Aleppo Burns – Dar Zamaria, Sisi House and much of Souq reported Burned
Posted by Joshua on Sunday, September 30th, 2012
- Dar Zamaria, a friend reports, is depicted above. It was one of the finest boutique hotels in Aleppo lovingly restored from a magnificent Ottoman home. I am not convince this is Zamaria as the shot below shows a staircase running in the opposite direction. I am told Sisi House was also burnt down last week. It was the best restaurant in Aleppo for many years.
In Syria’s Largest City, Fire Ravages Ancient Market – Anne Barnard’s article in the New York Times is the best on the souq and why it became a center of conflict. Good quotes from all sides.
….“Our hearts and minds have been burned in this fire,” said a doctor in Aleppo who gave her name only as Dima. “It’s not just a souk and shops, but it’s our soul, too.”
She said she supported peaceful resistance against Mr. Assad, and pronounced herself “annoyed, annoyed, annoyed” with fighters from the rebel Tawhid Brigade, which announced the offensive on Thursday. The fighters said they were seeking to “liberate” neighborhoods that had remained largely pro-government and were being used as posts from which to attack the opposition.
But in a Skype interview, Dima said the recent fighting cast doubt on both the rebel leaders’ tactical wisdom and their intentions. She called them “performers” who had needlessly provoked the government by posing for pictures outside the souk and the nearby 12th-century mosque — which she worried would now be shelled — and who “talked nonsense.”
“There is no decisive battle,” she said. “There are no liberated areas.”
Brig. Bashir al-Hajji, the commander of the Tawhid Brigade, said that the offensive had worked and that rebels were progressing toward the heart of Aleppo. Rebels and activists said the government had started the blaze by firing incendiary bullets…..
Ancient souk burns as fighting rages in Syria – Al-Jazeera
Hundreds of shops destroyed at UNESCO world heritage site in Aleppo’s Old City, as deadly violence continues.
Rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad announced a new offensive in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub of 2.5 million people, on Thursday, but neither side has appeared to make significant gains…..
Did Syrian authorities capture two Turkish pilots and killed them days later? Al-Arabiyya, the Saudi newspaper is reporting that it has many leaked documents, which it has posted, that prove: Acting on Russian intel, Syria forces murdered pilots of downed Turkey jet.
Syria Politic, a Syrian website, is claiming that the documents are forgeries. It argues that there is no such thing as the “Foreign Intelligence Agency” in Syria, the name printed on the documents, but only a “branch”. Also that Syria has no “Joint Command”, something referred to in the docs, etc. See counter arguments in the discussion section in the Syria Politic sight.
الوثائق ممهورة بختم كتب عليه “جهاز المخابرات الخارجية” في سوريا، ونحن نعلم أنه لايوجد جهاز أمني بهذا الاسم في سوريا، وهناك أربعة أجهزة لا تحمل هذا الاسم وإنما بعضها يتضمن أفرع يحمل اسم “الفرع الخارجي” ولا يوجد نهائيا “جهاز المخابرات الخارجية”….
The Sulaimaniya district of Aleppo, which is almost all Christian was his by howitzer shells two days ago, killing one family. The Free Syria Army said it was trying to hit a building which headquarters the Political Security office of Aleppo. It later warned citizens of the area to evacuate to avoid getting hurt.
Video of government bombing of Bab al-Hadid in Aleppo. زرة باب الحديد حلب Warning: do not watch this if you do not want to see dead and dying people. Most upsetting video I have seen.
Ross Burns, the author of Monuments of Syria, the best guide to Syrian Monuments and former Australian Ambassador to Syria writes this:I am the author of a couple of books on the history and archaeology of Syria as well as having been a former Australian Ambassador there in the 1980s.When the troubles started last year, I thought the best way of contributing something to keep alive the memories of the Syria with all its rich complexities was to do a website to provide a visual accompaniment to ‘Monuments of Syria’ (latest edn is I B Tauris, London 2009). As I am operating solo these days (long retired from the Australian Foreign Service), I’ve been building up the site slowly as time permits. Of the 132 or more sites in the book, I have posted about 50 so far but am trying to give priority to sites that might be threatened by the fighting. Also see this Flickr site with many photos.
Middle East: A second winter of war
By Michael Peel, Financial times
Syrians face a future of destitution, surging food costs and shortages of medicines
A displaced family rests in a retail space they are occupying on September 6, 2012, in al-Qusayr, Syria.©Eyevine
No place to hide: Syrian families on the run from shelling, such as this one living in part of an underground shop, shelter in ramshackle buildings as the weather begins to worsen
The wind that blows across the dusty plains north of Damascus will soon take on a wintry chill, gusting through the windowless shells of grey pitted concrete where thousands of Syrians made homeless by war are sheltering.
Refugees from all over this country imploding in conflict are hunkered down in the towering half-finished flats for government workers in the town of Adra, where they can only look wistfully at the completed pastel-painted blocks nearby.
“I just want my life back,” laments Abu Fadel, who fled the south Damascus conflict zone of Sayyeda Zeinab two months ago and now lives in a three-roomed apartment with 13 other family members. “I want to go back to my home – the home I spent my whole life building.”
Abu Fadel is one of a large and growing number of displaced Syrians who now face a grim choice, as a relief worker puts it, “between freezing and shelling”. The Arab world’s longest-running and most destructive uprising is moving into its second winter with the mass of Syrians at the mercy of a ghastly stalemate, between a regime that has killed ever more brutally and a fragmented armed opposition waging a guerrilla war. Angered by a lethal rebel assault on a military command centre in Damascus this week, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces bombarded rebellious districts of the capital from dusk on Thursday, the frequent thud of explosions a familiar soundtrack for the city and others across Syria.
While the regime continues its 18-month mantra of imminent victory – even sending out mass text messages on Friday telling the rebels it is “game over” – the conflict worsens by the week. The attack on the military command centre was a reminder of the capabilities of a rebellion that now controls large areas in the north of the country and has launched a fresh push to take the biggest city, Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based pro-opposition monitoring group, this week said the death toll in Syria’s conflict had passed 30,000, more than half of those in the past five months.
In this atmosphere of extreme violence and constant fear, many Syrians feel abandoned by international powers that are offering no hope of an agreement to stop the fighting in a country at the geographic and strategic heart of the Arab world. For some anti-regime activists, the traditional bogeymen of Tehran, Moscow and Beijing – Mr Assad’s strongest backers – have now been joined by western powers, whom they see as retreating in the face of overplayed concerns about violent religious extremism among some rebels.
“We are not a lie,” sighs a peaceful opposition activist and relief organiser known as Leyla, reeling off the religious affiliations of her heterodox family, in which Sunni Muslims, Christians and Alawites are all represented. “You have to see us as we are. Don’t watch us through your fears.”
The revolts that have swept the Arab world for more than a year and a half have inspired many with their affirmation of people power, but in Syria the vast majority of citizens are impotent in the face of a war enveloping their streets, homes and families. Friday, the Islamic holy day and once the focal point of the original peaceful protests that the regime brutally suppressed, is now just another day.
The demonstrations and resulting casualties are another footnote to daily death tolls sometimes running into the hundreds. When the rebels operate in residential areas and are still seen in some as protectors, it is civilians who bear the brunt of regime violence that has ratcheted up from rifle fire to shelling to air strikes with warplanes, sometimes – according to rights groups – directly aimed at civilian targets such as bread queues.
It is hard now for anyone not to feel the effects of the conflict, whether they are regime supporters whose relatives in the security forces have been killed or the great numbers of people who have seen loyalists of the four-decade old Assad family dictatorship kill, jail or torture family and friends. Government artillery booms out from the Qassioun mountain that looms over Damascus – proof to all, if it were needed, that the regime is prepared to turn parts of the country to rubble to survive. “We are afraid, but we get used to it,” says Alaa, a university student out on a thinly-populated street in the centre of the capital after the military headquarters blast triggered a security lockdown. “Like in the university – we heard some explosions but we continue our lessons.”
While significant parts of Damascus still feel peaceful and ordered, with malls offering expensive clothes and coffee to dwindling clienteles, other areas tell a story of ever-expanding destruction. Cars draw a low, spooky hum from highways gouged by tank tracks. The road out of the capital to Syria’s third city, Homs, infamously bombarded by the regime this year, is flanked by trashed vehicle showrooms and the collapsed buildings of shelled rebellious suburbs.
Many of those Syrians who can afford to leave the country have already gone, adding to the estimated 1.2m people displaced like Abu Fadel in this nation of 21m people. Those who remain face harsh months of high inflation, little work and more of the periodic shortages of petrol, cooking gas and – ominously as the season of biting cold approaches – heating oil known as mazout. The beggars, now in far greater numbers on the capital’s streets, are a kaleidoscope of women in black abayas and veils, grubby adolescent boys and a gaggle of children from the southern suburbs who gather at an intersection between two top hotels.
On Straight Street in Damascus’ old city, which is mentioned in the Bible, a merchant surrounded by tins overflowing with spices says demand has plummeted, with those who do buy often stockpiling because they fear the worst. “We are selling half of what we were two years ago,” he says, moments after a fire engine comes barrelling through the market, the latest emergency in a city full of them.
Still, the merchant says prices have risen 35 per cent overall as the conflict cuts supply routes. The fighting has also wrecked factories in important industries such as pharmaceuticals, while sanctions have made importing goods harder. Merchants in Damascus say that in just a few months the cost of a lean cut of lamb has risen by about 40 per cent, while red peppers from near the battleground of Aleppo have doubled in price. Doctors warn of likely epidemics of bronchitis and pneumonia among cold and hungry people, particularly children, who are short of drugs to treat common contagious diseases and chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes.
. . . Behind the grim day-to-day reality lie even graver hidden wounds of war, with Syrians of all political views expressing alarm that the new generation of this cosmopolitan but increasingly divided country is now being shaped by conflict. One wealthy Damascene tells of children playing soldiers at school, with one side the regime and the other the Free Syrian Army. In Douma, a poor Damascus suburb battered by government forces over the past nine months, a toyshop owner says the model troops and guns he still displays prominently are selling better than ever. “Everybody is shooting,” he explains. “So the kids want to be part of it.”
Even as Syria collapses, the Assad regime keeps up a surreal narrative that a return to its previous illusory stability is imminent. One of a series of posters put up round Damascus shows a little girl, smiling broadly despite the bombed classroom around her. “Help me to rebuild my school,” she pleads.
It is too much for some to stomach. “Aren’t they ashamed?” remarks one Damascene professional. “Help me rebuild my school, which the government destroyed.”
Yet Syria’s conflict is now so entrenched, with so little hope of resolution, that some people are trying to normalise the unthinkable, returning to shattered areas now at peace – until the never predictable next round of shelling. A foreign diplomat describes a conversation with an acquaintance in Homs, who said his home district, once a battle zone, was much quieter now. The acquaintance still heard explosions in other areas, but admitted he did not care. “He’s slowly becoming less and less afraid of the fighting coming to where he lives,” the diplomat says. “So however long the fighting takes, it’s becoming less and less his problem.”
Back at the Adra flats, Abu Fadel’s family can only wait and watch as their lives unravel. His grandson has bites all over his face from the mosquitoes that infest the half-built structures; his son, who hires out lighting for events, has no work because there are “no parties any more, no weddings, nothing like that.”
For Abu Fadel himself, a carpenter in his 50s, there is only the hope that his dotage will not disappear into the oblivion now threatening Syria, as a regime that took power when he was a teenager fights to an inevitable but perhaps still distant end.
“We were waiting for this age, when we could calm down and enjoy what we were building,” he says, seated on an old foam mattress under one of the window holes that gape so invitingly for Syria’s ill winds. “Now we may have lost it. This is our greatest fear.”
Report: Acting on Russian intel, Syria forces murdered pilots of downed Turkey jet
Al Arabiya cites leaked Syrian documents describing how Assad’s forces seized Turkish crew members while still alive, and killed them following Russian ‘guidance and information.’
By Jack Khoury | Sep.29, 2012 |Haaretz
The crew members of a Turkish fighter jet that crashed into the Mediterranean earlier this year survived the impact, only to be later killed by Syria forces following intelligence provided by Russia, the Al Arabiya network reported on Saturday, citing leaked confidential Syrian documents.
Al Arabiya’s report came amid months of speculation concerning the June 22 incident, involved the suspected downing of Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet. Turkey has accused Syria of shooting down the warplane, a claim that Damascus has denied, saying that its forces did not intentionally shoot down the jet.
The plane’s wreckage, with the bodies of the its two crew members still trapped inside, was found on the Mediterranean seabed in early July.
Earlier this month, an official report by Turkey’s military indicated that the F-4 was shot down after a Syrian anti-aircraft missile exploded near it, causing it to lose its bearings and subsequently crash.
However, leaked Syrian documents obtained by Al Arabiya on Saturday, indicated that the plane’s two pilots may have been still alive following the crash, the office of with Syrian President Bashar Assad reportedly ordering Syrian forces to murder the captured crew members and return their bodies to the scene of the crash.
One document obtained by Al Arabiya, reportedly sent from Assad’s office to brigadier Hassan Abdel Rahman, who the network identified as the head of Syrian Special Operations, stated that “two Turkish pilots were captured by the Syrian Air Force Intelligence after their jet was shot down in coordination with the Russian naval base in Tartus.”
In addition, the report claimed that the Syrian general was ordered to treat the pilots in accordance to the protocol concerning war prisoners, and that they be investigated concerning Turkey’s alleged role in supporting the Syria uprising against Assad.
Citing a second leaked document, Al Arabiya quoted another order, sent by Assad’s bureau to the heads of Syrian foreign intelligence, according to which unidentified Russian sources may have urged the Syrian regime to slay the Turkish prisoners.
“Based on information and guidance from the Russian leadership comes a need to eliminate the two Turkish pilots detained by the Special Operations Unit in a natural way and their bodies need to be returned to the crash site in international waters,” the document reportedly said.
One document reportedly indicated that Assad was willing to consider a suggestion by a general “Bassam” to transfer the two crewmembers to Lebanon, where they will be held captive by Hezbollah in order to serve as bargaining chips in a later time.
However, this suggestion was eventually rejected, the documents reportedly indicated, without specifying the points against it.
In addition, Al Arabiya reported that the Syrian documents indicated that Assad regime considered threatening Turkey with mobilizing the Kurdistan’s Workers Party militant group against Ankara if Turkey decided on military action against Damascus.
Al Arabiya claims to be in possession of hundreds of classified documents that shed light on the details of an Iranian and Russian involvement in the Assad regime, showing, among other claims, that Damascus’ two allies formed a joint command in Syria.
Furthermore, the leaked papers are said to indicate Hezbollah’s key role in assassinating key Syrian activists as well as orchestrating large-scale bombing attacks in order to sow chaos and instability in the war-torn country.
Manaf Tlass was once one of Bashar al-Assad’s closest friends. – From CNN interview with Manaf Tlass
“He is humble. He loves people,” Tlass said when describing Assad. “But he has changed. The crisis has changed him.”
“I tried to tell him that he had to give up something for the people,” Tlass said of his last conversations with Assad. “That there is a true uprising and that he must go along with it. There is an Arab Spring all around us. You should be part of it and democratize the country. He refused.”
“The old guard around him lulled him into handling the crisis this way.”“Alawites are being told that the Islamists are taking over – they were considered infidels by the Islamists and that’s what scares them,” Tlass said. “But when there is a project for Syria that can, which can include all parties, the Alawites will defect.”
“Everything will be different once he realizes that the international community has truly decided it’s time to step down,” Tlass said. “He will step down; I am certain of that.
EU defense ministers rule out military intervention in Syria – 2012-09-28
NICOSIA, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) — European defense ministers meeting in Cyprus on Thursday ruled out the possibility of a military intervention in Syria and advocated a political solution to the crisis faced by the country.
“Our aim is to extend our support to the people in the area to build their own democratic institutions, their own democratic societies and democratic states based on human and political rights,” said Cypriot Defense Minister Demetris Eliades, who chaired the two-day informal meeting.
He added that the European Union is in favor of a political solution in Syria.
“Our priority is to prevent further loss of life and destruction, to restore a peaceful environment and deter a regional escalation of the crisis, especially in Lebanon, because such a development will lead to unpredictable consequences in the region,” Eliades said.
However, Eliades conceded that the situation in Syria is tragic and the general feeling in the meeting was that no end of the crisis is in sight.
Comments (181)
Observer said:
If I were in the shoes of a right wing US or EU or Israeli person, I would find the situation in Syria most desirable and to prolong it even more rewarding. It is a perfect opportunity to pay back for the road side bombs and the funneling of armed men into Iraq and now we can do the reverse by giving both sides enough to continue to exhaust each other.
It would be more rewarding if by the same token Iran were to be drawn into the conflict and to have troops and most importantly money go to a lost cause.
It would be great to have areas of the country under the control of rebels and other parts completely out of action and the money flowing to fuel a conflict of about 7-10 years from which Iran will come out battered and bruised and begging for mercy.
It will take a lot to bring this to fruition; but again in the shoes of the protagonists I would think it is an opportunity and perhaps to boot we can create a situation whereby there is real ongoing low level conflict and enmity between the two sects on a regular basis.
It would be great if Turkey and Egypt can be somewhat separated from this conflict, leaving it somewhat contained withint he borders and with enough instability to weaken the rule in Iraq as well.
The wild card in this are the Kurds on the one hand and the Iranian willingness to absorb punishing sanctions and hemorrhaging conflict.
I would really like to have Ehsani’s thoughts and Dr. Landis’ thoughts about this.
All of course are welcome to join.
September 30th, 2012, 12:23 am
Observer said:
Again, I emphasize that I am playing devil’s advocate not proposing this scenaria lest some low level intelligence draw the wrong conclusion. Just imagine if I were GWB or Richard Cheney and this is an opportunity for me to bring Iran to its knees, I would jump on it
September 30th, 2012, 12:25 am
Ghufran said:
The ” documents” are probably forgeries despite the fact that the regime does not respect international law or human rights and can committ more atrocities than the ones described in alarabiya’s piece of journalistic garbage.Alarabiya is a tabloid news agency that has little credibility except in the eyes of people who are ready to believe anything that boost their own premade beliefs. Turkey is fully able to tell how the pilots died, the story that those pilots were killed after captured alive then were dumped in the sea is more suitable for an action movie than a serious news media. One fact stands out, alarabiya wants to gain popularity while trying to embarrass Turkey,the story will die in few days, the real story is how the battle in Aleppo is developing, rebels now need an external source of military help,they have not made any gains after 3 days of a”decisive” battle, as I said before they will only manage in helping destroy Aleppo and increase hatred and division among Syrians and that is far more serious than whether Bashar clings to power for few more months or a year, some of you guys need a vacation.
September 30th, 2012, 1:28 am
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
@OBSERVER
Praises and exaltation upon Lord EL, upon Enlil, Addad, Shamash, Ninurta and Nergal. We pray that you bring evil winds upon those that call on evil Amen name more disastrous than the one you brought upon them in older times.
Observer. I sure hope some idiot will take your offer. We need to take over the entire Middle East during WWIII, will fight against the 3 Zionists regimes in Iran, Arabia and Israel. The only way this is going to be so and win, is to form a huge army of blood thirsty and hungry men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. When Syria is left in rubble will have the opportunity of millennia to form the army hordes we needed for the job. Not only that, but will have no worry about our cities being destroyed, we got nothing to lose and all others have a lot to lose. The bible will be proven right again. Antioch is the capital of Syria, will preserve that city, Damascus can get nuked, who cares, as long as we make the damage equal to all. It is a winning battle of WWIII baby. With all the wealth that will be horded Syrians can build new Syria, we are working the Architectural and Urban plans right now, will strip our enemies land to dry sand. You are just watching one battle in a long 7 years war. Our lords, The Annunaki will finish off the rest of the enemies and leaves them in diust and desolation as well.
Curse you Enki and curses you son, you father of evil and raiser of evil against our nation. Your work, all of it will be laid waste on the account of your diabolically evil son.
September 30th, 2012, 2:07 am
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
Saudi Wahhabis Salafis aka Dajjal Followers preparing for War Vs Muslims.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P66LG8C9-Vo
http://sabinachiaburu.wordpress.com/wahabi-are-dajjaliluminati-they-call-forantichrist/
http://www.correctislamicfaith.com/wahhabiwarningahadith.htm
September 30th, 2012, 3:03 am
juergen said:
Joshua,
i think it is Dar Zamaria, check this pic:
http://uk.zooverresources.com/images/E120037L1B130181D0W400H299/Dar-Zamaria-Martini.jpg
September 30th, 2012, 3:03 am
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
Saudi Wahhabis Devil IBLIS worshipper:
September 30th, 2012, 3:04 am
Visitor said:
Hamoudeh al-Halabi # 179 from previous post,
You will find at the link down below a button to download a book that would answer all the questions that you either were unable or unwilling to answer. I did not ask those questions for no reasons. After you read the book I hope you would know what those reasons were. As for Sufism origin, you will find the answers beginning page 241 in the book.
You will also find accurate information about Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab and not the sort of propaganda you provided. In addition, You will find answers about many other personalities throughout Islamic history. This is a book written by a scholar and not by a so-called master Sheikh. I hope it will help you in your path without you having to go through the process of becoming a dead body in the hand of some mortal sheikh. You do not need anyone at all to achieve what you’re looking for.
http://www.mediafire.com/?yymwn5okmfm
September 30th, 2012, 3:14 am
Aldendeshe said:
Shia serving the Zionist agenda الشيعة خدم الصهاينة
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJGP2Nzrx0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4XLS9SMrxE
September 30th, 2012, 3:22 am
Aldendeshe said:
يآمة المسلمين السنّة وحّدو صفوفكم للحرب العالمية الثالثة ان الله تعالى سينصركم ضد الصهيونية العالمية وخدامينهم اليهود وآل السعود وواهابينهم وأهل الشيعة الصهيونية – العار عليكم التعاون مع الصهيوني الحقير السعود ووهابيته- العار عليكم ان تقتلو السوريين وتمدحو اليهود في فلسطين واليهود آل السعود وعشيرة الشيطان ابليس العنزة وعاهرها القطري
http://www.casttv.com/video/930d0t/anza-tribe-video
http://sunninews.wordpress.com/salafi-saudi-and-jews-an-unholy-nexus/
September 30th, 2012, 3:48 am
DarZamaria said:
For more pictures showing Dar Zamaria reportedly destroyed check out:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.371989459536051.76917.168536393214693&type=1
If you compare these photos to those on the Dar Zamaria’s official website (http://www.darzamaria.com/rest.html), the similarity is hard to miss, especially in the comparison of the Liwan photos.
September 30th, 2012, 4:12 am
Katamon said:
@Observer, speaking as a right-wing Israeli, no, it is not a great situation. The instability in Syria has the capacity of spreading throughout the region and slowly dragging us in. Stability in Lebanon in particular is very tentative and were it to collapse it would create the possibility of confrontations with the full range of usual suspects – Jihadis, Hezbollah, Palestinians. Instability can also spread further afield, including into Jordan, which at present is a key strategic buffer zone.
The ideal situation would be a centralized state in Syria with a relatively weak military which is not an Iranian ally and which can either be negotiated with or deterred militarily. As it is, Syria is collapsing and there is no stability in sight.
Given the absence of this scenario, it is not terrible that Iran is forced to spend blood and money on trying to prop up a failed regime while itself facing economic sanctions. It is also not terrible that this conflict is absorbing the global Jihadi swamp. However, I must point out that in the long-term the collapse of Syria as a centralized state could lead to the carving up of Syria among larger powers which would now have a border with Israel. So, if Turkey and Iran carve up Syria, Israel would have large and powerful states much closer to her borders to take into account which in itself may not be an optimal scenario.
So, no, there is no particular reasons for jubilation.
September 30th, 2012, 4:17 am
STEVE said:
Good piece on Turkey and Syria on Open Democracy by Christopher Phillips:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/christopher-phillips/turkey’s-syria-problem
September 30th, 2012, 4:39 am
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
“……The ideal situation would be a centralized state in Syria with a relatively weak military which is not an Iranian ally and which can either be negotiated with or deterred militarily….”
__________________________________________________________________
@KATAMON, speaking as a dim witted right-wing Jew, no. It is very bad idea to repeat what Jews did in Germany, you like Adolph, huh!Well, it was a hollow-cost, faked like 9/11, but the 6 million Jews that never ever lived in Germany backthen, do live in Israel right now (SNP lingo for them COLLATERAL) Not a collateral damage, but collateral against someone using nukes against Syria.
September 30th, 2012, 4:59 am
Syrialover said:
OBSERVER #1
Right wing US and EU persons and others of that type do not want failed states out there. Your scenario would make no sense to them.
I also believe that anyone of normal IQ, no matter what their political affiliations, would also now differentiate sharply between the Syrian regime and Syrian people.
The rubbish Mullahs and criminal Putin are among the few people in the world not squirming at the sight of a pinheaded dictator smashing a beautiful country, its people and world heritage out of spite. Watch and see them do it to their own countries soon when their citizens push back enough. They love the precedent they have helped Bashar Assad set.
Wish failure, humiliation and hell upon the leaders of those countries, not their citizens.
September 30th, 2012, 5:05 am
Citizen said:
They have to stop the funding of these terrorist groups that they are bringing them from everywhere. This is a message to the United States: don’t bring al-Qaeda from everywhere around the world and dump them on the Syrian people.
The Syrian people deserve a good life, a better life, and not a terrorist organization that you train them, you use them and now you use them again to be killed.
So, even those organizations have to be very careful because they’ve been used by the Americans to get rid of them and to fight a war that they have no business in.
September 30th, 2012, 8:17 am
Citizen said:
Aleppo’s ancient market in flames as battle rages
A Syrian UNESCO World Heritage Site is in danger of being destroyed, as the ancient covered market in the center of Aleppo is burning as fighting between the rebels and state forces rages. The medieval market, made of carved wooden facades and vaulted stone alleyways, was once a major tourist attraction. UNESCO warns that five of Syria’s six heritage sites that comprise the ancient desert city of Palmyra, the Crac des Chevaliers crusader fortress and parts of old Damascus have been affected. Both sides blame each other for blaze. The rebels on Thursday announced a new offensive in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub, but neither side has appeared to make significant gains.
September 30th, 2012, 8:28 am
Atheist Syrian Salafist Against Dictatorships said:
#15
But of course the regime is totally innocent of any attempts or even desires to have A-Q and other extremist groups enter the fray! Don’t be so silly, how could the Assadist Mafiosi and Associates come up with such devious plans that would give them all the execuses they need to appeal to the world that they are fighting INTERNATIONAL TERROR? “LOOK we’re your friends! Have you forgotton all the services we rendered to you when you turned over anybody you wanted tortured and from whom confessions had to be extracted? Have you forgotten all that help we gave?”
المسؤولية عن تسرّب «القاعدة» إلى سورية: النظام وتركيا والعالم
………..
في الأسبوعين الفائتين ارتفعت معدلات التحذير من «القاعدة» في سورية. قناة فرنسية بثت فيلماً عن حلب قالت فيه ان نحو 800 مقاتل غير سوري يُقاتلون هناك، وصحيفة «الغارديان» نشرت تحقيقاً عن «القاعدة» في ريفي حلب وإدلب. الرئيس السابق للمجلس الوطني السوري برهان غليون أطلق تحذيراً أشار فيه الى بداية ولادة ظاهرة «جهاد عالمي» في شمال سورية ودمشق. لكن وجهة الكلام عن «القاعدة» في سورية غالباً ما تُشحن بقدر من الريبة بالثورة لا بالنظام،
في حين يبدو جلياً ان جهداً كبيراً يبذله النظام في سبيل إفساح المجال لهذه الجماعات التكفيرية لكي تحل محل الثورة، وما تتحمله الثورة من مسؤولية في استجابتها لا يعدو كونه انعداماً في الخبرة والدهاء. فالجيش النظامي أقدم مثلاً على انسحابات مريبة من مناطق كثيرة في الريف السوري بهدف افساح المجال لهذه الجماعات التي يسهل له بعدها استهداف السكان بالقصف بذريعة وجودها، كما ان عمليات تسلل عناصر غريبة الى عدد من المناطق تجري تحت أنظار هذا النظام. خبرة كبيرة اكتسبها النظام السوري في العلاقة مع الجماعات التكفيرية في العراق ولبنان، وها هو يستثمر خبراته اليوم في سورية.
مناطق خارج السيطرة مضبوطة برقابة أمنية شديدة، وانكفاءات مريبة عن طرق ومسالك دأبت «القاعدة» على سلوكها، فيما تفاوتت الرقابة تبعاً للوظيفة وللظروف. أليس هذا ما جرى حرفياً مع جماعة «فتح الإسلام» في مخيم نهر البارد في شمال لبنان؟ ألم تكن الحدود العراقية -السورية في منطقة البوكمال مسرحاً لهذا النوع من الرقص الدموي؟
«الجهاديون التكفيريون» الآتون الى سورية بتسهيل من النظام ومن التخلي الدولي والإقليمي عن السوريين، سيصطدمون بالبيئة المحلية، وقد بدأت اشارات اصطدامهم تصدر مبكرة. انعقدت علاقات بينهم وبين هوامش ضعيفة في المجتمع الريفي في شمال سورية، فهم في 2كثير من البلدات والقرى هناك استثمروا في شبان عصفت بهم أزمات عائلية وجهوية وشخصية. كان ذلك شرارة العلاقة الوحيدة بمجتمعات القرى والبلدات على الحدود مع تركيا. واستثمروا أيضاً في شبان كانوا خبروا العلاقة معهم في العراق إبان تسهيل النظام عمليات تسرب شبان سوريين الى الأنبار.
http://syrianncb.org/2012/09/30/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%A4%D9%88%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B9%D9%86-%D8%AA%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%91%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%AF%D8%A9-%D8%A5%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%B1%D9%8A/
September 30th, 2012, 8:37 am
mjabali said:
Observer:
Funny how the “leftists'” logic is formulated. I have been reading your type of narrative all of my life. I do not buy it. I never did. It sounds like a broken record. بالعربي : اسطوانة مشروخة
You always sound like a man who believes in conspiracy. Those who believe in conspiratorial explanation for events always come up short. In the Middle East, those who believe in conspiracy always believe that “Right Wing America” and “Zionism” are behind every bad thing ever happened to them.
Let me give you a simple explanation of things: Who saws the wind harvests the storm من يزرع الريح يحصد العاصفة
Bashar al-Assad saws dictatorship and injustice so he is harvesting what you see in front of you.
The opposition now saws military options so they are harvesting destruction.
Muslims saw sectarianism and they are harvesting hatred and the impossible chance to live with each other.
No Right wing America or Zionism in this scenario.
The problem is Syrians: made in Syria. All of the outside elements that are adding to this fire are nothing compared to what the Syrians are doing to each other. Stop blaming these usual suspects and look inward.
As for the Kurds here is what I just watched on You Tube: an attack in al-Qamishli. Who made this attack is looking to harvest something right?
September 30th, 2012, 8:41 am
Tara said:
Yeah, the rebels *provoked* the Assad’s phalanges to burn the Souk. It is all their fault. And the rape victim in Tunisia provoked the police officers to rape her because of her indecency. But of course, blame the victim.
September 30th, 2012, 8:57 am
Observer said:
Thanks to all that responded; some more coherent than others.
I do not wish the scenario of course, but again, contained within Syria and low level for the next 10 years, a conflict that could sap Iran would be a dream to the neo cons.
On the other hand, the Israeli response clearly shows that the Zionist entity is not one bit interested in living in peace in the ME, only as a hegemonic entity.
I know and those of us that lived and visited know that the people in Syria are extremely resilient, and extremely resourceful, and will very easily build a superb place to live with a wonderful array of differences and similarities and with a sweet gentle way of life that they have been denied and forced to abandon.
I believe that they will overcome all of this, that they will manage to get the economy back on track.
Syria’s economy grew close to 10% in the 40’s and 50’s and after the union with Egypt incurred significant trade and budget deficit, yet the loans and the deficit were erased in a less than 18 months after the break up of the union when free market economics were allowed.
The same will happen, and if and this is a big if, gas is found in Syria, it will be a good source of revenue and cushion and mostly reconstruction.
Who would have thought that the people whose lives were controlled in every aspect from the cradle to the grave would take up arms and would manufacture weapons and would chase out and destroy Mukhabarat centers and dungeons.
As for the two Turkish pilots, if the plane was shot down by missile then the warning system would have let them bail out and they would have radioed their situation.
If they were shot down by canon fire, then they may not have had the time to bail out or they may have been killed outright. That would have been clear from their wounds. Pilots do not drown for their suits are made to allow them to float and the beacon to find them is activated by contact with water.
So, the fact that they were not found outright makes the story of Freddo killing them quite plausible. Notwithstanding what Majbali’s dog thinks. Some dogs are of course smarter than “others” including some humans.
September 30th, 2012, 8:59 am
zoo said:
While the Aleppo souk burns the great “decisive” battle announced by the rebels turned out to be another total flop.
As one french article qualifies the claim, these are claims and actions that losers would do when they are about to withdraw in defeat, angrily burning and destroying anything they can behind them.
It does sound like the end of the armed rebels in large cities is about to happen. They will obliged to retreat to the country side after that second failure and will resort to terrorists acts just to prove they are still here. There are becoming the “Talibans” of Syria.
Of course there will a flurry of explanation: The Iranians are here, the Russians are helping, there are no amunitions, the Army used chemicals etc…
Yet the main explanation are that the people of Aleppo, like Damsacus, don’t want the armed rebels to abuse their city, they want the powerful and nationalistic Syrian army to protect them from the FSA thugs.
To confirm that, the casualties for that predicted “decisive” and ‘raging’ battle reported by the media do not match the pompous qualifiers.
Syrian activists say fighting in Aleppo kills 5
By JAMAL HALABY | Associated Press – 1 hr 10 mins ago
http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-activists-fighting-aleppo-kills-5-114926476.html
September 30th, 2012, 9:08 am
Citizen said:
‘No support for US, Turkey policies regarding Syria unrest’
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/09/30/264264/no-support-for-us-turkey-over-syria/
September 30th, 2012, 9:13 am
Observer said:
Majbali, it is disheartening really to read your rants, for you still do not get it.
Agreed that what is happening in Syria was and is a revolution for freedom and dignity, and we all know the criminality of the regime.
The regime nevertheless was able to regionalize the conflict and to take advantage of rivalries and differences and to portray the situation as a conflict to install new regimes that would be compliant with this or that block.
The SNC in their ineptitude also did not help as they thought that a NATO intervention is in the works and their “wearing the bear’s skin before killing it” stance made them the ridicule of the world.
Again, if you claim that the situation is purely Syrian, I would say the conflict would have slowed down considerably as the support that the regime is getting would have been significantly less than what Russia and Iran are giving it. Also, the West’s hiding behind the Russian and Chinese Veto is ever so convenient not to interfere (as if the West ever needed a permission to intervene) is a golden opportunity to take the high moral ground without actually doing anything. So this support that the FSA is getting ” au compte gouttes” in small doses is actually prolonging the conflict. If they were to get a few missiles to neutralize the Air Force, the regime would be more amenable to back down.
There is no doubt and I hope you agree that the regime would not have lasted were not for the cover it gets from Russia and the support from Iran.
So, all I am saying that if it were for a cynical neo con, the opportunity to bloody Iran and to stick up Putin in Syria would be hard to miss, and of course we Syrians will pay the price, in the millions perhaps but hey, whoever thought that powers have friends, they only have interests.
This is Syria’s revolution for freedom and dignity and it going to forge a new country and a new day in the sun no doubt. The real question is how long and at what price.
September 30th, 2012, 9:15 am
Tara said:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/al-arabiya-claims-not-credible-says-retired-general-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31296&NewsCatID=359
Al Arabiya claims not credible, says retired general
ISTANBUL
A retired Turkish general has dismissed claims that Syria covered up the murder of two Turkish pilots in June, saying the country lacked the technology to place the bodies next to their downed plane, daily Hürriyet has reported.
“You will first find the wreckage at 1200 to 1300 meters, and then you will place the bodies of the pilots in there,” said Erdoğan Karakuş, who is also an air force expert.
“This is not very credible. Syria does not have the technology to do it, and wouldn’t the Turkish Naval Forces notice [Syria placing the bodies back in the water]?” he said.
..
“Every move in that area is closely watched,” Karakuş said. “This may be a trick to pin Turkey and Russia against each other.”
—-
Explain how 2 pilots can take off flying helmets and their boots which should have still been on the bodies when found instead of being found floating on the water when this scenario first happened PLEASE EXPLAIN THAT! I do know flying boots and Helmets do not come of so easily
September 30th, 2012, 9:18 am
zoo said:
Welcome to the Al Arabya’s sinister OZ
Desperate to provoke Turkey’s anger to act militarily, the media financed by the Arab “FFOS” ( Frustrated Friends of Syria) are fabricating just anything.
What they miss, it that they are actually ridiculing Turkey’s and NATO militarily intelligence which, after months of investigation, gave their own explanation of the downing of the plane, just to be contradicted by the “brilliant” military analysts of Qatar.
Curiously the mouthpiece of Saudi Arabia, Ashark Alwasat has not yet reported that scenario.
I guess the result of that attempt may simply be the further discreditation of the already ridicule Al Arabya.
September 30th, 2012, 9:21 am
Atheist Syrian Salafist Against Dictatorships said:
“Notwithstanding what Mjbali’s dog thinks. Some dogs are of course smarter than “others” including some humans.”
Puts a smile on the face of anyone reading this and makes for a great start or end of the day, depending on where you are.
Cheers to you, Observer!
September 30th, 2012, 9:21 am
zoo said:
The answer to the western agents, CIA, France and Turkey who are training the Sunni rebels militias to perform terrorists acts: Uniting the shabihha militias.
Syria: Hezbollah training Alawite elite force
30/09/2012
By Caroline Akoum
http://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=1&id=31263
Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat- The Syrian military is forming a new elite force of made up of 60,000 fighters, according to a report from the “tar-Tass news agency. The agency cited an expert at the London-based International Strategic Research Institute as saying that “western intelligence has obtained information that the armed security regiments (the shabbihah) that are made up of the Alawite community would be integrated in a division similar to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”
The expert pointed out that the preparation and training of this elite division is being done by Iranian experts in Syria who number around 2,000 and added, “We are expecting the number of government forces to double in the coming months which portends a prolongation of the conflict in Syria and provides Al-Assad’s regime with new prospects.” According to British analysts’ conclusions, this division that is being set up will when necessary provide protection for the Alawite areas on the Mediterranean coast.
September 30th, 2012, 9:29 am
Tara said:
Zoo @27
Then masks are off. It is all about shiaa dominance to HA and Iran. And if this is the case, one should support bombing Iran to never allow them to go nuclear. It is not about Israel really. It is about Iran “superiority” over the “Sunnis bedouins”.
September 30th, 2012, 9:39 am
Majed97 said:
Thanks to a revolution Aleppians never asked for, the damage to Aleppo and its historical treasures is a loss of epic proportion. Humanity is losing its soul, as Aleppo burns. There isn’t much left to “liberate” in that great city anymore.
September 30th, 2012, 9:57 am
Atheist Syrian Salafist Against Dictatorships said:
Tara: Whilst the news could certainly be true, don’t underestimate the “bluster” value the AsMAA are putting in this media campaign (in which our beloved Zoo dutifully plays a patriotic part). The image of the 60k extra tough and professionally (!) trained fighters is going to sow (yes, Mjabali, it’s sow not saw), sow fear in the hearts of those rag-tag rebels, so much so that the news alone will make them lose heart and go line up to be hired as actors in the next “MOTHER SYRIA TAKES INTO THE FOLD MORE DEFECTING DEFECTORS” comedy production.
Hey ANN, what’s the going rate for a one-hour conference shoot?
September 30th, 2012, 9:59 am
zoo said:
Tara
Your paranaoic reaction does not surprise me.
I would turn it around: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey are looking for the Sunni domination the Arab world.
You are silent when they get the help of christian western countries who most of them were colonialists who create the problem they claim they want to solve.
The day the oil-rich Sunnis will open their arms to the Shias instead of demonizing them and treating them as heretics and enemies of Islam, then the Arab world will start to develop more hamrmoniously
Until then they should not expect the Shias to bow.
September 30th, 2012, 10:06 am
Tara said:
Zoo
And the tolerant generous non-demanding non pretentious Syrians who have bowed for 40 some years are expected to bow forever so the “oppressed” Shiaa assume their “righteous” role in history?
What did exactly you loved about Syrians? Their slavery status? And now you no longer have the same affection because they can’t bear that status anymore?
September 30th, 2012, 10:24 am
Atheist Syrian Salafist Against Dictatorships said:
Just got word that yes, they’re hiring bit-part extras, no dialog roles, though, you just need to stand there and and look very remorseful with a mixture of gratitude for having been “saved”. There is a catch, though: no cash payments, they’re offering a choice of “sunni” old model confiscated/plundered mobiles (SIM not included). No bread vouchers, sorry!
September 30th, 2012, 10:29 am
zoo said:
Tara
Oh yes, Abdel Halim Khaddam..The Tlass mafia and the rich sunnis families who were so oppressed they made millions on the back of the poor sunnis and alawites
September 30th, 2012, 10:43 am
zoo said:
Erdogan is already campaigning for his presidency: Giving history lessons to big power and becoming the defender of Islam worldwide, thus stealing the place of apathetic KSA and confused Egypt.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/conditions-to-improve-relations-with-israel-armenia-remain-the-same-erdogan.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31300&NewsCatID=338
Erdoğan has meanwhile called on Russia and China to reconsider their stance on Syria, while also vowing to provide logistical support to Syrians and welcome refugees from the country flowing into Turkey, during his speech.
“I call on China and Russia: Please, reconsider your stance. History will not forgive those who side with this cruel regime,” Erdoğan said during his party’s congress today in Ankara.
Turkey is currently hosting around 90,000 refugees, he said. “We will do what brotherhood necessitates. We will continue to give logistical support.”
..
“Islamophobia is a hate crime. Insults to [Islam’s] Prophet Muhammad cannot be tolerated under the name of freedom of speech. This is not freedom of speech, this is a disrespect to freedoms,” said Erdoğan.
September 30th, 2012, 10:54 am
Dawoud said:
Qatar, Egypt, and Tunisia are now in favour of an Arab deterrent force. Arabs will soon enter Syria and crush Bashar’s, Iran’s, and Hizbillat’s murderous forces! Instead of Halab, I hope that Nasrillat’s and Khameini’s houses burn!
FREE SYRIA, FREE PALESTINE!
September 30th, 2012, 10:56 am
Tara said:
The psychology of mnhebaks. I find it difficult to believe how some are content with slavery status. I pity them.
http://bit.ly/NOVkJw
September 30th, 2012, 11:01 am
Dawoud said:
Tara,
President Morsi is now in favor of an Arab force. How long do you think it will take Egyptian and other Arab forces, who will be aided by tens of thousands of defecting Syrian troops, to rout Bashar’s, Hasan Nasrillat’s, and Ali Khameini’s shabiha?
Free Syria and Palestine!
September 30th, 2012, 11:06 am
Visitor said:
The Aleppo souk is more than 2300 years old. It contains over 5000 shops 700 of which were destroyed in the fire. It also has a 900 year old public bath that is still functioning, in addition to the great Umayyad mosque that is about 1300 years old. Some 30 plus souks branch out of the main souk. The legendary poet almutanabbi used to do his shopping in this souk.
The cause of the fire is sniper bullets of the burning type fired by government thugs directly at electrical installations. It is a heinous deliberate war crime committed by the criminal thugs of the remnants of the nazis that are now occupying Damascus and some parts of Syria.
FSA (tawheed brigade) was able to contain the fire with help from the local residents initially. However, the criminal thugs of the criminal regime targeted them. This is another reason why this abomination of thuggery must be uprooted once and for all from Syria and brought in front of tribunals for justice and accountability.
——————————
On the other hand, Egypt seems to be having a change of heart about Arab military intervention as proposed by our brothers in Qatar. Egypt is now willing to consider such proposal and even committing its own troops for the mission.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/30/240980.html
One may wonder why the sudden change? Did mr. Morsi realize the folly of his overtures towards mullah Iran? Did he realize that he was manipulated during his speech at the NAM meeting? Did he discover that his so-called contact group is a waste of time?
Or perhaps he got the clue from the Yemeni president who masterfully snubbed Nejjad in NY out performing the leader of the biggest Arab country?
September 30th, 2012, 11:12 am
zoo said:
Morsi is going to have a lot of change of heart depending on the money offered by the different parties to sustain him in the next election where he is threatened to loose power.
We will soon see all kind of excuses to postpone the new Constitution draft originally planned for end september and the new parliamentary election and presidential planned early next year.
So we should expect a roller-coaster Egyptian foreign policy in the coming months. Follow al Arabya, it has a lot of imagination.
September 30th, 2012, 11:19 am
Dawoud said:
One non-Sunni/anti-Sunni commentator has less intelligence than the creatures who reside in a place, whose name is similar to his chosen SC name 🙂
Free Syria, Free Lebanon, Free Arabistan, Bahrain is Arab Forever, Free Palestine!
September 30th, 2012, 11:27 am
Johannes de Silentio said:
31. Zoo
“Christian western countries who most of them were colonialists who create the problem”
You are such a pathetic hypocrite. The Europeans were on the ground in the Middle East for thirty years as colonialists. For the Turks, it was 500 years. Yet you give the Turks a free pass even though they did much more damage as colonialists.
After all, Zoo, the Turks were Muslims. Right?
Hypocrite!
September 30th, 2012, 11:30 am
zoo said:
The FSA revenge on the ‘traitor’ Kurds?
Suicide car bomb in Syria kills 4: TV
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/suicide-car-bomb-in-syria-kills-4-tv-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31313&NewsCatID=352
A suicide car bombing in Qamishli, a Kurdish city in northern Syria, killed at least four people today, state television reported, but a human rights group said that eight members of security forces died in the blast.
“A suicide terrorist using a car laden with explosives attacked the western district of Qamishli,” said the broadcaster, adding that at least four people were killed.
September 30th, 2012, 11:31 am
Visitor said:
40 The Zoo,
Regardless of what happens in Egypt now or in the future, do you agree without reservations or ifs and buts that the current thugs of the nazi-like criminals occupying Damascus and some parts of Syria must be uprooted and brought in front of tribunals for justice and accountability?
And I do not buy the argument of spreading blame. In other words I do not consider any one else besides the criminal regime has committed any crimes whatsoever.
The question is simple.
September 30th, 2012, 11:32 am
Atheist Syrian Salafist Against Dictatorships said:
Tara @37
I almost posted the same video. But the comments below it are quite telling too.
September 30th, 2012, 11:34 am
Juergen said:
This hamam may be gone too. Its inmidst the souq…
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/aleppo-nach-brand-neue-kaempfe-fotostrecke-87989-3.html
September 30th, 2012, 11:35 am
Tara said:
Dawoud,
I just don’t believe that it is going to happen. Unfortunately,
September 30th, 2012, 11:39 am
Mina said:
So we’ve been reading about fightings in Saba’ Bahrat and Jdayde for more than a week but this was supposed to leave the souks out of the battle? I don’t buy the idea that it is the army who needs the souks to hide, rather than the rebels, sorry.
Muslim akhlaq according to the Egyptian MB prime minister (trying to sound “cool”, i guess).
http://angryarab.blogspot.de/2012/09/muslim-brotherhood-sleaze-live-on-air.html
September 30th, 2012, 11:42 am
Tara said:
And here is the Coptic Egyptian pretending to be Sunni weighting in.
September 30th, 2012, 11:47 am
zoo said:
Silentio
“The Europeans were on the ground in the Middle East for thirty years as colonialists”
Oh really? French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962. Just one example.
The History of Libya as an Italian colony started in 1911
Go back to your history books: the Crusaders, Napoleon etc..
In any case Turkey was also an hegemonic power who oppressed Syria and now the rebels are begging them to come back?
September 30th, 2012, 11:52 am
Tara said:
Zoo
The French occupation in Syria killed total of 850 people. Batta and his dad killed 60k.
September 30th, 2012, 11:55 am
Visitor said:
27 Zoo,
Here’s another question for you.
Do you support Israeli bombing of Iranian installations in coordination with Arab countries such as Jordan, KSA and Qatar?
I would support, not just providing logistical support to the IAF, such as free passage over the airspace of the said countries but also the full participation of these countries air forces, that are quite formidable, in addition to stop overs, refuelling and rearming of the jet fighters involved in the operation.
I would envision a full month aerial campaign that would not only cripple mullah’s nuclear installations but also the decimation of its military- industrial complex, its air defense systems as well as its long and short range ballistic missiles, in addition to its oil producing facilities.
Considering the state of the mullah Iran economy (1 US $ = 30000 mullah riyal), I would say there is no better time than now to go ahead and finish the job once and for all. KSA’s feeble attempts to lower world oil prices may not be enough to destroy these mullahs by choking their revenues.
I am sure the FSA will then be able to eliminate the scourge of HA from our side.
September 30th, 2012, 11:55 am
Visitor said:
Continued from 52,
Oh, the Zoo, I forgot this.
Mujaheddin Khalq can then trigger the Iranian spring after the poor Iranian people become emboldened when they see their mullahs shattered to pieces.
September 30th, 2012, 12:02 pm
Ghufran said:
كشف عبد القادر الصالح قائد لواء التوحيد ، أحد أكبر التشكيلات العسكرية المقاتلة في حلب و ريفها، أن تشكيل المجلس العسكري الثوري المشترك في سوريا هو استهلاك اعلامي و أن لا أحد موجود على أرض المعركة .
و أضاف في حديث لقناة “الجزيرة” ضمن برنامج “حديث الثورة” يوم أمس السبت، أنه لا يوجد أحدا ممن ظهروا على شاشات التلفزة على الأرض، في إشارة إلى المجلس العسكري الثوري المشترك و الذي أعلن عن تشكيله في وقت سابق .
و دعا الصالح تلك القيادات إلى القدوم إلى حلب و المشاركة في وضع استراتيجيات من داخل أرض المعركة .
September 30th, 2012, 12:06 pm
zoo said:
Erdogan is using the “We need to join Europe’ card just to silence the seculars and sneakily impose islamism.
Why Turkey Will Never Join the EU
By Andrew C. McCarthy
September 29, 2012 4:00 A.M.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/328816/why-turkey-will-never-join-eu-andrew-c-mccarthy
…
Like all Islamists, Erdogan has contempt for Europe and the West. The objective of Muslim supremacists is to dominate and Islamize them, not emulate them. Yet the prime minister is artfully resourceful enough to exploit to his advantage the Kemalist dream of European integration and Europe’s responsive gamesmanship. For among the steps Turkey must theoretically climb on the ladder to Euro-worthiness are religious liberty, the separation of religion and the state, and civilian control of the military. As Erdogan saw, the EU-integration process was the surest way to cow the generals into accepting elected Islamists and to break secularist constraints on Islamic supremacism.
…
But the fact is that Islamic supremacism is the preponderant Islam of the Middle East. Yes, it is a religion, but it aspires to be so much more: to control every aspect of life, to impose sharia’s political, social, and economic strictures on civil society. Therefore, the guidelines for religions that pose no threat to free societies cannot be applied to Middle Eastern Islam without putting liberty in grave jeopardy.
…
All that said, though, the Europeans continue to make believe Turkey will someday be invited to a place at the adults’ table if it just addresses a few outdated flaws. Thus Erdogan continues to leverage this European pressure for Turkish reform because it serves the Islamist cause of weakening the Turkish military and breaking Atatürk’s shackles on supremacist Islam — all under the ironic guise of promoting “religious liberty.”
September 30th, 2012, 12:12 pm
zoo said:
Palestinians ditched; Egypt next?
By Spengler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NI29Ak01.html
“No one cares about the Palestinians,” I wrote in this space two years ago [1], and since then the world has stopped funding them. As a result, the Palestine Authority is collapsing, comments Khalid Elgindy, a former PA adviser, on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, about “the wave of Palestinian protests that swept through the Israeli-occupied West Bank this month [and] … virtually paralyzed life in Palestinian cities, with scenes reminiscent of the first intifada”.
The PA can’t pay salaries because international donors, including
the Gulf States, haven’t sent promised aid:
…
The question is: when will the world also grow weary of Egypt? With liquid cash reserves down to a month or two worth of imports in July, Egypt began bouncing checks to oil suppliers in August, and has stopped importing some urgently needed items. The latest shortage to plague the Egyptian economy is infant vaccines.
…
September 30th, 2012, 12:14 pm
jna said:
Aleppo
”They are not the army of freedom,” she said. ”They are the army of spite.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/as-aleppo-burns-rebel-strategies-challenged-20120930-26toy.html#ixzz27yGX2gW2
September 30th, 2012, 12:28 pm
ann said:
President Obama – Why is the US supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
Good news report from Fox19 channel about Syria and American support for the Jihadists in Syria.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=86a_1348427615
Hot debate. What do you think?
September 30th, 2012, 12:29 pm
Mina said:
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/18/107/54328/Books/Arab/Syrian-writer,-son-killed-in-Deir-Ezzor-NGO,-activ.aspx
Ibrahim al-Kharit, Syrian writer, and his son Sumar “were shot dead Thursday night by regime forces who raided the neighbourhood of Qasur,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
September 30th, 2012, 12:45 pm
Johannes de Silentio said:
50 Zoo
Like I said, Zoo, you see “European Colonialists” under every bed, because you haven’t the integrity or the honesty to admit that Muslim colonialists did far more damage.
You have no credibility. You never did. You’re nothing more than a cheerleader and a pom pom girl for the regime.
Do you have a job, Zoo? Do you do anything besides surf the Internet?
September 30th, 2012, 12:52 pm
Visitor said:
A new document is revealed by al-Arabiya in its advertised series of top secret documents supplied by Syrian opposition.
Today’s document reveals the presence of so-called joint command composed of Russians, mullah thugs and alawite thugs with offices in Moscow, Tehran and Damascus.
It also reveals the sinister plot of staging terrorist bombings in Damascus (May 2012 known as al-Qazzaz bombing) ordered by Bashar himself based on instructions of the joint command. The objective is to provide so-called evidence of the presence of non-existent terrorist groups.
Bashar ordered the selection of low level exclusively Sunni sentries in the targeted security installations who will become victims of the sinister plot in order to stage the propaganda stunt targeted for Western media.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/30/241051.html
Any Sunni who remains in the thug’s so-called army is either stupid, gullible or traitor of Syria.
September 30th, 2012, 12:55 pm
Tara said:
D-a-l-e
I post as much as zoo does and I have a very demanding full time job and 3 children and I promise you I am being honest, not a fake job and not fake children. Please do not make it personal.
Why are you so defensive when someone mentions the colonial powers?
September 30th, 2012, 1:07 pm
Jasmine said:
My best description of the situation in Syria is like having a very ill patient and every one is trying to kill him and they are all pretending that they want to save him and that they care.
http://rt.com/news/syria-west-proxy-war-321/
September 30th, 2012, 1:20 pm
Ghufran said:
The next day,alfarouq brigade executed 17 syrians in alhaydariyyah village near Alqsayr the declared the village as a liberated town.
قال متحدث باسم الأمم المتحدة في دمشق خالد المصري، أن مختار لماني مدير مكتب المبعوث الاممي والعربي الأخضر الإبراهيمي في دمشق، التقى احد قادة المقاتلين المعارضين في حمص خلال زيارة قام بها الى المحافظة.
ونقلت وكالة الانباء الفرنسية (ا ف ب) عن المصري قوله ان “مدير مكتب الإبراهيمي مختار لماني زار، يوم السبت، حي بابا عمرو ومنطقة تلبيسة حيث التقى هناك ممثلين عن المعارضة المسلحة برئاسة العقيد قاسم سعد الدين، المتحدث باسم القيادة المشتركة للجيش السوري الحر في الداخل”.
September 30th, 2012, 1:48 pm
Citizen said:
Propaganda Alert: Syria Islamists: ‘next stop Israel’
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/propaganda-alert-syria-islamists-next-stop-israel/22512/
—————————————
Russian Security Official: Syrian Government Controls Situation, Opposition’s Operations Prove They Are Mercenaries
http://sana.sy/eng/22/2012/09/29/444285.htm
—————————————
U.S., France boost contacts with Syrian opposition
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a meeting of foreign ministers in New York that the United States would provide an additional $45 million in non-lethal and humanitarian aid to the Syrian opposition
http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=96277
—————————————
New York Times Promotes War on Syria
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2012/09/28/new-york-times-promotes-war-on-syria/
————————————–
http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2012/09/aipac-israels-agent-feeling-squeezed/
September 30th, 2012, 1:54 pm
ann said:
Syrian insurgent commander killed by his own men in Dara’a – Sat Sep 29, 2012
A commander of foreign-sponsored Syrian insurgents has been killed by members of his own armed group, who turned against him in the southwestern city of Dara’a.
Rabea Swaidan was fatally shot in the city, located about 114 kilometers (70 miles) south of Damascus, on Saturday by his own gunmen after they got into a bitter dispute with him over the distribution of stolen property and the money they received from abroad to fund their insurgency and other illegal activities, the SANA news agency reported.
It is said that Swaidan personally supervised the looting of houses and cars, armed robberies, abductions, and the extortion of local residents in Dara’a.
[…]
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/29/264200/syrian-insurgent-commander-killed-by-own-men/
September 30th, 2012, 2:24 pm
ann said:
Another dead “FSA” child soldier
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9d3_1348990246
September 30th, 2012, 2:37 pm
Aldendeshe said:
The Prophet Mohamamd (PBUH) further foretold and warned us against the Shia helper of the Dajjal that:
“This liar would start conquer world, country by country, fortress by fortress, region by region, town by town and no place will remain unsafe except two Holy cities of Makkah and Medinah. He will posses the power to issue a command to the sky and it will rain onto the earth and it will produce crops. He will bring a false religion and brings something that resembles Paradise & Hell and that which resembles Paradise will in fact be Hell and which resembles Hell will in fact be Paradise. He is the DAJJAL meaning imposture and will be born with one eye andyour Lord is not One eye”.”
The forerunners of the Dajjal are none other than the “F R E E M A S O N S”
It is also known that:
“Before appearance of the Dajjal, a group of people would pave the way setting up a system to prepare the world for his arrival.”
Read all about the Prophet of Islam said here:
http://perfectkhan.blogspot.com/2012/09/antichrist-dajjal-and-freemasons-in.html
September 30th, 2012, 2:42 pm
ann said:
“Free Syrian Army” NATO Death Squads get a taste of Paradise
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dc3_1348990686
September 30th, 2012, 2:46 pm
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
Imam Mahdi The Shia Version – Messiah Dajjal Al Mashih???
Read the true facts about the deceiver Amen/ Marduk (the hidden one) helpers, the shia’s are nothing more than NWO helpers, read here:
http://theunjustmedia.com/Islamic%20Perspectives/Feb10/Imam%20Mahdi%20The%20Shia%20Version%20-%20Messiah%20Dajjal%20Al%20Mashih.htm
September 30th, 2012, 2:54 pm
Syrialover said:
It makes a lot of sense that Russian and Iranian military-terror thugs are at the heart of Bashar Assad’s military command and control center.
They would have no interest in protecting precious heritage sites from shelling or Syrian people from being randomly killed and their homes and livelihoods smashed.
In fact, they would share Bashar Assad’s clear contempt and indifference to these things and get crude satisfaction (and bonuses from their bosses at home) from directing troops that are punching holes in the fabric of a Sunni majority country.
It signals the level of depravity, desperation and hatred by the Assad regime that they are getting outsiders to help them burn the country.
September 30th, 2012, 3:01 pm
hopeful said:
“And so Syria’s war grinds on relentlessly, chewing up its young, stoking sectarian hatreds, multiplying atrocities week by week, spiralling into ever more horrific mayhem.” Bill Neely, the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9576261/Syria-despatch-meeting-Assads-snipers-as-they-fight-rebels-in-Homs.html
September 30th, 2012, 3:08 pm
ann said:
“Free Syrian Army” NATO Death Squads Firing From Schoolyard
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=677_1348989110
September 30th, 2012, 3:12 pm
Syrialover said:
ZOO,
You seem to claim confident inside knowledge about “foreign intervention” driving the Syrian crisis and sponsoring al qaeda and so on. You also see it as a powerful propaganda point for justifying the Assad regime’s conduct.
So you must also have a significant amount of inside information about the more direct and significant foreign intervention by Russia and Iran in the form of weaponry, military commanders, sponsorship of anti-Sunni militia and so on and so on.
Your silence on this REAL foreign intervention that is fuelling and sustaining the nightmare is baffling for one who has so much to say night and day about the Syrian situation.
September 30th, 2012, 3:20 pm
Ghufran said:
دعا وزير الخارجية العراقي هوشيار زيباري المعارضة والحكومة السورية الى عقد مؤتمر في دولة محايدة للبدء بعملية الانتقال السياسي ضمن أطر زمنية محددة، وطالب المبعوث الدولي الأخضر الإبراهيمي بالإسراع في طرح خطة عمل على الارض وعدم الاكتفاء بسماع الآراء.
وقال زيباري ان “إعلان بغداد الذي اتفقنا عليه يدعم المطالب المشروعة للشعب السوري في الحرية والديمقراطية وبناء مستقبله وتقرير مصيره بنفسه من دون تدخل خارجي”.
وفيما يخص المرحلة الانتقالية ومطلب تنحي الاسد، قال زيباري ان “هذا لابد أن يكون جزءا من عملية الانتقال السياسي، ولا يحصل بالتمني بل بالواقع”، مؤكدا أنه “لا بد أن يتحقق ذلك في إطار العملية السياسية، بمعنى أن السوريين هم الذين يقررونه”.
So, if most people agree that Assad needs to go why he is still at the helm of an unpopular regime? The short answer is fear and distrust.
People in the Middle East are yet to accept the idea of power sharing, they prefer to fight to death instead of accepting their opponents as legitimate partners who have equal political rights, the lack of a solid plan that does not divide syrians into winners and losers is the reason why Assad is still in power, his supporters would rather fight or stay idle instead of jumping on the revolution wagon and become second class citizens. Nobody on this board has looked at this and given an intelligent reply to the critical question of how a sizable section of syrians will be treated and what guarantees these people’s safety and human rights after the regime falls,instead we get the same lame speeches about how bad the regime is and how wonderful the rebels are, the only car that keeps running is the destruction of the country.
September 30th, 2012, 3:41 pm
Syrialover said:
Here’s a comment on “ANN” I made earlier that didn’t get posted.
“Ann” said on Sept. 12: “Our ambassador and three other American staffers are killed”
My comment:
Our? The mask slips again. An American.
An American who expresses poorly-informed sneering ill-will and contempt for Syrians and who has invested hours every day for many months cutting and pasting and pushing the Assad/Russian/Iranian line here.
Something’s not adding up.
Or rather it is – but we’ve been warned here not to make remarks about commentators being well, you know, how would you say it, “supported”.
September 30th, 2012, 3:42 pm
Visitor said:
70 SNP,
According to my information the surdab man has been living in the hole since 1021 AD. That is close to 1000 years.
Is he receiving food and water? How?
Does he have any sanitary facilities?
Does he have any medical care?
Does he have a wife with him? If so does he have children? How many?
Could you explain, please, or provide some theory?
September 30th, 2012, 3:46 pm
Syrialover said:
63. Jasmine
That article you posted is a silly Russian propaganda piece.
You honestly believe the existence of Syria as a nation has been a key deterrent to the west taking stronger action against Iran?
September 30th, 2012, 3:59 pm
Jasmine said:
SL 78
The article has a lot of truth in it.
Answering your question:
It would be an exaggeration to have this conclusion.
I think that the way of resolving the Syrian situation is going to define the relation between west and East,it is not any more about justice,freedom or democracy,or Sunnis versus shia.
I only blame our stupidity as Syrians,we didn’t see all this coming.
September 30th, 2012, 4:19 pm
Uzair8 said:
Bashar al-Assad ‘betrayed Col Gaddafi to save his Syrian regime’
The Assad regime in Syria brought about Muammar Gaddafi’s death by providing France with the key intelligence which led to the operation that killed him, sources in Libya have claimed.
30 Sep 2012
French spies operating in Sirte, Gaddafi’s last refuge, were able to set a trap for the Libyan dictator after obtaining his satellite telephone number from the Syrian government, they said.
Read more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/9577628/Bashar-al-Assad-betrayed-Col-Gaddafi-to-save-his-Syrian-regime.html
September 30th, 2012, 4:30 pm
Tara said:
Comparing the NAM conference in Iran that was supposed to de-isolate Iran with the AKP meeting but please do not eat your heart out..and what was it again? Erdogan won 1400 votes out of 1424? Not unexpected! Waiting with passion for Syrian Erdo..
AKP hosts dignitaries from all over the world
ANKARA
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/akp-hosts-dignitaries-from-all-over-the-world.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31299&NewsCatID=338
….,
September 30th, 2012, 4:38 pm
ann said:
‘West wants end of Syria as a functioning independent state’ – 30 September, 2012
http://rt.com/news/syria-west-proxy-war-321/
The Syrian insurgency will never win its war because its means are unsupported even among the opposition, political analyst Dan Glazebrook told RT. But thanks to a flood of weapons from the West, they will continue to destabilize the country.
Syria, Glazebrook says, is the only link keeping Western powers from dominating the region, which is why the anti-Assad coalition is sending weapons and funding the “proxy war” through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Western governments, he says, support the rebels because once Syria falls, they hope to “roll out the program of a final solution” for the Palestinians, Southern Lebanon and Iran.
RT: Russia has reiterated calls for what it calls a balanced solution to the Syrian conflict – why aren’t more countries supporting Moscow’s proposals?
Dan Glazebrook: Well, it is a good question. In fact it is not only Moscow that is making these proposals. A week ago in Damascus, the National Coordination Committee, which is the main organization behind the initial outbreak of peaceful protests in Syria, actually had their own conference where they also called for a cease fire on both sides. They’ve criticized the militarization of the conflict. They’ve criticized the countries that have been arming the rebels.
We see how the Western-trained and sponsored militia on the ground in Syria has responded. They’ve responded with a wave of bomb attacks over two days in Damascus. The crucial point is that the West does not want to see a peaceful resolution to this conflict. It wants to destabilize, that is the name of the game. They do not want a peaceful resolution.
They don’t want any compromise, because what are their main strategic aims? Remember, their main strategic aim is to destroy Syria as a functioning independent state, because at the moment Syria is part of the alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Now, Hezbollah’s independent existence, which was shown by Hezbollah’s defeat of Israel in 2006, that is the one thing protecting the Palestinians from Israel just unilaterally imposing some kind of once-and-for-all ‘peace deals’ on the Palestinians that would condemn them forever to living in little cantons in a sea of Israeli settlements – the one thing preventing Israel from doing that is the existence of Hezbollah, the arming of Hezbollah by Iran and Syria. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah himself, said that Syria was crucial in the 2006 victory by Hezbollah against Israel.
So the West is determined to keep this war going, to destabilize Syria, to make sure that they cannot any longer play the role that it has been playing in supporting the Palestinians and preventing a successful Israeli attack on the Palestinians, on Lebanon and on Iran. Once Syria falls, the hope is for the West and for the Zionists that they will then have a free hand to go and implement, to go ahead and roll out, that program of a final solution for the Palestinians, destruction of Southern Lebanon, destruction of Iran. Syria is a kind of link that so far is preventing that. They do not want a peaceful solution.
RT: With Washington now pledging $45 million worth of extra support to the rebels, how much longer can the opposition keep up the fight without direct foreign intervention?
DZ: We have to get over the idea that there is no foreign direct intervention. There is a foreign direct intervention already now – and there has been for many, many months. There were groups on the ground calling themselves part of the Free Syrian Army, but there are entire units made up of Libyans, of Lebanese, of people from Jordan, of people from Saudi Arabia. They have been armed and also equipped and trained by the SAS and by the CIA, at camps in Turkey.
In fact if the situation in Libya – the war in Libya last year – is anything to go on, from what we know happened there, they were probably under the direct command of British and US Army officers. So I do not think it’s true to say that the current situation is one without direct foreign intervention.
The other thing to bear in mind, the $45 million of aid from the US is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the weapons and the funding for the West’s proxy war against Syria is being channeled through Saudi Arabia and through Qatar. Now, just Britain alone for example, last year provided £1.75 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and much of it is now ending up in the hands of these proxy militias. So that $45 million figure is actually just the tip of the iceberg.
And it is very tricky that the US and Britain, and Britain in particular, often says it is just providing non-lethal equipment: communications equipment, night vision goggles, this kind of thing. But it is providing weapons, but it’s just doing it through third parties.
The question of how long this war can go on is a good question. It is not clear. They can’t really win these rebel groups, because they don’t have the support of even most of the anti-Assad forces. As I have mentioned, the main peaceful opposition group does not really support the strategy of the Free Syrian Army, does not support the Syrian National Council and in the key cities of Aleppo and Damascus, which is where more than half of the Syrian population live. Most of the population is behind the government, supports the government. A couple of weeks ago, a Free Syrian Army Officer admitted it himself, saying that ‘the problem for us here in Aleppo is that 70 per cent of the population supports Assad,’ and it has always been that way. So they can’t win with that lack of popular support.
[…]
http://rt.com/news/syria-west-proxy-war-321/
September 30th, 2012, 4:42 pm
SANDRO LOEWE said:
This is just to confirm that Dar Zamaria Hotel (I thought it was called Martini) has been burnt.
Just check this pick in the link and compare with the pick in the post.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/9CWt1nc6WwnSLuZbdOKXkA
September 30th, 2012, 4:44 pm
ann said:
15 people massacred in central Syria by “terrorists”: TV – 2012-09-30
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/30/c_131883038.htm
DAMASCUS, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — Syrian TV said 15 people were massacred by “armed terrorist groups” in central Syrian towns on Sunday, while activists reported violent clashes between the Syrian troops and armed rebels in the northern province of Aleppo.
The Sama TV reported the massacre in the towns of al-Haidarieh and Ghasanieh near the central province of Homs, placing the initial toll at 15.
On the same incident, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said hundreds of armed insurgents stormed the two towns overnight and rousted locals out of their homes before killing 17 of them and kidnapping seven others.
Al-Mayadeen gave no further details, but also reported a big blast targeting a command center of the rebel Free Syrian Army in Hass area near the northwestern province of Idlib and killing four of its leaders.
Sham FM said scores of armed insurgents were killed Sunday at Dar-Azzah and al-Jandoul roundabout in Aleppo, a city of about 3 million, which has emerged as a key battleground in Syria’s conflicts.
[…]
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/30/c_131883038.htm
September 30th, 2012, 4:53 pm
ann said:
4 people killed in suicide car bomb blast in northern Syria – 2012-09-30
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/30/c_131883168.htm
DAMASCUS, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) — Four people were killed when a suicide car bomb went off in Syria’s northern province of Qamishli on Sunday, the state news agency SANA said.
SANA gave no further details, but the blast came as part of the spiralling violence that has engulfed a considerable number of areas across Syria.
Earlier in the day, an explosive device affixed under a car went off at al-Baytara roundabout in the capital Damascus, amputating the hand of the driver and leaving material damage, sources told Xinhua.
The al-Baytara roundabout is close to a main intelligence headquarters in the area, which has been targeted more than two times by explosives.
Last week, the same area was hit by an explosive device that ripped through a boarding school.
[…]
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-09/30/c_131883168.htm
September 30th, 2012, 4:59 pm
Citizen said:
I think there are no way for resolving the Syrian situation ! Attrition destroy the structure of the state and the Syrians continue to face each other
75- دعا وزير الخارجية العراقي هوشيار زيباري المعارضة والحكومة السورية الى عقد مؤتمر في دولة محايدة للبدء بعملية الانتقال السياسي ضمن أطر زمنية محددة، وطالب المبعوث الدولي الأخضر الإبراهيمي بالإسراع في طرح خطة عمل على الارض وعدم الاكتفاء بسماع الآراء.
وقال زيباري ان “إعلان بغداد الذي اتفقنا عليه يدعم المطالب المشروعة للشعب السوري في الحرية والديمقراطية وبناء مستقبله وتقرير مصيره بنفسه من دون تدخل خارجي”.
—————-
ماذا سينتج عن مؤتمر يدعو اليه زيباري؟ أمريكا دعت الى مؤتمر أصدقاء سورية و ماذا نتج عنه ؟ روسيا دعت الى مؤتمر و ماذا نتج عنه ؟ ثم علينا تعريف من هم المعارضة ؟ هل هم المحافظون الجدد ؟ أم حمد أم أردوغان ؟ ثم من هي الحكومة السورية ؟ أنها تضم معارضة في صفوفها ! لا يمكن للأزمة السورية أن تنجلي الا بحرب كبيرة و على الأغلب سيكون سيناريو جهنم !!!
September 30th, 2012, 5:00 pm
ann said:
Al-Arabiya: New Evidence Links Russia to Turkish Jet Incident – 30/09/2012
http://en.rian.ru/world/20120930/176312279.html
Alleged top-secret Syrian intelligence documents recently obtained by Al Arabiya shed a new light on Russia’s role in the downing of a Turkish military jet in June by Syrian air defenses, the Saudi-owned news channel reported.
“Two Turkish pilots were captured by the Syrian Air Force Intelligence after their jet was shot down in coordination with the Russian naval base in (the Syrian city of) Tartus,” according to one of the documents released by Al Arabiya on Saturday as part of a special news program showcasing newly-leaked Syrian intelligence data.
The document was allegedly sent from President Bashar al-Assad’s office to Brig. Hassan Abdel Rahman, the chief of Syria’s Special Operations Unit.
A subsequently leaked file, also sent from the presidential palace and addressed to all heads of units of the Syrian foreign intelligence, said: “Based on information and guidance from the Russian leadership comes a need to eliminate the two Turkish pilots detained by the Special Operations Unit in a natural way and their bodies need to be returned to the crash site in international waters.”
The Russian government has not yet commented on Al Arabiya’s speculations.
[…]
http://en.rian.ru/world/20120930/176312279.html
September 30th, 2012, 5:18 pm
Uzair8 said:
From AJE Live Syria blog:
Syria 27 minutes ago
An Islamist militant group fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria said in a video posted online on Sunday it had captured five Yemeni army officers sent by their government to help quell the Syrian uprising.
The video by Al Nusra Front showed clips of five men in civilian clothes asking the Yemeni government to stop supporting the Assad regime. The authenticity of the recording could not immediately be verified.
One of the men identified himself as Mohammed Abdo Hezam al-Meleiky and said the Yemeni government had sent him and his colleagues to Damascus to help Assad’s forces in the civil war raging across the country.
“I ask the Yemeni government to cut all logistical and military ties because Bashar al-Assad’s regime is a regime that is killing its people and that is what we saw with our own eyes when we came here,” he said in the online video.
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/topic/syria/syrian-fighters-say-they-captured-five-yemeni-army-officers-sent-syria-their-government
September 30th, 2012, 5:27 pm
Humanist said:
Some Turkish nationalists like to call AKP = the Arab Kurdish Party.
It’s not really true since most AKP supporters are actually Anatolian Turks, even if around 40 % of Kurds voted for them and probably the small number of non-alevi Arabs too.
But maybe ‘the Arab Kurdish Party’ makes some sense after this congress, with speeches in both arabic ( Meshal, Mursi) and kurdish (Barzani).
An ironic thing I’ve noticed is that Turkish, Kurdish and Arab nationalists are all very anti AKP.
(Personally I think I would prefer the Kemalist CHP over AKP, but for other reasons than nationalism in that case)
September 30th, 2012, 6:13 pm
ann said:
Syria: The Opposition and terrorism – 27.09.2012
http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/27-09-2012/122278-syria_opposition_terrorism-0/
The west has once again armed, trained and supported terrorist forces in an internal conflict in a sovereign nation, breaching international law; the murderous activities of this scourge is the responsibility of the operationals on the ground and their foreign military and political backers. Once again, the FUKUS Axis is in deep trouble.
The hand of the FUKUS Axis (France, UK and US) was visible in Libya, where Benghazi was used as a base as the Libyan government slowly lost control of the Cyrenaica region, after which thousands of terrorist mercenaries poured into Libya from the already-secured frontiers of Tunisia to the west and Egypt to the east. The shocking crimes of these terrorists are the responsibility of their masters overseas and these were drawn up in an indictment presented by the author et al (*).
The International Criminal Court at The Hague has not to date even acknowledged receipt of the document, let alone open an investigation and delivery to the European Court of Human Rights merited a cryptic message that this would not be investigated by this court.
Moving on to Syria, it is patently obvious that the Syrian Armed Opposition (the Opposition is split into tens of factions, some of which are conciliatory and unarmed, most of which are totally against the barbarity of the FSA, the so-called Free Syrian Army, which bears all the hallmarks of a FUKUS terrorist force, given the degree of atrocities and the lying by western media about who or what is really perpetrating the crimes.
With the recent history of the FUKUS Axis ringing in our ears, how can these countries expect to have an iota of credibility any more? Their own actions long ago smashed any idea that they stand for anything other than the interests of the lobbies that control their governments.
We only have to look at the last few days to see the type of atrocity carried out once again by terrorist forces the west (France, UK and US) have launched but which have turned into a monster): kidnapping of Christians (most freed by the Syrian Armed Forces), terrorist acts in Damascus with CIA-style bombs against Syrian Army targets (Umayad Square).
And now, a terrorist strike against Press TV Correspondent, the universally respected Maya Nasse, who has been murdered today by the bullet of a terrorist sniper. Was the FUKUS Axis directly involved, or was it some of the sucm they support and call “freedom fighters”? Does a freedom fighter murder a civilian?
The man who gave his life for the truth, because he loved his country and knew what the terrorist scourge assailing it is really like has left us, however many more will take his place, carry on his work and fight his fight. Let the terrorists fight men with arms like men, not cower behind the murder of civilians. But then again they wouldn’t would they?
All the FSA is good for is raping girls, slicing the breasts off women, kidnapping Christians and committing terrorist atrocities. And now how about someone holding the FUKUS Axis responsible together with the political leadership of these countries?
[…]
http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/27-09-2012/122278-syria_opposition_terrorism-0/
September 30th, 2012, 6:15 pm
ann said:
Syrian army defeats rebels in Aleppo – Sep 30, 2012
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_09_30/Syrian-army-defeats-rebels-in-Aleppo/
The Syrian troops have repelled the rebels’ attacks in Aleppo, the second most important city in the country.
After three days of street fights, the armed gangs have retreated failing to break the government forces’ defence lines.
Members of an al-Qaeda-linked radical organization who took part in the offensive were surrounded and crushed. According to the SANA news agency, over 100 mercenaries and terrorists have been killed.
Syrian Air Force helicopters attacked the convoy of trucks moving to Aleppo from the Turkish border.
[…]
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_09_30/Syrian-army-defeats-rebels-in-Aleppo/
September 30th, 2012, 6:22 pm
Tara said:
Humanist
May I ask if you are a Turkish Alevi?
September 30th, 2012, 6:34 pm
Syrialover said:
That’s it, keep posting “ANN”, keep posting. Your meter’s on.
Racking up points for the number and length of junk propaganda cut-pastes you can disrupt this comments section with.
What a job. What a life for an American. I don’t think even the most destitute Syrian would agree that having that job is better than no job at all.
September 30th, 2012, 7:30 pm
Syrialover said:
JASMINE #78,
I still say that article’s assessment of the west is off the mark and expresses Putin’s peculiar world view.
I think you would find the west’s concern is still a lot about justice, freedom and democracy.
As an article posted here recently pointed out, we’ll see who comes forward with a clean pair of hands to help Syrians rebuild after the smoke has cleared.*
It sure won’t be Russia and Iran. Their leaders will be too busy getting ready for when they will do a Bashar Assad in their own countries.
* http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/humanitarian-intervention-wont-save-syria-7501
September 30th, 2012, 7:43 pm
zoo said:
“Nonsense” is the trade mark of Al Arabiya
Turkey denies claims pilots killed by Syria
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-denies-claims-pilots-killed-by-syria.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31358&NewsCatID=338
A claim by Saudi news channel Al Arabiya that two Turkish pilots were murdered by Syrian intelligence after their plane crashed June 22 is “absolute nonsense,”
…
“This is not very credible. Syria does not have the technology to do it, and wouldn’t the Turkish Naval Forces notice [Syria placing the bodies back in the water]?
September 30th, 2012, 7:49 pm
Syrian said:
A crack in the wall of total support of alawIs to Bashar have just happened.
It is all over the net that one of the heads and the original shabih Mohammad Alasad who is also know by shaykh aljabel has just got killed by other alwais in no other place than Ourdahe itself
http://youkal.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64987%3A2012-09-30-22-25-05&catid=54%3A2011-04-29-12-25-44&Itemid=126
It is also in here
http://all4syria.info/Archive/55513?wpmp_switcher=desktop
September 30th, 2012, 7:55 pm
Enrique Ferro said:
Who can believe al Arabiya and al Jazeera by now? Those two outlets, owned by the Houses of Thani and Saud, are only warmongering pamphlets vying with their lies to please their bloodthirsty owners.
September 30th, 2012, 8:00 pm
Visitor said:
Good one SL 96.
More will follow. Evil usually consumes itself.
September 30th, 2012, 8:21 pm
Tara said:
Ah. Read this comment
http://all4syria.info/Archive/55423
لو شاركت انيسة كانت فازت بكل الالقاب
September 30th, 2012, 8:26 pm
Syrian said:
With a mother in law like that, For a second I had little sympathy for Asma, then I realized it was just gas
September 30th, 2012, 8:53 pm
Ghufran said:
وزير الاعلام المصري الاخونجي يتحرش بالمذيعة السوريه زينه اليازجي
http://inagist.com/all/252402560307175425/
September 30th, 2012, 9:09 pm
Ghufran said:
أكد د. سيف عبدالفتاح، المستشار السياسي للرئيس المصري محمد مرسي، في حديثه لبرنامج “الحدث المصري”، الأحد، أن تصريحاته حول دعوة الرئيس مرسي إلى تدخل عسكري في سوريا، والتي بثتها وكالة أنباء الأناضول، “تعرضت للتحريف والاقتطاع من سياقها”، على حد تعبيره
September 30th, 2012, 9:16 pm
zoo said:
Qatar in Egypt: Buying Foreign Policy
By: Mohammad Khawly
Published Tuesday, September 11, 2012
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/qatari-egypt-buying-foreign-policy
Cairo – Qatar’s recent announcement that it plans to invest $18 billion in Egypt following President Mohammed Mursi’s controversial statements on Syria may herald a new era in Egyptian-Qatari relations, observers say.
Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem announced the proposed investments at a joint press conference with Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil on September 6. This new wave of investment comes on the heels of a $2 billion Qatari loan to the Egyptian state, the first installment of which was deposited at the Central Bank of Egypt on August 23.
The announcement came just a week after Mursi made headlines at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran when he announced his full support for the Syrian revolution against what he called an “oppressive regime.”
At the opening session of the council of Arab ministers last Wednesday, Mursi reiterated his call for the regime leadership to step down.
September 30th, 2012, 9:26 pm
zoo said:
Muslim Brotherhood insider says revolution not the goal
Bradley Hope
Oct 1, 2012
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/muslim-brotherhood-insider-says-revolution-not-the-goal
…
At its core, the Brotherhood is an “organisation based on the ethics of the Islamic religion”, with the goal of helping “people comply with the ethics in their life, with teaching them until they, themselves, implement it in their life socially and economically and morally, with their soul and mind”, according to Mr Nada.
“There are other places ready for the next coup, but the next revolution will probably be in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” Mr Nada says in the book. “Those countries are vulnerable.”
Clarifying his thoughts in an interview, Mr Nada emphasised that the Brotherhood “believe in horizontal growth, not vertical”.
“We want to export Islam, not revolution,” he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood is against the concept of revolution because of its destructiveness, he said.
“We are builders, not demolishers.”
The Muslim Brotherhood does not want to imitate Iran in creating an Islamic republic in Egypt, but believe in creating a democracy that does not contradict Sharia law.
“When you say normal democratic rule but without contradicting Sharia, you are open to a different interpretation of democracy as well as different interpretation of the Sharia,” he said in the book.
Therein lies the problem in Egypt, he said. Over three decades, the Mubarak regime encouraged the ultraconservative strain of Islamic thinking – in large part, brought from Saudi Arabia – to counter the Brotherhood’s influence. Since the uprising that toppled the old government, the Salafists have become a major political force that is trying to make Egypt into a more rigidly Islamic state.
September 30th, 2012, 9:38 pm
zoo said:
Brahimi moving discreetly?
Meanwhile, UN spokesman Khaled Al Masri said Mokhtar Lamani, the head of UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s office in Syria, met with an FSA commander in central Syria.
Mr Lamani held talks with Colonel Kassem Saadeddine in the town of Talbisseh, Homs province, and other members of the FSA, which is made up of army deserters and civilians who have taken up arms against Assad’s regime.
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/suicide-bomb-rocks-kurdish-city-in-syria
September 30th, 2012, 9:41 pm
zoo said:
Turkey is a model for every Muslim state, Recep Erdogan says
Thomas Seibert
Oct 1, 2012
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/turkey-is-a-model-for-every-muslim-state-recep-erdogan-says
ISTANBUL // Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan held his country up yesterday as a model for Muslim states with its decade of record economic growth, rising political power in the region and democratic reforms.
September 30th, 2012, 9:45 pm
Observer said:
One more thing Majbali just for memory’s sake. During the Lebanese civil war Lebanese fought Lebanese and all intervened in one way or another to fight their proxy wars through Lebanese.
Now we Syrians are doing the same, and it is very easy to have others intervene and use Syrians for their proxy wars.
Now we have news of a demonstration in Qurdaha asking for Freddo to leave. Were they asking for the brother psychopath to take over? Bashar lil Iada and Maher lil Qiada? Or were they asking for him to leave so that his political survival is no longer tied to their physical survival?
documents and more documents and e mails and what else are we going to be entertained with.
In the meantime, the fight goes on.
September 30th, 2012, 9:47 pm
Norman said:
May GOD break their arms and bring death on the people who sent them,
Now they are killing Christians in the country side of HOMS,
http://www.alquds.co.uk/index.asp?fname=latest/data/2012-09-30-08-58-47.htm
September 30th, 2012, 9:52 pm
Visitor said:
A strategic alliance is in the process of getting forged between Turkey and Egypt in November just in time For US presidential results,
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/pages/498dcabd-9f72-4ee8-b115-9c23d3ba41d9?GoogleStatID=9
Along with KSA, the two major Sunni powers in the Muslim world will form a formidable alliance that will ensure the end and demise of any Khomeinist/mullah designs on our traditionally Sunni dominated region. Looking forward for another millenium of Sunni rule in the footsteps of our great leader Muawiya.
———————–
107 We never heard from you when Sunnis were being murdered. Actually you were happy all along. So get lost.
September 30th, 2012, 9:55 pm
Ghufran said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PlCG1zxd8
البت بيضه بيضه بيضه. البت بيضه و ناعمل ايه
Morsi, adjusting his presidential center
(just for humor, I think Morsi will be a useful transitional president)
September 30th, 2012, 10:29 pm
Syria no Kandahar said:
Today suicide bombing in kamishli was another achievement for this terrorists
Wahabi movement .From sources inside kamishli I learned that almost the whole city felt the impact of the explosion .ALL THE DEAD AND WOUNDED WERE
INNOCENT CIVILIANS.Not one single soldier or security officer.ALL SUNNI
MOSLEMS except one or two wounded Christians .This is what wahabi criminals
Are doing to innocent Syrians:using the innocent bodies as a bridge to reach into
The 70 virgins.Sunnis are killing Sunnis to achieve psycho-repressed sexual desires,so called revolution .What kind of a reward will these psycho brain washed terrorists get?What kind of sexual rewards they will get?What kind of
Idiots still think still exists a revolution when they see innocent SUNNI SYRIANS
Killed by sex thirsty suicide bombers?
September 30th, 2012, 10:47 pm
Aldendeshe said:
So, if most people agree that Assad needs to go why he is still at the helm of an unpopular regime? The short answer is fear and distrust.
_________________________________________________________________
You should know better Ghufran, because Syrians know that once Assad departs, the real heavy fighting and Civil War will start, this is child play now. So far 30,000 deaths in 18 months, Zionist Jews in Israel, Iran and Arabia will insure 3,000,000 dead before year end after Assad depart. You could not even find any small workshop for making hay bales in Iraq today, after it was one of the most industrial countries in the Middle East. You cannot even find a Math professor in Iraq today, after it was once one of the most literate and technically advance countries in the Middle East. You think those Jews are going to spare Syria from this calamity, you are dreaming or deceiving, which one are you, Have you seen Lebanon goes from the Middle East Swiss Nation to selling their children and women to devil worshipping Wahabbis for food. Have you not seen Libya massive water project turns onto rubble, have you not seen Egypt teetering on a month worth of cash, living on handout, having no honor or dignity like Egyptians always lived ever since they became Moslems, living on handouts. Moslems even stripped its Pyramids of face stones in revenge for lacking anything more than tent dwelling, just like the Jews today cannot and could not tolerate anyone having advanced knowledge close to them. He is in power not out of distrust for the opposition, Syrians knows that they are mercenaries destroying their country in exchange for millions of grafted cash, have they have any inclinations that the motive and means of these rebels is to better Syria, in any small way, they would have sided with them. He is popular because Syrians feel the worst after he leave and understand the intent of these deceivers.
The destruction of Iraq’s education.
http://www.brussellstribunal.org/IraqEducation0608.htm
http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/health/intentional_death/news.php?q=1265833549
September 30th, 2012, 11:43 pm
Jasmine said:
SL@94
IMlHO only Syrian hands should clear Syria’s mess .
Would you really expect the GCC to loose any sleep over saving Syria,or would you like Syria to turn into another Iraq by the west or another Afghanistan.
No matter how dirty the Syrian hands will appear,they are much cleaner than the petro dollars hands.
The article wich you have referred to is a statement of pure sectarian opinion.
October 1st, 2012, 12:40 am
Syrian Natonalist Party said:
تأتي تصريحات المصدر العسكري السوري فيما نقل عن مستشار المرشد الأعلى للثورة الإيرانية يوم السبت قوله ان الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد سيدحر الانتفاضة محققاً نصراً على الولايات المتحدة وحلفائها في خطوة ستكون ايضا نصرا لإيران.
ونقلت وكالة انباء الجمهورية الاسلامية الايرانية عن ولايتي قوله “انتصار الحكومة السورية على المعارضين في الداخل وامريكا وانصارهم الغربيين والعرب الآخرين يعد انتصارا للجمهورية الإسلامية الايرانية”.
__________________________________________________________________
The Ayatollah is simply a delusional and deceiving con man, naturaly, he is a Zionist helper. What if!! this did not end anytime soon, is he going to foot the bill? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, he bark on Assad side and then sends his devil worshiping Jew President to kiss the hand and hug of the ones killing Syrians and destroying the country. What a Zio-bitch, call him Alitollah, Amentollah, Ziotollah, leave Allah out of it. What a rag, he indignified the Persian Nation.
October 1st, 2012, 12:55 am
Aldendeshe said:
Praises and exaltation upon Lord EL, upon Enlil, Addad, Shamash, Ninurta and Nergal. We pray that you bring evil winds upon those that call on evil Amen name more disastrous than the one you brought upon them in older times. Lord Anu and Enlil we plea for your help in Syria, the evil hands and deeds of Enki first born is too heavy of burden on our Syrian Nation.
The conspirator’s arrogant lord whatever name he gives to different nations, Amen, Marduk, Ali, Mahdi Messiah, what aver, a con man trickster, is a loser who is delusional and has shown nothing but miserable disasters for the life of our civilization. His claim to lordship of which he is unworthy of is false and deceptive. His efforts and grand planning for millennia’s to get to this one king rule will be smashed by the Assembly of the Annunaki. What is coming is not New World Order or Messianic / Mahdi rule on earth, that is his delusion, what is coming is utter devastation to the One Eyed Beast Ego Rule and the demise of his helpers. What they conspired to build and hordes will be made worthless. Their end will be no more than the rat-king you see in the movies the Nutcracker. He is no Mahdi, he is the deceiver of man who used the Jews as a tool to commit dastardly deeds against humans, hiding behind them, making them take the blame, hiding behind Zionism and among other sects and organizations he set up as fronts. This is not about Syria, this is not about Assad. Those could have been resolved amicably; this is about fulfilling Daniel and Ezekiel promises given to them by the Annunaki Watchers.
October 1st, 2012, 1:03 am
son of Damascus said:
She was awarded an honorary doctorates degree in preserving Syrian History that her husband ended up destroying…
دكتوراة لاشرفية
في عام ٢٠٠٤، قامت جامعة روما لا سابينزا – وهي أقدم جامعة في روما – بمنح أسماء الأسد شهادة الدكتوراة الشرفية في علم الآثار لجهودها المبذولة في مجال حفظ التراث السوري.
أما عن حفظ التراث السوري، فيبدو أنه توقف مع حالة دفاع النظام المستميت عن وجوده، وفي ضوء عبارة الأسد أو نحرق البلد، كان حرق الحجر والبشر على السواء هو العقاب الجماعي الذي تستحقه سوريا بما فيها لجحودها ونكرانها لجميل آل الأسد في طمس الهوية السورية لمدة ٤٠ سنة خلت
فقد توالت الأحاديث والشهادات ممن اجتمع ببشار الأسد منذ بداية الثورة في سوريا، وتكررت عبارة في شهاداتهم تقول عنه أن لن يتنحى أو يتنازل عن الحكم حتى تعود سوريا كما استلمها والده منذ ٤٠ عام.
ولكن، هل القلاع والأسواق والحصون هي عطيةٌ ومنّةٌ من آل الأسد على سوريا، ورثتها الدولة من بيت جدهم وقد آن أوان رد الجميل؟
ولنفرض أن حضارات آلاف السنين التي كانت أرض سوريا شاهدة عليها هي عطية ومنحة من بيت الأسد، هل من أخلاق الإنسان أن يلحس ما بصق؟؟
[…]
http://the-syrian.com/archives/88403
October 1st, 2012, 1:25 am
Juergen said:
Syria despatch: meeting Assad’s snipers as they fight rebels in Homs
In an exclusive report, Bill Neely gains rare access to the Syrian government fighters waging war in the frontline city of Homs
He sat in near darkness and total silence: a young man, with a hard face and a reputation to live up to.
In a city paralysed by fear, he is among the most feared. He is a Syrian army sniper and I’d come to meet him.
The soldier who’d taken me up the staircase and into the gloom of the house on the front line in Homs wouldn’t give the sniper’s name for fear that his family would be targeted and killed by rebels bent on revenge.
The sniper’s nest was almost airless. He said nothing while I was there. He was watching and waiting for his target to appear.
Through a crack in the wall of his top floor firing point, his rifle and telescopic sight were aimed at the balcony of a house already pockmarked with bullet and shell holes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9576261/Syria-despatch-meeting-Assads-snipers-as-they-fight-rebels-in-Homs.html
October 1st, 2012, 1:37 am
Syrialover said:
# 112. Jasmine
Thanks for your response.
I agree that Syrians should rebuild – but I want to be realistic that there will need to be massive assistance in various forms from outside, and optimistic that Syrians will be able to use it constructively.
Syrians were set back TOO LONG by lowering their standard of living and economic opportunities in the grip of Russia and Iran and shutting out the west. Then accepting Gulf “Investment” to build luxury hotels and other wasteful stupid things.
Without assistance I think Syria could continue to be a disaster zone where all the young people flee and nobody wants to invest – which is what Assad’s rubbish misrule was already creating.
And tell me, where is the model for non-corrupt and efficient institutions and rule of law etc going to spring from?
What has all this sacrifice by ordinary Syrians been all about? To have more of the same?
Paranoia about the west is pointless, unwarranted and potentially very damaging to Syria’s future. That’s the moronic stance of the Assadists that has deadened Syria’s past and is now literally destroying its present.
October 1st, 2012, 2:36 am
Jasmine said:
SL @ 17
You are most welcome.
Have you noticed the decline of economy in the west?
Can you see the emerging economic power in the East?
It is after all about protecting the Syrian interests for the long term.
On a different note ,I think that change is imminent and I hope that the sacrifices are not going to be in vain,after all change is traumatic,let alone when it is pushed by fanatics.
Once we Syrians realise that our country is more important than any religion,sect or clan,we will be able to save it.
October 1st, 2012, 4:45 am
Albo said:
110 SYRIA NO KANDAHAR
“What kind of
Idiots still think still exists a revolution when they see innocent SUNNI SYRIANS
Killed by sex thirsty suicide bombers?”
What do you want, foreign and homegrown jihadists are thinking about their huriyat in the afterlife when in fact their only input to the conflict is as fertilizer for the Syrian soil.
But as for their islamist paymasters and sponsors, they on the other hand are comfortably sitting behind their Tvs and computers eating ba’lawa and watching the youth they brainwashed get blown. Of course Gulfites wouldn’t bother about heavenly rewards, it’s all about the “here and now” http://youtu.be/BRQ2GzxGMBQ
October 1st, 2012, 4:53 am
Syria no Kandahar said:
Syria has becom the Mecca of Alqaeda.Jihadist bugs from all over the earth are
Flying into Syria to get VIP access to the 70 virgins!! Some married jihadist bugs
Have flied to Syria keeping kids and wife behind,even without telling them where
They are going!! Why would a married jihadist bugs kill himself to get 70 virgins?
Sex is a major drive for these idiot bugs flying all over and gathering on Syrian
Cities and turning them into garbage.The Jihad Honey is now sold in Damascus,
Aleppo…Even in Kamishli!!! No jihad in Isreal any more!! What a brave suicide
Bombers bug!!! His trips start from KSA to Turkey to Syria, he gets his van filled
With explosives,he drives it as if he has just taken a pure cocain, his face shines
Up on his way to kill innocent Syrians , He calls the virgins on his way : my dear
Virgins I am coming to you , His shieks have given him some women underwears
To give to the virgins(what size?), He manically moved his thumb into the explosion button , His only thought is : this button is what separates me from my
Dear virgins. A huge fireball goes in the air.Bodies fly into air in pieces: heads,arms,legs,wallets,underwears… All mixed.Crooked disoriented Islamists either say:Allah Akber or say : Collateral damage or say : وما رميت إذ رميت or keep
Eyies close or have gases!
The whole world,especially the free world, The US and Isreal in particular should
Be thanking the Syrian Army for doing this great mission of fighting Alqaeda in
Syria.
October 1st, 2012, 5:09 am
areal said:
I hope that it is just a bad dream and that this is not real :
A radical Islamic group that’s called the “Grandsons of Omar”, in al-Bab city of Aleppo countryside, claims that it has implemented the ‘Rule of Allah’ on two civilians of Suleiman Family, charging them of Apostasy and blasphemy in Allah and his Messenger. The civilians’ bodies were found beheaded after being sentenced according to the provisions of the Legitimacy (Sharia) Court, and that in accordance to al-Jamaa (Group)
http://www.documents.sy/image.php?id=1474&lang=en
RIP Maya Naser
October 1st, 2012, 6:11 am
syrialover said:
# 120. Syria no Kandahar
That dizzy frantic sexual fantasy you’ve been exciting yourself with is dull and silly to others. But quite revealing about where your head is at.
You’ve just exposed yourself, sweatily pounding your keyboard. Grappling with a shameful but volcanic desire to find some jihadis to play sex games with.
But your sexual fantasy will be a burst balloon if you furtively buy a ticket and go panting to try it on with some REAL jihadis.
You’ll find they are the usual losers, mentally unbalanced or childish rambos and they will show you your sexual fetishes about them are not welcome.
Or worse for you …welcome.
October 1st, 2012, 6:17 am
Citizen said:
Western Powers Double Down on Syria’s Destruction
http://www.globalresearch.ca/western-powers-double-down-on-syrias-destruction/
“The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those, who in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” – Dante
The world watches as a nation is torn, slow motion, at the seams. Money and geopolitics has caused a feeding frenzy of western nations biting and tearing at Syria, all hoping to profit from the regime’s destruction.
Toward this effort, England, France, and the United States announced increased support to the “rebels” of Syria. The Obama administration promised $45 million more in funding for aid that has now totaled $175 million (is it any wonder there are budget problems inside the U.S.?).
And although much of the U.S. aid is designated as “humanitarian,” this money will directly help the military mission by bolstering the prestige of opposition groups, who will use the U.S. aid to gain adherents by being able to feed and house refugees fleeing the destruction (assuming that not all of this money will simply be used to buy guns).
Of course there is no accounting of the amount of money and arms the CIA is funneling into the country. But even The NewYork Times has admitted the CIA’s involvement; in June it wrote:
“A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers…the weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.”
There you have the Syrian opposition in a nutshell: groups of mercenaries funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and France, and the Muslim Brotherhood inside Syria. All of these groups have their own self-interest in toppling the Syrian government, while destroying the country and its people in the process.
Saudi Arabia has used the Muslim Brotherhood as a key tool in its foreign policy for decades, funding the organization in countries all over the Middle East and North Africa. When Saudi Arabia beckons, the Muslim Brotherhood and associated groups can be used to destabilize “unfriendly” regimes in the name of “jihad” — officially declared by clerics who work in tandem with the Saudi Arabian government to recruit fighters for the effort. This is why there are “terrorist” groups now fighting to overthrow the Syrian government, including Al Qaeda — itself born from the purse strings of Saudi Arabia, like the Taliban (there is an excellent chapter about this dynamic in Vijay Prashad’s book, the Darker Nations)……
October 1st, 2012, 6:17 am
Syrialover said:
#123. Citizen
All those concerns are conspiracist chickenfeed in the face of the ugly sickening reality of Oranian and Russian military involvement in Syria’s crisis.
I repeat: It signals the level of depravity, desperation and hatred of Syria by the Assad regime that they are getting outsiders to help them burn the country.
October 1st, 2012, 6:27 am
Syria no Kandahar said:
Syrialover
Why are you so angry? Did I attack you? So if I exposed suicide bombers that makes you upset?? You are then defending suicide bombers? Right? How can any one be good to humanity or to any thing good if they side with wahabi suicide
Bombers?
October 1st, 2012, 6:45 am
Syria no Kandahar said:
Jack Gabriel Kaoria,MD
A Syrian Hero who gave his life trying to save his countries kids, A Christian physician who died to save Moslem kids, A real hero who choose to be pure
And real human being:
http://www.syria-news.com/readnews.php?sy_seq=153014
October 1st, 2012, 7:03 am
Mina said:
Riyad al As’ad in Aleppo?
http://arabic.rt.com/news/595846/
Yemeni govt helping al-Asad,
http://arabic.rt.com/news_all_news/news/595839/
MB takfiri shaykh
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/liberal-secular-infidels-must-be-prosecuted-says-brotherhood-preacher
Sunna’s akhlaq according to Egypt MB prime minister
http://angryarab.blogspot.de/2012/09/muslim-brotherhood-sleaze-live-on-air.html
October 1st, 2012, 7:34 am
Son of Damascus said:
It is not just Aleppo’s historic sites that are being lost, Homs has been devastated by Assadi shells and bomb for over 8 months now. Here are a few pictures showing the level of barbarity and carelessness towards everything Syrian and holy by the Assadi forces:
Old Homs:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chroniclesyrianuprising/sets/72157631666151055/
The covered Souk of Old Homs:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chroniclesyrianuprising/sets/72157631666049207/
October 1st, 2012, 8:57 am
Visitor said:
At times we have to be critical of the FSA in order to make it better.
Stockpiles of essential advanced weapons are awaiting distribution pending a show of unity by the fighting units.
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/pages/9d8cff0c-5887-4ac5-ac3c-a4e2c1e13350?GoogleStatID=9
Unite. What are you thinking?
October 1st, 2012, 9:03 am
zoo said:
#129 Visitor
Splits among rebels an obstacle in Syria conflict
By ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE | Associated Press – 1
http://news.yahoo.com/splits-among-rebels-obstacle-syria-conflict-112509445.html
…
He said that some of the main obstacles to brokering a resolution to the conflict are divisions among rebels and opposition groups. Syria has large numbers of such groups inside and outside the country, and relations among them have been dogged by infighting and accusations of treachery. The rebels include army defectors and gunmen who work under the rag-tag Free Syrian Army.
Despite months spent trying to cobble together a common front, attempts to unite the opposition have so far failed.
October 1st, 2012, 9:35 am
zoo said:
Turkey’s model of ‘moderate’ Islamism can be misleading
Murat Somer
Oct 1, 2012
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/turkeys-model-of-moderate-islamism-can-be-misleading
What do we learn from Turkey about building democracy in a Muslim society? When an unworthy movie mocking Prophet Mohammed provoked deadly protests in many Muslim nations, only peaceful protests occurred in Turkey. What makes it different?
October 1st, 2012, 9:42 am
zoo said:
A new dictator in the making?
Erdoğan wants to rule for at least ten more years
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-wants-to-rule-for-at-least-ten-more-years.aspx?pageID=449&nID=31367&NewsCatID=409
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan made it crystal clear in his ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Parti) congress in Ankara on Sept. 30 that he wanted to secure power in the country until at least 2023, even if it required constitutional changes.
October 1st, 2012, 9:49 am
zoo said:
After Qatar, “Buying Foreign Policy” episode 2
Billion dollar agreement signed with Egypt
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/billion-dollar-agreement-signed-with-egypt.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31393&NewsCatID=344
A billion dollar loan agreement between Turkey and Egypt was signed during yesterday’s meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt President Mohamed Morsi, Anatolian news agency reported today.
October 1st, 2012, 9:52 am
Visitor said:
Murat Somer must be delusional.
Ataturk secularism only produced military dictatorships that could only rule through endless coup d’etat against the will of its people.
Until AKP came around Turkey was nothing but a dysfunctional despotic military republic with only a facade of so-called democracy.
Good try Murat at trying to usurp what is not yours, but the rice is in the pudding.
October 1st, 2012, 9:57 am
Visitor said:
The Zoo 130,
Of course Lamani is wrong by assuming that the divisions are preventing the resolution of the conflict. He is talking from his point of view of so-called diplomatic resolution. He should know better because there is none, and therefore such divisions have no effect on his mission of buying time and which everyone knows except him it seems is a failed mission.
But think not ya Zoo that such divisions will in the end save the neck of your idiot idol president or your imam-gods in Qom. Rest assured that they will end up in the history dumbster, the lowest level thereof.
But Lamani is right in the sense that such divisions are preventing resolution of the conflict because by uniting the heroic FSA will get the weapons it needs and move on to vanquishing the criminal terrorist thugs of the criminal regime in no time. The planes will start falling off from the sky in droves while the tanks will become a pile of useless metal rubble. Then your alawite and mullah/shia terrorists will turn into their true selves, i.e. rabbits on the run.
So again, what are you thinking FSA?
October 1st, 2012, 10:17 am
zoo said:
When will be celebrated the victory of the Aleppo citizens?
The real heroes of this revolution are the Syrians in Aleppo.
They fought for their city against the barbarians rebels who tried to invade and subdue the city to punish the inhabitants for not supporting their aimless uprising. They did that without the help of foreign troops.
Despite the death and destruction, the coming victory of the Aleppo citizens will resound in the future and will be the convincing proof that the Syrians are strong and united against anyone who want their country to become a mess in order to satisfy the agendas of some foreign countries that are manipulating jobless, naive and idealistic Syrians.
Aleppo, the martyr city who resisted the assault of the Qatar, KSA, Turks and Al Qaeda mercenaries rebels, is worth the admiration of the whole world.
One thing is clear: Aleppo will never become the Benghazi the bebels have been calling for for. In the contrary, like Homs, it has shown a example of what resistance to the invaders is all about.
October 1st, 2012, 10:38 am
zoo said:
President Gul defending with more nuance than Erdogan, Turkey’s policy with Syria
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-president-calls-for-refocusing-on-eu-membership-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=31408&NewsCatID=338
Distinguished Members of Parliament,
There is a bloody civil war killing hundreds of people every day in Syria. Some of the most magnificent cities of our ancient civilization continue to be ravaged and the people that we embrace continue to attack each other ruthlessly.
How can a country consume itself like this? But that is what Syria is doing today. We would not want Syria to consume itself. Our preference is on the side of a strong Syria, a country in which its people are happy and content.
Turkey’s policy vis-a-vis neighbors, including Syria, is well-known. We are in favor of establishing good relations with all of our neighbors. We have tried to develop our relations with Syria with determination and against all obstacles. The growth of our relations have drawn our people together and contributed to their prosperity.
In this process, it was our belief that a policy of engagement would stimulate our neighbor’s appetite for democracy and provide encouragement for taking the necessary steps in this direction.
Even after the events started, we tried very hard and amicably to ensure that the Syrian administration maintained its initiative. We made every effort at every level. We did not act like countries distant to the region because we saw the inevitability what came to pass.
..
October 1st, 2012, 10:49 am
Uzair8 said:
I read the following comment on a forum yesterday. Any thoughts on the claims, analysis or prediction?
‘A lot of advances by the rebels lately. They’ve managed to destroy 1000+ BMPS/tanks, so far, when they manage to penetrate the Air Force for real (They need SAMS, which they don’t have…yet) – the war will be over. Inshallah. I would say, it’ll take 1-2 years….’
http://forums.islamicawakening.com/f18/the-official-ia-syrian-uprising-thread-44883/index238.html#post657194
October 1st, 2012, 10:54 am
zoo said:
Obama speech relegated after Al Thani’s : Ramping infantilism in megalomaniac Qatar.
Al-Jazeera’s political independence questioned amid Qatar intervention
Al-Jazeera English journalists protest after being ordered to re-edit UN report to focus on Qatar emir’s comments on Syria
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/sep/30/al-jazeera-independence-questioned-qatar?newsfeed=true
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 September 2012 12.57 BST
Al-Jazeera’s editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar’s emir to the UN led its English channel’s coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention.
Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s speech, last Tuesday when a last-minute instruction came from Salah Negm, the Qatar-based news director, who ordered the video to be re-edited to lead with the comments from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.
Despite protests from staff that the emir’s comments – a repetition of previous calls for Arab intervention in Syria – were not the most important aspect of the UN debate, the two-minute video was re-edited and Obama’s speech was relegated to the end of the package.
October 1st, 2012, 10:55 am
Uzair8 said:
136. Zoo
The ‘people’ of Aleppo seem to be proficient at sniping, shelling and flying MIGs.
October 1st, 2012, 10:58 am
Visitor said:
Zoo 136 said,
“Aleppo, the martyr city who resisted the assault of the Qatar, KSA, Turks and Al Qaeda mercenaries rebels, is worth the admiration of the whole world.”
wahahahahahaha
I cannot stop laughing.
You mean Aleppo, the martyr city which resisted the arsons of the terrorit alawite thugs and their mullah/shia thugs?
You mean Aleppo, the martyr city which resisted the terrorist nazi-like criminals of your alawite idiot idol prethident and his nazi cohorts of HA and Qom?
October 1st, 2012, 11:06 am
zoo said:
Only hyenas laugh at death…
October 1st, 2012, 11:22 am
Visitor said:
Here is another martyr city which resisted and continues to resist the barbarism of the alawite terrorist thugs and their cohort of HA, Qom and aparetchik of mafia Russia,
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/10/01/241240.html
Did anyone hear at any time in history of any other incident in which Airforce is indiscriminately used against residential neighborhoods aside from Nazi criminals of the last century?
But the Nazis are one level higher in the scale of morality than the criminal alawite thugs? The Nazis did not use airforce against their own cities.
What were the words of the song of that martyr singer of the revolution, Qashoush?
يا بشار ما ناك منا
خود كلابك وارحل عنا
How accurate and how prophetic?
October 1st, 2012, 11:23 am
Visitor said:
Zoo 142 said,
“Only hyenas laugh at death…”
Only snakes shed tears on their own victims.
October 1st, 2012, 11:27 am
zoo said:
Hyenas think that they are superior to all the animals who are either stupid or delusional, but they forget that they stink.
October 1st, 2012, 11:34 am
areal said:
121. areal said:
I hope that it is just a bad dream and that this is not real
Now , for sure I am not convinceD this is not a B grade vampire movie :
Edlib countryside: gunmen slaughter a person under the charge of apostasy
Activists have published a video that shows insurgents, slaughtering a person, under the charge of apostasy, in Edlib countryside
http://fb.me/20oH8XmBY
________
I am not convinceD that all these news are fake because
Dr Joshua Landis never mentioned these facts in his News Round Up or
maybe his friends forgot to speak about these “juicy” stories
or
RIP Maya Naser
October 1st, 2012, 11:38 am
Uzair8 said:
We always knew that if the opposition kept the pressure up something would have to give. We’re hearing reports of arguments and infighting between prominent families in Qurdaha. It seems the military losses are being felt back in the villages*.
An update on AJE blog, not entirely unrelated (in terms of military losses).
Syria 12 minutes ago
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Antakya, Turkey (near the Syrian border) said that the battle for control of a strategic area west of Aleppo has grown in ferocity.
“It is a colossal fight – it’s an unusual one because it’s not urban, like Aleppo. It’s over open ground, open terrain, and, of course, despite the numbers, we’re told that there are something like 1,500 rebel fighters on the ground, at any given time, matching up to around that same number in the Assad forces,” said Simmons.
“The numbers might be the same, but of course, the military resources are totally different, because the Assad forces have heavy artillery, they have air cover, they have helicopters dropping bombs, so this is a really big fight. Big losses are being taken, we understand, from both sides.”
Rebel fighters are attempting to take control of a base belonging to a government troop of fighters called Force 46.
http://blogs.aljazeera.com/topic/syria/heavy-battle-rages-west-aleppo
* http://yallasouriya.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/snn-syria-latakia-rural-alqirdaha-2/
This update on Yalla Souriya has had a response from a journalist from the Telegraph wanting to know more in order to write a piece on it for the paper.
October 1st, 2012, 11:46 am
zoo said:
Libya badly needs NATO again
Libya’s Flawed Attempt to Soak Up a Flood of Weaponry
The country puts up a good show of collecting arms that have circulated since the fall of Gaddafi. But the groups that hold the most weapons aren’t joining in
Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/09/30/libyas-flawed-attempt-to-soak-up-a-flood-of-weaponry/#ixzz283xQQjiH
October 1st, 2012, 11:47 am
zoo said:
Morsi on stage, is he fooling the West?
Morsi’s message
By JPOST EDITORIAL
09/30/2012 04:30
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=286088
Egypt’s new leader Mohamed Morsi is proving to be a cunning communicator, at least so far as what he puts across to undiscerning Western ears. He manages to sound exceedingly moderate and reasonable, while enunciating unreasonable, indeed radical demands that must be met or else. He in effect says that “it’s my way or the highway.”
October 1st, 2012, 11:56 am
Visitor said:
The Zoo@145 spoke thus,
“Hyenas think that they are superior to all the animals who are either stupid or delusional, but they forget that they stink.”
The Zoo is providing us with valuable insights into the state of existence inside ITS dwelling.
———————————-
The Zoo is unusually occupied today. The number of postings has just gone overscale.
October 1st, 2012, 11:58 am
areal said:
RIP Maya Naser
http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/post/32585134558/a-tribute-to-the-martyr-maya-nasser-by-hala-jaber
The story below is written by my dear friend and veteran journalist for the Sunday Times, Hala Jaber. It is a tribute to her friend and colleague, the martyr Maya Nasser, who was assassinated by NATO/GCC-funded terrorist “rebels” after receiving numerous death threats. The piece was originally published in the Sunday Times here but is protected by a “firewall”.
I copy-pasted the piece in full from Hala’s Facebook wall. The piece in full below:
Oh Maya, I wish I’d taken your last call
Our reporter fled to safety when rebels mounted a huge attack on the defence ministry. Her fellow journalist was shot dead
Hala Jaber, Damascus Published: 30 September 2012
I WAS woken by an enormous explosion. The first thing I saw was a flash. The bomb sounded so close that I thought my hotel was under attack.
Heart racing, I peered out of the window of my fourth-floor room, only to see jabbering security staff pointing at the Ministry of Defence building opposite.
Black smoke was billowing into the sky from the General Staff Command, where the minister of defence has his office. It should have been one of the safest places in Syria, but as I dressed hurriedly with shaking hands, the rat-tat-tat of random machinegun fire suggested it was in chaos.
It was 7.01am on Wednesday — 5.01am in London, too early to call the office, so I tweeted: “Huge explosion now followed by sound of gunfire and siren of ambulances.”
At 7.09am, another explosion shook the hotel. I dashed out of my room and opened the door to a terrace, where I stood alone, feeling strangely isolated. I tweeted what I saw, as much out of a need to feel connected to the world as a wish to impart the news.
The hotel’s security staff warned me to go back inside. “There are snipers everywhere,” they said, pointing to a gunman on top of the state television building to my right.
As I sat in the corridor, catching my breath, a series of smaller blasts reverberated around the square in front of the hotel. Ammunition was exploding as fire engulfed the upper floors. Through the smoke, I could see several men on the ministry building’s roof, waving desperately in the hope of attracting rescuers.
At 6am London time, I briefed my foreign editor and joined a group of security guards on the terrace. The guards warned me to stay close to the wall for shelter, but even from there it was possible to see flashes of gunfire from inside rooms on the third and fourth floors of the ministry building.
As word spread that this was a serious rebel attack at the heart of the Damascus defence establishment, requests came in for broadcast interviews. At a little before 8am, I was speaking to the BBC on my British phone when I noticed a call coming in on my local mobile. It was Maya Naser, a Syrian television journalist I had met on an assignment in the country’s second city, Aleppo. For nearly two weeks, we had met for breakfast or an evening coffee, sharing tips about the safest way round the city and debating the course of the war. In Damascus the previous week, we had caught up over dinner.
I’ll call him back, I thought with a smile; he was probably ringing to say he was on the spot and perhaps to suggest I join him.
When the interview was over, I couldn’t get through to Naser. I shrugged: he was almost certainly on air. But at 9.50am, when I was scanning Twitter for the latest reports, I saw a tweet that made my blood freeze. “Press TV correspondent Maya Naser killed by sniper in Syria,” it said.
It took me several seconds to comprehend it. Then I thought there must have been a mistake and tweeted back: “He just called me like an hour ago. I couldn’t take his call, was on other line, engaged when I tried him. Plz God NO.”
I dialled his number again but it was still engaged. “Maya, pick up,” I muttered, before dissolving into tears.
I thought of Marie Colvin, my friend and Sunday Times colleague who was killed by shellfire in Homs in February. I had spent nearly two weeks in Damascus trying to arrange for her body to be recovered, and finally identified her in a hospital morgue.
I thought of the 17 other journalists who have died covering the conflict in Syria this year.
But my over-riding thoughts last Wednesday were for Naser, for the parents he had just moved out of Homs to a safer place — and for the young woman he had fallen in love with. They had been going to announce their engagement two days later.
Maya Naser was born 33 years ago and raised by a Christian mother and a Muslim father so avowedly progressive that he gave his three sons girls’ names to show there should be no difference between the opportunities for women and men.
Naser, a self-proclaimed liberal, disliked the regimes of President Hafez al-Assad and Bashar, the son who succeeded him in 2000. He was imprisoned as a dissident.
On his release, he felt he had little choice but to go into exile. He travelled to America and France, was married to a western woman and divorced.
After spells in Bahrain and Lebanon, he returned to Syria at the start of the uprising against the Assad government 18 months ago, and joined protesters thronging the streets.
This Arab spring revolution seemed to be about democratic reform at first. But Naser grew uneasy when the street demonstrations were punctuated by armed attacks on Syrian forces.
When it emerged that the rebels were being supported by foreign governments, notably those of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, his doubts were amplified. The arrival of Islamist militants from abroad to wage jihad on the Damascus government convinced him that his beloved Syria faced disintegration. He switched sides.
Three months ago Naser became a reporter with Press TV, an Iranian-owned station loathed by the rebels for its pro-government position.
Death threats began soon afterwards. One caller woke him regularly at 2am to warn that he would “kill you, rip you apart and teach you a lesson”.
Good humour sustained him. When the caller rang after missing two nights in a row, Naser told him: “I’ve missed you and was worried about you. I hope you’re well.”
I first met him in August at a small hotel in Aleppo, where we were covering the rebels’ efforts to seize the city and a government counter-offensive to repel them.
He came to my table at breakfast with a wide smile. “I’m Maya,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling as he stretched out his hand. “We met on Twitter. Now it’s personal.”
I warmed to him over coffee and cigarettes. After that, we talked every day. He went to the front line with Assad’s army and told me what he saw when my office instructed me to stay away from the fighting. I told him about the gossip at dinners he missed because his office made him stay in the hotel after dark. He ran terrible risks for front-line reportage. One night, he and his bureau chief, Hussein Murtada, 40, were trapped under fire for three hours during a failed rebel attempt to take the city’s television station.
His mother worried about him, he admitted. He joked that she tried to tempt him home by saying she was cooking his favourite stew of chicken, garlic and rice.
At home in the city of Homs, Naser tried to mediate between warring factions, seeking out the Salafist commanders he resented for trying to turn the struggle for democracy into a holy war. He took three of them to Damascus, in the hope that its ancient history would inspire them to pursue peace.
According to Naser, the Saslafists thanked him over dinner and said they respected his actions but that he would be killed for opposing them.
Shocked, he gestured to a table where two women of different religious beliefes were dining together, one with a veil, the other without. “This is what Syria is about and as long as I am alive, I will fight to keep it this way,” he said.
Although his employer supported the government, Naser’s heart ached over the casualties inflicted on civilians by both sides. Blogging from his room in the middle of Damascus about the army shelling of a suburb, he wrote: “Is this real? Is this fire I can barely see someone’s house burning, or maybe a neighbourhood store? Is this my country on fire?”
He was almost killed in Damascus three weeks ago when his car was ambushed. Murtada, who was beside him, was hit in both legs by shrapnel that left him with a limp.
Naser put a brave face on the incident when we dined in the Christian quarter of the old city last week. But he believed Syria was descending into a war of attrition. “There will be no winner,” he said. “Syria will have lost after this.”
We had been due to meet last Wednesday morning. Instead, a white van drove into a checkpoint at the entrance to the Ministry of Defence building and blew up in a ball of fire.
In the confusion that followed, a black Mercedes reached the compound, disgorging rebels dressed in military police uniforms who shot three guards on the steps of General Staff Command and detonated the second bomb in their car. They joined forces with other rebels, who stormed the upper floors and put snipers in position to defend them.
Naser was again accompanied by Murtada as they raced to the scene on Umayad Square. They entered the compound but retreated as the gunfire intensified, hunkering down in the street behind a barricade.
Surrounded by fire engines and soldiers, Naser felt safe enough to broadcast without a flak jacket or helmet. The studio anchor came on the line and he started to answer her first question.“The damage is huge on Umayad Square,” he said breathlessly. “No further news about the victims yet.”
“Has the situation calmed down yet? Is it still taking place?” the studio presenter asked. The line went dead with a “beep, beep, beep”. “Okay, we’ve lost Maya but we’re going to try and definitely get him back on the line,” she said.
Yesterday, in hospital, Murtada described what had happened. The first of the sniper’s bullets had hit him, he said. “I felt myself going in circles, then I dropped to the ground. Within seconds, two others followed — whizz, whizz, tick, tick. These two bullets hit Maya in the neck and he dropped to the ground, smiling at me. He just had this smile on his face,” Murtada said, his voice choking. He was shot in the hip but will survive.
Murtada has no doubt that the two journalists were targeted by a rebel who regarded them as a greater prize than the soldiers around them.
In the ambulance, there was a phonecall for Murtada, who, like Naser, had received death threats. It was one of the men who had been promising to shoot him. “We saw you enter the building,” the man said. “You were limping. We were watching you.”
Officials said last night that Naser had been one of three civilians who died in an attack that killed eight members of the security forces. Thirty rebels had died. A captured sniper had said the rebels planned to seize the prime minister’s office and broadcast a decree from state television, but had been beaten back.
Murtada was to be reunited with his wife and two young sons this weekend. Naser’s fiancée was photographed kneeling before his coffin.
His shooting bore out his view that the conflict would claim many innocent lives, including those of more journalists. “Bombs and bullets aren’t smart enough to distinguish the right from the wrong,” he wrote. “Bottom line is: my people are dying and I am still in the line, waiting my turn.”
October 1st, 2012, 12:14 pm
areal said:
Aleppo municipality building hit by rocket fire from rebels today while people & employees were inside
picture: https://t.co/mOSmhovB
_________
RIP Maya Naser
October 1st, 2012, 1:08 pm
Visitor said:
A Revolutionary from Aleppo exposes al-Dunya propaganda machine and identifies his brother and cousins bodies who were labeled by al-Dunya rag media as ‘terrorists’
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/10/01/241272.html
Ghassan Yassin, the revolutionary, further makes a solemn promise to the Dunya reporter to sweep the Aleppo streets of the terrorist dogs of the criminal alawite regime agent of the qom and russian thugs, and to bring the reporter to trial for her defamations and lies,
ويقطع ياسين وعداً في رسالته: “سنكنس الإرهاب يا كنانة من شوارع حلب وسوريا كلها تماما كما قلت في تقريرك، وأعدك حينها بأنني لن أطالب بأكثر من محاكمة عادلة بحقكِ، وأظن أن أمي ستقول لك حينها لماذا لم تعطوني أشلاء ابني بسام لأدفنه وأقرأ له الفاتحة كل يوم جمعة وأزور قبره في الأعياد، عليكي أن تجهزي أقوالك أمام القاضي يا كنانة، والأصعب هو أن تجدي حينها جواباً تقولينه لأمي”.
—————————
The snake living in its zoo will find it easy to shed few tears of joy at the news.
You know Zoo that when the snake shed its tears it is doing it out of joy? But you should know that from your Zoo experience. Why am I telling you what you know best?
October 1st, 2012, 1:12 pm
Observer said:
“Only hyenas laugh at death”
The expert in animal behavior is not completely accurate and is not complete: human animal is the only one that takes pleasure in killing and destruction. The ill treatment of the average people in Syria, the torture for years that thousands suffered from like Dr. Sarraj and his account from Tadmur to Harvard forgets that the so called humans of one of the most oppressive regime after probably NK are still at work daily in Syria.
As a keeper of the animals that are supposedly governing Syria, I am reminded of the fact that looking at the tip of the nose at the glaring reality in front of one’s face is the hardest thing to do.
I would like to conduct a poll
1. How many of you read what ANN posts
2. How many of you go to her link without reading her post
3. How many of you just skip directly
4. How many of you actually read and enjoy her postings
5. How many read her posts to get a glimpse of what goes on in her brain
I say her assuming it is a she, for ANN may be an IT, perhaps the keeper of the animals may know
Cheers
October 1st, 2012, 1:49 pm
areal said:
On twitter:
edward dark @edwardedark
there’s a huge pro-regime protest going on right now in the Azizieh area of Aleppo,
edward dark @edwardedark :
rebels are going to factories in Aleppo demanding they pay “Zakat” or monthly payments to support the revolution or they’ll burn them
ام عجئة ام عجئة @Fegleh
@edwardedark this happened to us. Monthly payment plus a first big downpayment.
October 1st, 2012, 1:53 pm
Mina said:
Meet the “cool djihadist” of the BBC!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19711647
Wonder why Josh did not link that
http://qifanabki.com/2012/09/26/camille-otrakji-and-elias-muhanna-talk-syria-at-bloggingheads-tv-part-ii/
(Jad, there’s still a chance to move)
October 1st, 2012, 2:25 pm
habib said:
So the twin caliphs Erdogan and Mursi want to attack Syria.
With what armies? Those they’ve spent the last months weakening to suit their Islamist agendas?
I doubt either army has much love for the Muslim Brotherhood abroad or at home.
October 1st, 2012, 2:26 pm
Aldendeshe said:
“…the torture for years that thousands suffered from like Dr. Sarraj…”
_________________________________________________________________
I am sure that if my uncle Abdul Karim, a former Parliamentary in Syria was alive, he would share with you the torture methods used on him by Abdul Hamid Sarraj. It seems many of the current Syrian oppositions (fake F***kers) would like to forget about a period in Syria’s history that can bring condemnation either for their action or fathers ones. They just do not understand, or would want to deceive you, that they are angles, neither them personally or his daddy, his family have anything to do in bringing Syria to this level of bestiality.
October 1st, 2012, 2:57 pm
Son of Damascus said:
Syrian-American Doctors Head To The Battle Zone
October 1, 2012
As Syrian war planes bomb towns and villages held by anti-government rebels, a group of Syrian-American doctors is quietly providing medical aid inside Syria.
The Syrian American Medical Society, or SAMS, has a long track record of supporting health care in Syria.
But as Syria’s 18-month revolt has grown more lethal, these Syrian-American doctors have sided with the revolution and undertaken risky work delivering medicines and volunteering in field hospitals.
Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a pulmonary specialist from Chicago, is on his fifth medical mission to Syria — a mission that requires skills he didn’t learn in medical school, like the heart-pounding dash across the Turkish border into Syria and back.
“Never in my dreams I expected to sneak to the border three times and have the border guards shouting at me,” he says.
Medical school didn’t prepare him for creeping through holes in barbed-wire fence, smugglers urging him on, or for sneaking into the mountains at night and walking for three hours.
He’s done all of these things to get to Syrian field hospitals and clinics.
“I think this is part of the reality now in Syria for physicians trying to help, especially if they are from the outside,” he says.
But Sahloul is hardly an outsider: He graduated first in his class from medical school in Damascus. He was also a classmate of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, who worked as an army doctor and studied ophthalmology in London before he became Syria’s leader.
[…]
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/01/161973660/syrian-american-doctors-head-to-the-battle-zone
October 1st, 2012, 3:29 pm
Son of Damascus said:
Disgusting the level of disingenuous barbarity this criminal regime will go to in its sad yet unsurprising attempt to vilify the opposition…
Video emerges of Austin Tice, U.S. journalist who disappeared in Syria
Video footage has emerged showing U.S. freelance journalist Austin Tice being held by a group of masked men toting assault rifles in the first direct evidence of his condition since his disappearance in mid-August.
The 47-second video clip was posted onto YouTube on Sept. 26th and came to light on Monday after it appeared on a Facebook page associated with supporters of the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is the first to show Tice since he disappeared while reporting on Syria’s civil war. Tice contributed stories to multiple news outlets, including The Washington Post and McClatchy.
The video opens with shaky footage of a convoy of three vehicles moving through scrubby mountain terrain, before cutting to a small knot of armed men, faces obscured, leading Tice up a mountain path while calling “Allahu al-Akbar,” or “God is great.”
A blindfolded Tice is then pushed to his knees and filmed speaking a partially indecipherable prayer in Arabic. Tice, visibly distressed, cries out “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus” in English, before reverting to Arabic, seconds before the footage is cut.
The emergence of the video comes amid other reports suggesting Tice has been in the custody of the Syrian government. Experts on Monday cautioned against taking the apparent content of the video clip at face value because, they said, there are clear discrepancies between the footage of Tice and other videos released by Islamist extremist groups operating in Syria.
Those discrepancies included the clothing of Tice’s apparent captors, the production quality of the film, the means of distribution and other signs that cast doubt on whether Tice was actually being held by one of the extremist groups that has become active in battling Syria’s government. Assad’s government has been eager to portray the country’s conflict, which has claimed more than 30,000 lives to date, as a struggle against Islamic extremist groups within Syria.
In the video, the captors are wearing Afghan-style salwar khameez — tunic and pants — that appear to be freshly pressed and clean. The video would mark the first time Syrian rebels have been seen wearing such clothes, said Joseph Holliday, who researches Syrian rebel groups at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Islamist extremists typically address the camera head-on with statements, but in this instance the film has been carefully edited to avoid displaying any faces, he said. And the only comments made are the phrases “Allahu al-Akbar” and “takhbir,” which means praise.
“It’s like a caricature of a jihadi group,” he said. “It looks like someone went to the Internet, watched pictures of Afghan mujahedeen, then copied them.”
“My gut instinct is that regime security guys dressed up like a bunch of wahoos and dragged him around and released the video to scare the U.S. and others about the danger of al-Qaeda extremists in Syria. It would fit their narrative perfectly,” he said.
[…]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/video-shows-austin-tice-journalist-who-disappeared-in-syria/2012/10/01/63944c5c-0bd9-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_story.html
October 1st, 2012, 3:38 pm
Syrialover said:
#125. Syria no Kandahar said [in response to me mocking him for his weird sexual fantisies]: “Why are you so angry? Did I attack you? So if I exposed suicide bombers that makes you upset?? You are then defending suicide bombers? Right?”
Wrong, I was sending you up in #122. Big Time. For being ridiculous and inappropriate and posting your sexual fetish stuff here (in #121)
There are millions of other other (porn fetish) sites you shoud be visiting to share your obsessive thoughts about ” psycho-repressed sexual desires” and jihadis.
No, I was not defending jihadis, who you might notice I described as “the usual losers, mentally unbalanced or childish rambos”
October 1st, 2012, 3:44 pm
Syrialover said:
#154. OBSERVER,
Your poll on “ANN” is too generous.
I think the tag is an acronym, with the first word obviously “American” (see my post #76).
The other thing we know for sure is that person or group knows hardly anything about the Middle East or Syria. And cares even less.
And is posting here to attain some kind of length and numbers score for pro-Assad cut-pastes (and disruption to this site). We can easily guess at the motive or payoff for this.
October 1st, 2012, 4:03 pm
Aldendeshe said:
As Syrian war planes bomb towns and villages held by anti-government rebels, a group of Syrian-American doctors is quietly providing medical aid inside Syria.
_________________________________________________________________
Did ALCIADA gives them crash course in Berber, Pashtuni and other Bedouin dialects? These doctors may get frustratd and return like that French Doctor back complaining they could communicate with these wild ones, that they are not Syrians.
October 1st, 2012, 4:06 pm
163. Aldendeshe, said:
Everbody knows AlCIADA is ARAB. Don’t blame the poor Pashtuns, Berbers etc….
And you know those Ba’athis ruling your country don’t even recognize Syria as an independent nation.
So according to the (real) Ba’athi logic “Syrians” should not consider the ALCAIDA-fighers as foreigners, but welcome them as their Arab muslim brothers…
Well that’s maybe the reason why you prefer to blame the Zionists, or as now, the Pashtuns and Berbers instead.
October 1st, 2012, 4:44 pm
SANDRO LOEWE said:
163. DENDESHE
As far as I know all syrians I talk to who are in FSA controlled areas explain to me that rebel soldiers are completely syrians in these areas (from Daraa to Zabadani and from Yabroud to Idleb). Probably there are some jihadists or salafists in independent cellules but nothing similar to your AlQaeda Propaganda. I am sorry to dismantle your paranoic conspiracy idea. I talk about real facts explained by real syrians on the ground.
October 1st, 2012, 4:49 pm
Uzair8 said:
Liwa Islam destroyed a convoy.
October 1st, 2012, 4:55 pm
SANDRO LOEWE said:
Syria was a mirage in the desert. A place where security seemed to flow naturally from human being goodness. A place where human beings did not have the natural need to act in politics. A place where no ambition could damage the system. A perfect system….. of repression…
… Where goodness of the convicted, subordination of the condemned, intellectual misery and desperation was eternal as the leader of Assad´s Syria.
The mirage has vanished and reality, cruel and raw, appears flowing, now yes, in its real nature. All madness and vile repressions and hates did explode like a vulcano that has been sleeping for 45 years.
October 1st, 2012, 5:01 pm
jna said:
151. areal said:
RIP Maya Naser
Areal, thanks for posting Hala Jaber’s appropriate tribute to this fine Syrian reporter.
October 1st, 2012, 5:19 pm
Uzair8 said:
New post up.
October 1st, 2012, 5:22 pm
Aleppo said:
1. aside from it supposed survival at any cost what is Assad fighting for? He will not survive nor most of his closest assistants and possibly, relatives. It doesn’t matter if the FSA loses some terrain or what have you. The genie is out of the bottle.
2. i have to agree with observer that a prolonged war in Syria is in the best interests of the US and Israel
3. the longer it lasts, the worse it gets in all senses
4. hard to be optimistic, the initial momentum, that would more easily lead to a positive transition seems to be waning very fast if not altogether erased. Brain and capital brain will accelerate even further. The ethnic wealth of Syria will not be easily restored or mended. Alawites will eventually and in many cases, unfortunately, pay the cost of supporting the dictator. It is a matter of time.
5. Aleppo burns and nobody cares. I have nothing to say.
October 1st, 2012, 8:46 pm
Johannes de Silentio said:
134. VAT:
“but the rice is in the pudding.”
You mean. the proof is in the pudding. If you’re going to pontificate in English, you need to learn the lingo, VATTY.
October 2nd, 2012, 12:06 am
Juergen said:
Navid Kermani a known Islam researcher was in Syria, here his translated report:
http://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.navidkermani.de%2Fmedia%2Fraw%2FSyrienzeitredn.pdf
October 2nd, 2012, 1:09 am
Citizen said:
Russia helps U.S., Syria establish contact, Turkey in shock
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/russia-helps-us-syria-establish-contact-turkey-in-shock/article3949104.ece
October 2nd, 2012, 1:56 am
Syrialover said:
New thread by Joshua Landis seems to have been there and disappeared.
Anybody else see that?
October 2nd, 2012, 2:37 am
Aldendeshe said:
Of course, seen it, I copied the whole post and comments as well. Is he retracting the B.S. he wrote, did whoever paid him for it chech stopped, maybe he is asking more money, learned from his buddy extorsionist in Syria that he promotes, or something in comment section, told to remove it, who knows maybe served with an NSL order. Better check it out first, make sure it is the ligit thing, could the fake Israeli copy they use on unsuspecting Americans to exract technical material, cheap espionage. I love it when financial and high tech American companies hire Israeli security firms, LOL
October 2nd, 2012, 2:55 am
Visitor said:
The new post probably disappeared because of unspecified threats made by shabbiha elements loyal to the shaykh el-jabal. It is doubtful there were financial reasons behind it.
October 2nd, 2012, 5:53 am
Mina said:
Auctions are on
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/brotherhood-forms-committee-support-syrian-uprising
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/1/54499/Egypt/Video-Syrian-TV-launches-vicious-attack-on-%D9%90Egypts.aspx
October 2nd, 2012, 6:09 am
Tara said:
Ynetnews is not trustworthy.
Hezbollah chief ‘killed in Syria’
Ali Hussein Nassif, a senior military figure in Hezbollah, was buried in Lebanon yesterday. The moqawama website has pictures and a report (in Arabic).
The website does not say how Nassif died but the Israeli Ynetnews, citing Lebanese media sources, says he was killed in Syria on Sunday.
Nassif was in charge of all Hezbollah operations in Syria, and served as the liaison between the Shia group and Bashar Assad’s forces …
Opposition groups in Lebanon said that Nassif was killed in a clash near Homs, following an ambush by Syrian rebels.
According to the Free Syria Army, he was driving near the city when the rebels detonated a roadside bomb.
The Syrian opposition said that Nassif was transferred to Syria following the escalating uprising in the country, and was tasked with quashing civilian uprisings.
He was also responsible for tracking down individuals wanted by Hezbollah.
..
The Guardian
October 2nd, 2012, 8:20 am
Humanist said:
Ariel & JNA,
If this “journalist” worked for Press TV (of all TV stations) then I see no reason to feel sorry for him.
Yes I am biased. But just look at the comments to its “reports”. Press TV is Iranian, but you almost never see any Iranian commenting, mostly shia Arabs and self-hating Westerners. This is because everything just a little bit critical of Islam and/or the Islamic republic is censored.
And Hala Jaber still claims that man was a “liberal” . Ha Ha!
I guess this Arab woman works – or should work – for Press TV too.
October 2nd, 2012, 12:29 pm
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