooperation with the enemy means capitulation, relinquishment of the nation's position of dominance.

At its extreme, political dualism is essentially tribalism. (Betty Craige, 16-8-1997)

Bashar al-Assad's speech
Uruknet, 10-1-2012

The strength of Arabism lies in its diversity

The psychological war

A great part of the psychological war is launched now against Syria. When they failed in the sectarian issue, they also failed in the national issue. They failed in all the issues which have a political aspect. Then they moved to the economic aspect. ....
They are trying to depict Syria as an isolated country, trying to stress this over and over again. But our points of strength lie in our strategic position. If they want to besiege Syria, they will end up besieging a whole region. As for our relations with the West, they talk about an international community. This international community is a group of big colonial countries which view the whole world as an arena full of slaves who serve their interests.

For us, the West is important and we cannot deny this truth. But the West today is not like the West a decade ago. The world is changing and there are emerging powers. There are alternatives. ....
The West is still colonial in one way or another. It is changing from an old colonizer to a modern colonizer and from a modern colonizer during the Sykes-Picot agreement to a contemporary colonizer. It has different forms and shapes but it will never change, which means that we have to turn to the East. We, as a state, started this procedure several years ago, and my visits during the recent years fell under that initiative in one way or another. ..

President Bashar al-Assad's Interview with Addounia TV
ChamPress 30-8-2012

Bashar Al-Assad 29-8-2012

We greet you from the People's Palace in the Syrian capital of Damascus. We are honored to meet President Bashar al-Assad, President of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Mr. President, welcome on Addounia TV.

President al-Assad: Welcome to you and to Addounia TV.

Question: Mr. President, allow me to discuss during today's meeting the most important issues ... we start with the situation on the ground of course, Aleppo what is the situation in Aleppo; how do you view it?

President al-Assad: We cannot separate the situation in Aleppo from the situation in Syria.... They have a will to destroy the country. They started with Daraa, moved to Homs and Damascus and Aleppo and Deir Ezzor and Lattakia; to all provinces. They try to move from one place to another. The importance is in the difference in scale or weight of the city in the Syrian context, but if we take into account the scale of the complex battles waged by the armed forces on the technical, tactical and strategic levels, then they are among the most complex types of battles, yet the armed forces achieve great successes in this regard... Everyone hopes that the achievement or the resolution to be within weeks or days and hours. This is illogical; we're involved in a regional and global battle, so time is needed to resolve it.

Question: Mr. President, many ask what is the position of the Syrian state towards neighboring countries, particularly since some countries facilitate, train, finance and arm in all manners which may constitute a violation of the Syrian state, the security of Syria and the safety of Syrian citizens?

President al-Assad: We have to distinguish between what we as Syria and as Syrian people and as a country want from these countries. Do we seek a relation or a dispute with the country or with the people?
As for Turkey for example... do we go backwards because of the ignorance of some Turkish officials, or do we look at the relation with the Turkish people, particularly since this people practically stood with us during this crisis and didn't drift despite the media and financial pressure to go in the other direction. We must think first of peoples, because governments are transient and we must preserve relations with the peoples because these people are the ones who will practically protect us...
We must improve relations and help these peoples by presenting facts; when these peoples discover the reality of what is happening in Syria and the truth about the position of their officials, they will become stronger...

Question: Mr. President, there are those among the opposition who talk and ask why the Syrian forces and the Syrian army are inside Syrian cities, while not a single bullet has been fired in the Golan for nearly forty years.

President al-Assad: The task of the army and armed forces in all countries of the world is to protect the homeland. Protecting the homeland doesn't only mean protecting it from outside, but from within as well; any enemy that comes from any place.
This time, the enemy moved from within, not from without, and you may tell me that they're Syrians and I tell you that any Syrian who carries out a foreign and hostile plan becomes an enemy and is no longer Syrian.

Question: Mr. President, there are those who say that the popular movement in Syria remained peaceful for four or five months and became armed after it was oppressed by the state.

President al-Assad: No, this explanation is inaccurate for a simple reason; if they were unarmed then what explains that in the first week of turbulence and events there were a number of martyrs among security and police forces?
The truth is they died by weapons, but the type of arming and the goal of arming were different. At that time, the main goal was rallying the people by shooting protesters, security men and the police so that the police and security respond and kill more civilians; thereby spreading a state of hostility towards the state. ...
In fact, the gunmen appeared since the first days. The images broadcast by Syrian TV on what happened in Daraa, the shootings by gunmen which they said at the time were fabricated, were real...

Many people were misled in the beginning, thinking that what is happening is a state of excitement a wave of The Arab spring that will affect Syria, that these youths are excitable, that there are no gunmen, that the state is fabricating, all the these things we used to hear. For us as a state, the lack of public understanding was a problem. What helped the state in the resolution in recent months was the clarity of the picture for the larger part of the Syrian population.... There's a change in the public mood towards what is happening and towards the gunmen as they discovered that what is happening isn't a revolution nor a spring; they are rather terrorist acts in the full meaning of the word...

Question: Mr. President, the issue of defections is one of the things that concerned Syrian society lately as well... They said that if these people hadn't seen something dark in Syria's future and that the state isn't stable and isn't strong, then they wouldn't have abandoned fortune, power and positions to the unknown.

President al-Assad: Regardless of the names, and assuming that the future is dark, is this a reason to leave the country? What is this limited proposition, it is an accusation of being unpatriotic.
But let us examine the term. What happened was that individuals who were occupied certain positions fled the country, which is a process of desertion and escape, not defection... Those who flee are practically either weak or bad, because a patriotic and good person doesn't runaway and doesn't flee abroad.
Practically, this process is positive and a process of self-cleansing of the state first and the country in general...

Question: Your Excellency... the Syrians ask: why us? Why are we being targeted with this enormous amount of resources aimed at Syria?

President al-Assad: We are paying the price of different stances, some of them related to the principled polices linked to the Syrian rights, our stance on the resistance and our relation with Iran which means with this axes that is not liked by the West.
Some of those are linked to our latest stances, a lot of people aren t aware that our stance on the shelling of Libya was a lonely stance at the Arab League against the no-fly zone. We objected, and not merely abstained. As we fully understood that the no-fly zone means the start of aggression on Libya and this is what has happened.
We pay the price of these stances and the price of the west s openness towards us in 2008, 2009 and 2010 during which time some have mistakenly believed that it was a real openness stage...

Question: Mr. President, Was anything demanded to be done by your side .. during the openness and interest stage which was practiced on Syria between 2008 and 2010..?

President al-Assad: Yes, they clearly and continuously asked us to move away from Iran... How could we move away from it. In principle, rejecting or inverting on a side or faithful country, this is unacceptable. In terms of interest, a country which changed the Israeli Embassy into a Palestinian one and stood with the Palestinian right...
The attempts which were made during that time were related to conspiring on the Iranian nuclear file... What was needed from Syria was to convince Iran with matters against its interest, we saw that issue as an issue which relates to our future interest, our national security in the future, because what is applied to Iran as a state which seeks to get peaceful nuclear energy will be applied to us in future, particularly as this energy is basic in the future..

Question: Syria has and still encounters all forms of sanctions.. They say that through economic pressure, or through making Syria collapse economically they might achieve their political goals.

President al-Assad: This kind of sanctions will undoubtedly affect Syria, but it will affect with specific degrees. This depends on how we could we adapt with these conditions. Look to Iran, it progresses forwards in light of severe sanctions throughout many decades. We have capability to adapt with them as we are a productive state, we are not an importer country in principle, we are a productive state from agriculture, crafts into small industries, but we have to reformulate our economy in a way that suits with this new condition, in this case we can make achievement.

Question: Mr. President, You called for dialogue... How the State deals with the call for dialogue since the convening of the conference last year?

President al-Assad: This is a very long story... There was a national opposition which wanted to put aside all its interests and visions which we differ on to put the interest of the Homeland first. Subsequently in the political process, some of them entered elections, others participated in the People's Assembly and the government.
On the other side, there was the non-national opposition whom we didn't talk about directly, without specifying who was this opposition, the people will later know who they are, but we have to specify what is happening. In the beginning, that opposition presented a reform process, reforming, amending, changing laws or amending the constitution. ..
At the same time, it was bargaining with us through hidden channels that it had no interest in all this and that this speech was for the media or popular consumption, but it wanted to take part in the government...
They had no popular base, but they tried to achieve a political position for them in as opportunists in order to negotiate with the State... This was clear for us, they are opportunists to a great deal, so we disregarded them...

Question: Your Excellency, the Syrians want to know where they are heading, Where are we going? What next? What do you say to the Syrians, Your Excellency?

President al-Assad: In short, the fate of Syria is in the hands of the Syrians, NOT in the hands of anybody else; and once we eliminate terrorism, we will have no problem, even the conspirator would return and change. ..
The conspiracy is big; but as I said in every speech and every interview, the foundation lies in Syria. When we get rid of those terrorists and return to search later for the causes behind the presence of such criminality which we did not believe existed in our country, then we will be assured.

The Arab Homeland

Question: Part of the Syrian people say that they no longer believe in pan-Arabism. They say we should put Syria first .. Does His Excellency President Bashar al-Assad still believe in pan-Arabism and what is called Arab action ?

President al-Assad: First, I repeat what I said in one of my speeches, that Syria first is self-evident. .. But this does not contradict with what comes second, which is the city, the larger homeland and the Arab world to which we belong. ...
I say that today I am more committed to pan-Arabism, more convinced of it and more comfortable with it. ... Pan-Arabism is not an organization, it is a state of civilization...
As to the Arab League, let s be realistic: Since the year 2000, what are the achievements of the Arab League in the interest of the Arab nation? ... We never believed that in the Arab League there was real work in the interest of the Arab nation.

Maliki renews Syrian peoples' right
to establish democratic system
NINA, 30-08-2012

Baghdad (NINA) Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki renewed the Syrian Peoples' right to establish its democratic pluralist system that respects human rights, abandon monocracy and based on a constitution and law.

In his speech on Thursday, Aug. 30, before the Non-Allied Summit being held in Tehran, Maliki said, "We refuse to depend on security in dealing with our peoples' aspiration. We also refuse to resort to force to realize legitimate rights, because this harms and violate the uprising that must remain within its civilized frame."

Dawa party confirms standing by the Syrian people
against the domination of Baath Party.
Nina News, 31-08-2012

Baghdad / NINA /--Islamic Dawa party headed by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki confirmed standing by the Syrian people in its legitimate struggle for freedom and achieving full rights in choosing their representatives away from a one-party ruling and the dominance of the fascist tyranny Baath Party.

Al-Dawa was formed in 1957 by a group of Shi'ite leaders... Their aim was to create a party and a movement which would promote Islamic values and ethics, political awareness, combat secularism, and create an Islamic state in Iraq.
This came at a time when politics in Iraq was dominated by secularist Arab nationalist and socialist ideas.
Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr emerged as the leading member. It was he who laid out the foundations for the party and its political ideology, based on Wilayat Al-Umma (Governance of the people).
Al-Dawa gained strength in the 1970s. It waged an armed insurgency against the Iraqi government which initiated a crackdown on Shi'a political activism, driven in part by the secular nature of the Ba'thist ideology and in part by their view of a politicized Shi'a as a threat to the stability of the regime.

Dawa supported the Islamic Revolution in Iran and in turn received support from the Iranian government. During the Iran Iraq War, Iran backed a Dawa insurgency against Saddam Hussein's Baathist government in Iraq.
Despite this cooperation, al-Sadr's and Khomenei's visions of an Islamic Republic differed sharply in certain respects. While Khomeini argued the power of the state should rest with the ulema (Muslim scholars), al-Dawa supported the notion of power resting with the ummah, or in other words, the people.

In the West, al-Dawa was widely viewed as a terrorist organization during the Iran Iraq War, especially since the West tended to be more supportive of Iraq during that conflict. It is thought responsible for a host of assassination attempts in Iraq against the president, prime minister and others, as well as attacks against Western and Sunni targets elsewhere.

After the Persian Gulf War, the interests of al-Dawa and the United States became more closely aligned. The efforts of al-Dawa representatives and other opponents of Saddam Hussein led to the founding of the Iraqi National Congress, which relied heavily on United States funding.
INC's political platform promised "human rights and rule of law within a constitutional, democratic, and pluralistic Iraq".

DAWA Party Political Program

Iraqi regimes have always wielded excessive power from the centre. Saddam s totalitarian rule is but a further extension, albeit to a horrifying scale, of the authoritarianism and dictatorship of previous regimes. The Iraqi constitution has sought to remedy this through adopting federalism. However, grave danger can come from misunderstanding how federalism is meant to work.
Giving too much power to regions may serve to divide Iraq into mini-states based on ethnic and sectarian lines, seriously undermining the unity of the country and its elected national government.

Thus, we at the Islamic Dawa Party:

We at the Islamic Dawa party:

Ensure a fair hearing

They insulted the dignity
of the Arab Socialist Baath movement

"These tyrants have insulted even the dignity of the Arab Socialist Baath movement, having worked to transform it from an ideological movement and party to a gang which recruits members and inspires allegiance through force and hatred..." Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr

The Iraqi Constitution

We the sons of Mesopotamia, land of the prophets, resting place of the holy imams, the leaders of civilization and the creators of the alphabet, the cradle of arithmetic: on our land, the first law put in place by mankind was written; in our nation, the most noble era of justice in the politics of nations was laid down; on our soil, the followers of the prophet and the saints prayed, the philosophers and the scientists theorised and the writers and poets created...

We can create a new Iraq, Iraq of the future, without sectarianism, racial strife, regionalism, discrimination or isolation.
Terrorism and takfir (declaring someone an infidel) did not divert us from moving forward to build a nation of law.
Sectarianism and racism did not stop us from marching together to strengthen our national unity, set ways to peacefully transfer power, adopt a manner to fairly distribute wealth and give equal opportunity to all.

We the people of Iraq, newly arisen from our disasters and looking with confidence to the future through a democratic, federal, republican system, are determined - men and women, old and young - to respect the rule of law, reject the policy of aggression, pay attention to women and their rights, the elderly and their cares, the children and their affairs, spread the culture of diversity and defuse terrorism...

Rights and freedoms in Egypt's new constitution
Gamal Essam El-Din, 1-9-2012

Preliminary debate over the new constitution s chapter on freedoms and rights has deepened the rift between Islamists and seculars.

Essam El-Erian, a leading official of Muslim Brotherhood s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said: We are all for press freedoms but we are against the freedom of journalists to slander and insult citizens and public officials.
Younis Makhyoun, a leading member of the ultraconservative Salafist El-Nour Party, argued that it is essential that journalists accused of libel and slander crimes face jail sentences....
The above statements and others did not go down well with most members of the board of the Press Syndicate who accuse the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi of doing their best to manipulate public and private media.
They believe that most of the media is controlled by seculars who stand against realising their dream of turning Egypt into a religious state, Gamal Fahmi, a leftist board member of the Press Syndicate, told Ahram Online.

Cultural diversity?

Manal Al-Taibi, a liberal human rights activist, complained that the committee refused to seek the help of experts on civil society and human rights organisations.
As a result, Al-Taibi told the assembly 27 August, Women were not accorded many of their economic and social rights in the draft chapter, compared to a Muslim country like Morocco whose constitution is very progressive on women s rights."
Al-Taibi suspended her membership of the assembly s Freedoms and Rights Committee last week in protest to what she said was pressure led by Islamists to phase out many of the internationally-recognised codes on basic human rights and freedoms."
According to Al-Taiba, Most of these Islamist members are unaware of international accords on human rights and civil society activities.

Mohamed Saad Gawish, Salafist, stated: The draft of the chapter stresses the importance of respecting 'cultural diversity.' I have fears that this word is used to help some Western secular values infiltrate our Muslim society in a legal and constitutional way.

New Syria Constitution, 2012

Since the beginning of the 21st century, Syria, both as people and institutions had faced the challenge of development and modernization during tough regional and international circumstances which targeted its national sovereignty. This has formed the incentive to accomplish this Constitution as the basis for strengthening the rule of law.

The system of governance in the state shall be a republican system; Sovereignty is an attribute of the people; and no individual or group may claim sovereignty.
Sovereignty shall be based on the principle of the rule of the people by the people and for the people; The People shall exercise their sovereignty within the aspects and limits prescribed in the Constitution.

Israeli Democracy, Fact or Fiction?
by WILLIAM A. COOK, CounterPunch 2003

A true Democracy must meet two criteria: one philosophical that presents the logic of its argument in a declaration and/or constitution; the other practical that demonstrates how the Democracy implements legislation, distributes resources, and makes equitable all policies and procedures for all its citizens.

Democracy is first and foremost a concept, a philosophical understanding concerning the rights of humans relative to the government that acts in their name. A Democratic government serves through the manifest consent of the governed. That government receives its authority through the citizens in whom the right resides.
Inherent in this philosophical understanding is the acceptance of the rights of all citizens that reside in a state: each and every citizen possesses the right to consent to the legitimacy of those who govern, and each and every citizen must receive equal treatment before the law.

For a state to claim a Democratic form of government, it must have an established geographic area accepted by other nations as legitimate and defined. The need for established borders is both obvious and necessary with necessity arising out of the obvious. Without borders, there can be no absolute determination of citizenry, and, therefore, no way to fulfill the establishment of the rights noted above. What has this to do with the Democratic state of Israel? Everything.

Israel has no accepted legitimate borders other than those provided to it by Resolution 181, according to Anthony D Amato, Leighton Professor of Law at Northwestern University, in his brief The Legal Boundaries of Israel in International Law : The legal boundaries of Israel and Palestine were delimited in Resolution 181. Since the 1967 war, the borders of the current area controlled by Israel exceed those outlined by the UN in Resolution 181 of 1948... Despite numerous resolutions from the UN demanding that Israel return to its proper borders, most especially Resolution 242, Israel defies the world body continuing to retain land illegally held.

Supremacy of the Torah

A Democratic state must declare the premises of its existence in a document or documents that present to the world the logic of its right to govern. That usually comes in the form of a constitution. Unlike the Palestinians, Israel has no constitution.
Chuck Chriss, President of JIA writes, Israel has no written constitution, unlike the United States and most other democracies. There was supposed to be one. The Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel calls for the preparation of a constitution, but it was never done.
Both Chriss in his article and Daniel J. Elazar, writing in The Constitution of the State of Israel, point to the same dilemma: how to reconcile the secular and religious forces in Israel. ... Many religious Jews hold that the only real constitution for a Jewish state is the Torah and the Jewish law that flows from it. They not only see no need for a modern secular constitution, but even see in such a document a threat to the supremacy of the Torah

For a state to claim a Democratic form of government, it must accept the equality of all residents within its borders as legitimate citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, religion, political belief, or gender.
For a state to claim it is Democratic and reserve the rights of citizenship to a select group negates its claim. It is an oxymoron to limit citizenship rights to Jews alone and call the state Democratic.

Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism

Approximately 5 million Jews live in Israel. Orthodoxy is the only movement that is formally and legally recognized in Israel. Until very recently, only Orthodox Jews could serve on religious councils. The Orthodox rabbinate in Israel controls matters of personal status, such as marriage, conversion and divorce.

Orthodoxy or Rabbinic Judaism is the normative form of Judaism that developed after the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem (ad 70). Originating in the work of the Pharisaic rabbis, it was based on the legal and commentative literature in the Talmud, and it set up a mode of worship and a life discipline that were to be practiced by Jews worldwide down to modern times.

Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future. True, it gave the Jewish religion a legalistic tendency and made "separatism" its chief characteristic; yet only thus were the pure monotheistic faith, the ethical ideal, and the intellectual and spiritual character of the Jew preserved. (Jewish Encyclopedia)

Who were the Pharisees?

British Extremists Fighting in Syria
Syrian Arab News Agency, 2-9-2012

LONDON, (SANA)_The British Mail on Sunday newspaper disclosed that there are up to 100 British extremists, some of Pakistani origin, fighting in Syria.
The newspaper said that the British intelligence have detained British extremists on suspicion that they intend to join extremist brigades fighting in Syria.

Analysts see that the Western policy towards Syria that is premised on instigating violence and closing the door on the political solution has helped embolden the takfiri extremists and encourage them to head to Syria to commit crimes that targeted civilians and state institutions.
Political circles indicate that Western governments have adopted a secret plan that allows terrorists and extremists to head to Syria, thus serving a double objective; getting rid of the terrorists and using them to spread chaos in countries which oppose their own policies.

MI5 stops British extremists joining Syria
By Robert Verkaik, Daily Mail 1-9-2012

British Islamic extremists are being stopped from travelling to fight in Syria amid concerns that they will return home with deadly skills in weaponry and bomb-making. Scores of extremists, some newly converted to Islam, have been heading off to the Middle East and MI5 and counter-terrorism police units are using anti-terror powers to disrupt their travel plans.

One security source warned: There is an increasing number of Muslims going to Syria but they are becoming difficult to monitor because the disguise their ultimate destination by first travelling to France before flying on to Turkey and Jordan.
'The question is when they return to the UK do they carry on their lives peacefully, happy to have done their bit for jihad, or do they bring jihad back to Britain?
The source added: Some have the will to carry out attacks and by the time they return they also have capacity to make bombs and fire guns. This is a concern that needs to be closely monitored.

Unlike the Libyan conflict, the Syria volunteers are not refugees from their home country and counter-terrorism agencies fear that once the war is over, these trained fighters will look for a new jihadist cause.

Syria's road from jihad to prison
Robert Fisk, Independent, 2-9-2012

Damascus: They came into the room one by one, heads bowed, wrists crossed in front of them [..]. In one of Syria's [..] military prisons, they told their story...

Mohamed Amin Ali al-Abdullah was a 26-year-old fourth-year medical student from the northern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour. The son of a "simple" farming family in Latakia, he sat in the governor's brown leather chair in a neat striped blue shirt and trousers given to him, he said, by the authorities and told us he had encountered "psychological problems" in his second year. He twice broke down in tears while he spoke. He said he had followed medical advice as a student but also accepted psychological help from a "sheikh" who suggested he read specific texts from the Koran.
"This was a kind of entrance to my personality and from time to time the second man gave me disks about the Salafist cause, mostly of speeches by Saudi sheikhs such as Ibn Baz and Ibn Ottaimin. Later, he gave me videos that rejected all other sects in Islam, attacking the Sufis, attacking the Shia."...
When the uprising began in Syria last year, Mohamed said, he was advised by the "sheikh" and two other men to participate in anti-regime demonstrations. "When Friday prayers were over, one of us would stand in the middle, among the crowd, to shout about injustice and the bad situation; the other four would go to the corners and shout 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great] to encourage the crowd to do the same."

Around this time, Mohamed said, he was introduced to a Salafist called "Al-Hajer" who asked him to help in his movement's "medical and logistic support to hide men wanted by the authorities and to find safe houses". Al-Hajer began frequenting Mohamed's home, "and he offered me a kind of allegiance, where you shake hands with this man and tell him that you acknowledge him as a leader whom you will obey, and will follow jihad and will not question him".

Orthodox Obedience

Orthodoxy is opposed to heterodoxy ("other teaching"), heresy and schism. People who deviate from orthodoxy by professing a doctrine considered to be false are most often called heretics or radicals. (Wikipedia)
By definition, an Orthodox [believer] is one who strives to be obedient to the Commandments and, at the same time, obediently tries to fulfill the requirements of an Orthodox way of life, as revealed by Scripture and Tradition. (orthodoxinfo.com)
"If we have obedience we will understand what is required of us." (Elder Thaddeus of Serbia)
Hebrews 13:17: "Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account."

Ayatollah Khamenei added respectful, wise, and fair talks based on scientific reasoning is among the ways to spread and consolidate free-mindedness. The universities and seminaries shoulder a heavy responsibility in this regard.
Alluding to the matchless role of culture in the society, Ayatollah Khamenei said, the only way for the spread of culture and production of science and new ideas in the society is the creation of an atmosphere of critique in the universities and seminaries. (Teheran Times, 29-1-2003)

Al-Zoubi: Solution is Purely Syrian
Syrian Arab News Agency, 3-9-2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said that what is happening in Syria is a massive conspiracy and an aggression using barbaric tools whose elements are obvious, stressing that Syria is facing a terrorist, Wahabi and Takfiri mentality and an extremist culture in various guises and under various names.

They have no political project or program

Minister al-Zoubi stressed that there won't be dialogue as long as the terrorists have weapons because the dialogue should be held in peaceful and stable circumstances.
He said that some opposition sides don't want to hold dialogue because they have no political project or program...
"...Whoever wants to present their opinion can do so through political dialogue and clear opinion, and by the opposition, I mean the national opposition which rejects foreign interference..." Minister al-Zoubi said.

On the role of Europe in Syria, al-Zoubi said that the European role is dependent on the US role, adding that "Europe's role is a shadow of the US role and had been so for decades; the USA dominates the European decisions."

Iranian Soft Power
Race for Iran, 2-9-2012

Twenty years ago, Harvard University s Joseph Nye famously defined soft power as the ability to get others to want what you want, which he contrasted with the ability to compel others via hard military and economic assets. ...

Hillary notes that the rise of Tehran s regional influence over the last decade has little to do with hard power. Rather, as Hillary points out, Iran s rise is fundamentally about soft power.
We always think of Iran as a military dictatorship, but the Iranian message is clear: they want free and fair elections in countries like Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Iranian message and belief is if a country has free and fair elections, it will pursue independent policies that are in that country s national interest. The Iranian belief is that if they pursue independent policies, they will inevitably be unenthusiastic about pursuing U.S. or Western policies.

Hillary argues that Tehran can apply this approach even in Syria. ... Iranian policymakers are willing to roll the dice on elections in Syria because, first of all, they judge (correctly) that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad appears to retain the support of at least half of Syrian society. Thus, it is not at all clear that he would lose an election. But Hillary underscores that, even if Assad were to leave office as part of a democratic transition, a free and fairly elected successor to Assad would not be interested in strategic cooperation with the U.S. and would not be interested in aligning itself with Israel. That would be completely against the views and histories of the people.

On the other side of the Middle East s geopolitical and sectarian divide, Saudi Arabia is pursuing a very different strategy, in Syria and elsewhere in the region. The Saudi strategy emphasizes the funding and training of fundamentalist Sunni groups ideologically aligned with Al-Qa ida groups that, in contrast to mainstream Sunni Islamists who are not interested in killing other Muslims, take a strongly anti-Shi a stance.
This is, of course, the strategy that Saudi Arabia followed when it joined with the United States to fund largely Pashtun cadres among the mujahideen fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then fueled the rise of the Taliban during the 1990s, after the Soviet withdrawal. ...

Hillary elaborates on the point: The Saudis want to convince others in the region that the Iranians don t stand for Muslim causes, beliefs, independence or nationalism. The Saudis want others in the region to see the Iranians as Shiite, Persian, non-Arab, non-Sunni, and that what the Iranians are doing has nothing to do with democracy or freedom...
But polls and other objective indicators suggest that regional publics are not buying the Saudi message.

In Hillary s reading, dealing with the contrast between the Iranian and Saudi approaches to Syria will be crucial to Lakhdar Brahimi s chances of success in stabilizing the conflict there. ...
When challenged with an assertion that neither the Assad government nor the opposition is willing to talk, Hillary pushes back by observing that, just as the Islamic Republic supports a political solution in Syria, President Assad has been willing to talk with opponents since virtually the beginning of unrest back in March 2011. Furthermore, she underscores that it is largely the external Syrian opposition that has demanded Assad s ouster up front; the internal opposition has not insisted on that.

A flagrant violation of international law
Yahoo-IANS, 4-9-2012

Moscow, Sep 4 (IANS) Russia has strongly condemned the alleged threat by an armed Syrian opposition on attacking civilian airports in Syria, saying such actions were no different from terrorists.
Moscow was deeply concerned over the statement of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) that the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo were taken as "military targets" and civilian aircraft using them would be shot down, Xinhua quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying in a statement.
"We believe these threats are unacceptable. They are a flagrant violation of international law, in particular the Chicago Convention of 1944 on international civil aviation," said the ministry.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia

The international community can not remain indifferent to the attempts of extremist elements and terrorists to further destabilise the situation in the SAR, and especially to the repressive actions against ethno-confessional minorities, particularly Christians. We stand for the immediate cease-fire by unexceptionally all parties and for switching the conflict to political track based upon the existing consensus basis of Syrian settlement - K. Annan s plan and Geneva agreements. There is no alternative to that.

The citadel collapses
By George Monbiot, guardian.co.uk, 4-9-2012

For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses....
When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another and named his crime.

The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg principles as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression". This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.

That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair's cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His attorney general warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN security council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Blair tried and failed to obtain the third.

His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, "i) there must be an armed attack upon a state or such an attack must be imminent; ii) the use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) the acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack." None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him: "A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists."

Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people... That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed....

The justification, attempted by Blair this weekend, is that there was a moral case for invading Iraq. Yes, there was one. There was also a moral case for not invading Iraq, and this case was stronger.

Obsession With Regime Change
Responsible for Syria Catastrophe
by Tony Cartalucci, 5-9-2012

Foreign Secretary William Hague to the British House of Commons stated that more "death and suffering" would be required to convince Russia and other nations to change their positions on Syria.
This might answer the question as to why the United States, UK, France, NATO members including Turkey, and the despotic Gulf State autocracies have made such vigorous efforts to fund, arm, and support foreign terrorists...
It is their hope to create such staggering amounts of Western-subsidized "death and suffering" that the world begs for Western military intervention and regime change.

Hague however, faced criticism from the Labour Party's Peter Hain who accused Hague of an "obsession with regime change" that amounted to a "catastrophic and monumental failure of Western policy."

The premise Hague and his counterparts .. have upheld that Western support for terrorists operating in Syria is based on humanitarian concerns. ... At most, and much closer to reality, however, Western intervention is instead, naked military aggression...

FLASHBACK: Madeleine Albright: "The price is worth it"
by Sheldon Richman, November 7, 2003

In 1996 then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to years of U.S.-led economic sanctions against Iraq, We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? To which Ambassador Albright responded, I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.

That remark caused no public outcry. In fact, in January the following year Albright was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as President Clinton s secretary of state. ...
Apparently no member of the committee asked her about her statement on 60 Minutes. Albright was confirmed.
Why bring this up now? Albright has just published her memoirs, Madam Secretary, in which she clarifies her statement. Here s what she writes:

I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations.... As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into the trap and said something I simply did not mean. That was no one s fault but my own. (p. 275)

When one reviews the facts, it is clear that Albright s explanation is woefully inadequate. First, it contains an apparent contradiction. She says food and medicine were not embargoed, but then she says Saddam Hussein could have avoided the suffering simply by meeting his obligations. Does that mean more food would have been available had Hussein done what the U.S. government wanted? If so, weren t American officials at least partly responsible for the harm done to the Iraqi people? ...

Two UN humanitarian coordinators quit over the sanctions. As one of them, Denis Halliday, said when he left in 1998, I ve been using the word genocide because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I m afraid I have no other view.

Sheldon Richman, author of Ancient History : U.S. Conduct in the Middle East since World War II and the Folly of Intervention. .

Time for Washington to step back
Doug Bandow, CATO Institute 25-11-2011

Washington has a long history of supporting foreign thugs to advance perceived geopolitical interests. Sometimes horrible choices must be made, such as allying with Joseph Stalin against Adolf Hitler. In most cases, however, the interests being advanced are not worth the moral price of underwriting brutal repression....

Attempting to forcibly reform, or even overthrow, repressive regimes seems satisfying morally. But the outcome is not necessarily positive. It is far easier to blow up a society than put it back together. In Iraq at least 200,000 civilian likely have died after America's ill-considered invasion.
In 2006 the U.S. government pressed for elections in the Palestinian territories, which propelled Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip. Washington then refused to recognize the result, adding hypocrisy to stupidity.
Abrupt changes of regime are more likely to result in violence and repression. While Washington should not oppose democratic movements even if they seem less likely to promote its geopolitical interests, the U.S. government should not actively spur revolution....
The world in which Washington can simply tell everyone else what to do is illusory. ... Better for the U.S. government to advocate respect for human rights and democracy and then shut up. The less said by Washington about what the U.S. government desires, the better.

Washington's Perilous Power Play
by Ted Galen Carpenter, CATO Institute 2012

This article appeared in China Daily on August 31, 2012.

The Obama administration should back off from Syria and respect the concerns of China and Russia. US officials in particular need to mute the shrill rhetoric directed against their fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council. Above all, Washington needs to realize that hostile, bullying comments cause needless tensions in relations with those countries.
That outcome is especially unfortunate, since the bilateral relationship with China is perhaps the most important one of all for the US. It would be folly to let disagreements over Syrian policy do lasting damage to ties with China, but that is where the Obama administration seems to be headed.

Homs Governor: "Rewarded with sanctions, murder
and destruction", Syrian Arab News Agency 5-9-2012

HOMS, (SANA)- Governor of Homs Ahmad Munir Mohammad on Tuesday discussed the humanitarian, health and services conditions in Homs province with a UN delegation headed by Chief of Mission of Assessing Humanitarian Needs, Ben Parker.
Mohammad briefed the delegation on the current conditions in Homs city and the destruction caused by terrorists, noting that the terrorists didn't even spare schools and used them for their crimes.
He noted that Syrians and particularly the people of Homs received displaced people from Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq and shared their resources with them, hosting them in their homes, not in camps, and today the Syrians are rewarded with sanctions, murder and destruction.

For his part, Parker said that they are working to assess the security the situation in Homs, and that a permanent office will be established in Homs city to deal with humanitarian issues with the help of a team from the Red Crescent.

"Syria is a beautiful country"
Baghdad Burning, Riverbend Girl Blog
Monday, October 22, 2007

Syria is a beautiful country- at least I think it is. I say I think because while I perceive it to be beautiful, I sometimes wonder if I mistake safety, security and normalcy for beauty . In so many ways, Damascus is like Baghdad before the war- bustling streets, occasional traffic jams, markets seemingly always full of shoppers And in so many ways it s different. The buildings are higher, the streets are generally narrower and there s a mountain, Qasiyoun, that looms in the distance...
The first weeks here were something of a cultural shock. It has taken me these last three months to work away certain habits I d acquired in Iraq after the war. It s funny how you learn to act a certain way and don t even know you re doing strange things- like avoiding people s eyes in the street or crazily murmuring prayers to yourself when stuck in traffic. It took me at least three weeks to teach myself to walk properly again- with head lifted, not constantly looking behind me.
It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere....

"Riverbend and her blogging peers represent an uncensored real-time account of war, politics, and the perils of neo-imperialism." Alexandra Izabela Jerome

The weakness of non-Islamists:
a disaster to Egypt
Said Shehata, Ahram online 2-9-2012

Non-Islamist political forces are showing signs of being troubled by Islamists' domination - and this monopoly could be harmful for Egypt. This needs urgent action by non-Islamist forces to avoid the uncertain future of democracy in Egypt. If this does not happen soon, it will be more difficult to tackle this unhealthy political environment in the future and then put the country on the path of democracy and prosperity. ...

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists control almost all key positions in Egyptian politics.
The main reason for Islamists' domination is the weakness of non-Islamist political forces. In most democratic countries, such as those of the European Union, the presence of strong, different political forces is the safeguard for democracy. ...

One cannot change the fact that the Egyptian president is Islamist. So the practical reaction of the non-Islamist political forces to Islamist s domination should be to strengthen their grassroots base in order to be ready for the coming elections...
Islamists do need other forces to build a prosperous and democratic country. It is a responsibility of the non-Islamist camps to get over their divisions and become a real force on the Egyptian political scene. ...
Building a strong Egypt through active and effective political forces, especially the non-Islamist ones, will enable Egypt to regain its historical position in the region.

Egypt's Morsi calls on Syrian regime to step down
thestate.com 5-9-2012

CAIRO Egypt's president says Syrian leader Bashar Assad must learn from "recent history" and step down before it is too late.
Mohammed Morsi's reference to "recent history" appeared to allude to the fate of authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen that have been overthrown by Arab Spring uprisings.
Morsi spoke Wednesday at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo.

Amos Yadlin: bombing Assad's forces
most effective response to the Syrian crisis
Amos Yadlin, Independent 6-9-2012

Amos Yadlin is Executive Director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and former Head of Military Intelligence of the Israeli Defence Forces

The recommended model, built on the lessons of Iraq, is a Western aerial campaign that paves the way for regime change, as it did in Kosovo and in Libya. There are no "boots on the ground", at least initially (and should that become necessary, Turkish forces should be assigned to this mission).
The suggested strategy in Syria is to use gradual steps to convince Assad that an international campaign is a credible option: from moving aircraft carriers to the region and Turkish ground forces to the border, to reconnaissance sorties, no-fly zones, and humanitarian corridors.
The Syrian defensive capability is not dramatically greater than Iraq's of 1991 or 2003, which already included advanced Russian systems. As the Syrian military has been preoccupied with internal uprisings over the past year and a half, it is likely that its capabilities have even eroded.

Those who call for passivity in Syria claim that since there is no consensus among members of the UN Security Council and no explicit Arab League request, there is no legitimacy for foreign military intervention. These arguments ignore the moral obligation - the "Responsibility to Protect" principle - endorsed by the West. ... In any case, no Russian, Chinese, or Arab opposition justifies passivity while Assad's regime continues to slaughter the Syrian people. ...
On a related note, military intervention also enables Western powers to cope with the potential use of chemical weapons by the regime against the rebels, or by terror organisations against Western targets. ...
Finally, action in Syria might support the international campaign against Iran. ...
Acting in Syria, could weaken, if not break, the nexus between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Palestinian terror organisations, and therefore likely contain Iranian influence in the Levant.

A gradual military intervention along the lines of the Libyan model of a Western aerial campaign seems the most effective response to the Syrian crisis.

John Pilger: The Liberal Way to Run the World:
Improve or We ll Kill You, 5-9-2012

According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 strike sorties against Libya, of which more than a third were civilian targets. These included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UICEF report on the children killed, most [of them] under the age of ten. Like the destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, these crimes were not news, because news as disinformation is a fully integrated weapon of attack.

In Anglo-American scholarship, influential theorists known as liberal realists have long taught that liberal imperialists a term they never use are the world s peacebrokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole nations for autopsy, they have identified failed states (nations difficult to exploit) and rogue states (nations resistant to western dominance).

Whether or not the regime is a democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. The same is true of those contracted to do the dirty work.
In the Middle East, from Nasser s time to Syria today, western liberalism s collaborators have been Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while long discredited notions of democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest, as required. Plus ca change (ClearingHouse 2012)

What is acceptable and just for America,
is cruel and nefarious for its enemies
by John Glaser, antiwar.com 5-9-2012

Three of the Senate s most hawkish members visited Iraq on Wednesday to threaten Baghdad with damaged relations with Washington if it continues to allow Iran to send weapons to the Syrian government over Iraqi airspace.
Sens. John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham sat with the Iraqi foreign minister and other officials to pressure them to block Iran from making weapons deliveries to the embattled Syrian regime over Iraqi airspace. But Iraqi officials came back demanding evidence of this accusation.

Even as the US sent three of its most belligerent war hawks to Baghdad to get Iraq to stop being complicit in alleged arming of the Assad regime, Washington continues to be complicit in sending arms into Syria as well except to the criminal rebel militias instead of the regime.
What gives the US and its allies the right to send aid and weapons to the Syrian opposition, while such actions are prohibited for Iraq or Iran, is not clear. The same hypocrisy holds in almost every case of international relations. What is acceptable and just for America, is cruel and nefarious for its enemies.

Putin: Some Sides are Using Extremists
Syrian Arab News Agency 6-9-2012

MOSCOW, (SANA)_Russia's President Vladimir Putin said that some sides are using extremists to achieve their goals in Syria, calling upon all Western countries to reevaluate their position on the Syrian crisis.
In an interview with RT TV, Putin said "There are sides who want to use extremist members of al-Qaeda or other extremist organizations to achieve their own goals in Syria, which is a very dangerous and short-sighted policy that leads to bad consequences."
"It always happens that when someone wants to reach a certain end, he spares no means for that, and they are trying to use all means to reach their end This is what happened after the Soviet forces entered Afghanistan when our current partners supported the movement there and founded al-Qaeda that later dealt a blow to the US," said Putin.

The Russian president urged the West to re-evaluate its position on Syria. "Why would Russia alone re-evaluate its stance? We treat everyone with equal respect. Maybe our partners in the negotiation process should re-evaluate their position", he said.
Putin underscored the importance of halting violence by all sides and coming to the negotiation table, "We fully understand the importance of change, but it does not mean it has to be bloody." ...
He said the events in the Middle East and North Africa are unfolding in an uncivilized way.., expressing deep concern over the future developments there.

The devils game
Robert Dreyfuss 2005

For half a century the United States and many of its allies saw what I call the Islamic right as convenient partners in the Cold War. *** In the decades before 9/11, hard-core activists and organizations among Muslim fundamentalists on the far right were often viewed as allies for two reasons, because they were seen a fierce anti-communists and because they opposed secular nationalists such as Egypt s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iran s Mohammed Mossadegh. ***

By the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia s Islamist legions.
Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.

A second big mistake occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.

Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan.... The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.

Would the Islamic right have existed without U.S. support? Of course. ... But there is no question that the virulence of the movement that we now confront and which confronts many of the countries in the region, too, from Algeria to India and beyond would have been significantly less had the United States made other choices...

(More info: Sleeping with the devil, by Washingtonsblog)

The United States Must Abandon All Support
for the Syrian Rebellion
Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation 6-9-2012

The United States must immediately end all and I mean all support for the Syrian rebels. It should abandon them to their fate, whatever that might be. It should avoid getting involved, just as it abandoned Eastern European anti-Soviet rebellions in 1956 and 1968, just as it cut off Kurdish anti-Saddam separatists in the early 1970s and Shiite anti-Saddam rebels in 1991. And just as it didn t intervene, thank goodness, in the 2009 Green Movement uprising in Iran.

What s happening in Syria has transformed, inch by inch, from an Arab Spring type rebellion against an autocrat, la Tunisia and Egypt, into a full-fledged civil war. In that war, one side is amply backed by Iran, Russia and, it now appears, Iraq. And the other side is supported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Arab Persian Gulf kleptocracies.

Note any pattern? Yes, Sunni vs. Shiite. The United States is now engaged nearly completely in a sectarian, region-wide conflict pitting anti-American, Shiite powers and their allies against a Sunni bloc, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
In Syria, the opposition is heavily influenced by, if not dominated by, the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni militants, including a smattering of Al Qaeda types. And it s now getting the full-throated support of the Egyptian president, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, too.

As David Ignatius points out, the war in Syria is nearly identical to the 1980s US-backed jihad against the Soviet-backed government, and we know how that turned out: a thirty-years war, 1 million dead and a shattered nation that won t recover for a generation or two. ...

Are Americans so uninvolved in foreign policy these days that they ll ignore or, worse, support, another American-led intervention overseas, after debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq? Seems so.
If the United States wants to speak out on behalf of the Syrian rebels, as it did with the Green Movement in Iran in 2009, fine. But otherwise, hands off.

Al-Mikdad: 'A moral degradation'
Syria TV Online, 7-9-2012

The Syrian people do know that the USA and the Zionist entity are the mastermind for the ongoing aggression against Syria, Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Dr. Fayssal al-Mikdad declared. ...
He blasted vehemently the two speeches delivered by Egyptian president, Mohamad Morsi, whether before the Non-Aligned Movement, NAM Summit in Tehran or before Arabs' Foreign Ministers in Cairo, as 'very far from the reality' and as a 'flagrant interference in the domestic affairs of Syria'...

Al-Mikdad voiced Syria's welcome to the appointment of the international envoy, Lakhdar Ibrahimi, to Syria, as Syria did with Kofi Annan, the former UN envoy, his 6-point plan, and with UNSMIS mission, declaring that Syria would talk, with an open heart and a sincere desire, with Ibrahimi, and would listen to his advice and views, and would cooperate in establishing UN Office in Damascus to follow up and enable Ibrahimi to be in the picture of the ongoing in Syria. ...

The Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister blasted the League of Arab States decision to cut the Syrian Satellite TV's transmission by Arab-Sat and Nile-Sat as a 'moral degradation' in violation of the international declaration of human rights, and of all international values, asserting that the western 'no comment' on such a suppression of freedom proves but the hypocrisy and lies practiced and made by the west.

Iran, the NAM and Western Propaganda
James Petras, 7-9-20121

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a group of states considering themselves not aligned formally with or against any major power bloc. As of 2012, the movement has 120 members and 17 observer countries. WIKIPEDIA

Introduction

Iran chaired, hosted and led the recently rejuvenated Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) meeting in Teheran, attended by delegates from 120 countries, including 31 heads of state and 29 foreign secretaries of state. Even the United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon, notorious mouthpiece of Washington , felt obligated to address, a forum attended by two-thirds of the member countries of the UN, despite State Department and Israeli objections...
The entire US-Israeli-EU diplomatic and propaganda effort to isolate and stigmatize Iran, especially over the past decade, was shredded.

NAM Resolutions: Iran versus Washington Israel

The centerpiece of US and Israeli strategic policy has been to claim that Iran s nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium, are a threat to world peace and in particular to Israel and the Gulf states.
The NAM meeting repudiated that position, affirming Iran s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium. NAM rejected western sanctions against Iran and other countries. In fact many of the leading members, including India, brought delegations of business executives in pursuit of new economic contracts.

NAM declared its support for a nuclear free Middle East and called for an independent Palestinian state based on 1969 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, in total repudiation of Washington s unconditional support of the nuclear armed Jewish state.

NAM rejected Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi s proposal to support the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria, major blow to Washington s effort to secure international support for regime change.

Western Propaganda Media: Self Serving Diversions

The resounding diplomatic successes of the Iranian hosts of the NAM meeting were countered by a mass media blitz directed at diverting attention to relatively marginal events.
The Financial and New York Times, the BBC and the Washington Post featured a speech by Egyptian Prime Minister Morsi calling for NAM support for the Western backed armed mercenaries invading Syria. The media omitted mentioning that no delegation took up his proposal. NAM not only ignored Morsi but unanimously approved a resolution opposing western intervention and affirming the right of self-determination, clearly applicable to the case of Syria.

Overall the mass media deliberately ignored or underplayed the resolutions, dialogue and democratic procedures of the NAM meeting...

The hidden, obvious, peculiar, fatal,
omnipresent bias of American mainstream media
concerning US foreign policy
by William Blum, Foreign Policy Journal 1-9-2012

There are more than 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States. Can you name a single paper, or a single TV network, that was unequivocally opposed to the American wars carried out against Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, and Vietnam? Or even opposed to any two of these wars? How about one? ...

ODE: The Officially Designated Enemy

Can you name an American daily newspaper or TV network that more or less gives any support to any US government ODE (Officially Designated Enemy)? Like Hugo Ch vez of Venezuela, Fidel or Raul Castro of Cuba, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Rafael Correa of Ecuador (even before the current Assange matter), or Evo Morales of Bolivia? I mean that presents the ODE s point of view in a reasonably fair manner most of the time? Or any ODE of the recent past, like Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, Moammar Gaddafi of Libya, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, or Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti?

Who in the mainstream media supports Hamas of Gaza? Or Hezbollah of Lebanon? Who in the mainstream media is outspokenly critical of Israel s domestic or foreign policies? And keeps his/her job? ....

Long before the Soviet Union broke up, a group of Russian writers touring the United States were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. In our country, said one of them, to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We tear out their fingernails. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What s the secret?

Makdessi: Landmines in the Path of Ibrahimi
Syra Television Online 9-9-2012

U.S. ambassador to Libya killed
By Tamim Elyan and Omar al-Mosmari, 12-9-2012

BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.
Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.
The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.
"The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," the official in Benghazi told Reuters.

In neighboring Egypt, demonstrators had torn down an American flag and burned it during the protest. Some tried to raise a black flag with the words "There is no God but God, and Mohammad is his messenger", a Reuters witness said.
The crowd of around 2,000 protesters in Cairo was a mixture of Islamists and teenage soccer fans known for fighting police...

Flashback: Mohammed Gaddafi - Escape to Hell
Libyan Free Press, 3-4-2012

How cruel people can be when they flare up together! What a crushing flood that has no mercy for anyone in its way! It does not heed one s cry or lend one a hand when one is in dire need of help. On the contrary, it flings one about heedlessly.

The individual s tyranny is the easiest kind of tyranny. He is only one among many, who can get rid of him when they wish. He could even be liquidated somehow by somebody unimportant. But the tyranny of the masses is the cruellest kind of tyranny.

Who can stand against the crushing current and the blind engulfing power?! How I love the liberated masses on the march! They are unfettered, with no master, singing and merry after their terrible ordeals! On the other hand how I fear and apprehend them!
I love the masses as much as I love my father. Similarly, I fear them no less than I fear him.

William Hague condemns attack
James Tapsfield, independent.co.uk 12-9-2012

Foreign Secretary William Hague today condemned an attack on the US consulate in Libya in which the ambassador is believed to have died. ...
Mr Hague said: "There is no justification for such an attack and the appalling death of an US official. My thoughts and condolences are with his family and all his colleagues at the State Department.
"It is essential that the Libyan authorities take urgent action to improve security, particularly in Benghazi, and identify those responsible for such attacks.
"The UK stands ready to assist the Libyan authorities in any way we can and to support their efforts to continue the path towards a stable and secure Libya that fulfils the aspirations of the Libyan people."

Flashback: Libyan Blues
by Daniel Pipes, 22-8-2011

Many are ready to party about the political demise of ... Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi as rebel troops move into Tripoli. I am not partying. Here's why not.
The NATO intervention in March 2011 was done without due diligence as to who it is in Benghazi that it was helping.
To this day, their identity is a mystery. Chances are good that Islamist forces are hiding behind more benign elements, waiting for the right moment to pounce, as roughly happened in Iran in 1978-79, when Islamists did not make clear their strength nor their program until the shah was well disposed of. Should that be the case in Libya today, then .. Qaddafi will prove to be better than his successors...
I hope I am wrong and the rebels are modern and liberal....
I fear that Western forces will have brought civilization's worst enemies to power.

US envoy killed in attack had hailed Libya revolt
Hindustan Times 12-9-2012

US ambassador Chris Stevens had hailed the Libyan revolt that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi...
Stevens had served as envoy to the Libyan rebels from the early weeks of the February 2011 revolt, in which NATO aircraft helped rebels overthrow the 40-year-old regime and eventually capture and kill Gaddafi.
"I was thrilled to watch the Libyan people stand up and demand their rights," Stevens said in a video introduction released by the State Department shortly after he was appointed ambassador in May 2012.
"Now I'm excited to return to Libya to continue the great work we've started, building a solid partnership between the United States and Libya to help you, the Libyan people, achieve your goals."

During Gaddafi's reign an Islamist demonstration of the kind that erupted Tuesday night would have been unthinkable...

Syria s first Lady congratulates
the Syrian Scientific Olympic team

Syria s first Lady, Asma al-Assad has met the Syrian Scientific Olympic team who won their certificates of appreciation in Asian Scientific Olympics and the world of mathematics and physics for 2012.
During the meeting, Lady Asma has expressed her appreciation of the results that the Olympics team has been able to achieve this year despite the difficult circumstances that Syria goes through.

Away from the traditionalism

Mrs. Asma al-Assad confirmed that the achieved results at the international level are presented by the upgrading of the scientific level of the Syrian Olympics scientific team, as well as the accuracy in the preparation... taking advantage of Science in uprising a generation with analytical and logical concepts, who s able to judge matters in a scientific advanced way via a sophisticated creative way of thought away from the traditionalism. (breaking news 12-9-2012)

Bad terrorists and good terrorists
Syrian Arab News Agency, 12-9-2012

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations said that Moscow was not successful in pushing the UN Security Council (UNSC) to adopt a draft statement condemning the terrorist attacks in Aleppo city.

On the Series of Terrorist Acts in Iraq and Syria
Permanent Mission of the USSR to the United Nations

On 9 September, Baghdad and a number of other cities in Iraq were shattered by a wave of terrorist acts... More than 90 people fell victims of the acts of violence, most of them officers of the national security services. Over 300 people, including civilians, were injured.
On the same day a series of terrorist attacks swept through Aleppo, the second largest city of Syria, inflicting harm on civilians and civil infrastructure.... The death toll as a result of the terrorist attacks reached 47, over a hundred people were injured.

On 10 September, following the standard UN Security Council practice, the Russian delegation circulated two draft UN SC Press Statements, condemning in strongest terms the terrorist acts committed in Iraq and Syria and expressing condolences to the victims of the acts and to their families. ...

We express our gratitude to our partners in the Security Council for the adoption of the UN SC Press Statement on terrorist attacks in Iraq.
At the same time we are perplexed by the fact that due to a non-constructive approach taken by some of its members the UN Security Council failed to adopt a Press Statement on terrorist attacks in Syria.
The motivation used that the terrorist acts in Syria should not be taken out of the general context of violence in the country , in effect constitutes a departure from the principle, reaffirmed by the UN Security Council members on numerous occasions, that there can be no justification for terrorism. Such attitude encourages terrorism...

Libyan attack - Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, 12 September 2012

In truth, responsibility may [..] be traced back, directly or indirectly, to those in London, Paris, Brussels and Washington who launched last year's Nato intervention in Libya with insouciant disregard for the consequences.
It was clear then, or should have been, that toppling Muammar Gaddafi was the easy bit. Preventing an Iraq-style implosion, or some form of Afghan anarchy, would be much harder.
Yet this is exactly what Stevens's death may presage. Once again, the western powers have started a fire they cannot extinguish. A year after David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy jointly travelled to Libya to lay claim to a liberator's bogus laurels, the Libyan revolution they fanned and fuelled is in danger of degenerating into a chaotic, violent free-for-all.

Libya was 'until Nato barged in, a unified state'

Do not be misled by the fig leaf of this summer's national assembly polls. Post-Gaddafi Libya lacks viable national political leadership, a constitution, functioning institutions, and most importantly, security.
Nationwide parliamentary elections are still a year away. The east-west divide is as problematic as ever. Political factions fight over the bones of the former regime, symbolised by the forthcoming trials of Gaddafi's son, Saif, and his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-Senussi.
Effective central control, meanwhile, is largely absent. And into this vacuum have stepped armed groups whether politically, religiously or financially inspired matters little all claiming sectional suzerainty over the multitude of fractured fiefdoms that was, until Nato barged in, a unified state.

Flashback: The U.S.-NATO War Against Libya,
by Jack A. Smith / April 14th, 2011

It would be an enormous mistake to see what has happened in Libya as a mass, liberal democratic uprising. The narrative has to be strained to work in most countries, but in Libya, it breaks down completely.
As we have pointed out, the Libyan uprising consisted of a cluster of tribes and personalities, some within the Libyan government, some within the army and many others longtime opponents of the regime, all of whom saw an opportunity at this particular moment .
United perhaps only by their opposition to Gaddafi, these people hold no common ideology and certainly do not all advocate Western-style democracy. Rather, they saw an opportunity to take greater power, and they tried to seize it... (Dissident Voice 2011)

UN-Arab League envoy arrives in Syria
UN News Center, 13 September 2012

UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi today arrived in Damascus, where he will hold talks with the Government, representatives of the opposition and members of civil society.
On Monday, Mr. Brahimi had reiterated his commitment to the Syrian people during his visit to Cairo, Egypt, where he met with Arab League officials before heading to Syria.
I do know it is a very difficult task, but I believe it is not my right to refuse and to try my best to give as much help as possible to the Syrian people, Mr. Brahimi said.
Amidst reports of an escalation in violence in recent weeks in many towns and villages, as well as the country's two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, UN agencies now estimate that some 2.5 million Syrians are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

No One Disagrees with Need to Stop Bloodshed
and Restore Harmony Among People in Syria, SANA, 13-9-2012

DAMASCUS, SANA_ The UN Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said no one disagrees with the need to stop the bloodshed and restore harmony among the people in Syria.
In a statement upon arrival in Damascus International Airport on Thursday, Brahimi added " We came to Syria for consultation with the brotherly Syrians There is a crisis and I think it is deteriorating."

UNESCO chief speaks out against deaths
of journalists, UN News 12-9-2012

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with defending press freedom today condemned the recent killing of a Syrian journalist, and voiced grave concern over the death of three Eritrean media workers who had been kept in a prison camp for over a decade.
The Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Irina Bokova, said she was appalled at the killing of Musab Mohamed Said Al-Oudaallah, who is reported to have been killed in his home in the Syrian capital of Damascus on 22 August.
Once again, I call on all those fighting in Syria to respect the civilian status of reporters and the basic human right of freedom of expression, she stated in a news release.
Journalists must be able to perform their duties and keep the public informed without fearing for their lives.

UN envoy welcomes Lebanon s commitment to unity
after recent tensions, UN News 11-9-2012

In a meeting with Lebanon s Speaker of Parliament, a United Nations senior official today welcomed security developments in the country while emphasizing the need for political stability in a time of regional turmoil.
I have ... congratulated the Lebanese Government and the security authorities on steps recently taken to address threats to Lebanon s security and stability, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Derek Plumbly, said in a statement following his meeting with Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri.
The ongoing violence in neighbouring Syria has fuelled sectarian tensions across Lebanon and prompted concerns that the country could plunge back into the internecine violence it endured during its 15 year civil war, which ended in 1990.

Nabih Berri: Born in Bo, Sierra Leone to Lebanese Shi'a parents.
Berri went to school in Tebnine and Ain Ebel in southern Lebanon and later studied at the Makassed and the Ecole de la Sagesse in Beirut.
He obtained a law degree in 1963 from the Lebanese University, where he had served as the student body president, and became a lawyer at the Court of Appeals.
During the 1960s, he joined the Arab Nationalist Movement.

The Speaker of the Parliament, who by custom must be a Shi'a Muslim, is now elected to a four-year term. He forms part of a "troika" together with the President (required to be a Maronite Christian) and the Prime Minister (a Sunni Muslim).

Al Qaeda leader urges support for ousting Syria's Assad
AlertNet 13-9-2012

DUBAI, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri has called on all Muslims to back the rebels in Syria...
Speaking on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Zawahri criticised Muslim governments in the Middle East and in Asia for failing to pursue the cause of political Islam. He chastised the new leadership in Egypt in particular for sticking to its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Pakistan, which he described as a "government for sale and an army for rent".
Zawahri said the United States was propping up Assad because it feared the rise of another Islamist regime to threaten its ally Israel.
"Supporting jihad in Syria to establish a Muslim state is a basic step towards Jerusalem, and thus America is giving the secular Baathist regime one chance after another for fear that a government is established in Syria that would threaten Israel," he said. ...

Removal of Saddam A Disaster for US Policy
Dr. Susmit Kumar

In 1995 I wrote, Iraq would have been a natural ally of the West like Turkey in fighting the rising Islamic fundamentalist states a vital fact if these countries become a big threat to world peace. It was primarily Iraq who helped the West stem the rise of Islamic fundamentalists by waging the war with Iran. But under the influence of neocons, the US administrations, especially, the Bush, Jr. s administration committed the blunder mistake of getting rid of Saddam Hussein from Iraq.

Saddam Hussein s Iraq and Syria were [..] countries where Christians felt safe. Although ruled by dictators, they were secular. Instead of taking out Saddam, the U.S. could have taken his help fighting a bigger evil al-Qaeda. ...
In our 1995 article, we wrote, Iraq would have been a natural ally of the West like Turkey in fighting the rising Islamic fundamentalist states a vital fact if these countries become a big threat to world peace. ...

According to a 2004 report by Charles A. Duelfer, the CIA s chief weapons inspector, in Saddam Hussein s view the U.S. and Iraq should have been close allies. He could have helped curb Iran s nuclear ambitions, and he offered to become America s best friend in the region, bar none. This report was based on a variety of sources, including interrogations of Hussein himself.
According to a document found with Saddam Hussein when he was captured, he warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops. The document appeared to be a directive, written after he lost power, from Mr. Hussein to leaders of the Iraqi resistance, counseling caution against getting too close to Islamic jihadiis and other foreign Arabs coming into the country, according to American officials.
Officials familiar with the document said Mr. Hussein apparently believed that foreign Arabs, eager for a holy war against the West, had an agenda different from the Baathists ...

Establishment and protection of justice

"He who stands up against injustice, should himself refrain from causing injustice to others, and should remember that speaking of justice will be meaningless if capital is allowed rule beyond its limits or influence the process of decision-making.
Political and legal justice remains meaningless without social and economic justice. The fight against the wolves and the corruptors will not succeed, if they have contacts and partners inside the corridors of government and the palaces of the Sultan.
All of this, in order to be achieved, requires the establishment and protection of justice. Authority must have its sward while power must have its own mind, eyes and good conscience."

Saddam Hoessein,
on the occasion of the 34th anniversay of the 17-30 july revolution

The color WHITE

The Color White

In color psychology white is the color of new beginnings, wiping the slate clean, so to speak. It is the blank canvas waiting to be written upon. While white isn't stimulating to the senses, it opens the way for the creation of anything the mind can conceive.
White contains an equal balance of all the colors of the spectrum, representing both the positive and negative aspects of all colors. Its basic feature is equality, implying fairness and impartiality, neutrality and independence.
White is totally reflective, awakening openness, growth and creativity. You can't hide behind it as it amplifies everything in its way.
White is a color of protection and encouragement, offering a sense of peace and calm, comfort and hope, helping alleviate emotional upsets. It creates a sense of order and efficiency, a great help if you need to declutter your life.

Many people use white as a recall of their youth and innocence. It reminds them of a time when their lives were easier and less complicated.

A Fountain Of Life

Seyyed Mohammad Khatami
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran 2003

Southern California On Alert
By Kathleen Miles, The Huffington Post 13-9-2012

"The Innocence of Muslims," the film that is believed to have instigated deadly riots in Egypt and Libya, was made by two Southern California Christians with dark records.
The filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, is an Egyptian Coptic Christian who has served time for creating fake bank accounts with stolen Social Security numbers.
Advisor to the film, Steve Klein, is part of the Church of Kaweah, which is located at a compound near Sequoia National Park and has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC

Church at Kaweah Spreads Hateful, Militant Christian Views
By Leah Nelson 2012

In a 22-acre compound at the southern edge of Sequoia National Park in California, a secretive cohort of militant Christian fundamentalists is preparing for war. ... At the head of the Church at Kaweah is Pastor Warren Mark Campbell...
The tiny church has been well outside the mainstream since the early 1990s, when founding pastor Warren Lee Campbell (father of the current pastor) bought into the notion that churches should shun all government regulation and answer solely to God. Since then, the church has become increasingly radical, ramping up its paramilitary activities and forging alliances with an array of figures revered on the radical right [..] whose goal is to turn America into a theocracy based on the Old Testament...

In January 2011, at the invitation of Covenant Community Church in Whitehall, Mont., Pastor Warren Mark Campbell addressed an audience of 200 including 30 state officials at the Montana State Capitol. Politics, he told them, is a holy calling, not a secular calling. You have an obligation to rule and serve in the name of Jesus Christ.

Another frequent guest of the Church at Kaweah is Pastor John Weaver... Last July, Weaver conducted weapons training at a conference sponsored by the neo-Confederate League of the South....
Divine providence always arranges the time for fighting, Weaver told the attendees. You must remember, God is the god of war. ...
Over the past year, Johnson and the church militia have developed a relationship with Steve Klein, a longtime religious-right activist who brags about having led a hunter killer team as a Marine in Vietnam. ...
Klein, based in Hemet, Calif., has been active in extremist movements for decades. In 1977, he founded Courageous Christians United...

UNICEF helps open schools for children,
UN News Centre 14-9-2012

Efforts to rehabilitate Syrian schools ahead of the academic year are underway despite the ongoing violence across the country, the United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) announced today.
Addressing a media briefing in Geneva, a UNICEF spokesperson, Marixie Mercado, reported that according to Syrian Government estimates some 2,072 schools out of 22,000 across the country have been damaged or destroyed, and over 600 are occupied by displaced persons.
She also noted that UNICEF had completed repairs in 64 schools in Deraa, Rural Damascus and Lattakia, while another 100 schools would be rehabilitated within the coming days and weeks.
Ms. Mercado said that it was extremely important that children returned to school as a way of providing stability and respite from the conflict.

Education crucial to engender a culture of peace
UN News Centre, 14-9-2012

Top officials of the United Nations said today that education could tackle the roots of conflict by promoting an understanding of common humanity...
Through education, we teach children not to hate. Through education, we raise leaders who act with wisdom and compassion. Through education, we establish a true, lasting culture of peace, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said...
The UN chief stated that it was obvious that the absence of peace caused suffering, citing not only the civilian toll in open conflicts such as that in Syria, but also the deadly effects of discrimination, xenophobia, terrorism and human rights abuses around the world. ...
To fundamentally tackle the roots of conflict, we need to promote an understanding of our common humanity, he said, adding that education is paramount for that purpose.

Education that does not glorify war but educates for peace

Addressing the same gathering, General Assembly President Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser stressed that it was not enough to prevent war to ensure peace, and advocated for active efforts to promote a culture of peace through education that champions non-violence and justice in all areas.
The youth of today deserve a radically different education one that does not glorify war but educates for peace, he said.
The cause of peace needs to be understood not only in the passive sense of the absence of war, but also in the constructive sense of creating conditions for equality and social justice.

Bibi, Gone Rogue
John Glaser, AntiWar.Com 12-9-2012

From David Remnick in the New Yorker: "It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage."

Last month, Mofaz accused Netanyahu of waging an extensive and relentless PR campaign with the sole objective of preparing the ground for a premature military adventure.
Mr. prime minister, he continued, you re creating panic. You are trying to frighten us and terrify us. And in truth we are scared: scared by your lack of judgment, scared that you both lead and don t lead, scare that you are executing a dangerous and irresponsible policy.
At this point, Netanyahu seems to have gone rogue, with even his loyal Defense Minister Ehud Barak dialing back the war rhetoric considerably.

M.J. Rosenberg, 12-9-2012
Netanyahu Is An Existential Threat To Israel

New York Times' former executive editor, Bill Keller wrote that even if Iran develops nuclear weapons, they would not necessarily pose a significant threat to Israel, let alone to the United States. The Iranians are not insane. In fact the Middle East leader who behaves most irrationally is Netanyahu himself.
Keller suggested what many Israelis say privately: this whole Iran scare is not about nukes per, but about the fear that a nuclear Iran jeopardizes Israel s geostrategic supremacy. Bibi fears that he would lose his ability to do whatever he wants, to whomever he wants, whenever he wants.
Bomb Gaza. Bomb Lebanon. Bomb relief ships. Bomb whatever.
It is all about regional hegemony....

Sincere, Neutral and Independent
Efforts to Resolve Crisis in Syria
Syrian Arab News Agency, 15-9-2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- President Bashar al-Assad affirmed Syria's full commitment to cooperate with any sincere efforts to resolve the crisis in Syria as long as they were neutral and independent.
President al-Assad's stress came during his meeting on Saturday with the UN Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and the accompanying delegation.
"The success of the political work is linked with exerting pressure on the countries which are funding and training the terrorists and allowing smuggling of weapons into Syria to stop such acts," President al-Assad added.
For his part, Brahimi stressed that the basis of his work is the interest and aspirations of the Syrian people, saying he will work with complete independence and based on his main reference of Kofi Annan's plan and Geneva statement.

"Dilly-dallying with dogmatic zealots"
Gamal Nkrumah, Ahram online 12-9-2012

The killing, allegedly by suffocation, of United States Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens in the Cyrenaican port city of Benghazi in eastern Libya has prompted much talk about the possible implications of growing anti-American sentiment in the countries of the Arab Spring.
The incident marked an important ideological shift in the powers-that-be in Libya. Washington obviously had no notion of the consequences, and the admonition of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi comes to mind.
Washington flirted with militant Islamists and did not heed the words of her erstwhile secularist collaborator, who was derided as a mindless dictator and condemned to die the death of a dog.
Does not Washington stand for democracy and freedom of expression? He had long warned of the consequences of dilly-dallying with dogmatic zealots. But Washington, alas, did not heed his words of wisdom.

"The U.S. administration came into Iraq: it divided the Iraqi people according to religion, according to their sect, according to their ethnicity. It s divide and conquer. And now the women are the biggest loser in all of this..."
"Now, by the constitution, there are articles that refer us to the Islamic sharia, when this was not in action in the times of the previous regime.
Under Islamic sharia, women are worth half a man legally and one-quarter of a man socially in a marriage. And we still suffer under this.... (Yanar Mohammed)

Yanar Mohammed, whilst not being anti-religion, is a strong believer in secular government. Indeed, Yanar claims that women's equality can only be achieved through secular government because an Islamic government would hurt women s rights . WIKIPEDIA

The Revolution and Women in Iraq
by Saddam Hussein, 1981

Education of women is not restricted in our country to the primary stages, nor has women's employment been restricted to minor responsibilities. Iraq's five universities include a large proportion of female students and a number of women have acquired high qualifications in medicine and engineering. Some women are now teaching in the universities. Women in Iraq have also reached high positions in the government and become ministers and directors general. ...
The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society.

Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated. (Chapter 1)

Strengthening the economic status of women through both legal rights and social conventions is part of the liberation process.
Strengthening and expanding the conditions which prohibit polygamy is also part of that process. The same can be said about limiting divorce with additional restrictions and wider and stricter conditions.
The expansion of education and the provision of equal opportunities for men and women is another move in that direction. More important than anything is the liberation of women through active work and sincere participation in the reconstruction of society...
Antifeminist acts and ideas should be extensively condemned by men as well as by women in every section of our people. (Chapter 4).

The Revolution and Women in Iraq was published in 1981 by the Translation and Foreign Languages Publishing House-Baghdad.

"For the people who havn't read `Zabiba and the king` It might come as a surprise, but Saddam always believed in feminism and emancipation of the women." Rusty Shackleford

The first day of the 2012-2013 study season
Syrian Arab News Agency 16-9-2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) - Minister of Education, Hazwan al-Wazz, said that the Ministry is working to complete preparations in the areas where armed terrorist groups prevent students from going to school.
The Minister's statements came during a tour of a number of schools in Damascus Countryside with the aim of inspecting the province's preparations for the current study year.
The Minister reviewed the difficulties hindering the educational process in some areas of Deir Ezzor and Aleppo, adding that the Ministry will spare no effort to get the study year started in these areas.
Over 5 million students and more than 385,000 teachers and administrative employees headed to schools Sunday morning on the first day of the 2012-2013 study season.

National conference for the opposition
ChamPress, 16-9-2012

DAMASCUS- A number of parties and national figures on Sunday launched a call upon all the opposition forces and parties inside and outside the country for holding a comprehensive national conference for the opposition.
"This initiative is an attempt at rejecting monopolizing the representation of the Syrian opposition," stressed the statement...
The participants agreed on rejecting all forms of armed conflict and putting allegiance to the homeland above everything else...
Answering the journalists' questions following the meeting, Qadri Jamil, member of the Popular Front for Change and Liberation, said this initiative "reflects the new political sphere in Syria that is based on political and party pluralism and on the non-monopoly of the Syrian people's will by any party."
He stressed the importance of the Syrian people's unanimity on the weapon of the Syrian Arab Army as being the only legitimate weapon in the country.

Jamil was a member of the committee that drafted amendments to the Constitution of Syria in response to the 2011 Syrian uprising. The amendments were approved in the Syrian constitutional referendum, 2012 and allowed multiparty elections in Syria.
Jamil was elected as an independent but leads the People's Will Party, which is the legal name of the National Committee for the Unity of Syrian Communists.
He has stated that "The slogan 'the overthrow of the regime' is unpractical, unrealistic and useless", and has advocated a "complete change in the regime ... under the leadership of the President".
In the first government formed after the elections at 23 June 2012, Jamil was appointed as a Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs; Minister of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection. WIKIPEDIA info

Q & A: Qadri Jamil
By Muhammad Atef Fares, Syria Today, june 2012

QJ: We know what we want, and we have a comprehensive programme to solve the country s major economic and social problems. Not only a short-term one for getting out of the crisis, but also a long-term one for the first day after the crisis ends.

What about those who call for dismantling of the security state, for instance?

QJ: The dissolving of Article Eight in itself means the dismantling of the security state. Since the Ba ath Party is not the leader of the state and the society under the new constitution, all state agencies are now under the government s leadership. This in itself is a big step forward, because for the first time since 1972, we will have a government which governs.

But the new constitution, whose drafting committee you were a member of, gives the president extensive powers, including dissolving parliament and taking over its legislative powers according to Article 111. How can you try to implement any reforms under such a system?

QJ: All presidential systems are like that. The only problem in our constitution is the relation between the legislative authority and its powers and the executive authority. If this is solved, our constitution would conform to the standards of constitutions of countries described as democratic.

Muslim Brotherhood: The Arab Trojan Horse
By Eiad Wannous, Syria Today, august 2012

The Arab Spring has changed the political scene in the Middle East. Most striking is the re-touching of the image of a radical organisation such as the Muslim Brotherhood to that of a potential civil form for future governance in the region. One might argue: As other ideologies have not achieved well-being for Arabs, why don t we try Islamism? When it comes to Syria, the Egyptian presidential election and the Muslim Brotherhood s rise within the Egyptian Spring have enforced such arguments...
However, before any judgment can be made, a few points related to both the general history of the Brotherhood and its history within Syria must be reviewed. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a fundamentalist Egyptian schoolteacher who advocated violent jihad and the replacement of secular governments with a worldwide totalitarian caliphate governed under strict Islamic sharia law.

"We will not stop at this point [i.e., freeing Egypt from secularism and modernity ], but will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland, and struggle to overcome it..." Hasan al-Banna

The Muslim Brotherhood is known for its supposed hostility to US policies and Israel. What is not well-known is that the spread of the movement in Arab countries was facilitated by the CIA during the Cold War era as part of the famous strategy of containment , the anti-Soviet, anti-communist initiative adopted by Eisenhower s administration which lasted until the late eighties. Over these decades, the Muslim Brotherhood turned into a Trojan horse within countries allied with the Soviet Union.

Now, however, although the Brotherhood s success in Egypt may have revived its dream of becoming a 'regional governance system', differences among its branches make that a long shot in practice. In Egypt, besides its failed assassination attempt on president Gamal Abdel Nasser and its successful assassination of his successor Anwar al-Sadat for signing a peace treaty with Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood has conducted more peaceful activities, focusing on educational systems and charity organisations and publically confronting the mainstream political system by providing local financial aid that attracted candidates. However, their story in Syria was entirely different.

The organisation entered Syria in 1936 thanks to Mustafa al-Siba i, a pupil of Banna, who returned from Cairo after studying at Al-Azhar Mosque. The major shift took place in 1973, when the Vanguard Fighters, the Brotherhood s armed wing, was established to change the Ba athist secular government by force of arms and establish an Islamic state in Syria.
A violent rebellion conducted in Syria during the late 1970s and into the 1980s left bloody memories of doctors, academics, and army officers assassinated by Muslim Brothers, along with the massacres they carried out against civilians in Damascus, Aleppo, Homs and Hama. ...
Such memories make this organisation much less appealing for Syrians

The Assassination of Egypt's Anwar Sadat
middleeast.about, 6-10-1981

Salafist preacher faces legal case
for 'offending' Egypt's Morsi
Ahram Online, Monday 17 Sep 2012

A lawyer, Ghoneim Farouq, filed a complaint, Sunday, to Egypt s public prosecutor accusing controversial Salafist preacher Wagdi Ghoneim of offending President Mohamed Morsi.
In a video circulating social networks, the Salafist scholar condemned the president s 6 September meeting with Egyptian artists, who he denounced as promoters of immortality and prostitution.

Criticised Morsi for referring to Egypt as "a civil state"

Flashback: Ghoneim Hate Speech Draws Coptic Complaint
by IPT News,19-3-2012

A radical Islamic cleric forced out of the United States is finding trouble in Egypt, after uploading a video calling the late head of the Coptic Church the "head of infidels."
Coptic Pope Shenouda III died Saturday after serving for decades as spiritual leader to Egypt's estimated 10 million Copts. Ghoneim attacked Shenouda by blaming him for inciting sectarian violence and calling all Copts "infidels."
Ghoneim has exhibited hostility toward other faiths in the past [..], while he lived in the United States. U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrested Ghoneim in November 2004, citing "his past speeches and participation in fund-raising activities could be supportive of terrorist organizations."
In January 2005 Ghoneim left the US for Qatar. He was given a ten year ban on re-entry to the country.

When the Muslim Brothers would chant their slogan:
"The Koran is our constitution",
he would respond:
"The New Testament is our constitution".
He used to say that Egypt was under Muslim occupation.
We should be happy that he died.
Let him go to Hell.

Pope Shenouda fell out with President Anwar Sadat, who in 1981 sent him into internal exile. He was allowed back to Cairo by President Hosni Mubarak four years later.
Pope Shenouda sought to protect his Christian community amid a Muslim population by striking a conservative tone and lending tacit support to President Mubarak's rule. (BBB world news 17-3-2012)

Former Arab League head Amr Moussa
establishes Egyptian Conference Party
Ahram Online, 18-9-2012

The Egyptian Conference Party was formed in Cairo on Monday with 25 political parties coming together under the leadership of former Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa.
"The initiative aims to magnifying the influence of the 25 parties, and give a voice to the people who support these parties," Moussa said.
Moussa, who came fifth in Egypt's post-revolution presidential election, added that one of the main concerns of the party was to promote "moderate options that represent the majority of Egyptians and to preserve the civil identity of Egypt."

Ayman Nour, the president of Ghad Al-Thawra Party, stressed that the Egyptian Conference Party was neither an alliance nor a temporary electoral coalition, but rather an permanent integration of parties.
"We oppose the hegemony of one current over political life in Egypt. The revolution erupted to establish a civil democratic system," Nour said.

Initiatives to counter the Islamist domination of political life in Egypt have long been on the agenda of liberals and advocates of a civil state.

Flashback: Amr Moussa & Pan-Arabism

Flashback: Rules Of Law Are Universal

We have learned that rules of law are universal.

Ahmed Maher, foreign minister
Al-Ahram Weekly 12-18 sept. 2002

Profile: Ahmed Maher 1935-2010

Ahmed Maher was pulled out of retirement to become Egypt's 71st foreign minister in 2001. Generally considered an outsider, he replaced Amr Moussa, who left Egypt's top diplomatic post to head the 22-nation Arab League as secretary general...

On policy, Mr Maher criticised Washington's calls for the replacement of Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein, maintaining the choice of the head of state was the affair of the countries concerned.
Before the US-led invasion of Iraq, he said military confrontation was the last thing the region needed. He warned that economies would be hit and that an atmosphere of violence would emerge that would affect everybody.

Syrian s poet Adonis in an open letter
to Syrian President Assad, 21-6-2011

The pre-requisites for stable democratic systems are:

Taking society out of the political cultural realm of heavenly dictates to the earthly individual human rights . Basically, we have to separate State civil responsibilities from religious dogma.
Democracy needs a climate of freedom of speech, opinions, and expressions: Small minds can reduce rich texts into nothingness.
Forming a modern citizen: The experiences in the various political ideologies failed in the Arab World to forming a modern citizen: they identified the citizen as related to his religious affiliation or tribal membership. Practices and application of the better principles of the Baath ideology came very short to target in forming a secular citizen. (Adonis blog)

Gideon Levy: Let's face the facts,
Israel is a semi-theocracy
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz 10-12-2009

From birth to death, from circumcision to funeral, from the establishment of the state to the establishment of the last of the illegal outposts in the West Bank - we are operating in the shadow of the commandments of religion. We should be honest with ourselves and admit it already: The country is too religious.

It begins, of course, with the fact of our presence here. Among other things, it is based on theological reasoning. Abraham the Patriarch was here, so we are, too. He bought the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, so we, too, are in Palestinian Hebron. People who are entirely secular also cite religious and biblical explanations for the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. We can't even say whether Judaism is a religion or a nationality - and in any event, there is no other country in the Western world where religion has its holy iron grip on the state as it does in Israel.
Torah sages of various kinds make decisions on fateful political issues [..] and the lines outside their doors are growing, made up mostly of those who argue they are fervently secular. They are lying to themselves and to others. Expressions of racism and arrogance, too, based on the concept of the "chosen people", are uttered. And between you and me, who doesn't believe this (a little)?
The Western Wall is holy to everyone - who has not placed a note with a wish in its crevices? Most Israelis' reasoning for the continued occupation of "holy" East Jerusalem is also based on religious faith. ...
Israel is not what you thought. It's definitely not what we try to present to ourselves and the rest of the world.

Theocracy or 'The rule of God'

Theocracy is defined by Webster as a government by the immediate direction or administration of God; hence, government by priests or clergy as representatives of God.

The term theocracy does not occur in the Old Testament. The idea, however, of the rule of God over His people permeates through its pages. In fact, when Flavius Josephus of the first century used the term initially, he intended it to denote exclusively the form of government described in the Old Testament. Josephus said, upon the analogy of aristocracy and democracy, Our legislator [Moses] ordered our government to be what I may call a theocracy.
Theocracy in Israel, as defined by Josephus, has survived all the vicissitudes of history. Accordingly, it may not be too much to say that the history of Israel is the history of theocracy. (Y. David Kim)

Chief Rabbinate of Israel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is recognized by law as the supreme halakhic and spiritual authority for the Jewish people in Israel....
The Rabbinate has jurisdiction over many aspects of life of Jews in Israel. Its jurisdiction includes personal status issues, such as Jewish marriages and Jewish divorce, as well as Jewish burials, Conversion to Judaism, Kashrut and kosher certification, olim, supervision of Jewish holy sites, working with various mikvaot and yeshivot, and overseeing Israeli Rabbinical courts.
The Rabbinical courts are part of Israel's judicial system, and are managed by the Ministry of Religious Services. The courts have exclusive jurisdiction over marriage and divorce of Jews and have parallel competence with district courts in matters of personal status, alimony, child support, custody, and inheritance. Religious court verdicts are implemented and enforced as for the civil court system by the police, bailiff's office, and other agencies.

Russian aid arrives with food supplies
ChamPress 20-9-2012

DAMASCUS- A Russian aircraft arrived in Damascus International Airport carrying on board 38 tons of food supplies in aid to the families affected due to the crisis in Syria.

Deputy Director of Emergencies Department at the Russian Ministry of Extraordinary Situations, Alexander Bogdanov, said the Russian government decided to send humanitarian aid to Syria out of the friendly relations between both countries.

Who is gaining the most benefits
from what is happening in Syria and beyond?

Professor Guenter Meyer: So far, Israel and the US have been the main winners.
The government in Jerusalem has been able to rally significant support for its fight against Iran from Washington and the European capitals. This does not apply to the military intervention demanded by Netanyahu and Barak, but in respect to a significant increase in sanctions against Teheran which cause more and more serious problems for the economic development of Iran.

The US is profiting from the growing dependency of the GCC countries on military protection by US troops combined with record sales of weapons by arms manufacturers in the United States, where tens of thousands of new jobs are created and hundred thousands of old jobs are secured. (Asian Times: On Syria and way beyond, 21-9-2012)

Gulf states bail out U.S. arms industry
UPI.com, 6-3-2012

The Persian Gulf arms race is accelerating amid the smoldering confrontation between Iran and the United States, with gulf monarchies re-examining their defense programs even though they've spent far in excess of $100 billion on arms since 2006.
The Gulf Cooperation Council states -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain -- are bolstering defense budgets to counter Iran and are being encouraged to do by the United States.
"Military spending is increasing across the gulf," the Middle East Economic Digest reported. "With the exception of Oman, the GCC states have all accelerated defense expenditure since 2006."

It's widely seen as a systematic long-term effort by the United States to keep its defense industry functioning at a time when the U.S. Department of Defense is drastically cutting its defense spending and reducing the size of the U.S. military to rescue the economy.

DAMASCUS, (SANA) University students started their new academic year in the Syrian provinces on Sunday, September 23rd.
The number of new first-year students signed up for the academic year 2012-2013 reached 110,010 students, with a 10% increase compared to last year.
New students flocked to universities to familiarize themselves with their universities and follow up on registration paperwork, joining older students who missed the university life and others who are working to transfer from one department or faculty to another.
Some of the students voiced hope that the Higher Education Ministry would offer assistance to help students who want to transfer, while others hoped for more communication between professors and students.

Secretary of Damascus University, Dr. Abbas Sundouq, said that the university is fully prepared to receive the students and that it provided all possible facilitations in terms of registration, attendance and exams, in addition to preparations for accepting master's degrees students.
Sundouq noted that most of the faculties that were damaged by vandalism committed by terrorist groups are now fully rehabilitated and ready to receive their students. (SANA, 23-9-2012)

Egypt Islamists slam parliament's death knell,
liberals celebrate, Ahram Online, 23 Sep 2012

The fate of the People's Assembly the lower house of Egypt's parliament appeared to have been laid to rest on Saturday when the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) ruled in favour of an earlier decision by the High Constitutional Court (HCC) to dissolve the Islamist-led assembly.
While a majority of Islamist figures have vowed to contest the decision, liberal and leftist forces hailed the move.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), for its part, which had held almost half the seats in the assembly, slammed the verdict.
FJP lawyer Mohamed Abu-Baraka described Saturday's ruling as "a disaster in the history of the Egyptian judiciary."....

Amr Moussa, former liberal presidential candidate, stated that court rulings must be respected.
"Respect for the rule of law is a main principle that must be upheld to ensure stability in the political arena and respect for the state and people," Moussa asserted.
As head of the newly established Egyptian Conference Party, Moussa stressed the importance of uniting the country's secular forces so as to capture a larger share of parliamentary seats in upcoming polls.
Reform campaigner and founder of the new Constitution Party, Mohamed ElBaradei, also praised Saturday's court ruling.
"The verdict that confirmed the dissolution of parliament is a first step for those in power to understand that legislation is the main pillar for building the country," ElBaradei declared. "A balanced Constituent Assembly [tasked with drafting the new constitution] is the second step of that process."

Flashback: The Fate of Arab Democracy
Faced With Religious Conflicts
Raghida Dergham ("Huffington Post," April 27, 2012)

Separation of religion and state is no mere slogan in the face of "Islam is the Solution."
It is a national demand because it imposes on Islamist political parties to decide where their loyalty lies -- with religion or with the state.
The Muslim Brotherhood's candidate to the presidency, Mohammad Morsy, is accused of being a follower of the Salafist candidate who was excluded, Khairat El-Shater, because of his views and his approach, closer to Salafism in their extremism. Morsy slaps Egypt on both cheeks when he says that candidacy to the presidency of Egypt according to Muslim Sharia law bans women and non-Muslims from running as candidates. His supporters chant "the Quran is our constitution and the Sharia is our guide." ...

"Isn`t it better to propose a program that contains plans to deal with life`s problems from which non-Muslims also suffer? Jamal al-Ghaytani (27-4-2012)

Amr Moussa might be exactly what Egypt needs in a phase of transition from the former regime to a pluralistic, non-autocratic and non-vetocratic system, one that would not dictate in the name of religion and drag religion into politics and into the state. ...
He might also represent the space to breathe that would give the Egyptian people the opportunity to carefully examine whether they really want Islamist political parties to take hold of power, regardless of whether some of them behave erratically, while others display fanaticism, extremism, hatred and the exclusion of others.

Libya orders illegitimate militias to disband
Arab News, 23 September 2012

BENGHAZI, Libya: Libya s president ordered all of the country s militias to come under government authority or disband...
Late Saturday, President Mohammed el-Megaref told reporters that the militias, which the weak central government has relied upon for providing security in neighborhoods and at state facilities since Qaddafi s ouster, must fall under the authority of the national government or be disbanded.
He said a joint operations room in Benghazi will coordinate between the various authorized armed brigades and the army.
Armed groups operating outside the legitimacy of the state will be disbanded, and the military and police will take control over those militias barracks, he said.
In a statement published by the official LANA news agency, the military asked all armed groups using the army s camps and outposts and barracks in Tripoli and other cities to hand them over. It warned that it will resort to force if the groups refuse.

The militias, which arose as people took up arms to fight Qaddafi s regime, bristle with heavy weapons, pay little attention to national authorities and are accused by some of acting like gangs, carrying out killings.

Syrian Arab News Agency 24-8-2012

A constitution that is truly "for all Egyptians."
Mary Mourad, Ahram online, 24 Sep 2012

Freedom of expression could be threatened under Egypt's new constitution, a group of leading intellectuals said Monday.
"This is a critical phase," Mohamed Salmawy, head of the Egyptian Writers Union, said at the conference. "Now that a new regime is stabilising, there is a risk that the new constitution will be formulated by only one section of society," he added, referring to Islamist political forces.
"Winning a parliamentary majority gave the [Islamists] some authority, but not the right to exclude others from writing the national charter," Salmawy argued.
"The draft constitution jeopardises Egypt's unity," said Bahieddin Hassan, head of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights. "It also compromises equality and goes so far as to exclude faiths other than Sunni Islam."
Salah Eissa said the Constituent Assembly had been "unresponsive" to the needs of journalists....
The group called on political parties, former presidential candidates, and civil and human rights organisations to take a firm stance against the assembly for the purpose of having a constitution that is truly "for all Egyptians."

"Egyptians are religious by nature"
By Tamim Elyan, Reuters 12-9-2012

A constitutional assembly of 100 thinkers, scholars, professionals and political and religious leaders dominated by Islamists is drawing up the constitution...
Analysts expect the new document to have a more Islamic flavor than its predecessor, including articles prohibiting criticism of God and establishing an institution to collect zakat, or charitable donations for the poor, while cancelling an article banning parties based on religion.

At the vanguard of this movement are the Salafis, who were kept out of politics under Mubarak... Their slogan was to "bring back sharia" - laws derived from Islam's Holy Koran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad - in the belief it would solve Egypt's moral and social ills.
"Egypt is entering a new age that will witness a confirmation of the reference to sharia law in constitutions and a better application of it," said independent Salafi scholar Mohamed Youssry Ibrahim....
"We don't have a problem with it ... because Egyptians are religious by nature," said Hussein Ibrahim, former head of the Brotherhood parliamentary bloc and a member of the assembly.
"We don't seek dramatic change," said Salafi ex-MP Younes Makhyoun. But he added: "After the revolution, Egyptians chose Islamists. Egyptians want Islam and the application of sharia. No one (opposes it) except TV personalities who have a loud voice and are trying to impose a different reality".

The democratic gods of ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian Religion is recognized for its many gods, as many as 80 have been counted. These gods represented different qualities and importance.
Few Egyptians worshipped more than a small number of gods, but still recognized the qualities and importance of other gods.
The complexity refers to the fact that Egyptian religion never really was "a religion", but rather a universe of religions that often interacted, inspired each other, copied each other and often allowed one cult to dominate so that smaller cults disappeared or changed.

Never was a unified theology defined and imposed on the many cult centres. The closest we get is the "monotheism" of Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE, but this orientation proved to be short lived. (Source)

Liberated Prisoner al-Makt Rejects to Give interview
to the Jazeera TV, Mazen Eyon, SANA 25-9-2012

Quneitra, (SANA)-The Syrian liberated prisoner Sidqi al-Makt rejected to give an interview to the Qatari al-Jazeera English-spoken TV which went on Monday to the occupied Majdal Shams town to make the interview with al-Makt and prepare a special report on the occupied Syrian Golan.
"I rejected to interview al-Jazeera staff which is considered as a partner in the war against the Syrian people it is the field arm of sedition in our homeland," al-Makt said in a statement to SANA Tuesday.
He added that al-Jazeera TV is carrying out the agendas of extremists to execute a conspiracy along with the US against the Arab nation interests and the way of resistance.
Sidqi al-Makt spent 27 years in Israeli prisons under the pretext of resisting the occupation. He was released on August 22nd, 2012.

Sidqi Al-Makt: Free at Last
By: Fadi Abu Saada, Al-Akhbar 25-8-2012

After spending 27 years in Israeli prisons, Syrian Sidqi al-Makt from the occupied Golan Heights was released on Wednesday to a hero s welcome in his hometown of Majdal Shams.
He hails from an activist family that lived through the seizure of the Golan in 1967 and experienced the area s struggle which culminated in the Great Strike of 1982. Each member of the Makt family was at some point arrested by the Israelis for their role in the struggle against the occupation. ...
Sidqi Makt s comrades in the resistance cell were his brother Bisher, Assem Mahmoud al-Wali, Saytan Nimr al-Wali, and Hayel Hussein Abu Zayd.
Makt s sister, Nihal, campaigns for prisoner rights and has spent much of her life in demonstrations and sit-ins to shed light on the issue of political prisoners.

Majdal Shams is a Druze village in the northern part of the Golan Heights, in the southern foothills of Mt. Hermon. Since the June 1967 Six-Day War, the village has been controlled by Israel, first under martial law, but since 1981 under Israeli civil law, and incorporated into the Israeli system of local councils.
The inhabitants of Majdal Shams are considered Syrian citizens by the Syrian authorities.... As Israel does not recognize their Syrian citizenship, they are defined in Israeli records as "residents of the Golan Heights." (WIKIPEDIA info)

Armed militias a danger to Libya s future
By Dominique Soguel - Middle East Online, 26-9-2012

Libya's new leadership, under huge pressure from the street, has taken steps to tackle militias, but critics warn its decision to only disband some armed groups is dangerous and may backfire.
In the wake of massive anti-militia protests and violence in the eastern city of Benghazi, the authorities ordered "illegitimate" brigades be broken up but also warned demonstrators against targeting "legitimate" ones.
That distinction has ruffled feathers in Benghazi where tens of thousands of people marched on Friday for the dissolution of all armed groups and the establishment of a professional army and police force.

"Since Mohammed al-Megaryef divided them into legitimate and illegitimate brigades, everyone has been able to claim they are legitimate," warns analyst Fathi al-Baaja, referring to the head of the General National Congress (GNC).
Baaja, a political science professor, says the danger of making such a distinction and not banning all brigades is that major armed groups might become the "military wings of political factions."
"We will have many armies inside the army and that will be very dangerous," Baaja adds, stressing that what the oil-rich country needs is a national army where people join as individuals, rather than as groups.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have long warned that militias have become a law unto themselves, detaining people and carrying out torture with impunity....
Brigade leaders and fighters, meanwhile, argue that if they step out of the picture there will be a security vacuum and insist it was they who fought Kadhafi, secured the elections, and are deployed when crises arise....
Ahmed Majbari, deputy of the revolutionary forces union, sums up a common view among ex-rebels who refuse to go home: "The army fought us on the front line and the police killed us on the streets. How can we come under them?"

Flashback: Qatar admits sending hundreds of troops
to support Libya rebels, Ian Black, The Guardian, 26-10-2011

Qatar has admitted for the first time that it sent hundreds of troops to support the Libyan rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi's regime. The Gulf state had previously acknowledged only that its air force took part in Nato-led attacks.
The revelation came as Qatar hosted a conference on the post-Gaddafi era that was attended by the leader of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who described the Qataris as having planned the battles that paved the way for victory.
Qatar played a key role in galvanising Arab support for the UN security council resolution that mandated Nato to defend Libyan civilians in March. It also delivered weapons and ammunition on a large scale without any clear legal basis.
The Qatari chief-of-staff, Major-General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya, said: "We were among them and the numbers of Qataris on the ground were hundreds in every region. Training and communications had been in Qatari hands. Qatar supervised the rebels' plans because they are civilians and did not have enough military experience," AFP quoted him as saying. "We acted as the link between the rebels and Nato forces."

Qatar calls for Arab intervention in Syria
By Tim Witcher, 26-9-2012

The emir of Qatar has called for an Arab intervention in Syria and a no-fly zone to protect refugees as President Bashar al-Assad's forces stepped up the battle for Aleppo.
Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, urged Arab action in the war-torn state because of the failure of the UN Security Council and other international efforts to end the 18-month-old conflict.

At the UN assembly, UN leader Ban Ki-moon called on the Security Council to "solidly and concretely" support the peace efforts of UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has stated there will be no quick solution.

Obama: No Peace!

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. ...
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.
Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges." Oslo, October 9, 2009

Opposition Parties Conference
Syrian Arab News Agency, 26-9-2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA)- The conference of the opposition parties and forces for peaceful democratic change concluded its activities on Wednesday, issuing a closing statement calling for working to launch a unified opposition conference that doesn't exclude any side.
The statement said that the conference produced a number of documents and resolutions that represent a roadmap and the convening sides' viewpoints regarding comprehensive dialogue, a safe exit from the crisis, and peaceful, comprehensive democratic change.

Return to the homeland and the army establishment

A dissenting officer, Lt. Col. Khaled Abderahman al-Zamel, who abandoned the bearing of arms, said in a speech at the conference that he was the deputy head of the military council in the south for the so-called "free army."
He offered on behalf of himself and his colleagues the sincerest condolences to the families of military and civilian martyrs and wishes for recovery to the injured, saying that he and those who accompanied him to the conference had discovered after breaking away from the army and working with the armed groups that the Syrian crisis cannot be solved by bearing arms against fellow Syrians...
Al-Zamel said that he and his colleagues thought deep and hard about what is happening in Syria and decided to recant what they did and cooperate with the National Reconciliation Ministry to resolve their situation, placing themselves at the disposal of the army command.
He said that this is a first step in calling all other dissenting soldiers to return to the homeland and the army establishment...

Other representatives of different parties in Syria underlined that they don t accept to kill the State and the Syrian society, destroy railways and the public institutions.
They said that all in Syria want change, but the Syrian State is the sponsor which gather all Syrians as the solution will not be other than Syrian.

Objective, just and responsible

Addressing the conference, the Russian Ambassador in Damascus, Azmatullah Kulmohammadov, stressed the necessity of finding solutions to the crisis in Syria through peaceful political means...
He said Russia attaches great importance to the mission of the UN envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi...
For his part, Sing Yao condemned in a speech in the name of the Chinese Embassy in Damascus the two terrorist bombings which took place in Damascus, stressing that China's stance towards the crisis in Syria is objective, just and responsible and based on protecting the main interests of the Syrian people.

President Ahmadinejad's Speech At UN
InformationClearingHouse 26-9-2012

Friends and Colleagues;
Today, I wish to share with you a few points about the changes that should take place.

First,
Clearly, continuation of the current circumstances in the world is impossible. ...
It is no longer possible to inject thousands of billions of dollars of unreal wealth to the world economy simply by printing worthless paper assets, or transfer inflation as well as social and economic problems to others through creating sever budget deficits. The engine of unbridled capitalism with its unfair system of thought has reached the end of road and is unable to move...
The time has come to an end for those who define democracy and freedom and set standards whilst they themselves are the first who violate its fundamental principles.

It is not acceptable that the military budget of some governments exceeds far larger than those of the entire countries of the world. They export billions of dollars of arms every year, stockpile chemical and biological weapons, establish military bases or have military presence in other countries while accusing others of militarism, and mobilize all their resources in the world to impede scientific and technological progress of other nations under the pretext of countering arms proliferation.

Second;
Liberalism and capitalism that have alienated human beings from heavenly and moral values will never bring happiness for humanity because they are the main source of all misfortune wars, poverty and deprivation.
We have all seen that how the inequitable economic structures controlled by certain political interests have been used to plunder national wealth of countries for the benefit of a group of corrupt business giants. The present structures are incapable of reforming the present situation.

Rulers whose hearts do not beat for the love of humankind and who sacrificed the spirit of justice in their minds never offer the promise of peace and friendship to humanity. By the grace of God, Marxism is gone. It is now history. The expansionist Capitalism will certainly have the same fate. ...

Third;
All problems existing in our world today emanate from the fact that rulers have distanced themselves from human values, morality and the teachings of divine messengers. Regrettably, in the current international relations, selfishness and insatiable greed have taken the place of such humanitarian concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity, and justice. The belief in the One God has been replaced with selfishness.

Some have taken the place of God and insist to impose their values and wishes on others. Lies have taken the place of honesty; hypocrisy has replaced integrity and selfishness has taken the place of sacrifice. Deception in interactions is called foresight and statesmanship; looting the wealth of other nations is called development efforts; occupation is introduced as a gift towards promotion of freedom and democracy, and defenseless nations are subjected to repression in the name of defending human rights.

Pro-Israel advert on New York subway
Middle East Monitor, 25 September 2012

After getting the go-ahead by a federal court last week, a group by the name of 'The American Freedom Defence Initiative' (AFDI), posted a controversial pro-Israel advert in ten subway stations in Brooklyn, New York City.
The advert reads: "In any war between the civilised man and the savage, support the civilised man."
The quote is from a Russian-American philosopher and novelist. It is followed by the tag line "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad" set between two Stars of David.
Clearly, Israel is presented as civilisation against the anti-Israeli (Palestinian) "savage".

Pamela Geller, AFDI's executive director, told the American website TRANSPORTATIONNATION: "The organisation aggressively seeks to advance and defend the nation's Judeo-Christian moral foundation in courts all across the nation."

Mohammed Morsi & The Arab Nation
UN News Centre, 26 September 2012

The Middle East peace process is currently at a standstill, with Israeli-Palestinian talks stalled, following Israel s refusal to extend a 10-month freeze on settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The crisis in Syria also figured prominently in President Morsy s statement to the General Debate. Noting an Egyptian initiative on Syria, put forward in August and involving three other countries, the President said they would continue to work to end the suffering in Syria...

I would like to emphasize that the initiative is open to all those who wish to positively contribute in resolving the Syrian crisis, President Morsy said, adding that Egypt is also committed to supporting the mission of the Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States on the Syrian crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, as well as efforts aimed at unifying Syrian opposition groups.

President Morsy also flagged Egypt's commitment to working with other Arab nations to reclaim its rightful position in the world.
This Arab nation is an integral component of Egypt's vision of its national security, which extends from the Arab Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, and is thriving with opportunities of cooperation and constructive engagement with the entire world, he said.

Mahmoud Abbas addresses the UN
"Prevent the occurence of a new Nakba"
Information Clearing House, 27-9-2012

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Developments over the past year have confirmed what we have persistently drawn attention to and warned of: the catastrophic danger of the racist Israeli settlement of our country, Palestine.

During the past months, attacks by terrorist militias of Israeli settlers have become a daily reality, with at least 535 attacks perpetrated since the beginning of this year...
The escalation of settler attacks should not surprise anyone, for it is the inherent byproduct of the continuation of occupation and a government policy that deliberately fosters the settlements and settlers and deems their satisfaction to be an absolute priority....
Over the past year, since the convening of the General Assembly's previous session, Israel, the occupying Power, has persisted with its settlement campaign, focusing on Jerusalem and its environs. ...
The occupying Power has also continued its construction and expansion of settlements in different areas throughout the West Bank and continued its suffocating blockade as well as raids and attacks against our people in the Gaza Strip, who to this day continue to suffer from the disastrous impact of the destructive war of aggression committed against them years ago.

At the same time, the occupying Power continues to tighten the siege and impose severe restrictions on movement, preventing the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) from implementing vital infrastructure projects and providing services to its citizens, who are also being prevented from cultivating their land and deprived of water for irrigation. It is also obstructing the establishment of agricultural, industrial, tourism and housing projects by the private sector in vast areas of the Occupied Palestinian Authority, which are classified as areas subject to the absolute control of the occupation, which encompasses approximately 60% of the West Bank.
The occupying Power continues to deliberately demolish what the PNA is building, projects funded by donor brethren and friends, and destroying PNA projects involving the building of roads, simple homes for its citizens and agricultural facilities. ...

Israel's overall policy is ultimately leading to the weakening of the Palestinian National Authority, undermining its ability to carry out its functions and to implement its obligations, which threatens to undermine its very existence and threatens its collapse.
There can only be one understanding of the Israeli Government's actions in our homeland and of the positions it has presented to us regarding the substance of a permanent status agreement to end the conflict and achieve peace. That one understanding leads to one conclusion: that the Israeli Government rejects the two-State solution.

The recent years have actually witnessed the systematic acceleration and intensification of Israeli measures aimed at emptying the Oslo Accords of their meaning, while simultaneously building facts on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territory that are making the implementation of the Accords extremely difficult if not completely impossible.
Israel refuses to end the occupation and refuses to allow the Palestinian people to attain their rights and freedom and rejects the independence of the State of Palestine.

Israel is promising the Palestinian people a new catastrophe, a new Nakba.

Yasser Arafat
Nobel Prize lecture 1994

In this context I call on Russia and the United States of America, the cosponsors of the peace conference, to help the peace process take bigger steps, by contributing to the process and helping to overcome all obstacles. I also call on Norway and Egypt as the first countries to have nurtured the Israeli- Palestinian peace to pursue this worthy initiative that took off from Oslo, to Washington to Cairo.
Oslo shall remain the bright name that accompanies the process of peace, the peace of the brave, as will the name of those countries sponsoring the multilateral talks.

Here I call on all the countries of the world especially the donor countries to speed up their contributions so that the Palestinian people may overcome their economic and social problems and proceed with reconstruction and the rebuilding of infrastructures. Peace cannot thrive, and the peace process cannot be consolidated in the absence of the necessary material conditions.

Netanyahu UN speech political escapism
Press TV, 28-9-2012

In his address to the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again accused Iran of getting closer to attain the ability to produce a nuclear bomb in the near future.
Press TV has conducted an interview with author and political scientist Kaveh Afrasiabi from Boston to shed more light on the issue.

Afrasiabi: I had the opportunity to listen to Prime Minister Netanyahu s speech that finished just minutes ago and found it to be, frankly, another exercise in political escapism, because there was no mention of the rights of the Palestinians or Palestinian statehood.
Mr. Netanyahu portrays himself as the champion of human rights, which is really hilarious, and of course no mention of the international community s desire for Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty that was echoed by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, just yesterday.

Press TV: It does not make that much sense does it, when Prime Minister Netanyahu comes in this case in a forum and organization of which he does not care about...? And of course I am talking about Israel throughout the years.

Afrasiabi: Exactly. The resolutions 242 and 338 have been in existence for decades and have [been] met by nothing except callous disregard by the state of Israel and its various political leaders including Mr. Netanyahu.
I was at the UN these past few days and had an occasion to speak with some UN officials, responsible for the relief efforts in Gaza and they have issued a report lately that indicates that Gaza will be uninhabitable very soon. I think that the international community is not blind to all of this...

Why Netanyahu Really wants to Destroy Iran
Juan Cole, 28-9-2012

Iran isn t, contrary to what Netanyahu alleged, a year away from having a nuclear weapon. Iran can t construct a nuclear weapon at all as long as it is being actively inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which it is...
So what is really driving all this noise about Iran? It is the Israeli right wing s competition with the Palestinians. In the past few years, Israel has vastly expanded the number of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank:

Israeli squatters, backed by Netanyahu, are attempting to make a Palestinian state impossible. Netanyahu s plan is to keep the Palestinians (some 12 million strong, 4 million of them in the Occupied Territories) stateless and without citizenship rights forever. People without a state have no institutions that would enforce their claims on property or on basic human rights, and so they are open to being treated, in a way, like slaves and constantly stolen from, as the Palestinians are.

Israel s policy has long been to use its close relationship with the United States to domesticate or destroy any country in the region that gives hope to the Palestinians that they might one day get their own state.
The Israeli military, backed and resupplied by the US, beat Egypt and Jordan into accepting a separate peace. Lebanon s economy was destroyed more than once. Netanyahu argued hard for a US war on Iraq, and the American Neocons who fomented that war began by writing a position paper for Netanyahu himself arguing for an invasion of Iraq...
Now, Iran is more or less the last man standing. Iran, and its unstable ally, Baathist Syria, are the only major Middle Eastern countries that strongly support the Palestinians, though admittedly more in speeches than practically. The rest have either given in (Egypt, Jordan) or de facto acquiesced in Israel expansionism into the West Bank...

Netanyahu wants to remove all hope from the Palestinians, so as to keep them permanently stateless and to ensure that their land is available for Israeli encroachment.

Back To The Iron Wall: Bookreview

In 1923, Jabotinsky published two works under the title 'The Iron Wall'. In these pieces, Jabotinsky argued that the 'sole way' to an agreement with the Arabs was through an 'iron wall, that is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure.
In other words, the only way to achieve a settlement in the future is total avoidance of all attempts to arrive at a settlement in the present.' It was, therefore, pointless to talk with the Arabs as the 'Zionist program had to be executed unilaterally and by force...'

Jabotinsky was the main inspirational source for Begin... Anwar Sadat of Egypt failed to realise the overwhelming reluctance of Israelis to part with the iron wall. .. The 1979 treaty was an aberration and once it was signed Israel was fated to go back to the 'ideological precepts of Revisionist Zionism.'

Considering the theme of Iron Wall, Shlaim is particularly harsh on Binyamin Netanyahu's period in office which he describes, bluntly, as 'Back to the Iron Wall'. Shlaim argues that Jabotinsky inspired Netanyahu with a Manichaean vision of a never-ending conflict with the Arabs. Under Netanyahu, history was 'rewritten from a Revisionist perspective in order to demonstrate that it was not the Jews who usurped the land from the Arabs, but the Arabs who usurped it from the Jews.( The Iron Wall, Avi Shlaim, 1999)

Apartheid leader lectures the UN
Mazin Qumsiyeh, 28-9-2012

The Prime Minister of Apartheid Israel just lectured the United Nations General Assembly! He spent most of his time nagging those present as if they were school children about Iran. He even insulted their intelligence by showing them a diagram of a "bomb" and drawing a red line on it (yes literally with an actual red marker)....
Netanyahu dismissed Mahmoud Abbas's speech with just one sentence "we won't solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the UN or unilateral declarations of statehood."
He dismissed all Palestinians and their rights by claiming they need to recognize a "Jewish state" then they could be allowed a vague but "demilitarized state".

Netanyahu's war mongering and idiotic speech merely confirmed the obvious conclusion about this rogue state: it is run by lunatics.

Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine.He is author of "Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle" and Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment

"The international community must renounce Abbas"
Moran Azulay, YnetNews 29-9-2012

At sidelines of General Assembly, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman tells counterparts from several countries there is no chance for peace as long as Abbas serves as Palestinian president. 'Iran's conduct in the international arena is barbaric,' he adds.
The foreign minister argued that Abbas was "the main and greatest obstacle to peace." He added that although Israel had saved the PA from collapsing just several days ago, Abbas had chosen to deliver a hateful and inflammatory speech against Israel the type of speeches, he said, which are usually delivered by the leaders of Iran and Hamas.
He further claimed that Abbas had no interest or ability to properly manage the situation in the PA, and that all he was interested in was travelling around the world, inciting against Israel and blaming the Jewish state for all his problems.
Lieberman told the foreign ministers that the international community must renounce Abbas if it wished to advance a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Flashback: Lieberman may lead country to catastrophe
Moran Rada - YNet News 24-10-2006

Actor Juliano Mar said, I believe Israel is on the road toward fascism. Lieberman represents this fatal process of a country that is losing its way. I myself have disengaged from all the Liebermans, and today I live in a refugee camp in Jenin, where I m building a children s theater. Lieberman s entrance into the government has taken away my desire to return to the Israeli scene.

Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Chairman Shawki Khatib said that Lieberman's joining the coalition sends a message of belittlement to the Arab population in Israel. "We think that a party whose flag is emblazoned with racism, whose platform is transferring the Arab population out of Israel, who is legitimized by the Israeli government, and is legitimized to be one of the decision makers of the coalition and part of the mainstream of the Israeli public, sends a message to the Arab population: Even though you are a million people with Israeli citizenship, we belittle you. That is why we give the okay to what is defined by both the Jewish public in Israel and by the world as racism," asserted Khatib.

Hadash party Chairman Mohammad Barakeh explained that the inclusion of Israel Our Home into the Olmert government is "a step [..] that is against democracy and gives legitimacy to the racist discourse coming out of the extreme right wing.
"Furthermore, giving Lieberman the strategic portfolio is a declaration of war against Iran and other countries in the region." (YNet News website)

"Our faction will support the government when its policies are aggressive and criticize it when it is passive." Avigdor Lieberman (2002)

Russian Foreign Minister calls for return to Geneva accord
UN News Centre, 28 September 2012

Russia s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, today urged Member States to help bridge the divisions in the Security Council over the ongoing Syrian conflict and promote a return to an agreement outlining the steps for a peaceful transition in the Middle Eastern country. ...
Meeting in Geneva in June, the UN-backed Action Group agreed to a six-point peace plan calling for an end to violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief to those in need, the release of detainees, the start of inclusive political dialogue, and unrestricted access to the country for the international media.
The Group also agreed on a set of principles and guidelines for a Syrian-led transition that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people, which includes the establishment of a transitional governing body that would exercise full executive powers and that would be made up by members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups.

We call upon all members of the Action Group to fully confirm the commitments that all of us have taken on in Geneva. This is the shortest way to stop the loss of human life, Mr. Lavrov continued.
In his statement, he also warned those who opposed the implementation of the Geneva agreement that they take upon themselves an enormous responsibility.
They insist on a ceasefire only by the government and encourage the opposition to intensify hostilities, but in fact they push Syria even deeper in the abyss of bloody internecine strife, he said. ...

Speaking through an interpreter, Lavrov said arbitrary interpretation of principles such as the non-use or threat of force and the respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, is threatening the world order.
"These are the key principles of the UN Charter which confers the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security on the Security Council. In advancing reform of the UN, it is necessary to preserve the capacity of the Security Council to perform these functions. Their erosion would deprive the international community of an essential mechanism for developing joint approaches to the settlement of crisis situations."