President Assad’s media advisor appeared on CNN and asked where John Kerry gets the right to tell the Syrian people who can and cannot be their leader. She encouraged the media to come to Syria so “you will find out for yourself who is the criminal; who is kidnapping people, who is raping people.” She said that “most of what’s circulated in the media has nothing to do with what’s in Syria.” From the following site: http://www.intifada-palestine.com/2014/01/bouthaina-shaaban-think-u-s-democratic-syria/ In the current international negotiations over the Syrian conflict, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear that current president Bashar al-Assad will not have a role in any new transitional government.
Category: Head Stories
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has emphasized Russia’s red line with regards to terrorism, saying that “a dialog with terrorist groups fighting in Syria will not be held under any circumstance”. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani backed up Russia’s position in an interview on CNN, saying that “the first step for solving the crisis in Syria lies in expelling terrorists”. Meanwhile, UN/AL envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi has held talks with both the Syrian government’s and the foreign-backed opposition and indicates that talks continue in Geneva on Monday. In February 2013 a US veto to a Russian sponsored UN Security Council resolution, condemning all forms of terrorism, regardless by whom and under which circumstances they are being committed, threw the two partners for peace into a state of diplomatic deep freeze. Russia drafted the resolution, following a devastating terrorist attack in Damascus, and Lavrov responded to the US veto by blasting the US administration for double standards. On Sunday, in Geneva, the Russian Foreign Minister underlined Russia’s red line with regards to terrorism, saying:
Israel is often viewed by Washington politicians as the most ‘stable’ ally in the Middle East. But stability from the American perspective can mean many things. Lead amongst them is that the ‘ally’ must be unconditionally loyal to the diktats of the US administration. This rule has proven to be true since the United States claimed a position of ascendency, if not complete hegemony over many regions of the world since World War II. Israel, however, remained an exception. The rules by which US-Israeli relations are governed are perhaps the most bewildering of all foreign policies of any two countries. An illustration of this would be to consider these comments by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon quoted in the Israeli news portal Ynetnews. “The American security plan presented to us is not worth the paper it’s written on,” he said, referring to efforts underway since July by American Secretary of State John Kerry, “who turned up here determined and acting out of misplaced obsession and messianic fervor.” Kerry “cannot teach me anything about the conflict with the Palestinians,” said Ya’alon.
The media spin machine is again kicking into high gear, perfectly timed to accompany the “Geneva II” Syria peace talks. The lies are necessary to give the Obama administration an upper hand in the peace negotiations, which are not being used to pursue peace, but instead, to accomplish the Obama administration’s longstanding goal of Syrian regime change. Here are the top three Western media lies about the Syrian peace talks. 1) The removal of Syrian Bashar al-Assad was an agreed upon “precondition” for the Geneva II peace talks. This lie has been repeated over and over by government and media alike. It has zero basis. The Obama administration claims that this precondition was expressed in the “Geneva communiqué,” which was a road map agreement meant to guide the Geneva II peace talks, agreed upon by some of the major parties of the negotiations, including Russia. The communiqué does indeed call for a negotiated political transition, but nowhere does it state that such a transition cannot include President Assad. Such a condition would have been outright rejected by Russia.
Today, in this gathering of Arab and Western powers, we are presented with a simple choice: we can choose to fight terrorism and extremism together and to start a new political process, or you can continue to support terrorism in Syria. Let us reject and isolate the black hands and the false faces, which publicly smile but covertly feed terrorist ideology, striking Syria today, but ultimately spreading to infect us all. This is the moment of truth and destiny; let us rise to the challenge. Syria Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, who headed his country’s official delegation to Geneva II, called at the opening session of the conference on a collective confrontation against terrorism and on starting a national dialogue in Damascus, SANA reported. Ladies and Gentlemen, On behalf of the Syrian Arab Republic, SYRIAN – steeped in history for seven thousand years. ARAB – proud of its steadfast pan-Arab heritage despite the deliberate acts of aggression of supposed brotherly Arabs. REPUBLIC – a civil state that some, sitting in this room, have tried to return to medieval times. Never have I been in a more difficult position; my delegation and I carry the weight of three years of hardship endured by my fellow countrymen – the blood of our martyrs, the tears of our bereaved, the anguish of families waiting for news of a loved one – kidnapped or missing, the cries of our children whose tender fingers were the targets of mortar shelling into their classrooms, the hopes of an entire generation destroyed before their very eyes, the courage of mothers and fathers who have sent all their sons to defend our country, the heartbreak of families whose homes have been destroyed and are now displaced or refugees.
Unquestionably, there would be no Geneva-II conference on Syria had it not been for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s brilliant tactical strategy of offering up a positive proposal from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that Syria would turn over to the West all of his country’s chemical weapons in order to avoid a Western military attack. Kerry laid down his chemical weapons stipulation at a September 2013 joint press conference in London with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. In answer to a reporter’s question about what Assad could do or offer in order to stop an attack from the United States and other NATO forces, Kerry responded, “Umm… sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over! All of them… without delay and allow a full and total accounting for that. But he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done, obviously.”
On January 3 Rear Admiral Viktor Bursuk, a deputy commander of the Russian navy who oversees weapons procurement, said Russia’s Navy is expected to receive 40 new warships and auxiliary vessels in 2014. In addition to surface ships of various classes, the Navy will also commission the third Borey-class nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine, the Vladimir Monomakh, and a Varshavyanka-class diesel electric submarine. Russia will continue the repair and overhaul of the Admiral Nakhimov nuclear-powered missile cruiser and three nuclear-powered attack submarines this year. The Admiral Nakhimov is expected to rejoin the Russian navy in 2018 with the most advanced weapons systems for its vessel type, the Sevmash shipyard said in June last year.
North Korea has demanded South Korea and the US halt their annual military drill, calling it “a serious provocation.” If not, north-south relations “will plunge into a deadlock and unimaginable holocaust,” says Pyongyang. “We sternly warn the US and the South Korean authorities to stop the dangerous military exercises which may push the situation on the peninsula and the north-south ties to a catastrophe,” said the spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) in a statement, reported [North Korea’s] KCNA state news. The US and South Korea, which have shared the cost of hosting American soldiers since 1991, are planning to stage military exercises late February. The annual drills such as ‘Key Resolve’ and ‘Ulchi-Freedom-Guardian’, staged by Seoul and Washington, focus on defending the South from attacks, including possible ones from the North.
Terrorism came into being as soon as humanity appeared, but the US special services turned it into a threat of global scale. The end of the 1970s can be considered as the starting point. Back then the Central Intelligence Agency launched a training program for «Islamic brigades» to entangle the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic into the war in Afghanistan. In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, «According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahedeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention». That was the time Osama bin Laden was recruited.
African immigrants demonstrate against racist policies of the Israeli regime. For more than six decades since its creation in 1948, the Israeli regime has hidden its crimes against native Arab people with the façade of “national security”. The Israeli usurpers have systematically stolen land from the native Palestinians, killed them, brutalized them, and pushed millions into exile or into squalid ghettos. Yet when charged with these blatant crimes against humanity, the Israeli regime defends its racist genocidal conduct in terms of security against “Arab terrorism”. It has gotten away with this despicable charade and affront to international law and morality in large measure because of the cynical indulgence of its patron in Washington.